Estrella Damm Daura

I just read a comprehensive review about Estrella Damm Daura on SureFoods Living's Blog and I wanted to see if I could find it & give it a try. The thing about this GF beer --- it's actually made from barley, not sorghum, and they remove it down to an "acceptable level" for celiacs -- under 6 ppm. Apparently products with a gluten content below 20 ppm are suitable for people with celiac disease.

I wasn't that wary of trying something that was originally made with gluten, but it was a little weird. I figured I'd try it since I had read some people thought it was great - and I was thinking, if it wasn't made with sorghum maybe it would taste close to the real thing.

My sweet husband found it for me & when he picked me up from the train he had it, so we got home, opened them up, and tasted.

The verdict: it tastes to me a little like Redbridge. Actually -- I think I may prefer Redbridge for the taste, and for the fact that there is NO gluten in it at all, and because it's cheaper. Only 4 bottles of this was $8, vs $8 - $9 for 6 bottles of Redbridge.

Still totally worth it to try though -- and I love to try new GF things, because you never know.

Anyway - check out the SureFood's Living blog if you want more info -- and she also mentions another beer called Saxon at the bottom of the article, that if I find, I will try.

**UPDATE** --- I came home last night and opened up one of these, and I must admit - I liked it better than the first bottle.... I found the taste to be richer, and I realize the smell is much closer to real beer. The first bottle went down fast actually. And it was really good. I think I may give this beer another shot. Maybe I'll do a taste test comparison with Redbridge to really see how it matches up!

Let's just order a pizza...

...Words I haven't said in a LONG time. "Let's just order a pizza". Those gluten-free eaters out there know what I'm talkin' about. I mean, GF pizza is out there, but it's usually a drive away, or something special to go out of your way for, or something you just whip up at home. But get delivered?! SOOOO nice.

My husband recently did some googling and found out that Gregory's in Reading, MA has gluten free pizza with crust courtesy of Strawberry Moon!

We got back from our vacation and had almost no food in the house, and just called up & ordered a pizza for dinner. So great! Their sauce is excellent, and we got ours half pepperoni and extra cheese. The crust has a great taste, and a good crunch on the outside (although a tad chewy, but still really good). Yuuummmm:

Look at that pizza grease! haha... anyway. I love that more & more places are popping up with gluten free options. I usually just make pizza at home when my husband orders one with my fave Udi's pizza crusts -- but he actually likes this so much that we can just split it!

I like to get my own though because this makes EXCELLENT cold pizza the next day!

Sandwich while working...

Oh Udi's. You're so great, and you really are living up to your ad campaign, "We're Bringing Sandwich Back" - because for me, you really are. Ooh, and did you all enter to win Udi's bread for a year?!?! If not, do so here.

Side story --- I work in a pretty big ad agency and sit close to the catering women who organize all of our fabulous parties/events/meetings. They now know I'm gluten free because DAILY they come around with extra sandwiches, muffins, donuts, cookies, etc from meetings and I say NO every time –– unless it's chips, or ice cream - the latter is pretty rare though. They finally asked and I explained i was GF.

Anyway - they had a request for a meeting last week with someone who was GF, and I was all over it - I picked up a few bags of UDI's for them to have out at the meeting, and they did a meat & cheese platter, fruit, chips, etc to have out, along with regular bread in a separate basket to make your own sandwich. Apparently it was a big hit (OBVI) but I would have loved to have been in that lunch meeting & seen that woman's face when Udi's bread was in front of her!

New GF product obsession: Canyon Bakehouse

OK everyone. I found a FANTASTIC new gluten free product at Whole Foods last week.

I was walking through and happened to go by the regular bread section and saw the words "Gluten Free" looking at me on the shelves. Not in the freezer, but out in the open. I hadn't heard of this product - and had to try it. I grabbed Canyon Bakehouse's GF San Juan 7-grain bread and their GF Rosemary and Thyme Focaccia.

YUM:
I am already on my second loaf of the 7-grain bread. It's amazing.

Now -- I've been a huge Udi's fan for a while -- and I definitely still love it. But what I love about this bread is that it has whole grains, is thick and spongy like I remember read bread feeling, and it tastes absolutely amazing.

I've noticed recently that my Udi's has been a bit dry and crumbly. Just look at this toast:


My husband actually made me an egg sandwich this morning for breakfast and I had to ask him if he was SURE that this was my gluten free toast and not his - for real!

I was actually a little hesitant because I don't usually like bean flours -- I have WANTED to like bean flour because I know that are more nutritious, but I've always thought they gave a weird soapy taste - but not here!

I also bought the Rosemary Thyme Focaccia which is sooooo yummy. I had it as toast, and actually I ate some leftover meatsauce from last week with hunks of this bread. My husband also loved it and was mad I was hoarding it without sharing (haha), here's a not great pic of it from my phone as a snack at my desk:


Anyway - I'm obviously a fan! I would LOVE IT if they would reach out and let me host a giveaway so I can let some of you try this product! Especially if there is not a Whole Foods near you - although, you can order online, here.

Next on my list is to try there White Bread, Cinnamon Raisin, Hamburger Buns! Basically, all of their products.

OH -- the prices weren't bad... Online in the store 1 loaf is $4.99 -- I believe I bought it in the store for about $5.29 -- so comparable to Udi's.... Also - here is a quick side by side of the nutritional facts for Udis vs Canyon Bake house:

Click on graphic to read at full size

Snyder's Gluten Free Pretzels!!

WOW -- Just heard about this today! Snyders has gluten free pretzel sticks! I hear they cost less & are crunchier than Glutino's version. I also checked out the calories here, and that is definitely better than Glutino's! Only 1.5 grams of fat and 110 calories for 30!

There is a full review here, on Triumph Dining.

**UPDATE**
Found these in Whole Foods this weekend!


They are good! The bag was like half the size of regular pretzels (why do they always do this?!) but it was a very good, 'normal' price, even at Whole Foods.

They are REALLY crunchy - like almost too crunchy, but have an excellent flavor. They were also smaller than I envisioned for some reason -- but are making an excellent snack at work today. yay!

Quick & Easy Bruschetta

I was at Whole Foods and saw Against the Grain's Rosemary Baguette and decided it would be fun to slice it up and make some easy bruschetta.


Originally it was for company on Friday night, but I ended up making it on Sunday afternoon when the entire house smelled delicious for a bolognese sauce I was making, and having to wait a few hours for it to cook!

I cut up a vine-ripened tomato, half of a red onion, and a few basil leaves, mixed them in a bowl with a touch of olive oil, and added a little to the top of each sliced piece of baguette (the only problem with these are the sliced pieces are teeny tiny, and there are some big holes so it's easy for tomatoes to fall through)... I sprinkled a little pecorino romano on top, and put them in the toaster oven at 375 for about 10 minutes.

DELICIOUS treat.

And it held off our growling stomachs until the sauce was ready to eat! That post is coming tomorrow.

Food for Life Gluten Free English Muffins!

I was browsing the frozen gluten free section at Whole Foods the other day and saw these:

Yay! New GF product find! Of course I bought them, I couldn't resist. The price was also a good selling point. These were $5.49 at Whole Foods, compared to Glutino's english muffins that were $6.50-ish, and then compare to my fave english muffins (Joan's) at $13!

I haven't been buying Joan's lately, it's just too extravagent to pay that much for them, even though I love them. Ooh, I almost forgot, I really like Trader Joes GF/DF english muffins (wrote about them here) but don't have a Trader Joe's that is convenient to my new house :(

Woah, side-track.... anyway, Food for Life's Multi-Seed english muffins are really good! They definitely have the nooks & crannies goin' on:


And the flavor is really good. The seeds may be throwing the taste off a little, but I like it. They're a little bit dry too, I over-toasted my first one and it got a little too crunchy. My next one I microwaved to de-frost, then lightly toasted, and that one was much better.

I, of course, had a lovely ham, egg & cheese on mine:


Check out to see if these are near a store near you with their store finder.

Best Gluten Free Pizza crust - hands down.

Udi's does it is again.

OH. MY... this is by far the best pizza crust yet. The flavor is what I think real pizza crust used to taste like, the crunch and the crust was perfect, soooo delicious, and it was dusted in cornmeal along the bottom which I LOVE and makes it taste so authentic and fresh out of a brick-oven. Just look at that crust in the pic above....

I brushed my de-frosted crust with olive oil, spread on some pizza sauce, 5 dollops of ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, sauteed onions, some fresh pecorino, then topped it off with fresh arugula and a spritz of lemon juice.

I have been wanting to make this pizza EVERY DAY. But I restrain myself. Barely. I made this last week and almost a week has passed, so I think that's what I'll be making tonight ;)

Favorite lunch right now

Food for Life Brown Rice Tortilla

Hummus spread (been using lemon or tomato/basil)

two slices of cheese

3 stackers pickles

(turkey if I have it - otherwise, the above on it's own is good!)

Weird right?  I find that microwaving the tortilla wrap for 30 seconds on a plate, and putting the hummus on with the cheese & probably the juice from the pickles, helps to keep the wrap in one piece - no cracking. i also keep it in a sandwich tupperware instead of a baggie.

I am addicted to this for lunch - have eaten it every day for a week! i'll probably be sick of it next week.

Best Gluten Free Cupcakes I've ever made

Ahh cupcakes, I didn't realized I missed you so, until I took a bite of one of these. Thanks to the genius that is Better Batter mix - I have created the most delicious cupcake. And it was SO easy. Too easy almost. I want to make more, but I'm afraid it was a fluke and I'll never be able to re-create them. 

Here's the recipe (found it online somewhere, just did a search for regular cupcakes, and substituted):

2 cups gluten free all purpose flour mix (preferably Better Batter)

1.5 cups sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

4 egg whites from large eggs

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup 2% milk

2 large eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, shortening, milk and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Mix at low speed for 2 minutes. Scrape bowl. Add egg whites and eggs and mix at high speed until fluffy and smooth, approx. 2 minutes.

Fill liners 1/2 to 2/3 full of batter. Do not overfill. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool 10 minutes in pans then remove from pan & place on wire racks to cool completely. Frost & decorate as desired.

For the frosting, I just did a quick Buttercream Vanilla with butter, confectionary sugar, a bit of milk and a bit of vanilla. It was perfect. I'm drooling after writing this post.

Another new GF Find

When I was at that natural food store in Reading, MA this was another product I hadn't seen before. I've been eating a lot of wraps as of late, and this one is definitely a winner.

Made by La Tortilla Factory - these Sonoma brand wraps are made with whole grain ivory teff. Teff is a gluten free grain that is high in protein giving each wrap 2g protein and 3g of fiber. You can check out more nutritional information here. 

I found these frozen, took them home and kept them in my fridge.... After two weeks - they were still rolling up without breaking! Here is the proof in the form of that breakfast roll-up I mentioned a few weeks ago:

Wrap, egg whites mixed with salsa and onions, rinsed black beans, avocado slices and drizzled with lemon. Sooo good, healthy & filling.

Best GF Store-Bought Bread I've found....STERK'S

OK -- who has had this before, and why have you been hiding it from me?

I was in Reading, MA at this cute little place in Reading, MA called The Natural Food Exchange and found quite a few GF products that I had never seen before, that I had to buy.

The best one - was Sterk's Italian Bread.

WOW - this is definitely the closest to real bread flavor & texture (when toasted only) that I have found. AND - there are like no calories or fat*, and there is some protein & fiber. Look, there's 7 ingredients in this bread:

I'm not sure how they get it to taste so good... or get the texture so spot on. Look at this delicious breakfast sandwich:

I mean c'mon -- looks like real toast. Needless to say, I ate the entire loaf in 4 days... and now I'm sad that I've run out, and don't have anywhere near me that sells it.

* I am exaggerating when I say "no" fat or calories - but it was really really low for both. Since I devoured the bag, I threw out the packaging and forgot to write it down. Sterk's doesn't have a website, but I found their products for sale here.

Garlic City

Have you ever tried Aleia's brand? They sell it at Whole Foods now.... I had been to their restaurant in CT once, but then they closed down to only manufacture and sell their GF goods, which was a bummer - because the restaurant was great.

Anyway - I'm not a huge fan of their product. I've tried two kinds of cookies and two kinds of bread, not great -- but I like their regular breadcrumbs. I saw this Italian version and decided to try  it out -- I made meatballs with it, and they were OK except that there must be about 20 cloves of garlic in here. It was kinda gross. And I really like garlic, but not that much. Matt ate some and was up at night with heartburn & other issues -- he really can't have much garlic, it angers his insides.

Moral of story: if you love garlic, buy this product.

DeBoles Multigrain Gluten Free Spaghetti

Found a new kind of gluten free pasta in Whole Foods the other day.... DeBoles Multigrain gluten free pasta!

I was pumped - this pasta had 5g of protein and 3g of fiber (something that a lot of gf food is lacking in), and was hoping this might be a good pasta to keep on hand - although, it was going to be tough to live up to my current favorite, Tinkyada.

So - I took it out of the box and went to boil it -- I noticed it breaking very easily, and when I went back to look into the boiling water, it had all broken apart! Not cool! It looked like this:

Grr -- I was really mad. The entire thing of pasta broke into little bits like this. So -- I guess if you like your pasta like this - this is the pasta for you -- but if you're looking for long spaghetti - stick to Tinkyada.

I heart you General Mills!

Saw THIS online today!  YAY. Great to see General Mills removing useless gluten from beloved cereal.

Oatmeal Pancakes

Over the past week, I have been working on trying to get this recipe right, and I think I did it.

The original recipe is in Joy's LIFE Diet Book -- which we are attempting (poorly) to follow.... but of course, I had to change it a bit to be gluten free. It called for instant oats, so first try, I just followed exactly what was in the book and switched out instant oats for gluten free. Didn't quite work, it didn't hold together, we also used the wrong pan, it looks like a crepe:

Then I modified the recipe a bit -- used the GF Oats, but added a spoonful of pumpkin - and about 1/2 tbsp of gf all-purpose mix, much better consistency - we also used a smaller round pan: 

Third time was a charm... added more pumpkin, and a heaping tbsp of pancake mix, and we got a nice big delicious pancake with a great texture (the forkful at the top of the page is the winning pancake:

 

Gluten Free Oat Pancake

4 egg whites (whisk for a few minutes)

1/2 cup of gluten free oats

Heaping spoonful of pumpkin (no sugar added!) add as much as you like

1/2 tbsp vanilla - or more if you like

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tbsp pancake mix 

1 tbsp granulated sugar

Mix everything together in a bowl -- spray a pan with cooking spray and pour in mixture. Edges will start to look finished just like a pancake - flip, cook until done -- only takes about 8 minutes or so. Finish with light syrup or whatever you like!

Hope you enjoy it -- it's incredibly filling & healthy too! 

What is wrong with me?!

I don't even like cookies normally!

It's just because I'm on a diet - I know it.... 

For some reason, I am ravenously hungry today. I don't know why.... I've eaten PLENTY. 

When I was at Whole Foods getting that ONE Coconut Water - I saw these sitting on the shelf, and they were calling my name... 

I succumbed.

My justifying excuse -- there are only 33.5 calories per cookie. I had 5 though. Ugh. 

O.N.E. Coconut Water

{Update #2 -- Just posted about Vita Coco Passion Fruit Coconut Water, and LOVED it -- I think I got a bad O.N.E. when I bought it because the taste/consistency was really different from this experience, see that post here.}

Have any of you tried O.N.E. Coconut Water?

ONE is coconut water from the inside of a young coconut before the meat grows in, which is where all the fat comes from, and then it's naturally filtered to give us this drink... It is supposed to be an excellent source for replacing lost electrolytes (nature's gatorade),

I have read MANY blogs about this product - people RAVING about how delish this was, etc etc.... I don't know. I got some today at Whole Foods (it was $5.49 for a 1 liter container! eeek)... and I don't think I really like it. Which is weird! I love coconut - I especially love cooking with coconut milk when making rice for thai dishes... but this stuff? not so much.

It's got a weird taste. And it's kinda thick - which grosses me out.... my co-worked tried some and thought it tasted like yogurt... I'll give it another taste tomorrow, maybe when it's colder it will be better.

I guess this is a good thing. If I did love it, it would be a very expensive craving to keep up.

**** UPDATE: For anyone coming to this site to read about this product, please read the comments below - there are some big Coconut Water fans out there!!!! I, sadly, was not one - though, it's been brought to my attention that I may have gotten a bad one, so if I try it again, I'll let you know.