MILK + COOKIES A sweet treat for people with various dietary restrictions.

If you’ve ever been out to eat with an “I-can’t-eat-that” person, you understand how difficult it can be. But if you’ve ever been an “I-can’t-eat-that” person, you really understand just how difficult, annoying, and all too often unappetizing it can be.

Special diets–be they by necessity (severe food allergies, Celiac Disease) or by choice (strict vegan, kosher), tend to come with one common side-effect: limitations, especially in the indulgent, decadent treats category.

Yes, there are alternative options. But these options are not always the most tasty, nor do they always resemble the “real” foods they’re substituting.

Enter Dr. Lucy’s cookies, a delightful peanut-, tree nut-, milk-, egg-, wheat-, and gluten-free treat that just so happens to be made right here in the Seven Cities.

Dr. Lucy’s cookies are acceptable for Celiac disease patients, vegans, those following kosher, low-fat and low-cholesterol diets, and pretty much anyone with taste buds.

And these crisp little cookies (they’re on the small side; four constitute one serving) are the perfect size for guilt-free snacking.

Boxes of 16 cookies or smaller cellophane pouches of four can be found in specialty and grocery stores or purchased online. They’re available Sugar, Chocolate Chip, Cinnamon Thin, and Oatmeal varieties. Chocolate Chip, according to Lucy herself, are the best-selling flavor; although you really can’t go wrong with any selection.

All are light and airy, sweet—but not cloyingly so, and very, very crunchy.

The Oatmeal is the most-dense and vaguely resembles a grown-up version of those Barnum & Bailey’s animal crackers I devoured by the red-circus-train-boxful as a child. The Chocolate Chips are straightforward—a tad like Chips-a-Hoy, minus the flavor of Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil and Caramel Color.

The Sugars and Cinnamon Thins are virtually identical confections, save for a dusting of the obvious spice on the latter.

Dr. Lucy’s gluten-free flour blend is the staple ingredient—milled from six whole foods ranging garbanzo to tapioca. [For the uninitiated: gluten-free baking can be a Royal Pain; wheat-gluten—a protein—is sort of the glue that holds together almost all baked goodies]

Only a mere few years ago, both Dr. Lucy Gibney and her husband, Dr. Paul Gibney, were practicing Emergency Room doctors; Lucy left the ER in 2006. Today, they bake cookies.

The Gibneys’ son, now five years-old, was born with severe food allergies—an ailment that can create a great deal of fear and anxiety for parents and caretakers. As ER doctors, the Gibneys certainly didn’t have much flexibility in case of their own family emergency. But it was more than an issue of scheduling that led the couple to ultimately trade their scrubs for aprons.

Parents in their position must be available at a moment’s notice, she said. And until a few years ago, the market—especially the mainstream grocer segment—was not exactly flooded with gluten-free foods or other acceptable products for people with certain dietary restrictions. Even worse, many labels often neglect to mention that while the products’ ingredients may be “safe,” they’re sometimes packaged or processed in joint facilities that also manufacture foods containing potentially harmful allergens.

Cross-contamination, even from microscopic particles lingering on shared equipment, is a dangerous reality. When dealing with a severe food allergy, vigilance is key.

When their son was a younger child, the main priority was to staunchly monitor his intake. But as he grew and interacted with other children, the Gibneys’ concern vacillated from his physical to emotional well-being. “We didn’t want him to feel left out.”
When her son entered pre-school, Lucy took a proactive approach to monitoring his classroom diet. Rather than trouble teachers and fellow parents with the responsibility of regulating shared snacks, she approached them with a simple solution: “I asked that other parents send in a fruit and I would provide the rest of the snack, like cookies or crackers.”

By this time, Lucy wasn’t just whipping up batches of allergen-free treats in her home kitchen—she was producing them by the boxful in her namesake factory near Norfolk’s Tidewater Drive.

The couple, of course, was used to scouring the grocery aisles in search of wheat-free, peanut-free snacks and staples. But even at health food stores, the yummy treats—great-tasting cookies, cakes and even crackers were near-impossible to come by.

Lucy trial-and-errrored her way to a victory.

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“I just kept trying different recipes, substituting this and that. I looked in gluten-free cookbooks and vegan cookbooks and sort of pieced them together.”

These methods, applied to her mother’s cookie recipe, ultimately resulted in a winners.

Through their own struggles in dealing with a dangerous allergy (not to mention the often unappetizing food solutions on the market), however, they deeply understood how unfortunate and debilitating a life with severe food allergies could be. They did their research and, unsurprisingly, learned that yes, there was a huge void in the market for cookies like hers, which are vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, low-cholestoral, peanut-free, and frankly, delicious.

Lucy recalls the other doctor (husband Paul) teasing her that she should go into the cookie business.

When they began to research the actual logistics of manufacturing, it was decided their only option would be to build their own factory. “Many companies out-source their production to facilities that can handle the volume,” she explained. “But we couldn’t trust that there were any who could meet our standards.”

As a result, the couple purchased a space on Central Park Business Drive in Norfolk, where they completely designed and built-out a baking factory. (None of their ‘blacklisted’ ingredients are allowed even inside the office, ensuring there are no mix-ups or accidents.)

In 2006, Lucy Gibney left the ER and the couple immersed themselves in the world of allergen-free treats, with Lucy at the manufacturing helm and Paul in charge of distribution.

Two years later and Dr. Lucy’s Cookies—as they’re trademarked—are distributed nationally. Here in the Seven Cities, you can (and should!) pick up a box at numerous natural-foods stores; they’ve also started appearing in regional Farm Fresh markets.

While their career change may have been rather unusual, there’s really not much disparity to Dr. Lucy. After all, she’s still helping people to live the best, healthiest, most enjoyable lives possible. Only now, it’s just a little sweeter.