Acid Reflux and other digestive issues have finally forced me to give up chocolate for good, it seems…. Oh woe is me, what am I to eat when I get that sweet thing craving. Oddly enough white chocolate that is not contaminated by wheat is relatively difficult to find. Given that we just passed through Easter season, believe me I tried.
Another pet peeve of mine is Ben and Jerry’s, so many of their flavors have either cookie bits or chocolate in them that I’m left eating vanilla and pistachio, assuming that your can find either of these relatively blah flavors at your local store. B&J has built a business catering to people who want goobers of stuff in their ice cream.
Can you imagine my elation when I found an ice cream product just as good as B&J, but most of its flavors are marked GF. I’d seen Talenti Gelato at my local organic grocer haunts for some time. the only reason I did not try it sooner was the $6 a pint asking price, $2 more than B&J. A $4.49 sale on pints at Healthy Living got me started. True to Italian ice cream tradition, the texture is softer than B&J and easier to stick that spoon into. The first flavor I tried was their Sicilian Pistachio. It’s good. But by far my favorite is their Caribbean Coconut. Try it heaped with fresh raspberries and you’re in for a real special treat. Their strawberry is decent as well.
Glutino is really a mixed bag brand as far as replacement food go. A few things are good, a fair number are “meh”, and an equal number rare far inferior to other products out there. How they became the “General Mills” of GF replacement foods is beyond me except they may have gotten there before everybody else jumped on the GF bandwagon.
One of their products that is worth a try are their yogurt covered pretzels. Yes, they have chocolate covered ones too, but for the choco-deprived they are heaven if you are looking for a guilty sweet snack. Health food this is not.
Happy midnight snacks, GF folks.
Frontier Soups and My Favorite Boxed Soup Stock!
March 3, 2012
One of my best GF discoveries since returning Stateside have got to be Frontier Soup kits. Not all their kits are – but a fair number are (they contain the usual warning about not being made in a dedicated GF facility). The first I tried and by far my favorite is the Wisconsin Lakeshore Chicken and Wild Rice Soup. -Yum! All you will need to feed 4-6 is one soup kit, 2 boxes of chicken stock, 3 chicken breasts, a modest bag of peas and carrots, and a few tablespoon of olive oil, follow the directions and -voila, the yummiest chicken soup ever. There is a variation in the recipe on the back of the package that calls for white wine; I must confess I like it so much as is I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure its delicious. One warning, the wild rice takes forever to cook and tends to remain chewy. It won’t get mushy, so throw it in as soon as you add the broth. The kit also comes with GF corn noodle spirals. they hold up pretty well, but as with any Gf pasta add them last, as in 5-10 minutes before you plan on serving the soup.
My favorite boxed chicken stock to use with this recipe and anything else has got to be Kitchen Basics Unsalted Chicken Stock. It has a nice flavor, no MSG taste, and since its unsalted you can choose your own level of seasoning. I like to brown my diced chicken breast separately in a little olive oil and salt/pepper before adding to the soup.
I’ve been making the chicken and wild rice soup about once a week, so I was excited to find another Frontier Soup kit for French Onion Soup. The kit is GF. And if you add only GF items you should be safe, unlike at restaurants where said soup is usually served with a piece of bread floating in it. I also happen to be intolerant/allergic to beef and this soup is suggested to be made with beef stock, as is traditional. I’m happy to report it’s quite passable with aforementioned chicken stock. I even added a little GF beer to “beef it up” so to speak. You’ll need 1-2 onions and 1/2 cup apple cider to complete this soup, plus cheese and some GF bread or croutons as a topping. Toast your GF bread separately and put it on just before serving so it doesn’t get too soggy too fast. This might be a good use for those chewy, crusty Udi’s bagels, although I had mine with Schar Ciabatta Par-baked Rolls.
Peamut Butter Cookie Wars
February 10, 2012
One of the first specifically GF replacement products I tried were Pamela’s Peanut Butter Cookies that I bought in Seattle at Whole Foods. By then I hadn’t had anything closely resembling bread or cookies in about 3 months, as such replacement products by and large simply don’t exist in Japan. I was so desperate for sweet carbs aside from mochi that I didn’t realize quite how good they were, until I recently tried a competing pre-packaged GF cookie product by Tree of Life. Now, I can tell you with certainty that Pamela’s has the packaged GF cookie market won (at least as far as nationally available products go).
GF replacement products are usually expensive enough that when it comes to non-essentials, like sweet treats, I confine myself to sales and weekly specials. I had bought some Tree of Life shortbread cookies and found them okay, so when the peanut butter ones came on sale I figured they ought to be good, -wrong… Of the typical problems GF baked goods face, these have it all: dry, gritty sandy and so crumbly I think only half the cookies in the package were intact. Of course this could have been why they were on sale. While a certain amount of sandy texture is the nature of shortbread, it is totally unacceptable in peanut butter cookies, especially when such a good alternative exists.
Pamela’s PB cookies are moist and chewy and have none of the gritty sandy-ness that often plagues GF replacement foods. To Tree of Life, I can only say “Try, try again…”
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