Glutino Pad Thai

It looks gross right? It is. I don't like doing this but I have to be honest to my gluten-free friends. Besides if you know me you know it's impossible for me to lie. So don't ask if you don't want to know. If you like good Pad Thai, you know I do, don't buy this.

This is Glutino, Chicken Pad Thai. It's a frozen meal which doesn't usually bod well but there are some companies that make pretty decent frozen meals. Not many but they are out there.

I followed the directions very closely and I got tough noodles and chicken. Part of the meal was burned into the plastic edges not in a good way like lasagna edges. I was so bummed the picture on the box looked so good. Like most food advertising. I couldn't even finish it. Sad face.

Sawatdee Pad Thai

Good news! The Pad Thai at Sawatdee in St. Paul and in Minneapolis are gluten-free. Granted I have not been to every Thai restaurant in the cities but I love this Pad Thai. It took care of 3 meals! Gotta love the value.

What's cool about the restaurant in Minnepolis (the one on Washington Ave.) is that in the menu all the dishes that are gluten-free are clearly labeled with a GF at the end. In St. Paul the servers and staff are very accommodating and will answer questions about what's GF. Now you know the Pad Thai is.

Urban Spoon

The Urban Spoon has a great list of gluten-free friendly restaurants in the Twin Cities. They also have an app for your iPhone, iPad and Android. I myself have never used it but my husband has it and really likes it. Plus it looks like a slot machine and you get to shake your phone when you want a new suggestion. You set the location, the type of food you want and the cost, then you shake the phone and it gives you a suggestion of a restaurant. Fun right? I guess it's time for me to take the plunge and try the app.

Update 12:55pm: So I just go the app and the shaking feature just changes all the settings, the location, kind of food, and cost. If you go into browsing you can select "features" and select "gluten-free friendly" and it will give you a list of restaurants in the area that are GF friendly.

Add me as a friend.

Cherrybrook Cake Mix

My cousin gave me a bunch of gluten free mixes that she thought she would never get to making. Cherrybrook Kitchen chocolate cake mix was one of them. They make peanut free and dairy free products. They have a great variety of free kinds of food. I have no idea where she bought them but I think I saw this product at a Super Target the other day.

I made these for our New Year's Eve party. This is another great option for an easy gluten-free cake. My cupcakes turned out more on the fudgy side then I might have liked but that could have been because I was impatient and took them out of the oven too soon. They were a little crumbly, which is to be expected - it's gluten-free and sticky at the same time. An interesting mix. The frosting was fantastic if I do say so myself. I used mint extract instead of vanilla - not planned had no vanilla. I've been eating these all week for breakfast, my husband thinks that chocolate cake is weird for breakfast. I say, it's no different then a muffin or cinnamon roll.

I think these are worth checking out. It's nice to have options instead of making the Betty Crocker mix all the time. I remember the days of debating between Duncan Hines vs. Betty Crocker. Yea for more gluten-free options!

Pizza Crust Mix

We experimented the other night with a new pizza crust. I found it at Target! It was still $5.00 but it was at a large grocery store chain. This is Namaste Foods GF pizza crust mix it makes 2 crusts. I could tell right away when I was mixing it that this was going to be good. The dough smelled amazing with the spices and herbs they included. The ingredient list just had Italian Seasoning, nice and vague. They probably want to keep it a secret like KFC and their 11 herbs and spices. This was easy to make and just as easy to eat the entire thing.

I added some water and oil, mixed for about 5 minutes in the mixer, buttered the pan, and used a spatula to 'roll' it out onto the pan. I like not having the roll the dough out and not have to wait an hour for it to rise.

Here's the finished product. I used my non-dairy cheese and it melted! Yea! You know I love easy and that's why I love this crust. It's good. I do like the kind I make froms scratch better but I don't always have the energy or the time it takes to make. There is a sense of relief that comes when I find GF food that is easy to make. So much of the GF food is high maintenance. There are times when I long for my frozen pizza. Namaste's crust is much better than any frozen pizza. 

Chicken Noodle Soup To Go

I know I have been neglectful of my blog. The holidays, a great excuse for not getting a thing done at the end of the year. In my laziness I decided to try some pre-packaged frozen gluten-free meals. I tried the Kettle Cuisine chicken noodle soup. I was expecting something bland, with hard noodles, and soggy vegetables. Here's what it looked like after cooked...

So, it doesn't look amazing in the photo. I think it's the gluten-free crackers I put in. I liked it, Mikey likes it. I had to microwave it a few times to get the desired temperature but it's damn good soup. All the elements that go into making it, the rice noodles, the veggies, the chicken all done right. I'm not sure I could make better soup. Then again, I didn't make the last GF soup, my husband did. This chicken noodle soup was slick. I love that I didn't have spend all the time to make it. 

It's in the freezer section at the store, it's another co-op find. I haven't seen it in any of our 'big box' grocery stores. I do know that you can request foods and there is a large population of GF people these days. Maybe we should form a collective or union or lobby and start demanding better GF foods at the larger grocery stores. Hopefully the price on GF food will go down.