I’m a chocoholic. A BIG one. Before learning about my dairy allergy, I knew the sales people at my local Godiva chocolate store. Seriously. It was kinda sad. (Actually, I had to stop eating Godiva a few months earlier when I found out about my gluten intolerance. Godiva says that all of their chocolates may have gluten contamination, no matter what the ingredients of the particular kind of chocolate.) Anyway. Finding a GFCF chocolate has proven very difficult. And I’m sorry, but chocolate is a MEDICAL NECESSITY for me. When I heard I was allergic to Casein, I thought, okay, well, I don’t really like to drink milk. Oh wait – I love cheese. And butter. But I could stand to do without – WAIT! CHOCOLATE! I can’t have CHOCOLATE anymore?!?!??! Noooooooooo…! So now I’m on the hunt for GFCF chocolate – which means dark chocolate – which is fine by me ’cause it’s my favorite anyway. But it seems like every kind of dark chocolate I try is cross contaminated. It may be because it’s made in the same factory – and sometimes even on the same lines – as the milk chocolate. But I need to find some chocolate. Especially with Easter coming up….! I’ll post back when I find some. (Note: I did find some! Check it out...
It’s still very hard for me to explain my new allergy status to people. They don’t fully realize how pervasive gluten and dairy are in our western culture: they’re lurking everywhere! The first few times I went to dinner at a friends, they would earnestly make what they thought was GFCF, but without fail I’d get glutened or dairyed (how do you SPELL that word? It’s not a real word to begin with, so Spell Checker can’t help… But what would the rules be with that ending “y”… turn it into an “ie”? Leave as a “y”? Hum…. But I digress.) So I’d leave smiling and saying thanks, but really I’d have my button undone at the waist and inside my stomach was churning. So now I try to bring my own food whenever I can. Like this weekend I’m going to a scrapbook crop with some friends. And the hostess always makes the most WONDERFUL dinners for us, which prior to being GFCF I very much looked forward to (someone else spending the time in the kitchen instead of me?! Whoot!). But not anymore… Leftovers, which I was never a big fan of prior to going GFCF, are my new best friend. And since I threw away all my old, contaminated tupperware, now I’m going to seek out the best take-your-leftovers-with-you gear I can find! I’ll post back here on my Resources Page, under “Gear.” Comment back if you have any...
I love the Evernote application!! I love it! Why? Well, one of the symptoms of gluten and casein allergy is the swelling of many things – including the brain. I’m assuming this is cause for the oft-mentioned “brainfog” that people talk about as a side effect of ingesting gluten. And going GFCF is a major undertaking for even the clearest of minds. So I think that when making such a drastic life changing decision, it’s best to have all the help you can have! So a the husband of a friend of mine is a great guy: Economy Sized Geek. He turned me on to this wonderful app, Evernote. It’s the best thing that could have ever happened to my de-fogging brain. It’s a cross-platform app (I use it on my iPhone and Macs, but they have it PC too) that syncs all kinds of useful information and files. Recipes, GFCF shopping lists, links to websites, photos… you can organize and store and sync everything in once convenient place. Here’s a real world example of how I use it. Tonight we had Taco Night and I had to do research to see what was GFCF. So I googled everything I wanted to find, found wonderfully helpful recipes and hints. But I never trust myself to remember all the brands that are safe: every time I’m standing in front of the shelves, I get overwhelmed and can’t remember which was good and which I’d read wasn’t safe. So I clicked my handy Evernote link in my Safari toolbar: It saved the helpful links right to my account. Then I typed up...
Oh my oh my! Gluten-free and casein-free donuts!!!! And they’re really, really good! Since going GF and now CF I’ve eaten my share of poor tasting, cardboard-texture, fake, gluten-free baked goods (I guess I should do reviews on them too, but it doesn’t seem fair to bash them — maybe SOMEbody would like ’em..). But the Kinnikinnick Cinnamon Sugar Donuts are fanTABulous!!! They’re frozen (to keep fresher longer), so I just heat one up (25 seconds in the micro) in the morning while our DS is eating his breakfast. (Usually I have to wait until he’s full from HIS breakfast or else he ends up taking “just one little taste.. please?!?!” until he’s eaten almost half of my precious GFCF fast breakfast.) While they’re pretty small (think of a kind of “mini” donut compared to “normal sized” donut, say, a Krispy Kreme), they’re very dense (not in a bad way tho!) and filling. Which is good, ’cause at almost a buck a pop, they’re pricey (but what GFCF prepared food isn’t). I also like the Vanilla version, but they’re a little too sweet for my newly sensitive taste buds. The first couple of bites rock, with the vanilla icing nice a melty and the donut perfectly spongey inside. The texture of both versions are really delightful. (I took my son and two of his little cousins to get donuts after a sleepover one day. I heated up two of these Cinnamon Donuts and put them in a baggie and wrapped it in a towel and stuck it in my purse. After getting the kids settled, I took them out...
So I can’t have butter or sour cream on my baked potato anymore… (boo hoo..!) And who cares if I can’t have crisp, drippy garlic bread anymore… (me! that’s who!) But wait! I found a way to have both yummy baked potatoes and garlic bread and still be GFCF!! Whoot! (Or should I say “Joy! Oh joy!!”) Joy’s Gourmet Garlic Joy is a line of fabulous local Florida products (but you can buy online if can’t find it at your local store) that’s Gluten Free and Dairy Free. As a matter of fact, most products are simply four simple raw blended ingredients: Garlic, Canola Oil, Lemon Juice and Salt. The Garlic Spread also comes in various fun flavors: Sun Dried Tomato, Chipotle, Olive Tapenade, Eggplant and Artichoke. They also have a line of Olive Tapenades that are GFCF, but I’m not a big fan of olives, so I can’t review them (there are some with Feta and Blue cheese tho — so be careful which one you grab – they all look very similar!). For lunch today (leftover grilled sausage, edamame and rosemary roasted new potatoes), I used the Garlic Spread to jazz up the leftover potatoes (they’re just never as good microwaved the next day as when they come out of the roasting pan, all crispy and fresh…). I was lamenting the lack of butter (there was nothing like it to “freshen up” day old potatoes…) when I spied a white container in the back of the fridge. Ah HA! Yes! Garlic Spread. YuM! I happily grabbed it and put a bit on the side of my plate...
