Lego Gummies

I am sure you have all seen the YouTube video on how to make Lego gummies, if not it is posted here:

Being big Lego fans we searched for the molds but alas came up empty-handed.  the only molds we could find were larger ones and they would not work to stack once done.   Still wanting to provide the best possible fun for my youngest we pulled out the Jell-O jelly bean molds and we pretended they were angry bird eggs.

The result was

Lego bricks and angry bird egg gummy treats that were enjoyable.

Looking forward to doing this again once we have better molds.   The video was easy to follow the results were perfect and the treats were lots of fun.

Please RE-sign up – New Site

If you have enjoyed getting my posts and updates please got to my new site as this one will go into retirement soon.

www.glutenfreealaska.com – new site

the same content is there for archives and new content will be posted in a better format.   I welcome your opinion on the new website and I thank you for following me on my journey in blogging.

Today we made those circus cookies that you see in the stores and wish were gluten free.   Well wish no more we made a version that is and it was easy as can be!

Want this?

then you definitely want to sign up on my new website as a gluten free version will be posted soon!.

Thank you again everyone for sticking with me all these years and hope to see you at my new website.

ABC’s of Celiac Disease

A
Celiac Disease is NOT:
~ a food allergy (IgE response)
~ Intolerance to food.
Celiac Disease IS:
~ a serious genetic autoimmune disease that damages the villi of the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. Essentially the body is attacking itself every time a person with celiac consumes gluten.
~ is triggered by consumption of the protein called gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye (oats are often considered into the equation as they are rotated crops with wheat. Oats also have a protein called avenins that is similar to gluten. On that same topic, some individuals cannot tolerate milk proteins as well because of the similar make up of proteins and the damaged Villi)

B
How Do You Get Celiac Disease?
First Thing to address is Celiac disease cannot be “caught,” the gene for celiac disease is in the body from birth. Celiac disease can develop at any time during a persons’ life and it’s not gender specific although more women are diagnosed than men at present.
It is not known exactly what activates the disease; however three things are required for a person to develop celiac disease:
~ a genetic disposition: being born with the necessary genes. The Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) genes specifically linked to celiac disease are DR3, DQ2 and DQ8…and others.
~ An external trigger: some environmental, emotional or physical event in one’s life. While triggering factors are not fully understood, possibilities include, but are not limited to adding solids to a baby’s diet, going through puberty, enduring a surgery or pregnancy, experiencing a stressful situation, catching a virus, increasing gluten containing products in the diet, or developing a bacterial infection to which the immune system responds inappropriately.
~ A diet: containing gluten.

C
How do you Cure or treat Celiac Disease?
There is no cure for celiac disease; the only treatment is a gluten-free diet. The standard treatment calls for complete avoidance of gluten for life. The principles of a gluten-free diet include:
~ Avoid all foods made from wheat, rye, and barley. Examples are breads, cereals, pasta, crackers, cakes, pies, cookies, and gravies.
~ Avoid oats. Some patients with celiac disease can tolerate oats in the diet. But long-term safety of oats in celiac disease patients is unknown, and some oat preparations can be contaminated with wheat. Thus, it is probably best to avoid oats at least during the initial treatment with a gluten-free diet. Once the disease is in remission with a strict gluten-free diet, it may be possible to reintroduce small quantities of oats into the diet under medical supervision.
~ Pay attention to processed foods that may contain gluten. Wheat flour is a common ingredient in many processed foods. Examples of foods that may contain gluten include:
Canned soups
Salad dressings
Ice cream
Candy bars
Instant coffee
Luncheon meats and processed or canned meats
Ketchup and mustard
Yogurt
Pasta
~ Beware of tablets, capsules, and vitamin preparations that contain gluten. Wheat starch is commonly employed as a binding agent in tablets and capsules. Gluten also can be found in many vitamin products, and cosmetic products such as lipstick. Tell your pharmacy of your Disease, the pills you are taking to help you recover may be doing more damage than good.
~ Avoid beer, and check your alcohols. Malt is a common ingredient in wine coolers.
~ Avoid milk and other dairy products that contain lactose. Untreated patients with celiac disease often are lactose intolerant. With successful treatment, dairy products can often be reintroduced slowly into the diet later.
~ *See Notes below* Because people with celiac disease who have severe malabsorption can develop vitamin and mineral deficiencies, vitamin and mineral supplements are important. Ask your doctor if a multivitamin is right for you. Patients with iron deficiency anemia should be treated with iron. Patients with anemia due to folate or B12 deficiency should be treated with folic acid and B12. Patients with an abnormal ProTime should be treated with vitamin K. Patients with low blood calcium levels or with osteoporosis should be treated with calcium and vitamin D supplements.

Here is a basic symptom checker I found online, remember symptoms vary greatly. I was misdiagnosed for many years because I didn’t have the classic symptoms. Listen to your body.
http://www.celiaccentral.org/disease-symptoms-checklist/
Bottom Line and some personal points about this are:

• Celiac is an auto-immune disease, and this makes you susceptible to all the other auto-immune diseases out there. Please be pro-active on your health and go with your gut instinct about things.
• Take it slow; Rome wasn’t built in a day. Absolutely take out 100% of the gluten and dairy however don’t beat yourself up when there is a mistake and you accidentally eat something, I still make mistakes after 10 years (major mistakes). Add things like dairy and oats in slowly after you are 100% better. Took me about 6 years to add in dairy safely and I still can’t overdo it.
• Pills, watch your pills. I was so anemic for years they threatened blood transfusions, had me on major doses of iron and vitamins (all synthetic) and I was getting worse each day. Turns out I have MTHFR which is another genetic gene mutation and all they were doing was killing me.
• MY ADVICE, all natural, no synthetic crappy vitamins and minerals. Get it all the natural way with essential oil vitamins, foods, and natural supplements. Find a good natural health doctor. I love MD’s but they were literally killing me slowly. I use to take steroids to counter act the other steroids symptoms that I was taking to counter another medication and even another medication. At one point I kid you not I was on 20 pills a day and literally laying in my bed slowly dying. Please please be proactive about your health.
• I want to help you feel better; I started this blog to help others. It’s a safe place to come and ask questions and learn. I have been to people who charge outrageous fees and have learned nothing. I help others by trial and error and living through what they are going through. If I don’t know an answer I will find out. However never would I suggest taking my opinion over a certified doctor or natural health doctor.

Last but not least, get into a good support group. I can’t tell you how much relief it is to talk to someone who has gone or is going through this. I was a crazy physco person and it just felt good knowing I was not alone. I would suggest GFCFrecipes@yahoogroups.com.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, there is a rainbow waiting after the storm subsides, there is a piece of chocolate at the end of that conveyer belt and its gluten free………………………………

Check out my Facebook websites where I post a lot of little odds and ends:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gluten-Free-Alaska/166715226719341?ref=hl
& https://www.facebook.com/Essentialabundanceak?ref=hl
If you have personal questions you don’t want posted on my site you can email me as well:
EAdoterra@gmail.com
References:
Most of this info can be found and was taken from sources like webmd & Celiac support association. Just be careful on the information you find out there on the web as sometimes it is quite tangled like the sites that say you can cheat a little and just take an enzyme pill and enjoy your gluten. Really?

Thank you to my readers

With all the wonderful new gluten-free foods I have found, it seems I have been doing back to back food reviews; this was not what I started the blog out as.

I want to apologize to all my new members who have come to my site looking for general information, help and ideas and of course recipes.  (I have a slew of recipes over in the right hand margin)

My next post will be for all those new members looking for a little clarification and a reminder to all those who have been on this road for a while.

I am also back in the kitchen tonight with two new recipes, hoping there will be a favorable post on them soon.

Again:   Thank you to my members who have been with me for years and all those new members just coming aboard.

Home-Made Raisins

Have you ever tried to make home-made raisins?    This was my first try at it, and I only tried it because I had a ton of grapes that no one was eating in the house.   I don’t like grapes, but I do love raisins: weird right?  I also have a kid who will douse everything in ketchup but won’t eat a tomato……………….Crazy makes the world more interesting.

I have a handy-dandy dehydrator that I don’t use nearly as much as I should so I got it out from in the deep dark corners of my pantry and got my grapes ready.   Since I never done this I looked it up on how to do it.    Two things stuck out, you have to blanch the grapes then you have to soak them in lemon infused water.   After I did that I placed them on my dehydrator making sure none of them touched.  In fact I spread them as far apart as possible using all my layers.

{Recipe:   blanch grapes for a short time to crack the skin a little, drain, rinse and soak in lemon infused water for 10 minutes.  Pat dry and place in dehydrator, dehydrate until done.}

First off let me say this, wow it took forever!  Perhaps a bigger, stronger, more professional dehydrator may have cranked these babies out faster but my little one took almost 30 hours.   I turned it off at night and had it running all day.  I was pranoid I would burn the motor out and well I didn’t think raisins were a good enough reason to ruin a good machine.

Now let me tell you what I got,   Okay you know what I got; it was raisins.  big deal, or is it?

have you ever eaten warm fresh raisins?  Oh my goodness it is a whole new experience quite different from opening up that little red box and getting these little itty bitty dried up pieces of  fruit.   these were big, warm juicy, delicious things.  My taste buds were confused as I eat raisins all the time but these were a kicked up another notch raisin!

I am actually finishing the bowl off as I type.   so good.

Next sale of grapes I just might get me another bunch.

Ener-G Pretzel Bread – Review

My daughter recently had a bridal shower and the theme was breakfast.  We had Quiche (I wish I took photos of my Quiche as it turned out great!) and breads.    Since my daughter also has Celiac Disease I wanted this to be the best time ever so went on the search for different types of bread.   On my adventure I found Ener-G Pretzel Bread.   I also found some against the grain bread which I will blog on later.

This bread reminded me a little of sourdough.  I wasn’t a big sourdough fan prior to being gluten-free but this was a great treat reminding me of such.  I didn’t find this bread to taste anything like pretzels which I was really hoping it would!!!  Had it, I would be buying it all the time as I love and miss soft pretzels. Even though it wasn’t the taste I was hoping for, it was a good bread.

I got busy putting it to the test.  I thought what goes great with pretzels?  First I just buttered it which basically tasted like a buttered sourdough, then I got created and thought I love pretzels and cheese so had a grilled cheese sandwich; this definitely took the bread up a notch but I think the best use of it was today with a melted ham and cheese sandwich with mustard.

I really enjoyed the bread, not something I would buy every week or every month but for a change of pace treat it was a wonderful bread.   If I find something I make that would pair well with sourdough I will definitely go back and buy this.

It is 80 calories per slice and calories from fat are 30

INGREDIENTS: Filtered Water, Pretzel Crumbs [Potato Flour, Corn Starch, Rice Flour, Organic Palm Fruit Oil, Corn Glucose, Tapioca Syrup, Baking Powder (Sodium Pyrophosphate, Potato Starch, Sodium Bicarbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Cellulose Gum, Bamboo Fiber, Salt, Yeast.] Egg White, High Oleic Safflower Oil, Tapioca Flour, Sugar Cane Fiber, Granulated Sugar, Pear Juice Concentrate, Plum Puree (Prune Juice Concentrate, Dried Plums), Xanthan Gum, Modified Cellulose, Glucono Delta Lactone, Calcium Carbonate, Cellulose Gum, Orange Citrus Fiber.

Suzie’s Thin Rice Cakes – Review

I have never had good luck ordering gluten-free meals (this was back when they served you meals) on a plane.   But one trip I got the most awesome rice cakes used as a sandwich.   Ever since then I have looked everywhere for a rice cake that was thin and soft enough to do that again.

there are lots of rice cakes, there are even lots of thin rice cakes but it has been my experience that they are dry and crumbly not to mention a little unappetizing.   So what makes Suzie’s rice cakes different?   I am not entirely sure.  the ingredients are simply brown rice and sea salt, same as all the rest but in my opinion these are just thin enough and soft enough to duplicate that yummy treat I had on the plane years ago.

I made several things with this, a ham and cheese rice cake, a PB&J rice cake and my favorite a PB &apple rice cake.  I even gave it to my son to see if he would like it.  He is ultra picky about how he eats his PB&J so this was a big test.  I am happy to say he loved this!

It’s a simple little rice cake but it is so different from anything I have ever had and quite frankly I will pay the extra money to have these in my house.   I even put them in the lunch box and they held up wonderfully.  I have stuffed them in my purse, taken them in the car (no messy crumbs).

I love them

Enjoy!

Ians Southwestern Chicken – Review

Ian’s is a brand I usually have on hand in the freezer for my son.   Being that he only has a list of 15 its he will eat (he has come a long way from the three items he would eat a mere 3 years ago) we stay well stocked on the fish sticks and chicken nuggets.   My son is a sight, smell, touch, type of eater, so I never could pull one over on him by serving another brand of fish sticks or chicken nuggets although we are making great breakthroughs.

I mainly started buying them since those two items are the only things that I ever find in my stores which is why I haven’t tried more of their products.  Ian’s however has a large variety of items and I would love to try them all.

however that being said I was not impressed with the new item I found.   Southwestern chicken.   It looked good on the package and I imagined in my head how wonderful and juicy these would taste based on the other two products I have eaten.  I was so excited.

Big let down.

first lets see a photo; this is what it looked like as I took it out of the box.

Okay not a big deal, it was frozen, lets just cook this food up and see what it becomes………..

okay a little better but you can even see from the photo (I cooked exactly how they told me to) how dry this is and well it tasted like nothing.   Dry tasteless chicken.  I managed to get one piece down then had to douse the rest in ranch dressing just to tolerate.   Yes I ate it because it was all I had for dinner sadly.

I have to state again I love Ian’s, (the two things I have eaten and yes I still want to try the rest of their products) but this I did not enjoy at all.    My son took one look at it and gave me the gag sign but that isn’t saying much it didn’t look appealing in the least.

Sorry Ian’s but I will pass on this one but do look forward to one day seeing your other items in my stores.    How about sending more of a variety to Alaska so I can try them.   I thought for sure when my local health food store expanded I would see some items but no luck this is the only new item I have found.   Big Sigh, sometimes it sucks to live clear in Alaska where people think we still live in igloos.   Well okay we do but that is only in the winter months, in the summer there are wooden huts.

Canyon bakehouse Gluten Free Bread – Review

I actually did not set out to review this bread.  I found it at my local Safeway store and I thought what the heck I will give it a try.   It was the first time I have seen it and I hope I continue seeing it.   I have heard people raving on this bread forever but since I found Franz bread I honestly thought there could be no better.   Don’t get me wrong Franz is a wonderful soft bread and I still like it but can I tell you a few things about Canyon Bakehouse bread?   (I have to go get a napkin because there is some serious drooling going on; yes over a piece of bread)

Basically I bought this out of curiosity to see what everyone was raving about.  Some people rave about other brands and well I find them equivalent to eating cardboard.  So here it goes, this is what I want you to know about the bread:

1.  It smelled like bread, It felt like bread, in fact I was a little puzzled how gluten bread-like it was that I had to go read the ingredients and then even thought to myself what if it was marked wrong somehow?

2.  I made a ham and cheese sandwich and the first bite brought back memories I didn’t know I had from 10 years ago when I use to eat gluten bread.   I have honestly never bitten into bread that reminded me so much of real gluten bread.   Other brands are soft, delicate and edible without toasting but with each bite I went back to pre-celiac days.  So I thought clear back to childhood and a light bulb went off, I had to test this bread to the full limit!

3.   My childhood test of bread.  As a child sometimes we just got a piece of bread with dinner.   My favorite thing to do (don’t judge me) was to wad it up into a little ball and nibble on this almost raw tasting dough ball.  Of course leaving the crust.   I did this to the Canyon bread……………………………whoa, I have not done this in forever.  No other gluten-free bread has ever been able to do this.

3.  test two, I toasted it and buttered it and dipped it in hot tea.    When I am sick there is nothing better than hot tea and toast and this is something I have not been able to enjoy in the last ten years as much as I have tried.   This was perfect……………I am almost crying at how perfect this was.

BUT WAIT!   CHECK THIS OUT, HOW PERFECT IS THIS?  Its sugar free……….Oh yes it is.  Water, brown rice flour, organic agave syrup, tapioca flour, whole grain sorghum flour, xanthan gum, cultured brown rice flour, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, whole grain amaranth, sea salt, yeast and natural enzymes.   What?  oh my gosh the perfect bread for my diet.

Anything from here on will just be a bread coma rant about how much I love this bread and how I feel like a little girl again back before I couldn’t have gluten.  I have eaten so many pieces in so many ways today and I could die a happy person right now.

How can a bread make a person that happy?   Oh it does, it so does.

Here is a picture of the sandwich and the dough balls, after that I ate it so fast and said the heck with the photo give me my bread…………I was like a kid in a candy making shop making this and that and that and this, and well there may no longer be a loaf of bread in my fridge now, but I don’t care.

“shuddering” this was so good!

Fig Bars – Reivew

Marin Food Specialties makes a fig bar.   I would love to link you to their site but for some reason they do not have a direct site to reference.  In fact I can’t find them anywhere which is concerning because I absolutely loved this product.  I found them at my local Health Food store.

This is the only info I could find.  If you have any other info please contact me so that I can link to them.

MARIN FOOD SPECIALTIES INC.

PO BOX 609.3800 BYRON HIGHWAY BYRON,CA 94514-0609 USA ATT DORIS BRUMFIELD P:9256346126 F:925 634 6240

Anyway, they make this amazing fig bar.

Its hard to think of a food that don’t bring back memories so like most other foods; I recall my momma buying fig newtons on special occasions and we all sat around and enjoyed them.  She had her coffee we had our milk.  It was a treat for sure.

I have tried Pamela’s figgies and honestly I thought they were awful.  they were dry, crumbly and there wasn’t just a regular fig bar, they were all these variations of flavors with fig.   I just want a soft, delicate, fig only bar.   When I found these I grabbed them right up and the put them to the test.

1.   Taste………..Yup they were just plain fig cookies with a cake like crust and the closest darn thing to Fig Newtons I have ever tasted.   They went down real smooth with a cup of coffee.  First cookie I enjoyed with my eyes closed getting the full effect of that little fig cake that brought me back to childhood.

2.  Holding up………I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to Pamela’s Figgies since perhaps I just got a stale bunch so as hard as it was I divided these New fig bars up and put some in the freezer and some in a bag in the pantry.  two weeks later I went back to them.  still soft, non crumbly, ultra delicious fig bars.   The freezer batch after thawing on the counter were the same way.   So I have determined these are the real deal fig bars and nothing will cross my lips for that old fig newton fix than these little cookies right here.

Do you miss Fig Newtons?   Search no more (well unless you can’t find these in stores then you might have a hard time searching online) these fig bars will satisfy your craving.