Martha White Gluten-Free Mixes:

 

I don't know how everyone else is, but when it comes to trying new gluten-free products,

I am the whimp of WHIMPS!!!

I am generally pretty adventurous when it comes to food...I just enjoy food and will at least try most everything once.

So, it's weird that gluten-free products scare me away! 

I think it's because when I first went gluten-free, my family tried a lot of different types of flours, and mixes, etc., and to be perfectly honest - they were GROSS!!!!

I literally got to the point that I didn't care whether I had another cookie, piece of bread, or cracker again in my life. If they were going to taste like that, I could DEFINITELY live without.

And so we did.

For a long time.

It just wasn't worth it.

However, that was over 10 years ago now. 

And a lot has changed in the gluten-free world during that time! 

Thank goodness!!!

I love seeing all these different, new, awesome things on so many grocery store shelves now, and knowing that there are so many more options out there!

But I'm still scared!!!!!!

Before we got married, we were FaceTiming one night (well, I mean, not just one night, we did it every night, but anyways!), and Bradley was eating these delicious-looking, little blueberry muffins that he had just made. And he was like "oh yeah, these are so good. And they're from a gluten-free mix you know."

Ummmm, NO! I did not know! 

He showed me the mix that he used, and I had never heard of it before.

Turns out they are a relatively popular brand that has been around for a long, long time, and now have gluten-free options as well!!!

I am a sucker for muffins, and when he said they were good, I felt brave all over, and couldn't wait to try them!!

So, that is literally the very first thing we made in our house when we got back from our honeymoon. 

We made the Blueberry mix and the Chocolate mix.

Both are incredible!!

And just FYI: spread a little peanut butter on top the chocolate ones while they are hot...

OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!

So in case you haven't heard about this brand before, 

I wanted to tell you that it's out there, 

it's amazing, 

and I hope you try it out!!

Where I am living now, I have seen them at Walmart and Bi-Lo grocery stores.

They are on Amazon as well.

And be sure to check out the Martha White website, as well!

You can purchase online there, and also read their cool story!

Live G-Free Products:

Aldi Grocery Store

We are pretty big fans of the Aldi grocery store!
They have great prices on great food, including amazing produce.
The stores are located all over the country, and more and more are opening up!

They have recently released a line of gluten-free products, and I just want to tell everyone how amazing they are!
I have not had a chance to try everything they offer, but I also have yet to try something that I didn't like. It's very high quality, and very reasonably priced!

Probably their top product for us, is their sandwich bread.
It's amazing! Super soft and just really, really good!
The tortilla wraps are also great, and I have a few recipes that include those wraps, coming out very soon!
Their pasta, crackers, granola cereal, granola bars, and cake mixes are all things that we have tried and loved!
They have some frozen chicken nuggets that we are anxious to try, and we also just got some other flavors of crackers that we are excited to test taste!!

I am not being reimbursed for this post in any way. I just love their products, and wanted to share them with you!
If you try anything out, please let me know what you think!

Click HERE to find the store nearest you!

Products I love: 3 different Granola Bars:

Today, I'm sorry to say that I do not have a recipe to share with you.

However, I'm very excited to share several product recommendations with you!

I am not receiving anything or getting paid to write this post. 

These are not my pictures, but all the opinions are my own. 

I love granola bars. 

For breakfast, a snack, I could eat them any time of day. Surprisingly, there are precious few gluten-free options when it comes to granola bars. And even fewer options if you are not interested in eating the same kind of granola bar for the rest of your life.

We have been getting the Nature Valley Trail Mix bars for years, and whereas they are good, I personally am getting sick and tired of them, and would be perfectly content not to see another one for the rest of my life!!

Yes, I do make my own and all that sometimes. But I have been traveling a lot recently, and have encountered different situations where I needed those bars to be completely sealed 

(example: in the airport, camping/vacationing where it's very damp and humid, etc.)

Being in one of those situations recently, I randomly started reading every.single.lable of every.single.box of granola bars in the grocery store. I have done this time, after time, only to find 2, maybe 3 bars that were gluten-free.  

However, this time I was SO excited to come across three very different bars, that were all gluten-free!! So of course I got all of them to try, and I ended up loving each and every one of them!

They were each very different and unique, yet delicious!

Both of the Nature Valley Bars are completely gluten-free. 

The milk&cereal bar, however, does have malt extract, which is derived from barley. This does not bother me, but for someone with extreme gluten sensitivity, or actual Celiac Disease, this may be a problem, so you have to use your own judgement.

I hope you will check your grocery and give some of these a try!!!

If you are a fellow granola bar lover, I don't think you'll be disappointed!

~Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate~

~Mixed Berry with Greek Yogurt~

~Honey Nut Cheerios Milk&Cereal Bars~

Ledo's Pizza:

Valentine's Day has always been my dad's holiday...he gets everyone a card and either a gift for each of us, or something big for everyone. For as long as I can remember, he has done this!

This year, he decided to skip the treats and gifts, and order pizza!!

Now, that might sound pretty lame to most people, but I only ever remember our family ordering pizza one time in my life! It's expensive for a family our size, and just something we never did. After we went gluten-free, it was pretty impossible. We make homemade pizza about once a week, but ordering pizza is just a BIG deal for us!!!! (It's okay, you can laugh!)!!

We have a local pizza shop that has gluten-free pizza, so that's were we ordered from. I was so excited to try it! I was afraid to get my hopes up, though, in case it turned out to be disgusting!

But I had nothing to worry about!!!

It was SOOO good!!! All of my gluten-free family members LOVED it!

Unlike many other places that serve gluten-free pizza, you can choose whatever toppings you want!

We went with cheese and pepperoni, and ham and pineapple this time, but I can't wait to try a Supreme!

It's a thin crust pizza, which is my favorite! They say it's a personal size. There are 4 of us who eat gluten-free, so we ordered 3 pizzas. We all ate, and had enough leftover for 2 more people to eat the rest the next day, so I think you would have to be REALLY hungry to eat the whole thing by yourself!

Since we were pretty impressed by it, I wanted to share all the info with you!

Turns out it's a chain restaurant, and they have quite a few locations here in the East!

Ledo's

They have many other menu items apart from pizza (of course many of them are not gluten-free).

You can check out the menu here:

About their Gluten-Free Pizza

http://ledopizza.com/menu/gluten-free-pizzas/

Locations:

http://ledopizza.com/locations/

I think we all would agree that this was just about the BEST Valentine's Day EVER!!!!

NutriBullet:

You may have seen these advertised on TV, in magazines or seen them in stores.
You can click HERE to go directly to the NutriBullet web page and learn all about them.

Before I get into this too far, I just want to say that I'm not trying to sell them and I'm not getting any compensation for writing this post about them either!

I had not heard of them before my Aunt bought one for us a few months ago. It's like a juicer and a blender combined. You can use it for lots of things, but right now, we are using ours mainly for smoothies. Smoothies are a big thing right now, and they are a great, easy way to get in a lot of fruits and veggies that you might not other wise eat!
With the NutriBullet, you can totally customize your smoothie to your preference. You can use just about any fruit and any vegetable, seeds, nuts, protein powders, etc., and the ratio is again, up to you.

I prefer a pretty simple smoothie - 50% vegetable/50% fruit. I use spinach, strawberries, bananas and a small amount of water. I also prefer that my strawberries are frozen and that my bananas are not! The frozen fruit makes it cold and frothy without making it watery. The fresh bananas makes it creamy. According to the book, they say to add water to the max line, but that makes it pretty runny and I like it to be more milkshake consistency, so I usually only add about an inch of water. Again, my preference. Everyone in my family makes theirs a little different!

(normally, I like have more spinach and less fruit, but we were running out of spinach!)

My aunt adds in Greek yogurt, milk, chai seeds and fruit juices.
The list is really endless! You just put in everything you like, and blend it all together to a smooth, creamy texture! There is books with recipes and you can go to the website for recipes as well. You can also just use the recipes for ideas as to what kind of fruits and vegetable to do together, and adjust the amounts to your preference.

So, if you have one, I hope you use it!! And if you don't have one, I hope you check out the link at the top and start making some amazing, healthy smoothies!!!!

Leave me a comment with your favorite smoothie combo!

Wegmans:

We were in the Baltimore/DC area for my sister's graduation last weekend, and we stayed with my dad's cousin. She went ALL out in providing us with AMAZING gluten-free food the whole time! It was all so delicious! Thank you so much, Viv! I don't know how we could ever thank you enough!

Anyway, she sent us home with a bag of macaroni noodles that she didn't use over the weekend.

We had never had the brand, so I was excited to try them out!

And they were far from disappointing!!!

Actually, they were FABULOUS!!!!!

It was Wegmans Brand. I had heard of the grocery store, but had never been in one.

You can check out their website by clicking here and hopefully find a store in your area.

They have a lot of gluten-free foods. Almost like a Martins or Kroger, but they have different things and brands as well.

I'm sure they probably have other brands, but the Wegmans brand is what we tried.

It's a 100% corn pasta.

The pasta that our Walmart carries, and what we normally use, is a corn and rice pasta. I do like that pasta, but I feel like the Wegmans isn't as thick - more like a normal wheat pasta. In fact, it tasted a lot like wheat pasta. It was even good cold, which if you have tried very many gluten-free pastas, you know that that is almost never the case!

The Wegmans Pasta cooks extremely fast, unlike other varieties that take quite some time.

Also, the water you cook it in, does not become thick and foggy like the rice pasta does.

I have found a Wegmans close to me, and I hope to be able to go there soon and definitely get some more pasta, but also try out some of their other food items as well!

And I hope you do to!!!

Let me know if you try out anything from there and how you like it!!

Ice Cream Cones:

There are actually only a few things that I miss eating since going gluten-free.

I know how sick it makes me if it's not gluten-free and so it's not worth it to me to "just indulge this once."

I'll just live without. But still, every now and then, I do get hungry for things like a really good bowl of macaroni and cheese, or a sub, or an ice cream cone! Some people might not understand this, but if you haven't had an ice cream cone in 8 years, you would understand! So you can imagine how excited we were to run across a box of gluten-free ice cream cones! And they were super good!

The brand is "Goldbaums" and you can click here to look up their website.

Everything they have is gluten-free. They have lots of stuff and several different kinds of ice cream cones. The picture here, is the ones we tried. They are very small, like we had to use a little spoon to scoop the ice cream into the cone, but it was 100% totally worth it (eat 2 or 3 if that bothers you). It was so fun sitting there eating an ice cream cone! Call me odd, I don't care at all! I was in heaven! And if you are craving an ice cream cone too, then I strongly suggest you give these a try! You won't be disappointed!

Where to buy:

-We got them at Earth Fare (click here for my post on that store)-

-The Goldbaum Website-

Look at the store locator and find out where you the nearest place is that you can purchase their products.

-Amazon.com-

.........

I'm sure you can find them in more places as well, but I don't know where else for sure.

Eat 'n' Park:

We went Christmas shopping last weekend, and decided to eat lunch at Eat 'n' Park Restaurant. We went in intending to get their chips and cheese, but after glancing over the menu, we realized they had a Gluten-Free menu!!!!! I love it when places have that, except sometimes it can be a very small list of food choices and contain mostly salads. But not this one! It had lots of stuff on it and the thing we were most excited about was their Burgers.....on a gluten-free bun!!!!!!!! We decided to give them a try and OH. MY. GOODNESS!!!! We still can't stop talking about them!! They were light and airy and soft, just like a regular bun. They are, by far, the BEST gluten-free thing we have ever tasted! We're already trying to find a reason to go back! I personally think they ARE a reason!!

Visit their website by clicking on this link:

http://www.eatnpark.com/

Enter your zip code to find a Restaurant near you,

browse the website and sign up to receive coupons!!!

As a side note:

their fries and Potato chips are not marked as gluten-free, because they are fried in the same oil as other things. That type of thing doesn't bother us, but you will have to make that decision based on what you can and can't handle. And always feel free to ask them questions about anything!!

I hope, if you can find one in your area, that you will go and check them out!

Let me know what you think!!!!

NOTE:
I just found out that you can also purchase the buns from there too! They are a little pricey, but so worth it!

Betty Crocker GF Mixes:

Some of you may have tried the Betty Crocker GF Mixes before,

but if you haven't I thought I would share my take on them!!   

#1. I LOVE them!
#2. They are a little (okay, a lot) expensive :(

We try to keep at least one on hand, because it's nice to have.

We don't use them all the time, but they are nice.

We aren't fond of the cookie or the brownie mix. They might be "ok" if you are used to using boxed mixes for that kind of stuff, but we have NEVER done that, so we weren't at all impressed with them. We decided the recipes we have for those things were much better. The cakes, however, are really good.

You can purchase these at Walmart, Martins and other grocery stores. Like I said before, they are expensivee, but if you've been eating gluten-free for any amount of time, then you should know by now that gluten-free products ARE expensive. That's just how it is!!

A Tip:

Whenever I make a cake mix, I always add one package of Dream Whip to the mix.

 I did this with wheat-based cake mixes and have still done it with gluten-free cake mixes. It keeps things moist and really flavorful. It doesn't change the flavor of the cake in any way...just makes it better!

I get this at Walmart. It's in the same section as the gelatin.

I'm sure you can find it at other grocery stores as well.

So I hope you give the mixes a try. If for no other reason, but to support companies who are trying to make life a little easier for us!!

Yellow Rice:

---This is a very great and fast rice mix that we have really enjoyed and I wanted to share with you. It's found in the rice section of your grocery store (I know Walmart has it, I assume other grocery stores would too, but I can't say for sure). All you have to do is boil water, add oil and the rice and cook for 25 minutes. It has a great flavor! I hope you will give it a try.

Pasta:

Since I just posted the recipe for Chicken Noodle Casserole a few days ago, I thought I would do  a post on the pasta that me and my family LOVE!!! We have tried a few different gluten-free pastas, and if you have one you love, then by all means use it! But we weren't totally satisfied with any we had tried. Until, my Aunt introduced us to this pasta! It's a corn and rice blend pasta and tastes as close to wheat-based pasta as anything I've tried. You don't have to cook it forever, or rinse it off for a full 10 minutes after it's cooked, only to have it turn to mush as soon as you do anything with it. I know that it's sold at Walmart, Martin's, Bi-Lo and I'm sure other grocery stores as well. If you're grocery store does not sell it, consider taking them a photo and information about it, and asking them to stock it. Some places won't, but some will, so I think it's worth a try!

This brand comes in three varieties: Fusilli (a spiral), Penne (a small tube), and spaghetti.

I've tried all three and equal like them all!

<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>

As for Lasagna noodles, this is the only one I've tried because I was very happy with it the first time I tried it and therefore I haven't risked the money in trying something else!! We purchase it at a local health food store, so I'm sure it's sold at other stores as well, I just don't know which ones. The Tinkyada company also has many other varieties of pasta that are very good as well. I have tried a few of them, and really liked them, but they are pretty expensive.  



Check out their website here to view all of their products.

You can also purchase Tinkyada Pasta Joy Products at Amazon.com