freshii

I have been on the hunt for a new spot to pick up lunch in the area, and somehow I happened upon freshii. It's a chain, and I think it opened pretty recently here in Boston. They are gluten free-helpful which is huge! I read online about some others having the rice bowls and I really wanted to give one of those a try. They also have a list of all the ingredients they use out where you order so you can check, and everything is made fresh to order. Here's an info sheet about what contains gluten.

First visit, I went with the Bliss Rice Bowl:


YUM. And it's A LOT of food. If I were better at managing my portions, I would eat half one day, and half the next. I went a couple other times and made a custom rice bowl, all good - then I realized they had rice noodles, so I gave that a try, again, custom bowl:


Jam-packed! This one I got the rice noodles with avocado, chicken, carrots, broccoli, feta cheese, probably some other veggies I can't remember and balsamic vinegar dressing.

Love this place! It's a tad pricey - probably around $10 for these bowls... but this really could be two meals.

New (mostly) GF blog find: ROOST

Photo courtesy of Roost.... Also, click on image to see the whole thing.


My friend just sent me the link to this GORGEOUS blog, called ROOST.

Check it out -- most recipes are naturally GF, and her food photography, food styling, design skills are KILLER.

I mean -- just look at that photo above of Butternut Squash and Hazelnut Bouchons. GORG.

You can search her site by the tag gluten/grain free -- i just linked you there.

Woefully behind on posting

helloooo.... is that an echo? Probably.

I have had little to no time to post. I barely have time to do anything - work has just been all consuming the past 6 months, well, year probably... Maybe this winter I'll get back into it.

On a positive note, I was working last saturday at my husbands office (so sad that we work on saturdays - but we worked together! which made it semi-fun)... I googled "gluten free andover" (his office is in andover, ma) - and found gluten free pizza at Stachey's in North Andover! There is also one in Salem, NH - which is where my sister in law lives!


EXCELLENT pizza. Like - almost-not-sure-if-it's-really-gluten-free good.

Yeah - I polished that whole pie shown above.

Love the bountiful gluten free options these days!

Apple Butter

I just so happen to work with a very talented Jam-maker and I recently helped her out by making her logo & designing her packaging/labels, and for payment, I get jam!... Not too shabby! You can check out Jess' Jams here - she's started up a little blog, and she sells at local farmers markets, etc. She is also gluten free.

She just made a DELICIOUS batch of Apple Butter that has the perfect amount of spice - and is perfect for the fall weather that is suddenly upon us in New England.

This might be my new favorite of hers... although, I've been obsessed with the Raspberry Orange Prosecco jam. YUM. I would have shared a pic of that, but we burned through that jar quickly...

Smoothies

My husband and I are trying to get back into shape now that the fun of summer is coming to an end. It's fall-ish weather here already in the Northeast and I love it! I'll miss summer, but for some reason with the summer being SO busy and every weekend planned, it's nice to be home a little more and fall back into a routine (no pun intended)....

We haven't belonged to a gym since last April, so we joined a new one (woo hoo!) and are watching what we eat (ABS Diet style - we did this before, it worked, so we're back on it --- and it's really easy to adjust for gluten free with this).

My favorite part is bringing smoothies back into our lives!

While I generally am an egg person in the morning, I like mixing it up. Especially since we're trying to work out before work - so a smoothie is the perfect thing to mix up and have pre-workout.

This one pictured above (with my super fun straw) included:

Frozen strawberries
Frozen mango
1 banana
0% fat greek yogurt
GF whey protein powder, vanilla flavor
splash of low-sugar orange juice
splash of 0% fat milk
ice cubes


YUM

Mariposa Gluten Free Bakery

After my unfortunate pizza experience in San Francisco, the next day I was lucky enough to be down at the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building for work. I remember someone telling me about Mariposa a while back, and went inside to look for it. Didn't take long, it's a small-ish kiosk right in the middle (they mentioned they're moving soon to a new location in the Ferry Building).

I was like a kid in a candy store. EVERYTHING is gluten free - pastries, breads, bagels, SANDWICHES, cookies, brownies, etc etc!!!

It was really hard to decide. I should really have filled my purse with goods, but I only had room to get a few things, and found out they deliver, so we've all got that goin' for us.

I had a Blue Bottle Coffee in my hand, and thought that a Cinnamon Roll would go quite well with it...
Ummmm - yeah. IT WAS AMAZING. I should have bought every single they had and brought them home with me. Delicious, moist, great flavor. Perfect size.

Then I saw they had little bags of pre-made sandwiches, so I had to grab one of those. IT WAS ALSO AMAZING. The bread was fantastic - soft, perfect texture, not crumbly at all, not chewy - just good. I had one that (I think) had arugula, red-pepper spread, salami... Can't quite remember, meant to take a picture but was too excited about the sandwich & grabbed these two shots with my phone:
I also got a little bag of bagels - 2 per bag. I think they were multi-grain. Also very good... Not the best ever - but excellent flavor, not too crumbly.

All in all -- if you are in San Francisco and you are gluten free you MUST go to Mariposa! I linked to their website again, here it is again --- they also deliver. I'm sure it's expensive to do that. I may order for a special occasion -- otherwise, my friends who live in San Fran will be getting calls from me to bring me home goods when they're back east :)

Extreme Pizza Gluten Free in San Francisco

Got Extreme Pizza GF delivered last night.... While super delicious last night, seriously not feeling good today. Hmm.... not cool.