Gluten-Free Food Review 1

I have been eating a gluten-free diet since January when I found out that I have celiac disease.  I have found that gluten-free food is extremely hit-or-miss and also very expensive.  I thought it would helpful to other gluten-free people if I would share the products that I would highly recommend and the products that I would highly recommend you to avoid.

If you are gluten-free and you live in or near Seattle, there is this Fred Meyer that you have to go to.  It's in Lynnwood and the address is 4615 196th St SW Ste 175 Lynnwood, WA 98036.  There is a fantastic selection of gluten-free products located on the left side of the store.  I bought the pizza crusts in the above picture.  The brand is Kinnikinnick.  These are actually not expensive.  There are four personal-sized pizza crusts in a box.  They are frozen and you have to cook them in the oven.  I actually wanted to put mostly cold toppings on my pizza, so I cooked just the crust and added the toppings after removing it from the oven.  The crust is made of rice flour and it tastes just as good as a gluten pizza crust.  I have only made one of these so far, but it was really delicious.  I used Kraft brand Creamy Poppyseed dressing as sauce and bacon, avocado, tomato, and mozzarella as toppings.

I also bought some blueberry muffins by the same brand and they tasted just as good as muffins that have gluten.  I had previously tried Udi's brand blueberry muffins and they were ridiculously dry and I was not impressed.  Some people swear by the Udi's brand but I am not a fan.  I have also purchased the Udi's brand of granola and it is some of the least flavorful granola I have ever tasted.  It also doesn't agree with my stomach.  I would definitely recommend the Kinnikinnick muffins.  They are also located in the freezer case and you can just heat them up on a plate in the microwave for about a minute to thaw them before eating.

As far as granola, I'm still trying to find a really good kind.  I bought some by the Enjoy Life brand at Fred Meyer.  Their brand is really cool because they make sure not to have the 8 most common food ingredients in any of their food, which are wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts. egg, soy, fish, and shellfish.  The granola I got is really delicious, but it will probably break your teeth if you eat it by itself.  I have been letting it soak in soy milk to soften it up before I eat it.

As far as delivery pizza goes, if you live in the Seattle area, I highly recommend Garlic Jim's.  Their pizza crust is thin but very tasty and they have lots of gluten-free options for pizza toppings.  I always get the Hawaiian.  The gluten-free pizzas are only available in two sizes and do cost more than an ordinary pizza, but they are also delicious, and in my opinion, completely worth it.

The other brand that I highly recommend is Gluten Free Cafe.  Their canned soups are nothing special, but their frozen meals are delicious.  I especially like the Lemon Basil Chicken and the Fettuccine Alfredo, which uses rice noodles and I actually prefer it to any other fettuccine alfredo.

Last but not least is ice cream.  Sadly my three favorite flavors, Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide, Ben and Jerry's Boston Cream Pie, and Ben and Jerry's Red Velvet Cake, all contain gluten.  But I have already discovered my new favorite.  It's called Safeway Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry and there's not gluten in it.  It has strawberry ice cream with real strawberry pieces and fudge swirl and it's delicious.

I hope that someone will find these recommendations helpful.  I think the worst part of accidentally wasting your money on disgusting or less-than-delicious food is that you (or at least I) feel bad just throwing it away, so I usually make myself eat it all so it's not a waste of money.

We All Scream

But it's not because of clowns this time.  It's because of this:

That's right, we're talking about ice cream.  And because I am a self-diagnosed ice cream-aholic, ice cream ratings will be a regular feature on my blog.  Not regular as in, you can set your watch by it, but regular as in, this will be happening again in the future, many many times.  So it's starting to be slightly warmer weather here and I figured that now I might be too insane to think that other people will want to be eating ice cream.  You see, as an ice cream-aholic, I love and even crave ice cream year-round, even in the winter when there's snow on the ground and I'm huddling under a blanket.  But anyway, sometimes it's difficult to choose a flavor of ice cream.  There are just so many flavors!  And sometimes you want to try something new, but aren't sure if you'll like it.  (I know, it's ice cream, what's not to like?)  Anyway, I will be sharing my thoughts on a few ice cream brands and flavors every so often, mainly Haagen Dazs, Ben and Jerry's, and Safeway brand (Judge me if you like but Safeway has some yummy ice cream varieties).

I'm sure you're all wondering what my favorite ice cream flavor is.  Well wonder no more, it's a (sadly discontinued) flavor called Caramel Apple Pie from Haagen Dazs.  It was so perfect and delicious.  It had salty caramel, sweet vanilla ice cream, and apple filling that you could use as an excuse to claim it was kind of healthy (It was not healthy at all).  Anyway, since that flavor has been discontinued (sad face), my new favorite flavor is also from Haagen Dazs and it's called White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle.  It's every bit as amazing as it sounds.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes their ice cream with lots of goodies in it.

Today I would like to review a few flavors that I have tried recently.  They are both from Ben and Jerry's, which is surprisingly a brand that I hadn't tasted until this year.  I wasn't really a fan of either one.  I am not giving up on Ben and Jerry's though.  There has to be a reason so many people adore it.  I have four other flavors in G's freezer and two in my own (I'm particularly looking forward to the Red Velvet Cake flavor, which is my favorite kind of cake.  Also, I'm very proud of myself for not even opening it yet, when I bought it three days ago. Willpower!).  Anyway, the first flavor was called Late Night Snack.  The premise is that it's both salty and sweet, which is a thing that I really enjoy.  It also has caramel swirled through it, which is a very good thing in my book.  The only problem I have with it is the treatment of the chocolate-covered potato chips (Yes, you did read that correctly.)  I have had chocolate covered potato chips before (from Trader Joe's, I think) and they were so delicious.  But the way that Ben and Jerry's do theirs is sort of small chip fragments covered in chocolate.  And the real problem is that they aren't very crispy.  Other than that, the ice cream was very good and I finished it all.  I give it 1 and a half stars out of 5.

The second flavor that I want to review was very disappointing.  It was called Cake Batter.  Seriously, how can you screw that up?  But they did, in my opinion.  It would have been so delicious if it had just been the cake flavored ice cream.  But they swirled chocolate frosting through it.  And I'm talking about the same proportion of frosting as there is ice cream, which in my opinion is too much.  I'm not the kind of person who likes eating frosting straight from the can.  Frosting is something that I enjoy in moderation, but there was no moderation here.  I did manage to finish the whole thing, over the course of a week, so I'll give it a 1 out of 5.

I know I'm coming across as a Negative Nancy, but these two flavors are really the only two that I would never buy again, aside from one other I've had in the past (Green Tea from Haagen Dazs. Just way too sweet for green tea; it wasn't right and I only took two bites and threw the rest away.)  In the future, things should be a lot more positive, especially after that Red Velvet Cake ice cream.