Stuff I Can't Eat - Fail-Loaf

Today, I failed at cooking an edible dinner for the first time. My biggest mistake was ruining my plans for making tasty gluten-free ziti in turkey marinara sauce by not checking to see if the leftover marinara sauce was still good before I added the meat (thus ruining over a pound of good, seasoned ground turkey.) I decided that, though it was a depressing loss, I could still make something edible. It's hard to go wrong with parmesan, garlic, herbs, and olive oil or butter.

My second failure, I think, lays partly in the hands of Heartland Ingredients and their "Quick Cook Premium Ziti". The first time I had their pasta, it was wonderful. The second, it had an awful aftertaste that still got to me even after I'd added sauce. This time, the pasta itself was of a flavor somewhere between the two previous tries. I'd used half the package before and been roughly satisfied. This time, I tried their "New & Improved" preparation instructions. When I checked the pasta after the suggested 3-4 minutes, it was still inedibly tough. Just a minute later, though, and it had become limp and breakable. Still, I thought, it wasn't that bad. Except in the time it took me to drain it, the pasta had gotten cold, or lukewarm at best.

I put it on low heat and added my sauce ingredients, but I'd apparently underestimated how quickly it truly lost heat. To top it off, the pasta wasn't even tough enough to hold structural integrity against the horrible assault of oil and light stirring. To make a long and depressing story short, it turned into a horrible, shrunken, fractured, congealed mess in the bottom of the pan which I could only dub "Fail-Loaf." In case you doubt me, I've included a few images:

Mmmmm.... Tasty. My boyfriend was able to stomach it without too much trouble (that he would admit), but then again, he works in a parasitology lab. A strong stomach is his part of his job.

At least my first failure was a spectacular one! (And a good thing my city has a Pier 49 Pizza place that offers gluten-free crusts, in case I do it again!)

On Oats.

Oats are one of those tricky subjects when it comes to gluten-free living. They don't naturally contain gluten, but many sources of oats are contaminated with gluten, and even pure oats have a very similar protein that has been known to cause reactions in some gluten-intolerant individuals. Because a lot of sources recommend that oats be omitted entirely from one's diet, I'm choosing not to cook with or review products that contain oats at this time.

Review: EnviroKidz Amazon Frosted Flakes

Produced by Nature's Path Foods. Available online here (link also includes ingredients and nutrition info) in the United States, or at many health food/natural stores.

Cold breakfast cereal is one of the more frustrating products to shop for on a gluten-free diet. In a normal grocery store, nearly every product on the shelves contains either wheat or oats (which are frequently contaminated with gluten and may cause reactions even alone in some gluten-intolerant people. See my post On Oats.) and even those few that don't, like the ubiquitous Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies contain barley malt for flavoring, which, of course, contains gluten. If you want to step beyond the very few cereals that are actually clean, you have to look at natural foods or things that are made specifically gluten free. I'm picking EnviroKidz Organic Amazon Frosted Flakes as my first review because they're what I have sitting on top of my fridge at the moment. :D

The ingredients here are comfortingly simple: Corn meal, cane juice, salt. The cereal itself is likewise simple. The texture is a little coarser than your generic or big-brand corn flakes, and they're crunchier and denser, seeming to last longer in milk, as well. The taste is a good, plain corn flake with enough sweetness to be noticed without making you feel like you're eating desert for breakfast. The lack of malt flavoring isn't terribly noticable to me, and I'm a real lover of malt.

Living near to a Whole Foods which sells these, I have bought them several times even though I don't eat cereal every day, but I'm not sure they're remarkable enough for me to mail-order them if I'm not living near a store that sells them. If you have a gluten-free kid who misses Frosted Flakes, though, I'm sure they'll enjoy these.

Introduction

In November 2007, doctors were trying to understand my persistent fatigue, anemia and sporadic stomach troubles. I was working at a medical lab which offered free testing for employees, and, on a whim, they tested my EMA & TTG levels, which showed positive for Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder where gliadin, a gluten protein within wheat and several other grains, triggers a reaction which causes the body to attack the villi of the small intestine. It wasn't until February 2008 that the diagnosis was confirmed by an endoscopy and biopsy.

This wasn't good news. I'd worked at a Wild Oats (now Whole Foods) in Portland, Maine which had carried a lot of gluten-free food and even hosted meetings for people with Celiac disease. I had, ironically, at the time thought it to be sort of a fad disease that they were encouraging people to self-diagnose so that they would buy all of this special food. Now, looking at my own endoscopy photos and biopsy results, I was forced to accept the truth- it was not only a real disorder, but one that was causing a lot of damage to my own body. I was frustrated. On one hand, I wanted to feel better. On the other, I really love food. One of my great pleasures in life has been trying different ethnic cuisines and doing my own kitchen experiments. I'd even found that one of the best ways I could lift myself up out of depression was to make something healthy and tasty. The only current treatment for celiac disease is completely avoiding all gluten-containing foods, and the thought of having to limit what I can eat was frustrating.

Despite my inner gourmand's protests, I obeyed the doctors. Grocery shopping became an ordeal, both because I had to carefully read labels and because I was constantly faced with things I used to enjoy that I felt like I'd never get to experience again. Yet things have slowly gotten a little better. I've found resources and places that sell gluten-free products. In a week, however, I'll be moving somewhere that I won't be able to shop at specialty or health food stores save online.

One thing I noticed connecting with other people trying to manage a gluten-free diet was that a lot of people seemed to eat the same things every day or at least eat from very limited menus. Maybe that works for some people, but I'm fond of variety. I've created this blog to try to share some of my own recipes, reviews, and insights on gluten-free food in the hope that I can bring some hope, humor, and good taste to others in the same position.