Blue Moon Grill - Wakefield, MA

Saturday morning I felt like going out to breakfast, so I hopped on Google to look for a new spot, and found the Blue Moon Grill because apparently they had gluten free pancakes - umm, sweet.

The menu doesn't mention anything about gluten free - but we decided to head over and try it out, it's only about 10 minutes from my house.

It's a tiny little place and we liked it immediately. The menu is awesome - I should have taken a pic of it - I wanted EVERYTHING. I was going to just get straight pancakes, because, well, when else can you get pancakes outside of your home?

But, with the help of the waitress who told me their hollandaise sauce was GF, I went with the Eggs Benedict served on gluten free silver dollar pancakes. That's right. Diet be damned!

Here it is:

And here's what I did to it:

BVI Vacation

(This from the balcony of our house - no joke)

My husband had surprised me for our 2nd Anniversary with a trip that he had fully planned & booked to the British Virgin Islands - specifically Tortola - with our good friends for the Thanksgiving week.

I mean, clearly he's the best (and I really hate the planning & logistics/flights part of it). I was shocked and suuuuuuper excited.

Anyway - it was amazing, obviously... the weather was incredible, it was soooo relaxing, and it was a really beautiful island.... but I wanted to talk a little about eating gluten free in the Caribbean. Let me just say, it wasn't that easy.

We were staying in a house - which was great, so we did quite a few meals there. I went down there with a loaf of Udi's, a bag of Tinkyada pasta, a handful of Luna Protein bars and LaraBars, and I brought a bag of Better Batter flour just in case.

Good thing too! Tortola doesn't exactly have a huge selection of groceries. We were shopping first in Road Town, and the pickin's were slim. Although, when we were in Soper's Hole Marina, we found a grocery store there that actually had a few GF items - but if you're going, it's really best to just bring a few staples.

I tried to stick to simple easy items - grilled fish, salads with no dressing. But somehow - I got sick a few times. I ordered fish with rice one time, and I'm pretty sure most places use a packaged rice mix that contains gluten - so I stayed away from that. We were on a full-day sail, and we docked near this permanently anchored boat/restaurant called Willy T's for lunch - I had a great piece of tuna, and it came with rice, my husband figured he'd go ask the chef if he knew if it was GF or not, sure enough - he came back fuming, he got in a fight with the dude because the chef said "what's with this trendy shit"... nice. Whatever though - I was on vacation, on a boat eating lunch and wasn't really phased. I told my husband to calm down. it was fine, I didn't eat the rice.

We did one other 'fancy' night out at this really cool restaurant called The Sugar Mill, actually, we did Thanksgiving there. I didn't opt for the turkey - it came with stuffing & gravy - who wants turkey in 85 degree heat anyway -- but went for a grilled fish option and salad. For some reason, I was really sick after eating. ANNOYING. After that I vowed not to eat out anymore.

It was semi-pathetic, but I was fine, when we were out to lunch one day I ordered a plain salad, and had a pb & j udi's sandwich in my purse that I ate under the table! Ha! I really didn't care, I was so happy to be in the sun and not at work! Ahhh, gluten free travel.

I mean, look at our sunset:


And my husband in the water:


Yeah. Who cares about food really? And rum punch by the way - is gluten free ;)

We had to head back to St. Thomas for a night because of flights - and we stayed at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef - and I had an easier time eating here, although, it was only 2 meals, but the place we went for dinner - Havana Blue, knew what gluten free was and they were on top of it.

**UPDATE: Kate commented below and let me know there is a store in Road Town called Nature's Way that offers many gluten free products, open every day except Saturday.

Avocado Obsessed

I have been LOVING avocado lately. I have been putting it on everything - and a really great quick meal is just toasting some Udi's bread, a little shredded cheddar, a slice of tomato and sliced avocado on top.

I usually squeeze some fresh lemon all over the avocado once I cut it - and then I top with Janes Krazy Mixed Up Salt --- have you guys ever had that? I LOVE IT. I put on everything, absolutely everything. I have a little salt problem though, I admit.

The one thing I can't figure out with Avocado is how to add it to my sandwich or salad without it going brown. I have ended up bringing in the whole avocado and cutting it right before eating it, but I'd love to prepare it in the morning and bring. Any tips? I have tried dousing it in lemon juice and bagging it - but that doesn't work. let me know!

Also - here are a couple things I have learned about Avocados:
- When picking them at the store, get the ones that have the little "nubs" on them - know what I mean? If they are missing the nub, they will go bad. someone told me this once, I hadn't know, and ever since that little tidbit, I've never had a 'bad' avocado.
- I usually leave them out to ripen, but when they start to get ripe/soft - put them in the fridge, they'll last longer.

Here's some interesting health facts about Avocado....Are you avocado obsessed like me?

"Apple Pie" Oatmeal

................................
1 cup GF Oats (I use bob's red mill quick-cooking oats)
2 cups water
2 chopped Macintosh apples
1 tbsp ground flax
1 splash gf vanilla
dash of salt
about a tsp or so of appie pie spice
another dash of cinnamon
top with brown sugar
................................

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!