FDA and Gluten-Free Fail

The FDA defining gluten-free fail. Article from the Washington Post found here.

"The FDA has spent years calling upon experts to have open-forum debates, town hall meetings - we've been having reiteration and reiteration," said Alessio Fasano, medical director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "They've been reiterating and listening to Grandma, Grandpa, people on the street corners. . . . I really don't understand why it's lingering up in the air when it really should be a no-brainer."

Trotter's Cafe

We ventured to Trotter's Cafe on Marshall Ave in St. Paul a few weeks ago with some friends. I am really impressed with Trotter's commitment to local farmers and fresh food. You can view a list of all their suppliers here. All the suppliers are from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. I really appreciate their transparency in a world so focus on food privacy.

I like going out for breakfast because it's an easy way to go out and eat gluten-free. Restaurants always have eggs. Trotter's also happens to have GF bread - photo on the right. It tasted like a pop-over, light and airy. Unlike most store bought gluten-free breads. The bread was an unexpected and delightful surprise.

Trotter's has a great local atmosphere. They have been added to a my list of local favorites.

Rice Chex Treats

Thank you Amy for introducing me to Rice Chex treats! If you know how to make Rice Crispy Treats you know how to make these! Replace the Rice Crispys with Rice Chex. It's that simple. Every time I make these they don't last more than two days.

This is a great option for an easy gluten-free dessert that everyone will enjoy.

Butter a 9x13 pan. In a large pot melt 3 Tbsp of butter on med-high heat. Add 2 bags of marshmallows. Keep stirring to avoid the mallows turning brown. Once melted remove pot from heat and add 6 cups of Rice Chex. Stir together. Spread the mix into the pan. Let cool and Enjoy!

These treats are a little rougher then Rice Crispys so I use a bread knife to cut them.

Eden Pizza

Have you been to Eden Pizza? A friend recommended I try it months ago - and I finally did. They have an extensive menu of speciality pizzas including GLUTEN-FREE! Very good. I'm excited that I found this place. It's really good pizza and it cost less then some other places.

It's a small restaurant in Midway/Como neighborhood in St. Paul  off of Snelling just north of 94. It's in a residential area so parking is easy and the traffic is light. You can order for delivery, eat there or pick it up. They're closed on Monday and open 3pm-10pm the rest of the week.

Gluten Sensitivity

Clues to Gluten Sensitivity in Wall Street Journal

Delightful Surprises at Super Target

I find myself grocery shopping at Target more and more these days. Don't get me wrong I love my co-op and Lund's is super nice but Target fits my budget. And to my surprise Target has been albe to fit my diet. I can't get everything at Target but I can get a lot there. They carry many GF products including Glutino, Kinnikinnick, Amy's, Julie's, Annie's, Bob's Red Mill, Cherrybrook, and General Mills. You have to be looking for some of them. For example, the Kinn-Toos are on the top shelf - not exactly easy to spot. For a while I thought that only certain Target stores in certain neighborhoods would cater to food allergiers but I was wrong. I have seen a wide variety of GF products in many Target locations. Honestly I can get more GF food at Target then at Lund's. I'm not kidding. Obviously Target can't be the only store you shop and for many of you with food allergies I'm sure you're already shopping at many different grocery stores but they can be added into your repertoire. The best part - it's less expensive for the same food.

Another sweet treat from Kinnikinnick. These are their animal crackers. These crackers are light and sweet. Remember how animal crackers always stuck to the roof of your mouth, similar to graham crackers. These are easy and don't get stuck anywhere in your mouth. I didn't feel weighed down or that I had eaten too many. I would choose these over the gluten filled crackers. I found these at Super Target and I haven't seen them anywhere else. Yea Target!

Brasa

Ate at Brasa Premium Rotisserie last week - love it! They have a separate gluten-free menu that includes GF beer. The staff is very knowledgable about the food and super helpful. Most of the food is served family style but they also make sandwiches. We chose family style because the sandwiches are not GF. We ordered the pulled pork, the ribs (they were on special), yellow rice and beans, apple coleslaw, and cornbread for the gluten eaters. For dessert I ordered the butterscotch pudding. I would go to Brasa just for the pudding. I loved it that much.  Besides the pudding, the coleslaw really stands out to me, it's tangy. Tangy coleslaw is unexpected. By adding the apples the slaw becomes more of a palet cleanser. Which worked out great so I could focus on dessert. You can tell that the food is made with a lot of care.  Every time I've been there it lives up to my expectations. Usually my memory remembers the food more favorably then it actually is however Brase never disappoints. 

There are two locations, one in NE Minneapolis and one on Grand Ave in St. Paul. Adam Richman, host of "Man vs. Food" included a Brasa meal on his 5 foods not to be missed on the Today Show in December. You can see the video here. You can also see photos from the "Man vs. Food" visit to Brasa and other Minnepolis favorites here. In conclusion, go to Brasa!

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. 

Why I Love P.F. Chang's

We went to P.F. Chang's for our 2nd wedding anniversary this past weekend. Yes, we drove through the snow storm. Three years in a row, including our wedding day, there has been a snow storm. Lucky us. On the plus side parking was easy, there weren't many people there and it was easy to run a few errands at the mall. The bad part, it took us an hour to get there from St. Paul. The reason we chose P.F. Chang's is because of their extensive gluten-free menu found here. They have done an outstanding job of making gluten-free food without sacrificing taste. We had a server explain to us that for them to make the transition to GF was very simple, most of the changes came in the sauces. Say what you want about chains, I can go to any major city and find a P.F. Chang's for dinner. My other fall back is a burrito bowl at Chipotle.

The staff at P.F. Chang's have a good routine for serving gluten-free customers. The GF meals come on different plates so that you can easily tell them apart. They know to bring you GF soy sauce. Many of them have tried the items on the GF menu and even have said that some of the dishes are better GF.

So far my favorite is the GF Mongolian Beef. It's my understanding that this is on their signature dishes. I've had a server them me this dish GF is better then the original. The famous lettuce wraps can also be ordered GF. The flourless chocolate cake is really good.

As a side note, I've noticed that many places we go to that have GF free food still have gluten in their foods. I realize this afterwards when I get a pounding headache. Guess what, not at P.F. Chang's they take GF serious.

Never thought I would say that P.F. Chang's is my new favorite restaurant.

Gluten Free Ice Cream Sandwich

I've been looking for a good gluten-free ice cream treat. Enter Julie's Organic Ice Cream. I've seen Julie's products in every co-op I've ever shopped in. I have only seen these sandwiches in one store. 

They are delicious. I love that they are a reasonable size and it's clear when I'm done. When I buy a pint of ice cream I tend to eat it out of the container and then all of a sudden it's gone! Oops. Having a clear portion is helpful. The cookie doesn't get too hard in the freezer, it's soft enough to bit in to but not so soft that you have cookie all over your fingers when you're done like the big name ice cream sandwiches. The ice cream is delicious. It holds it shape well in the sandwich and doesn't melt all over the place. Like most ice cream treats they are spending, just over $5 for the box. Still cheaper than going out for ice cream. 

To sum it up - I love them!

Babycakes Bakery

Who doesn't want to go this bakery? Babycakes NYC looks amazing. Friends in NYC, LA and Disney check this out and let me know what you think. I wish they had one in the Twin Cities. Everything looks amazing and they ship to MN! They also sell cookbooks.

Pizza a la Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free

 This pizza was an experiment on two levels. This is the first time I have had Glutino's GF frozen pizza crust and dairy-free cheese. Let's start with the crust seen in the picture and found here. I was skeptical because I haven't particularly liked the frozen pizza crust. Especially since baking the crust myself has become so easy. I was pleasantly surprised. I like the size, it's filling without being too much. It rises, not many GF crusts can do that and not taste dry and like cardboard. I thought this one was great. It was a little on the dry side but not enough to stop me from eating it. Thank God too because there are three more crusts in the freezer.

Now the cheese. I'm still not sold on dairy free eating for myself. I haven't seen a huge benefit. My stomach feels a little upset by the dairy but what I want to happen hasn't happened and we'll leave it at that.

This is the kind of dairy-free cheese I decided on. Mostly because I thought rice was safe alternative and it was already shredded. A plus so I don't have to do any extra work. Galaxy Nutritional Foods can be found here. They make a variety of dairy-free cheese including a vegan cheese. So what did I think. It's obviously not the same as cheese but it works. It's fine. I would be just fine if this what I had to eat for cheese for the rest of my life. If your like me and you gauge the pizza's completion based on the melting of the cheese, this alt-cheese will not melt like the real thing. You have to watch it. I've made pizza since and the cheese sort of melts, browns and bubbles. Just be watch it at the end.  

Eating Gluten-Free is too easy now

I'm starting to feel like I've gotten a pretty good handle on what has gluten and what doesn't. And since I don't want anything about my life to be easy I'm experimenting with also being dairy free. Once Christmas is here I'm going to have to eat dairy again - Christmas cookies! There is no way I'm missing out on that fun. I don't know if you know this but my Grandma Phyllis makes the best Christmas cookies in the history of the planet. That might be an overstatement but they're damn good cookies.

I won't go into my digestive details about why I'm doing this dairy-free experiment but people keep telling me that too much dairy can cause digestive issues. In fact one of my doctors said that nearly 75% of the world's adult population have lost some forms of being able to digest lactose - see here on Wikipedia also in the same Wiki article it says,

Pathological lactose intolerance can be caused by coeliac disease, which damages the villi in the small intestine that produce lactase. This lactose intolerance is temporary. Lactose intolerance associated with coeliac disease ceases after the patient has been on a gluten-free diet long enough for the villi to recover (BMJ Textbook of Gastroenterology, Chapter 11, Celiac Disease, Dr.Jamie Gregor & Dr. Diamond Sherin Alidina).


The term coeliac is the Greek work for celiac. Which apparently is the actual spelling and North America is the only place that spells it celiac. Seen here on Wikipedia.


So really I have no idea if this going to help. All I know is that there is a lot of room for improvement. I'm on day 8 and so far no improvement. It only took one week to feel better after starting my gluten-free diet. I hope I learn something soon. The next big step is trying the non-dairy cheese. At least I got the gluten-free pizza dough that tastes amazing. Here's hoping...

Chicken in a bag

This is super easy and tasty. I don't think the photo does this justice. I'll keep working on that.

In a large plastic bag mix:
3 Tbsp of cornstarch
2 Tbsp of GF soy sauce (sometimes I add a little more soy sauce - the kind I have isn't very flavorful so the more the better)
1/4 tsp of garlic powder
1/4 tsp of ginger (I used paprika because I didn't have ginger. It worked out great).

Next, put the chicken in the bag, shake it and than bake however you feel. I usually put in a fry it. I find that frying is an easier way to tell if the chicken is done. Insert lack of FDA oversight joke here. I think the next time I make this I'm going to cut the chicken into strips. I've also thought this would be a good mix with a veggie stir-fry with rice or rice noodles.

I love how simple this recipe is. You can have some fun with it too. You get to shake a bag. Let out that frustration from the day!