Easter: holidays will be a major test of eating GF in and out of the house.

First off, this Easter I had company, my two sisters came to visit. A major test as they have never eaten GF and they can be a tough sell at meals sometimes. On Friday I made GF pasta for shrimp cannelloni with a saffron cream sauce which is a favorite recipe of mine, a good test choice…. I made the pasta sheets too thick to easily roll up with filling inside. It was pretty tricky to roll out in my Atlas pasta machine because of it’s sticky texture and I quit the rolling thinner process too soon. I think I will flour the dough a bit more as I run it through the tighter settings on the machine. It was pretty close in taste to wheat homemade pasta. Check off the pasta on my bucket list of things to try making GF!

I made a GF French bread Friday that was almost as good as any you could buy. You just glop the messy bowl of dough onto a French bread curved sheet and it rises and bakes to look pretty darn good! Check. One of my sisters asked for the recipe as she wants to eat less wheat. That is a major recommendation when Elaine asks for a GF recipe as she is pretty picky about her French bread! I made a meatloaf on Saturday night with GF bread crumbs inside it which were created in my blender from dried up GF bread slices. As good as ever…and not even a slice left for a sandwich today….check! We had a pear clafouti Saturday night – a sort of pear custard in a big tart pan, tasty and GF! Every scrap of it was eaten, Check! I made gravy Sunday to go with the pork tenderloin. Check. And for Sunday dessert I made a yogurt tart covered with fresh slices of orange. My crust was lauded by my mom; had ground almonds in it and almost like a shortbread cookie. I promised to make it again in May with local strawberries sliced on top….check, Check!

So I successfully fed my family three GF meals this holiday weekend and I was no more stressed out than normal visits in the past. The GF thing is getting easier. I find that if a recipe has flour in it I just use white rice flour and that is a really good substitution – gravies, white sauces, thickeners. And my go-to cook book is Gluten Free Baking Classics by Annalise G. Roberts. It has not failed me yet! What I love about the recipes is that they are the foods I grew up eating and like to make for company but now GF. If you are trying to go wheat free it is an absolute must buy. I have read that if you want to be GF as a permanent change you can’t give up bread and pasta, you just need to eat the same foods but with no wheat. This cookbook makes that eminently doable! Have a great week and try something GF if it is offered to you. You might be surprised at how good it is.

So…eating out…I happened to go to two different Panara Breads this past week. At the counter of the first one we happened to be waited on by the manager. I asked her for the GF menu. She said they had none. She said “What do you want to have?” This was a bit hard to respond to when she just told me she couldn’t give me even a paper with GF menu items on it. I said how about the Mediterranean Salmon Salad thinking this would be GF. She went and got a big ring binder. She paged through it and read off the long list of ingredients in the salad. She would not let me read it for myself! So… as I thought, it was GF, and therefore I enjoyed the salad down to the last sliver of almond! I averted my eyes as my man ate his baguette along with his boring chicken Caesar. He was openly envious of my lush salad full of a variety of tasty ingredients, all GF.

A few days later my family went to a different Panara for lunch on Easter Saturday. I asked again for the GF menu. I was told there was none. This server did not offer any suggestions or get out the big binder! I went for my fall back position and got another Mediterranean Salmon Salad. I found they had used the romaine they use in the regular Caesar so it wasn’t nearly as tasty as the one I had earlier the same week.

The thing that gets me is I could swear I read on line that Panara has a “secret GF menu” that you can ask for! It is so secret even the managers don’t know about it! How tough would it be to type up a two page menu showing how certain things could be GF; leave off the croutons, baguette gone, etc. And really, I have a few excellent GF bread recipes I could share with their research chefs. Panara could lead the industry by putting GF on their main menu; just set aside a couple of pans for GF and make a few loaves a day! Easy peasy. Would be a winner for Panara and their customers who surely have family members trying to eat less wheat. Listening Panara??
Have a great healthy eating week!! I know I will….

Originally published in early April 2013.

Wheat, wheat everywhere I look, I find wheat in my food shopping expeditions. It is not that much fun to keep on ranting but I can’t seem to escape this one ingredient! Wheat was in my Heinz 57 sauce, now given away. And worse yet, it is in my Turkey Hill, light recipe, Skinny Minty ice cream. It is in all cookie dough ice creams. As I said before, wheat is in Campbell’s tomato soup, and pretty much all their soups as well as many Progresso soups! I did find a Progresso cream of mushroom soup that is GF which is such a great find for cooking and just eating as soup. I wonder why Campbell’s can’t thicken soups with corn starch or rice flour?

It was in my bottle of soy sauce, so I had to throw it outand get some new GF soy sauce by San-J. And yes, it is in my white vinegar. Upon some research the celiac.com site says distilled vinegar is safe for those who want to be GF. Still…in the comments underneath I found a number of people who have celiac who say distilled or white vinegar makes them ill. So I think I will keep my white vinegar for cleaning only purposes. Other vinegars are all safe except one; malt vinegar which I already gave away. I am hoping to still eat most pickles. Of course, they have some sort of vinegar in all of them so I will see what eating dill spears does for my tummy.

Wheat is ubiquitous. Meaning it seems to creep into most processed foods. As I walk through the grocery store whole aisles seem off limits. I have to look very hard for cold or hot cereals that I can eat. Chex cereal brand come to mind as a great choice, just stay away from the bran or whole grain versions. Corn flakes has wheat in it unless you get an organic brand; just a tad pricy and rather hard to crunch on. Still it made a dandy fried chicken coating. Oatmeal should be safe but unfortunately so many mills that process oats also process wheat which can contaminate it…. Breaded foods in the freezer aisle must be passed up too!

I can’t much go down the snack/pretzel aisle nor the cracker and cookie aisle. They are all too, too depressing. No more fig newtons, pretzels or a host of snack bars. The list goes on and on. Premade frozen foods are all off limits as are canned premade stuff or mixes. All seem to have forms of wheat in them which rule them out for me. Of course, the bread and bakery areas are a total loss as are bread crumbs, hot dogs and all pastas. Rice mixed with pasta in the little box is a no no and I can’t even make matzo ball soup. You don’t have to be Jewish to love that and I am sad over the loss of something so comforting.

No more couscous or any of my favorite pasta shapes and no more homemade pastas when I eat out. Worse yet, no ravioli, pot stickers or perogies. Disaster!Still, people tell me there are far more GF pasta choices than there were ten years ago. So far I like brown rice pastas far more than white rice pasta. I want to try the corn blend spaghetti next.

Wheat is in my vodka. Time to give it away. And in some liquors – there is a yummy Irish cream one that I tried last weekend and then found out I can’t enjoy ever again…. It was in my Josh Early chocolates and in the Victoria’s chocolates I got this Saturday as an early Easter gift! Both of which I deem major bummers.

I have to think about what I eat so much more these days. I can’t just grab a frozen meal for lunch and head off to work. I have to plan ahead for what I have in terms of meals particularly breads. I have found myself baking GF bread at ten pm as there was nothing in my house for lunch the next day. I now love that I can keep a few slices of GF bread in my freezer so I am always prepared for a quick meal. Can’t buy Hot Pockets, not until they make a GF version! All my favorite frozen meals are all off limits too for now. I am hoping more big companies jump on the gluten free bandwagon and make versions I can eat. One can hope anyway….

Peace and think of me when you are chowing down on some cheese and potato perogies…..boo hoo hoo!

Originally published March 25, 2013.

 

My first reaction to the news of having celiac disease (other than total disbelief) was a strong sense of irony.  How could I, the baker of all things wheat, now be allergic to that most basic of components of my baking?  Once I got used to the idea, I spent some energy investigating where I could buy GF foods.  My local Giant didn’t seem to have much at first glance but after perusing it a couple of times I saw that they had a fair amount of GF cake/brownie/pancake mixes, pastas, redi-mixed flour mixtures, GF condiments and the like.  I bought some GF bread crumbs and cheddar cheese crackers there because they were on sale.  The Giant in Coopersburg has a slightly bigger GF selection.  I got a bunch of rice pastas there.

I have only been to the Rt. 248 Wegmans but it has some great finds too.  I imagine the other two local Wegmans have similar GF stock.  Most important, they have the individual flours that are critical to making your own flour mixes and for many recipes out of GF cookbooks.  I bought some tapioca flour, some potato starch and garbanzo & fava bean flour there.  The G&F flour is hard to find but is used in a number of recipes.  I did find that a white bean flour from Echo Hill was a decent substitute.

Echo Hill Country Store is out in Fleetwood, PA; the edge of Amish Country.  It is a small busy store crowded with aisles full of packaged flours, pastas, rice and beans of a variety that is found no where in this area as far as I can tell.  My friend Marjorie took me there a few years ago and I used to buy a lot of interesting wheat flours there.  Now I buy everything but wheat there.  They have pretty much everything but the G&F flour which I later found at Wegmans.  And they have a good GF pasta selection at decent prices.  I also found a wide variety of rices there that I never see anywhere else.  I found brown risotto rice there! And black rice, green rice and a number of rice mixtures that looked interesting.  Even if you are not GF you should take a trip to Echo Hill.  Their spices have great prices, bulk dipping chocolate is to be had there and there is just a lot of packaged goods to check out.  You can even get real chocolate jimmies there!!

Health food stores carry a decent range of flours and Fry’s Foods in Hellertown has brown  rice flour as well as several other specialty flours necessary for GF baking.  They also have some great GF cereals there.

One thing I haven’t found is rye flavor.  One of my cookbooks uses it to simulate rye bread.  You can mail order it from Authentic Foods which is located in California.  I think I may have to put together an order this spring….  I do miss seeded rye and pumpernickel breads.  So I know I will continue looking for it in stores and one way or another I will make some rye bread soon. 

Most stores have redi-made GF baked goods like rolls and breads.  I have heard nothing good about them.  And they are very pricy; I saw frozen GF breads in Weis Markets that was $7.49 for a loaf! That is twice what wheat bread costs these days.  The GF rolls when touched (my man did that!) are hard and unyielding so I think for now I will be making my own from scratch. 

GF bread crumbs cost about three times what wheat bread crumbs cost but they are nice as they don’t really need refrigeration.  Still, these were made only of cornmeal crumbs which I take issue to.  I think I will stick to my homemade crumbs from leftover GF bread I made in the past.

Everyone says that, once you get the hang of it, home made GF baked goods are far superior to the pre-made stuff offered in today’s stores. So I cannot report to you on how they taste.  If I buy any I will let you know how it tastes.  And if you, fair readers, have tried any pre-made GF breads/rolls please do write in on what you thought of the taste and texture.  Tell me where you bought them too! Maybe I will be tempted to try one by your recommendation.

First published late March 2013.