Just about the time when others might be thinking of retirement, Canyon resident Maggie Zsoltaros dove head first into the bakery business, opening Maggie’s Gluten Free Kitchen.

With a resume that includes raising ostriches, running her own restaurant, providing care for people with developmental disabilities, serving as a union president and even working at the Advance, Zsoltaros started the bakery after being diagnosed with celiac disease. After years of battling symptoms, the discovery came as a relief.

“I had allergies all my life,” she said on Tuesday. “I had hives all the time, suffered severe headaches, had a thyroid condition and all kinds of food sensitivities.”

When she finally learned she requires a gluten free diet to be healthy, Zsoltaros started experimenting in her kitchen.

“I wasn’t very happy with the products available,” she said. “So I started researching recipes and then creating my own.”

The results suited her own desire for tasty foods that didn’t make her ill, and they impressed others who had similar health issues.

According to Health Canada, “Celiac disease (CD) is an immune mediated disease, triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by the ingestion of gluten. Gluten is a generic name given to storage proteins in wheat, barley, rye and other closely related cereal grains. It is the gluten in wheat flour that binds and gives structure to bread, baked goods, and other foods, making it widely used in the production of many processed and packaged foods. In those with CD, these proteins trigger an inflammatory injury in the absorptive surface of the small intestine resulting in malabsorption of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fat-soluble vitamins, folate and minerals, especially iron and calcium.”

Celiac disease is a lifelong condition with no cure. The only effective way to manage it, says Health Canada, is with a strict lifelong avoidance of gluten in the diet. As many as one in a hundred are affected worldwide.

Today, from a bakery beside her home in Canyon, Zsoltaros and her staff bake four types of bread (brown, multi-seed, Kootenay Harvest and cinnamon raisin), hamburger and (seasonally) hotdog buns, pizza shells, dinner buns, brownies and four types of cookies. Also produced are four types of muffins, granola and breakfast bars, granola cereal, pancake and waffle mix, and bread crumbs.

“We operate a 100 per cent gluten-free establishment,” she said.

Maggie’s Gluten Free Kitchen products are available on shelves in Calgary, Red Deer, the Kootenays, the Lower Mainland, the Okanagan and northern B.C. The business recently purchased a one-ton reefer truck that allows the goods to be shipped frozen.

“I love to bake,” she smiled. “I enjoy putting recipes together and the results have been well accepted in the celiac community.”

Organic rice flour is the base in most of the products, but it’s a quest for quality that has driven Zsoltaros to use certified organic ingredients like eggs, butter and sulphur-free dried fruits wherever possible. No chemical stabilizers are used.

While the products are mainly sold from health food stores and grocery outlets, some bakeries are also carrying them.

“Some people cannot tolerate even a trace of gluten,” she explained. “It isn’t easy for a regular bakery to guarantee there has been no cross-contamination of their products, so they choose to purchase our products instead.”

Maggie’s Gluten Free Kitchen even had a role to play in the recent Winter Olympics. A large San Diego-based caterer was one of the Games’ suppliers, and it chose to offer gluten free products made right here in the Creston Valley.

“Our products were available in three athletes’ villages, three commissaries and at the buffet tables of many of the major television networks,” she said. “We shipped out 1,800 muffins a day ahead of schedule because of our great staff — everyone just rallied. They were so supportive.”

The bakery has recently become a two-shift operation and five full-time and two part-time employees work to get orders to the marketplace.

For Zsoltaros herself, though, the reward comes from providing food that can help make life more enjoyable for people who have to pay such close attention to their diet. Her experience at the Iron Kettle Restaurant, which carries her products, illustrates that feeling.

“I went for lunch with some friends and I was able to order a hamburger,” she recalled. “My meal looked just like my friends’. I was so thrilled.”

Thanks to the extraordinary energy and enthusiasm of one local entrepreneur, even area residents with celiac disease can fully enjoy the pleasures of our Local Lunch. More information about Maggie’s Gluten Free Kitchen can be found on the company’s website, www.maggiesglutenfree.com.