In another head to head test with typical kids, this time there is a CLEAR winner. The boys enjoyed one just fine, but truly disliked the other. I managed to add more milk and frozen greens and have it for MY dinner, since I mostly never met a gluten-free mac and cheese I couldn't find a way to like. Well, okay, so these two are the only boxed gluten-free mac and cheese I've ever had. But still. You get the point. As you may have gathered from my ecookbooklet, I add greens to lots of things. And as I promised my older son Corley, here is his website. He's 10. It has nothing to do with living gluten-free. http://mastermagicianslearnmagic.weebly.com My boys (not average, I've been informed, but I think typical is accurate) recently sampled two gluten free frozen pizzas. They were nearly identical in size -- about 10 inches across -- despite Udi's larger box. Three Bakers claimed that their pizza was 3 servings at 250 calories each, Udi's said their pizza was 2 servings at 320 each. Either way, this is no diet food. I read ingredients more closely at the end and discovered that Three Bakers contains gelatin, making it not a vegetarian food, and frankly, if I had realized that at the outset, it wouldn't have been part of the taste test. But I didn't, and I did, and so there you have it. While I don't want to spoil the ending on the taste test, I will say that both pizzas were way better than Amy's gf vegan pizza, whose crust was a little too thin and easy to overcook, and with the vegan cheese just not very tasty. It's not really comparing apples to apples in that case, but I think my experience with Amy's helped me decide that I'd need to relax how strict I am with cheese. Any pretty much the only dairy I eat these days is cheese on pizza, and now and then some Greek yogurt on my brother's recommendation as a possible solution to staving off my propencity for snacking in the evening. But I digress. On with the taste-test! Visit the home page and sign up for the mailing list to get So What CAN You Eat? A Gluten-Free Paleo Vegan (mostly) Recipes for Health and Weight Loss and other updates, offerings, tips and more! (I never sell or share my mailing list.)
[May is Celiac Awareness Month, and I’m giving away copies of my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) Recipes for Health and Weight Loss, to all who join the mailing list. Visit the homepage here.
19 fast, easy recipes!] 1) I'm cooking most of my own food, so I know what goes into it 2) I'm more likely to just get a salad (with dressing on the side) when I eat at a restaurant that doesn't have a gluten-free menu, helping me meet my weight management goals 3) I can't succumb to the temptation of workplace pizza or doughnuts when they appear 4) I'm more mindful of the nutritients and calories I'm putting into my body 5) I've gotten to experiment with new foods and have found some new things to add to my list of favorites, and they are healthy (Beets! Brussels sprouts!) 6) I've befriended nutritional yeast as a replacement for some of the B vitamins I lost with enriched carbs, and I LOVE it! 7) I've come up with new ways to prepare vegetables and make them satisfying as the MAIN dish 8) I've begun using condiments in interesting ways (yellow mustard on broccoli is delicious!) 9) Nuts and beans are great protein sources, AND they make good dips, spreads and hummuses (or is that hummi?) 10) (This should be number 1!) I generally feel so much better and have so much more energy! What gifts have you found from having to live gluten-free? [May is Celiac Awareness Month, and I’m giving away copies of my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) Recipes for Health and Weight Loss, to all who join the mailing list. Visit the homepage here. 19 fast, easy recipes!]
When I first went gluten-free, I had a little help from a friend about what to buy, but mostly I looked at the shelves and freezer cases of the gluten-free replacement products and didn’t know where to begin. Corn pasta or quinoa? Tapioca bread or some mixed grain thing? More often than not, I let a major deciding factor be that of price. I figured if I started with the least expensive and kept moving up the scale until I found something palatable, then I would eventually identify my go-to purchases. With the exception of Udi’s bagels, I had very few Eureka! moments (well, other than if you add enough milk, eggs and cinnamon to make bread pudding a girl can actually choke down a loaf of tapioca bread…). If I had to do it over again, I’d have sought out the advice from a real gluten-free foodie, bought what they buy, and just stuck with those except when feeling adventurous or wanting to try something new. Not long ago I asked the celiac listserv for their recommendations for stuffed pastas and egg noodles and got some great suggestions. One woman who replied gave me this feedback on the new bread from Kinnikkinnick. She and her daughter, both gluten-free for more than 10 years, are passionate about food. They have done lots of product reviews and, in fact, her daughter was once gluten-free food editor for Foodista. I asked if she would share their go-to gf recommendations and she gladly put together this list, asking for no credit or attribution, but just wanting to help people navigate the world of gluten-free products for maximum enjoyment and satisfaction. Here are her suggestions (and note her full disclosure for being a sales rep for Glutenfeeda) and also my full disclosure that I haven't tried most of these suggestions, (but I plan to!): Hi Claire: Here is my very short list of the gf essentials in our house. We are foodies and do like to cook. We are not huge bakers but do bake! And in the interest of full disclosure, while I have been a Celiac for over a decade I do work for a manufacturer as a sales rep... Glutenfreeda. Our favorites in the pantry: pretty slim but we are foodies and this is all we truly need * Jules Gluten Free Flour (for anything and everything using standard recipes) * Kinnikinnick Panko Crumbs * Pamela's Cornbread ( I use the traditional recipe but bake it in a iron skillet) * Pamela's Pancake Mix (but generally we make crepes with corn starch or I use almond flour) * Better Batter Brownie Mix (in a pinch but I prefer my old Ghiradelli brownie recipe using Jules Flour) * Gluten Free Mama's Pie Crust Mix (truly fabulous) * Better Batter Flour nice to have on hand if you make homemade egg rolls, or Fry Bread..the rice blend lends itself very well for frying * Dakota Lakes Gourmet Coating .. just nice to have on hand . I often mix it with the Panko Crumbs for a spiced coating on chicken tenders or baked fish.. Frozen: * Feel Good Foods Egg rolls and dumplings * Garlic Jim's pizza when I am too lazy or in a hurry to make Pizza Dough with Jules Flour Bread and Pasta: * Kinnickinick Buns and Bread (frozen) * La Veneziane pastas (pantry) * Orgran Spirals (pantry) We're Jewish so... * Eena Kadeena Mock-zah Ball Mix * Eena Kadeena Mandel Cookies Not marketed as gf but essential for our lifestyle (aka to busy to make from scratch): * Cream of Buckwheat (Wolffs') * Wolff's Kasha * Sweet Rice Flour * Rice flour wrappers for sushi and spring rolls * Corn Starch for crepes (sweet and savory) * Almond flour (mainly because I prefer almond flour pancakes) * Lundberg's Risottos and Rice blends If I had kids at home still: I would probably also stock the K-Toons, or the plethora of cookies out there but now I just make up batches of my favorite recipes , roll them into balls and freeze for bake on demand. And I do eat our oatmeal often, as well as the burritos and pizza wraps Glutenfreeda Oatmeal, Burritos, Pizza Wraps and Granola :-) That's it...I cannot think of one thing that I cannot make with the above on hand. I use any recipe I come across from Liebowitz's "to die for" German Chocolate Cake to Curtis Stone's Cheese Biscuits. So Thank you, anonymous gluten-free food aficianado for sharing your list and hopefully making life easier for others! Last night's No Starch Stirfry Cauliflower, broccoli, a red pepper past it prime, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, and a tablespoon of walnuts, sauteed in a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook it til you're bored. Include onions and add gf soy sauce and serve over rice for a more traditional stirfry. Personally, I'm working on minimizing grains, and the great taste is driven by the veggies. Make a lot and enjoy! I was so taken with the attractiveness of my dinner last night that I snapped a picture of it and shared in on Twitter in a short conversation with @gfdougie (who also has a helpful blog: http://glutenfreetip.com/). I was flattered when he asked for the recipe, because it is essentially just fresh vegetables cut up and and a tablespoon of chopped walnuts sauteed in a little olive oil in a non-stick pan with some Trader Joe's smoked sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and sometimes (but not last night) I throw on some nutritional yeast. If you are thinking "I could never take the time to chop all those veggies," here are some tricks:
1) Buy them already cut up if possible. Produce Junction sells bags of broccoli florets. It's easy to find mushrooms already sliced. A nutritionist friend of mine suggested this to me a long time ago, and I felt strangely freed from the guilt of not doing all the chopping myself. 2) Since many fresh veggies are fine eaten raw, chop them big (which goes much faster) and cook them longer or shorter depending on your patience level. This won't work for folks who have trouble with raw veggies, but I find them most enjoyable when there is still some structure left to them. Not crunchy exactly, but that place between crunchy and soft. "Cook it til you're bored" is a common phrase in our house for recipes. 3) See my blog post on Beans and Greens (another common go-to dinner in my house) for other ideas for seasonings to keep things interesting. Keep it easy! |
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