Before adding “casein free” to my already existing gluten free diet, sometimes I would make smoothies for breakfast. But when the dairy yogurt for my morning smoothie disappeared I tried and tried to find a CF combination but failed. Enter Ricera – an organic brown rice yogurt claims to be: “One-and-a-half servings of Whole Grain Rice per cup; Casein Free, Soy Free, Wheat and Gluten Free.” A friend of mine had told me about rice yogurts, but since she’s a full blown dairy addict, she’d never tried any. So last week at Whole Foods I sought out as many non-dairy yogurts as I could. Soy, Rice and Coconut versions made it home with me (this is the first one I’ve tried). I must admit that even before going casein free, I didn’t eat regular dairy yogurt right out of the container. Just not much of a fan of the texture. So I didn’t try this Ricera yogurt just with a spoon by itself – that would create an unfair predisposition to dislike the resultant smoothie since I just plain old don’t like to eat yogurt like that. So I happily plopped my frozen banana, frozen pineapple, container of Blueberry Ricera and a shot of orange juice in the blender and blended away. The texture came out just right: thick and creamy, not too chunky or runny. The color was just slightly off putting: it somehow took on a brownish hue. But it had little flecks of “it’s okay, I’m blueberry!” blue in it, so our five-year old son was appeased enough to try it. And when we did: yum! It’s actually...
I love to eat out. Love it, love it, LOVE IT!!!! I used to eat out once a day, every day and many time up to all three meals would be purchased and eaten out. I’m really not one for the kitchen, to say the least. So when I was diagnosed with all of these food allergies (a gluten allergy and casein allergy, amongst others) I thought, hey, how hard can it be to eat non-wheat/oat/rye/barley/dairy? Well, it’s hard. It’s very hard. SUPER DOOPER hard, as our five-year-old son says. Here in the good ol’ US of A, just about all of our pre-prepared foods have gluten and/or casein in them. For the first few weeks, I didn’t really change our going out habits – we’d still go out for a meal at LEAST once a day. I’d try to order the least innocuous menu items: salads, grilled meats and veggies… but would still feel super “full” after eating them from the allergic bloating reaction. Slowly, over several months (December ’09 – March ’10) I came to the realization that eating out is just plain dangerous when it comes to being GFCF. Over the four months of trying/reacting/identifying offending foods & places, I began a “safe” list of places to eat. They’re few and far between, but I can regularly go to them and be reaction free. Which is SO worth it: the symptoms I get from eating dairy and (especially) gluten are just icky and uncomfortable, it’s not worth risking eating somewhere I might get cross-contaminated. Now more and more places are realizing there’s money to be made through...
Oh, how I love my bread. How I missed my breads when I first went gluten free and now casein free. But slowly but surely, I’m finding ways to get ’em back! I stumbled across my latest find at my local Super Target. Tucked in with the Betty Crocker GF mixes was a box for Simply Organic Banana Bread. I drooled over the moist bread picture, torturing myself with what I’ve had to give up for just a moment (I tend to do this.. but that’s for another post…) I was just tearing my eyes away when I noticed up in the little left had corner of the box there was an inconspicuous little “Gluten Free” label. What?! I can have this yummy looking bread?! Yeay! I immediately grabbed it, scanned for casein ingredients and found none. So I bought it and when I got home, true to form, I had a few overripe bananas. So I whipped up a great banana bread in no time at all! With only three ingredients (eggs, water and bananas), no rise time or anything else, it was super easy and fast. And yummy. Oh, was it YUMmmmmmmy. Moist and banana-ey, no one even knew it was GFCF. It was so wonderful that it didn’t even last a full 24-hours. My son and husband (and myself) loved it so much we just kept going back for slice after slice. “Just a one more. Mommy… pulllleeeeesssseee?!” our 5-year-old son kept pleading. He loved it! I had it toasted with Earth Balance in the morning for breakfast. Oh, it was so good. Great. Now I’m...
When I’m in the grocery store, running late with an antsy five-year-old, the last thing I want to do is have to read and decipher every last little ingredient of a potential new food. But being GFCF often means having to do just that. So I’m always looking for reliable shortcuts, ways to the cut time it takes to maintain a strict gluten free and casein free diet but not take any chances with G or C contamination. Enter… Passover?! Yes! Since I’m not Jewish, I had some vague ideas about the dietary restrictions that Passover dictates, but didn’t know any details. Everyone kept telling me that I should stock up on things during Passover because of all the extra kosher products that were released during that time. So I did a little research and found out that while “kosher” doesn’t nessicarily mean anything with reguards to strictly avoiding dairy content in a food, anything that is Kosher Parve does indeed mean something: Any food labeled Parve means it doesn’t contain any meat or dairy, hence there’s no possibility of casein and safe (for the “CF” part of our GFCF diet, anyway… We still have to be cautious of the gluten content). I found a WONDERFUL article on kidswithfoodallergies.org that gives some great information about the Kosher and Parve labeling I kept hearing about…. You can read the repost below or check out what they have to say on their site: Kosher Labeling and Dairy or Milk Allergy ———— “Kosher” foods are foods which meet Jewish dietary laws. These dietary laws prohibit the consumption of certain foods, require that foods be processed in...
Well, I was very upset to learn that Moe’s Southwest Grill is off my Safe Restaurant List. Before finding out about my gluten and dairy allergies, Moe’s was one of my favorite places to go (the Pinky Toscadaro and Close Talker Salads were worth ordering for the smile-inducing names alone!). But then my local Moe’s closed last year before I went GFCF, so I never even thought about it. But I always assumed in my GFCF ignorance that Moe’s would be like Chipotle or Pollo Tropical and offer some good GFCF options. So I was very excited to see that it reopened last week – in the same location (who knows what happened there…!). Anyway. Boy, was I WRONG. Moe’s Southwest Grill is NOT GFCF safe at all! Here’s what they say when contacted via email about gluten: Thanks for getting in touch with us. The vegetable stock is used in almost all of our food preparation and does contain gluten.For the time being it is safe to eat chicken and veggies. I would definitely avoid the queso, chips, the tortillas, and the taco/salad shells. The chicken is the only protein that is safe to consume. We are still working to have a gluten free menu in the future. Please let me know if you have any other questions. And if you go to their official website, they have a very outdated Allergen Information PDF – it’s actually dated over two YEARS ago! “effective as of 2/25/2008.” Yikes. I’m sorry, but there’s no was I’ll be trusting my sensitive GFCF system to this kind of laid-back attitude about allergens. Not when...
