One of the things I miss is the convenience of frozen meals. I know they’re typically not the best nutritionally, and they often cost a lot, but on days when you just don’t feel like cooking they’re better than fast food. But they’re filled with additives that contain gluten.
While gluten-free frozen meals do exist, you can’t just run into any supermarket and pick one up. They’re usually found at specialty shops, like Portions in Guelph.
On a trip to Vermont this past winter, I came across Bountiful Pantry soups at several shops. Several of their soups are labeled gluten-free. I love corn chowder and decided to try it.
All of Bountiful Pantry soups are packaged, dried ingredients, and preparation is merely adding liquid like stock, milk or water. Ingredients are listed on the back, and they all contain foods you can actually recognize – corn, potatoes, onions, etc. The clear packaging shows off all the ingredients as well.
But despite the gluten-free label, the ingredients I could read and understand, something in the soup made my stomach unhappy.
I normally eat brown rice pasta, but decided to try a new brand of corn pasta I saw on the shelves at my grocery store – San Zenone’s 100% organic corn pasta from Prairie Harvest.
Corn pasta tends to be a bit more expensive than brown rice pasta, but it tastes less “nutty” than rice pasta and doesn’t get gummy when you cook it. I actually found San Zenone tasted much like what I remember wheat pasta tasting like, so this might be a good one to try if you’re new to gluten-free pasta. I had it with some tomatoes, olives and oil, and found I didn’t need a thick sauce to help camouflage the taste.
I’ve always loved tortilla chips, but since going gluten-free they’ve become my go-to snack. But plain ol’ tortillas can get a little boring sometimes, so I decided to give these chips by Boulder Canyon Natural Foods a try.
I had no idea what an adzuki bean was – turns out it’s common in China and Japan – so I wasn’t sure how these would taste. I wouldn’t say the chip has a particularly strong or identifiable flavour, but it was subtley different than a corn chip. The red chilies give it a very mild heat.
I recently discovered that Irresistibles, one of the private brands sold in Metro and Food Basics stores, has a gluten-free, boxed macaroni and cheese – yes, a gluten-free “kraft dinner”.
Obviously, with being totally in love with all things mac & cheese, I had to try it out.
Sadly, it didn’t live up to my memories of actual Kraft Dinner. The white rice pasta had a strong flavour, and the powdered cheese sauce had barely any flavour at all. I was left eating a bowl of rice pasta that was orange.
I’m just gonna put this out there: I hate rice crackers. I mean, ick. They’re almost flavourless, except what flavour they do have is salty and bland and weird. So I when I first went gluten-free I tried a few brands and then promptly decided to eat corn chips for the rest of my life.
Well, last week at the grocery store, I came across Mary’s Organic Crackers. And I have to admit, they weren’t bad. I bought the Original flavour, but my store also carried Herb. They are organic, Kosher, Vegan, dairy-free, wheat-free, gluten-free and manufactured in a nut-free facility. Whew!
I’m not a from-scratch baker. I prefer my baking to come from a box, where all I have to do is add milk and eggs, and maybe oil. But since going gluten-free, I’ve been wary of trying packaged baking mixes. I know my chocolate cake turned out well, but I just expect that it’s going to bad. And that I wasted a lot of money. But when my local Bulk Barn was selling all El Peto products for 40% off, I grabbed a box of pancake mix and gave’r a try.
I was pleasantly surprised! They tasted like pancakes! And no weird mouth-feel!
Apologies: This post has been written for weeks. Like, since the day after Easter. But I’ve been busy…selling a house, buying a house, traveling from work. And it never got published. Oops. So, here it is, rather delayed and barely relevant.
Easter weekend has just passed, and I got together with my extended family for dinner. Unlike my last family dinner at Thanksgiving, I was actually able to enjoy all the sides! Everyone tried out some new recipes this year, and none of them included gluten.
As well, my mom brought me a little treat to have for desert while everyone else had custard tarts – some gluten-free gingerbread cookies!
I celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago, and wanted to find a decent gluten-free cake that wasn’t…well, disgusting. To be honest, I haven’t had much luck with gluten-free baked goods; they’ve always either been silty or very dense. Either way, not very appetizing. But my friends have been known to show up with cake, and I wanted something tasty that I could eat. Or, if no one brought cake, something that my “normal” friends wouldn’t mind eating.