Gluten-Free Food Review 2

It's been over a year since my last round-up and review of gluten-free foods I've discovered.  Here are some of my favorite finds.  There is one affiliate link in this post.  I have no affiliation with Safeway; that's just the store I usually shop at so most of these items are from there.  These are all items that I purchased myself.  If you are a brand and would like to send me a gluten-free item to review, feel free to contact me.

Muffins:

These muffins are so good!  They're moist and taste just like you would want a blueberry muffin to.  I got these at Safeway.  I'm not sure if this brand has shown up at Safeways nationwide, but it is in most Seattle Safeway locations.

Granola:

KIND is the best granola I have tried.  I don't buy granola very often, but every once in a while I'll buy some and use it sparingly on yogurt with fruit or jam. They also make really good (but expensive) granola bars.

This is the flavor of granola I got.  If you buy through this Amazon seller, you can subscribe to monthly delivery and save money.  I bought mine for about $6 in a grocery store (Metropolitan Market in Seattle), and this is $14.34 for a 3-pack, plus whatever for shipping.

Pizza:

I love Udi's three cheese pizza.  It's the best gluten-free pizza I've had, that I haven't had to make myself.  You can find it in the frozen pizza section of many stores, including Safeway.

Soup:

Progresso has a few gluten-free varieties.  Not all of their soups are gluten-free, so make sure you read the ingredients.  My favorite flavors are New England Clam Chowder, Chicken Corn Chowder, and Split Pea Soup.

Ice Cream:

I was delighted when I discovered that one of my favorite flavors of ice cream from before my diagnosis is gluten-free!  It's Haagen-Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, pictured above.  Other gluten-free flavors of ice cream that I love are Safeway brand Mint Chocolate Chip, Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia, and Ben and Jerry's Hazed and Confused Core (which has half chocolate ice cream, half hazelnut ice cream, and a chocolate-hazelnut core).  The Hazed and Confused is so good that I have only been able to buy it twice and every other time I've looked it's been sold out.

Bread:

I don't usually buy bread.  I usually just go without or use corn tortillas.  But sometimes I want a grilled cheese sandwich or a BLT, and when I do this is my go-to bread.

Chips and Crackers:

Juanita's tortilla chips are the best tasting and the cheapest gluten-free tortilla chips.  They are even the brand of choice of three of my non-gluten-free friends.  Nabisco started making Rice Thins crackers a few months ago, or at least they arrived locally a few months ago.  I love these crackers but I will eat an entire box in one sitting, which is fine when they're less than $3 a box.  White Cheddar is my favorite flavor, but they also come in Original, Sea Salt and Pepper, and Sweet Barbecue.

Many flavors of Lay's potato chips are also gluten-free, including Cheesy Garlic Bread and Cheddar Sour Cream.

Frozen Dinners:

I love EVOL brand frozen dinners.  They are a little bit expensive but worth it, in my opinion.  My favorite kind is the Fire-Grilled Steak.

So that's what I've found lately.  Is there anything gluten-free that you've loved and would recommend to me?  Tell me in the comments.

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 for Egg Nog

I meant to post a fashion post today, but I accidentally left my camera at home with all of the pictures on it and I'm staying at G's until I can eat all solid foods again.  (I will post the fashion post next Friday.)  I can eat pasta now which is fantastic, because I love pasta.  Anyway, I had to eat a lot of soft foods while I was recovering, including a lot of ice cream. 

Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk and Dublin Mudslide are both delicious.  Oatmeal Cookie Chunk is pretty self-explanatory.  Dublin Mudslide is a mix of chocolatey coffee-y goodness. It has Irish cream liquer flavored ice cream, chocolate chocolate chip cookie pieces, and fudge swirls.  It is also my new favorite.

The one that I am super duper excited to tell people about is Safeway brand Egg Nog ice cream.  It's a limited edition flavor and it tastes just like egg nog.  It's a softer ice cream which adds to the egg nogginess of it.  And it's under $4 for a gallon, so that's really awesome.

So if you're crazy like me and like to eat ice cream when the weather is cold, you just had mouth surgery and have to eat soft food, or you're a lucky duck who lives someplace warm, give these flavors a try next time you want some ice cream.

We All Scream (Again)

Who has two thumbs, loves puns, and obviously doesn't own a tablet? This girl.



It's ice cream review time again.  I have learned that Ben and Jerry's mostly puts way too many goodies in their ice cream for my taste.  The first ice cream I'm reviewing today is Ben and Jerry's Everything But the.  The premise for this flavor is that it has a little bit of just about everything.  You can think of it as a kid at a sundae bar putting as much stuff as possible in his ice cream.  It was an alright flavor.  It had waaaaay too many goodies in it for my preference.  Also there were really big pieces of some of the goodies that were difficult to break into bite size pieces because they were frozen.  I would not get this flavor again.  I also tried Ben and Jerry's What a Cluster.  This flavor has caramel clusters and marshmallow swirl.  I found that the caramel clusters did not taste like caramel and they also had a weird texture.  I couldn't taste the marshmallow swirl at all.  I would not buy this flavor again either.  The flavor that I was super duper excited about was Red Velvet Cake.  It was so delicious and I have bought it again since.  The ice cream itself is red velvet flavored and it has actual red velvet cake pieces in it, with cream cheese frosting swirls.  It is every bit as delicious as it sounds.  The other flavor I recently tried is Ben and Jerry's Boston Creme Pie.  This flavor is also really delicious.  This is another less complicated and cluttered flavor.  It has Boston Creme Pie flavored ice cream with yellow cake pieces, chocolate pieces, and pastry cream swirls.  It's basically like eating a delicious pastry in ice cream form and I will buy it again in the future.  So that should get you by for now on your ice cream flavor purchases.  I'll be back with more ice cream reviews sometime again in the future.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I won't be blogging after Monday, June 25th until next month.  I am going to be visiting my family, including my brother who is being deployed to Japan for two years after this visit.  I will also be moving at the end of this month to a teeny tiny room that doesn't even have a closet.  I'm sure I could find something better, but I just like knowing for sure where I'll be after I move out, so I'm signing the lease today.  For these reasons, I am shortening my giveaway to end June 18th, so make sure you enter before it's over.

Jobs I Wish I Could Have

In the midst of applying for a ton of different jobs, some of which are kind of awesome (I seriously want to work at Marshall's!) and some that are not so great (7-11 cashier), I have found myself wishing for other jobs entirely.  Some of these jobs might not even exist, but I still want them anyway. So behold, a list of things that I wish someone would pay me to do!

1. Be a hacky sack extra: If you pay attention when watching any movie (or tv show) ever that has involved a college or high school, you will notice they all have one thing in common.  There will be people hacky sacking at some point in the movie (or tv show).  They are usually kind of terrible at it too.  I could be that hacky sack extra! And I'm also pretty good at keeping it up for a while. (Get your mind out of the gutter.)  Sure people might be a little distracted from the actual plot development when they notice that there's a female who's pretty awesome at hacky sacking (a very male dominated activity), in the background.  But I could mess up on purpose a few times so I'm not so distracting.  Fun fact: I was president of the hacky sack club at my university during my sophomore year.

You probably think this wasn't me becuase of the pink shoes. Well my art professor decided the shot needed more contrast,
so I borrowed my roommate's pink shoes.  Also skinny jeans are way better for hacky sacking than flared legs.

2. Read books and watch movies: This is something I do all the time anyway, so I wish that someone would pay me for it.  I would review them and everything, which I already do with lots of movies.

3. Give my opinion on every single thing ever: Give me a topic and I'll tell you what I think about it.  If I don't know what the topic actually is, I'll just make something up.  Why won't anyone pay me to do this?  I love talking about my opinion all day long: I love this show, this hot chocolate is awesome, oh no I think I have food poisoning, ginger ale is awesome.  It's a gift, really.

4. Eat ice cream: I am so serious right now. How do I get a job as a new ice cream flavor sampler, because sign me up right now!  I don't think it's any secret that I love my ice cream.  It's also a good source of calcium when I don't drink milk regularly, except on my Lucky Charms.  Just call me a health superhero.

5. Write the sayings on the insides of Sobe caps: This is clearly a job that someone does, and I have a feeling that the person who does this job does not speak English fluently.  I can generate random phrases with the best of them.  (Sidenote: I've had multiple Sobe caps that said "Get Out of There" on them; I don't like it when my beverage tries to frighten me)  So, Sobe cap saying generator person, I take your "fist pump" and raise you a "party rock"  Your move buddy.  Here's one more to think about "YOLO".  (Obviously I wouldn't use YOLO or party rock.  Those are merely sarcastic examples.)

Oh no, it seems that I have written another list with a normal number of items on it. Oh well, I'm going back to bed now.  Who has two thumbs and couldn't fall asleep until 5 in the morning? This girl.

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.

Stuff I Think

1. There are a lot of words ending in "press". Depress, impress, suppress, oppress, compress, okay well that's five not really a lot. Well, I guess it's a lot compared to like three or four.
2. If I had been born way earlier in the history of the world, I could have come up with some pretty awesome quotes. Thats a big problem nowadays, most of the really good quotes have already been said.
3. I always feel the need to eat ice cream when it's cold. It makes no sense, but I do it anyway, and then I complain about how cold I am. I never learn my lesson though. Ice cream's just too good to resist, unless you're lactose intolerant or something.
4. I love love LOVE being able to walk. Not being able to walk for about two months made me realize how many things I take for granted. If I can walk, it's a good day. It totally put everything in perspective for me.
5. "If life gives you gators, make Gatorade." I'm not sure who said that one first, but it was not me.
6. I have some very strange thoughts sometimes.
7. I want to catch a squirrel that does not have rabies and keep it as my pet and take it for walks on a leash. I would name it Spot, and I would tell everyone that it was my dog, and that he's just really little with a very fluffy tail.
8. The coolest talent ever would be juggling three Rubik's cubes while solving them while hula hooping and riding a unicycle across a tightrope over lava, blindfolded. However, that would be extremely hard to learn without dying.