The Yearly Hunt

Being GF, as you all know, means school lunches are WAY off-limits. This means that I am bringing a lunch from home, every day, 180 days a year. Thank goodness for my mother who packs them for me so I can sleep a little later.

Packing lunch means bringing a lunch box, and this is where it gets tricky for me. As a high-schooler, I know that right from the get -go most I am not going to like most lunchboxes. (Dora and Thomas the Tank Engine and Tinkerbell and Unicorns just aren't quite my style). But beyond looks, the box has to meet certain criteria I have set. I prefer them to be soft-sided, so they fit in my already-stuffed book bag better, and they should be taller than they are wide. This helps keep the food intact, as it fits more easily with my books and binders. Obviously, they need to be able to keep food cold, and a washable, or, at least, wipe-able liner is key to cleaning those minor spills.

I have found that my fairly specific needs, as well as the fact that I am admittedly picky when it comes to looks, make it incredibly difficult to find a lunch box I love. I end up hunting online for days, and often settling for one that I just don't really like. This stinks.

Last year, I found what I thought was the ultimate lunchbox. The right size, shape, style, softness. It was actually a "small cooler bag", but I loved it. This one:

Unfortunately, at around halfway through the year I the lining (which is like aluminum foil, but a fabric), began to fall out. It ripped and tore and just wasn't keeping my food cold. Had the bag inexpensive, we may have just gotten another one. But it was over 40 dollars with shipping. That type of money should get me a lunchbox to last at least two years.

What do you guys think? Have you ever found a stylish and durable lunchbox you absolutely love? Please share!

CC

Hey, Domino's!!

Domino's recently launched "Gluten-Free" Pizza.  Their pizza is NOT GF, nor will it ever be GF. The fact that they are advertising it as such is wrong.  Sign Here to start the process of getting that "GF" labeling off of Domino's Pizza.

Thanks!

These Lights, They Made Me Want Thai Food

I was in the Big Apple recently, and it was pretty fun. Cold, and windy, but fun! As I am sure you know, there are many, many, GF options in NYC. I found a Thai restaurant with lots of GF food! From the dinner, (and lunch), I got there, it tasted pretty normal. Now, I haven't had "real" Thai food in a few years, but this tasted like the real thing to me. My favorite item was the Crispy Sesame Chicken. I really am not a fan of spicy foods, so I went with this over General Tso's. It was SO GOOD. Also, the portion size was HUGE, so I had leftovers! YUM!

Lili's 57

Enjoy your GF Leap Day!

C.C.

Fun Finals Food...Or Maybe Just Finals Food,

It's finals/midterms week. Yay. Ugh. Bleck. I mean, good god people, I have had above 90 in every class all year. Why no exemption????!!! Anyway, about the food.
Finals food. Filling, fun, finals food. (I love alliteration!) (Another Alliteration!) (I CAN'T STOP!. oh wait. just did.)
I have decided to bring those cute little Jif ToGo Cups, and a banana. Also, my usual bottle(s) of water. I chose those because I can eat them in the 5-15 minutes between exams, and they are filling as well as yummy!

There is my corn dog speech for the day. What are some of your tips for getting through long, dull days? Peanut Butter? Bananas? Maybe CHOCOLATE?

C.C.

Lordy Lordy

Dear Blogging,
My, My, How can I resist you? Mamma Mia, Here we go again!

Much GF Warmth to you and yours in the new year!

C.C.

Let's go to the MOOVIES!!!

I, like so many, many, other people, am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. Really REALLY huge. So I have now seen it twice. In less than five days. This, of course, means, that I have been in a Movie Theatre twice recently.
That got me thinking about popcorn, (you know), because in Movie Theatres there is lots of popcorn EVERYWHERE. :)
I was just wondering how you guys go about eating at Cinemas. Do you buy candy, or bring your own Popcorn?

(Sorry about the very short and incoherent post, I got about 5 hours of sleep last night, and still have to pack for two weeks of vacation...)

C.C.

Are they Cupcakes? Or are they Brownies?

A few months ago, I ran across this recipe while in a waiting room somewhere, and loved it immediately.
I was planning on making them for Father's Day, as the article suggests, but I forgot (of course!), and so I created them on Independence Day.

Here are a few things I learned:

Its best to make the brownie/cupcakes the day before you plan on serving them, just don't decorate until the day of. This way, they have a chance to cool, and you won't spend a good portion of the day in the kitchen.

GREASE THE BAKING CUPS. This seems obvious, and I am sure all you experienced bakers would do this anyway, but I skipped this step because the baking cups told me I did not have to. I DID HAVE TO, as it turns out. :)

Skip the dying of the icing and sticking it in a bag and all that. I tried that, made a huge mess, and it still did not work. On the second batch, I used black piping gel (it had sparkles, an added bonus for the "grill") that we picked up at the grocery store for like 3 dollars. Way easier, because not only does it use less ingredients, it has easier clean up, and is VERY easy to put on the cupcakes.

Make a glaze of confectioners sugar and water to brush on the cupcakes before you sprinkle on the sugar crystals for "embers". Otherwise, the crystals just fall off. I believe the recipe calls for putting the "grates" on and then the "embers", but that is just silly because embers on a real grill are below the grates, and the glaze is easy to assemble, as well as being clear.

I could not find any orange sugar crystals, so I used a combination of red and yellow. It seemed to work just as well, so no problem there...

Okay I think that is it :)

I did have one problem which is that I could not find and caramel-cream candies that were GF!! So i just used the non-GF kind, had my sister stick them on, and did not eat those brownies.

The Whole Batch:

 The "Hot Dogs":

 The "Kabobs":

A GF Fourth!!

First of all, let me start out by saying Happy Birthday America!! (Also, Happy Canada Day, even though that was a while back...)

Second, I hope you all had a nice Fourth of July, I know I did!!

This year was way easier food-wise than last year. For starters, we had less people over, and some of my friends that came were GF too, so that helped, but mainly it was just that I have been GF for over two years now, and this was my THIRD GF 4th of July, so I just am more comfortable. It also helped that my mom made all the food, and she is really good about cooking GF.

So I ate potato chips and a hot dog, and peppers. I made some really cute brownie-cupcakes (details posted soon), which were verrryy verryyy yummy). And after the fireworks, 2 friends and I split a pint of Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. Needless to say, that kept us up for a good long time, far later than was probably healthy. :)

What did you all do for Independence Day?

C.C.

Summer is officially here, and has been for a few days now, which means we are back to calling up the various ice cream vendors, and chip companies, and salad dressing-makers to see what products are GF, which are not, and which products were once GF, but are not any more.
I have no problem with Customer Service people, and they are always really very nice and helpful, but I have to say, waiting on hold for up to 15 minutes just so they can go find an ingredient list is really very annoying, and I wish that the lists were just handy and right there. I mean, I cannot be the only one calling to ask what "natural flavorings" they use, right?

Are there any GF/Celiac related things you guys do at the start of every summer?

C.C.

Rice Krispies FTW!!!

I had my first bowl of GF Rice Krispies today, and they were...okay. I am pretty dissapointed, I hate to say. While MILES ahead of the other GF crispy puffed rice cereals out there, they still were not very good. The cereal got mushy pretty quickly, and it did not have much flavor. Overall, good-ish, which is a bummer. Oh well.

C.C.

The Best GF Foods on SHINE

There I was. Scrolling through Yahoo. (Did you know that Bradley Cooper speaks fluent french?) (And have you seen that video of the skiving marriage proposal?) To sum it up, I was procrastinating. I am very, very good at procrastinating. I saw this article on Yahoo's SHINE and, obviously, clicked on it.
There are a few opinions of mine I would like to share.
The best GF cereal? Corn Chex, or Honey Nut Chex. Not Rice Chex, I do not think they have enough flavor when plain, and they get mushy a lot faster in milk than other cereals.
The best GF dry pasta? Mrs. Leeper's Brown Rice Pasta or Jovial or Bionaturae, depending on what shape of noodle you want. The Quinoa pasta they feature just does not reheat very well.

I also wonder if the author, Karen Ansel, has Celiac...
Hmm....

What are your favorite GF foods? Do you agree with the article?

GF: True or False?

There is an ice cream place in my town, and out front they have a sign telling people about their GF items!

That is great, and wonderful that GF is becoming more mainstream, but THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT GF!!! I bet some of the ice cream itself is probably GF, but the scooper's they use to scoop it? Nope. The gloves handling the icecream that just make a grilled cheese for someone? Nope. The sprinkles that all the cookie dough ice cream has been rolled in? Nope.

And that really bothers me. I feel like, unless you are certified GF, (and this place is not), you should not GF in the advertising. It just feels wrong, and what about the people you go in there to get Ice Cream thats GF, eat it, and get really really really sick?

What you do guys think?

C.C.

Rice Krispies, Take 2

Hello, all!

Rice Krispies will be launching a GF line in June,which I AM INCREDIBLY EXCITED ABOUT. I do not know if I have ever told you guys, but Rice Krispies were on of the products that bugged me most. Puffed rice cereal should be GF. So, when I saw that announcement, I was soooo happy!

I do wish that Kellogg's had just made the Original RK's GF, (like General Mill's did with corn chex), but I will take what I can get :).

Also, these GF ones will be made with brown rice. Why is that? Does anybody know? White rice is GF. It is not that I have a problem with brown rice, it just seems as if they might be able to get the most similar taste to the originals if they used white rice. Maybe it is because brown seems more "GF"? If so, that is super dumb.

At this point, it is unclear whether or not they will be certified GF, which would be my biggest issue, if they are not. I do not think I am comfortable eating a "GF" product that might not really be GF! It just seems unsafe to me.
What do you guys think?

C.C.

Tweet Tweet Tweet

Celiac Cake is now on twitter!!!!

@celiaccake

:)

C.C.

Potato Chips & Happy May!!

Happy May, everybody!!

Summer is right around the corner, and that means cookouts, cookouts, cookouts!! I love cookouts. The potato chips, (which I can eat almost exclusively due to limited parental supervision), the soda, (which I drink GALLONS of due to limited parental supervision), the flashlight-tag, (during which I can get more bug bites than I care to count due to limited parental supervision), the limited parental supervision. :)

But back to the potato chips. I love them. I love them. I love them (Potato chips, that is). Recently, I have gotten very good at eating them, too. The one problem is that not all of them are GF!!! So, here is what I have discovered regarding the GF-osity of some potato chips.

Utz rocks. They say GF if they are, and don't if there is any question, just as it should be.

I have had some trouble with Frito-Lay products. Sometimes they list wheat as an allergen and say things like "manufactured on equipment, blah blah blah, so obviously I don't eat those ones, but even ones without wheat listed, and none of those manufacturing disclaimers, I have still gotten contaminated, even though all ingredients are GF, and everything!! (This is why the FDA needs to get it's act together! May 4th GF labeling summit!! Anyone going?)

There are others as well, but..er...I forget what their deal is, so I will leave them out :)

Have any of you ever had and trouble with Frito-Lay? What are your potato-chip favorites?

C.C.

One in one-thirty-three!!

Remember to check out 1in133.com!! Great cause, as all of you know!!

WARNING!!! THIS DUDE IS EVIL!!!

Okay, so you GF-savvy people probably already have read about this and have already been adequately outraged.

Chef Damian Cardone, publicly posted this on facebook, and it got subsequently picked up sites such as celiac.com, and The Celiac Handbook.

     Damian Cardone

Gluten free is bullsXXX!! Flour and bread have been a staple of life for thousands, THOUSANDS of years. People who claim to be gluten intolorant dont realize that its all in there disturbed liitle heads. People ask me for gluten free pasta in my restaurant all the time, I tell em sure, Then I serve serve em our pasta, Which I make from scratch with high gluten flour. And you know what? nothing, NOTHING! ever happens! People leave talking about how good they feel gluten free and guess what, They just had a full dose! Idiots!

 

I just wanted to warn some folks about this very, very, sadistic and ignorant and just plain EVIL man.

 

 

C.C.

 

 

*Found via Celiac Handbook on Facebook.

**Damian's post I got off his Facebook wall. It was copied and pasted here without editing, (hence the spelling mistakes, save for a bit of censoring). You have to scroll down a bit, it was posted on March 10th, 2011, at 10:53.

***While it is unclear where he now works, some sources online, (I forget which ones), have him currently working at Florindo's Italian Cuisine, in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

 

 

GF Labeling Summit

May 4th, in D.C.!!!

1in133.org

C.C.

TV

Last night I was innocently watching people get lost and get angry and drink lots of tea on the Amazing Race. 
Cut to commercial. BLAH BLAH BLAH NATIONWIDE INSURANCE, BRAWNY PAPER TOWELS, BLAH BLAH BLAH. And then up on the screen pops this lady, and I am almost positive she is the star of some other show I don't watch and she is talking about how this terrible disease damages your intestines and is really bad for you and most people don't even know they have it, and I am sitting there like, "Oh frosties, what if I have this? It sounds awful and OHMYGOD IT COULD KILL YOU PROBABLY!", and then this lady with the braids is all, CELIAC DISEASE. GET TESTED.  And I am just like, I DO HAVE THAT!!!!

Anyway, point of the story is, those "CBS Cares" things will scare your socks and YAY for Celiac awareness.
C.C.

Stonehearth

I recently discovered a pizza place on the east coast. One the offers every single pizza and pasta on their menu in GF!!!!! I nearly peed myself, that's how excited I was when I heard this. The days of cheese pizza and plain pasta when eating out are OVER!!!! If I wanted, I could have pineapple-chicken-sausage-onion-tomato-chocolate pizza. I dont want to do that, because it sounds gross, but I COULD!!! I just think that is wonderful. So, whenever I am in Massachusetts, I will be eating at Stonehearth Pizza. And I encourage you to try it, too.


C.C.