Mama Mia!

I am Italian, through and through, so my celiac diagnosis 7 years ago really threw my whole family into a major tizzy. We are the kind of family that has pasta twice a week - Thursdays at home and Sundays with the whole extended clan. Not only pasta, but nice fresh Italian bread. For the past few years, I'd just sit there, pathetically, while my big, noisy family enjoyed their Sunday dinner. Yes, I know there's GF pasta out there. I'm pretty sure I've tried them all. The best of them are okay; the worst, let's just say I'd rather cook the box they came in and eat that with sauce on it.

However (you knew the however was coming, right?), Conte's has a line of frozen pastas that are just out of this world. Yes, they're a bit pricey, but man oh man, it's worth it. Especially if you're a mama mia like me and you've been missing your spaghettis, rigatonis and raviolis.

The ravioli is just like you remember it, maybe even better. The ricotta cheese filling is light and delicious and the pasta tastes like...well, pasta. There is a spinach and ricotta ravioli as well, I just haven't tried it yet. They also offer wonderful stuffed shells and some great onion & potato pierogi and a light potato gnocchi.

I've been buying my Conte's at Mom's Bake at Home Pizza ( http://www.momsbakeathome.com/), but it's also available online (check out my Amazon store, to the right.)

My grandmom, who, up until she passed away at the ripe old age of 96, made fresh, homemade pasta every single Sunday of my life, would have to agree...Conte's is delizioso!

Quick & Easy GF Peanut Butter Cookies

Easy GF Peanut Butter Cookies

1 c. peanut butter
½ c. white sugar
½ c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. baking soda

Optional: Semi sweet or milk chocolate

Directions: In a bowl, mix together peanut butter, sugars, egg and baking soda. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours (overnight is even better.)
Roll into small balls (3/4”) and bake in preheated, 325 degree oven for 6 – 8 minutes on an ungreased baking sheet.

Optional: As soon as they come out of the oven, sprinkle a few semi sweet chocolate chips or place a small piece of a milk chocolate bar on each. After a few minutes, spread the melted chocolate over the top of the cookie.

Remove the set cookies to a rack and cool completely for a crispy cookie.

Warning: These are VERY rich! Have a glass of milk on hand!

Makes about 3 dozen.

Note: If you don’t want to bake them all at once, the dough keeps nicely for about a week in the fridge, if covered or wrapped tightly.

Thank You, Mr. Heinz...

There are some companies that make it almost easy to be gluten free (okay, that was an exaggeration). They have their products clearly marked GLUTEN FREE and/or their websites offer nice, clear allergen information. Two such companies are Heinz and Kraft.

Heinz's site http://www.heinz.com/health--wellness/focus-foods/dietary-preferences/gluten-free.aspx has an easy-to-read list of all its products and whether or not they are GF.

Kraft's site offers a Gluten Free fact sheet at http://www.kraftfoodservice.com/healthy_living/gluten_free_0623031.pdf and a list of their GF products, followed by some GF recipes http://195.244.101.205/kraftKitchens/index.cfm?Page=glutenFree .

Creamy Lime Tart

Gluten Free Fast Food

You deserve a break today! You just might not be getting it at a fast food restaurant. Most fast food places are very slow in getting the GF picture, while some are slowly coming around. Following is a list of some FF joints and their allergen info. Feel free to contact the individual restaurants for more info, and to bug them about providing gluten free items.







Arby’s:
http://www.arbys.com/nutrition/printable.php?type=allergens
Arby’s is great about packaging the roast beef in a plastic container, rather than placing it on a bun. The curly fries have gluten, but the potato cakes seem to be GF.

Burger King: Very few GF items.
http://www.bk.com/#menu=3,2,-1

Carls Jr:
http://www.carlsjr.com/content/downloads/CJAllergenChart_03-30-09.pdf
There are a couple of things here:
The Six Dollar Lo Carb Burger
Regular & Chili Fries

In-N-Out: Very GF friendly… you can get any burger "Protein Style" or wrapped in lettuce instead of serving it on a bun. Protein Style is listed in their "Secret Menu" Also their French fries are made fresh from potatoes that were washed, peeled and cooked minutes before they are served to you.

Jack in the Box:
http://www.jackinthebox.com/pdf/Ingredients.pdf
Not much here.

KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken):
http://www.kfc.com/nutrition/pdf/kfc_allergens_april09.pdf
Not a whole lot here, either, although a few sides a GF.


McDonald's: McDonald’s offers Allergen info on their website: http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_ingredients.html
There is very little there that is gluten-free—even their fries and hash browns contain wheat! The salads seem safe, just watch out for the dressings. Most of the ice cream products look safe, too. Always check before you dine, though.

Sonic:
http://www.sonicdrivein.com/pdfs/menu/Sonic_Allergen_Table_9-30-08.pdf
There are quite a few choices on this menu, like fries and tots; just order your burger bunless.
Subway:
http://subway.com/subwayroot/MenuNutrition/Nutrition/pdf/AllergenChart.pdf

According to the chart, the following salads are GF:
Chicken & Bacon Ranch (includes cheese)
Cold Cut Combo
Ham (Black Forest)
Italian BMT®
Roast Beef
Roasted Chicken Breast
Tuna
Turkey Breast
Turkey Breast & Ham
Spicy Italian
Subway Club®
Subway Club®
Veggie Delite®

Taco Bell:
http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/food-allergens-and-sensitivities/
According to Taco Bell's Allergen chart only three things on the menu are gluten free.
Side of Rice
Side of Pinto Beans and Cheese
Tostada


Wendy's: Wonderful Wendy’s has their own GF list! http://www.wendys.com/food/pdf/us/gluten_free_list.pdf
All of their hamburgers can be ordered bunless. They serve croutons packaged on the side of their salads, so you don’t have to pick them out. The baked potatoes and chili are gluten free.

Exposing Hidden Gluten

So, you’re going along, doing your gluten free thing, but you think you should be feeling a lot better than you do. Or maybe you’re still having symptoms even though you’ve stripped your kitchen of wheat and all the other “bad” grains. What’s going on? Well, it could be hidden gluten, that nefarious little protein is lurking somewhere – you just need to flush it out. Look into some of these more common sources of hidden gluten and see if they sound familiar.

Toasters, grills, toaster ovens, bagel cutters…do you toast regular bread in your toaster, and then throw in your carefully baked GF bread? There could be teeny weeny wheaty crumbs sticking to the inside of your toaster. Either invest in a dedicated toaster just for GF use, or try toast sleeves. http://trishydee.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/672913

Same for grills, toaster ovens, panini makers, even bagel cutters. Make sure you use a cutting board just for your GF foods or wash the family’s cutting board well before using it.

Peanut butter, Mayo, etc…One of the biggest hiders of crumbs is the infamous peanut butter jar. Your family makes a pbj, dipping the knife in and out of the peanut butter and jelly, depositing little crumbs just waiting to jump on your knife when you go to make your GF PBJ. You need a dedicated peanut butter jar, just for you. Same with jelly, jam, mayonnaise, Nutella (tell your family that you NEED your own Nutella jar!) tub margarine or butter and other jars and tubs. Lots of products now come in squeeze bottles, so that’s a good option, too.

Products that you wouldn’t think would have gluten in them sometimes do. Soy sauce is almost always made from wheat. Some ready-to-spread frostings and whipped toppings contain gluten, as well as tomato sauces and pastes. Some spices and spice blends may have gluten, and sometimes corn tortillas have wheat in them. You must be diligent and look at labels each time you buy them. Some products may change ingredients over time (i.e.: Pringles used to be GF, but now they’re not).

Many medications and vitamins contain gluten; if you’re not sure, ask the pharmacist. Some health and beauty products, like lip balm and moisturizer, also hide gluten. Check the label, but if there’s no info, go to the web site. Most companies have it listed somewhere on their site.

Thanks to GFers like us, more and more companies are listing ingredients and/or labeling products as containing gluten or gluten free. Be a label detective and you should be fine.

Do You Need a Bread Machine?

If you don't want to pay upwards of 5.00 for a loaf of sorta decent gluten free bread, then yes, you should probably invest in a bread machine. You can make wonderful bread for yourself whenever you want it, your family can make gluten-FULL bread whenever they want, and your house will always smell delicious.

There are some good articles out there to help you choose which kind of machine to buy. Here's a good one from Celiac.com:

http://www.celiac.com/articles/287/1/Bread-Machine-Tips/Page1.html

I've had 2 bread machines in my GF career, and they have both made great bread. The first was a Cuisinart CBK200 (about 129.00.) This machine had lots of bells and whistles, but I pretty much always used the GF setting with good success. After a few years of beating that poor machine to the ground, it died on me. In the nick of time, my mother-in-law gave me an extra that she had, a Welbilt (selling on ebay right now for 30.00 - 60.00), which was much simpler to use, but still puts out great bread. Lots of GFers swear by the Zojirushi, which can be had for 200.00 or more.

The key to good gluten free bread making is experimentation. Don't expect your first loaf to come out perfectly (if it does, yay!) Just be sure to follow the instructions carefully. Yes, it does matter in which order you put the ingredients (wet first, then dry, yeast on top). And because there are no preservatives in homemade bread, if you're not going to eat it all at once, make sure you slice some and freeze the slices. Then, when you're dying for a toasted PBJ or grilled cheese, your bread is all ready to go.

Here's a recipe to get you started. Let me know how you make out!

Basic Bread Machine White Bread

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey or 2 T. sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature (or use regular milk and add 1 1/2 T. white vinegar to it)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup potato starch
1/2 cup soy flour
2 cups white rice flour
1 tablespoon active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
Mix eggs, vinegar, oil, honey, milk and place in the pan of bread machine.Mix the all the dry ingredients (except yeast) and place on top of wet ingredients. Sprinkle the yeast on top (try not to let the yeast touch the sides of the pan.)

Select the Gluten Free or sweet dough cycle. Five minutes into the cycle, check the consistency of the dough. Add additional rice flour or liquid if necessary.
When bread is finished, let cool for 10 to 15 minutes before removing from pan. Enjoy!

FYI: Unfortunately, GF bread is never very pretty :( But, as we all know, looks aren't everything!

Birthday Cupcakes!

One of the saddest things about being GF is birthdays. Your own or someone else's. When you're at a birthday party, you can't eat the cake and it always looks so GOOD, doesn't it? And when it's your own birthday, you either have to make do with fruit or a GF baked good, which is never that great anyway. It's enough to make you want to skip your birthday this year!

Lizzie put an end to that on my bday this year. She knows how much I used to love treats like Whoopie Pies and Devil Dogs, so for my big (I'm not saying how big) day this year, she made me cream filled chocolate cupcakes that were out of this world. I'm not kidding! The chocolate cake tasted like cake, not cardboard, and the cream was sublime.

She made the cupcakes using Bob's Red Mill Chocolate Cake Mix and then piped in a clone of the Hostess cupcake cream using a piping bag with a large star tip. (Any large tip would work fine, though.) Here's the cream recipe. Give it a try!

Cupcake Cream Filling

Beat together 1 c. shortening, 1 1/2 c. confectioner's sugar and 2 c. Marshmallow Fluff (or marshmallow cream). Add in 1 1/2 t. vanilla and mix until blended.