Something Nice To Say About Applebee's Restaurant

My wife and I went in to eat lunch a few weeks back, and when she asked, "What do you have that is gluten-free?" the waitress returned with a very detailed menu listing all the common allergies, and what items on the menu were safe.  Wow!

A Tasty Gluten-Free Dessert

My daughter came up with this recently -- Rainbow-Vanilla Cake.

Groovy, Man, Let Me Get Back To My Electric Typewriter To Write a Review

Someone at church mentioned that there was a place that served gluten-free pizza at Glenwood and State in Boise, and since we were in the neighborhood, my wife and I tried to find it.  It turned out to be Pizzalchik.  It's not fancy, but the restaurant theme made me feel like I had walked back into 1969.  Everyone is wearing tie-dyes.  Reefer Madness movie posters.  Customers who look like they walked off the set from a Cheech & Chong movie.  And yet, most of the customers must be the children or even grandchildren of the Summer of Love.

Anyway, in spite of the disconcerting countercultural vibe, they did as good as job as you can with gluten-free pizza crust, and all their pizza toppings are also gluten-free.

Gluten

We made pizza using Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Mix this evening.  I would say that while it wasn't quite up there with Boboli, it was actually pretty respectable.  My wife made the thin crust form, and since I am used to thick crust, that may account for some of the disappointment relative to restaurant pizza.  Still, she hasn't had pizza in quite a while.  While I am not affected as severely as she is, I do see some unpleasant consequences from eating gluten-containing foods.

Also, warning: Kraft has a new cracked pepper mayonnaise out there, and my wife used it for a sandwich yesterday--and suffering pretty noticeable side effects.  It turns out that the ingredients labels (which she should have checked before buying it) shows modified food starch.  Generally, if a food lists "modified food starch" as opposed to the more specific "corn starch" or "potato starch," it is generally made from wheat.  It certainly treated her intestines that way.  She did say it was very tasty,  for those of who can eat gluten.

Gluten Free Bisquick

I'm impressed at the level of interest in gluten free cooking.  A wife of one of my regular readers runs a blog devoted to gluten free cooking: Gluten-Free Nancy.  It looks like a number of interesting recipes over there.  She agrees that Ener-G's breads are "biohazard" but she says they make nice gluten-free breadcrumbs.

One of the items that I bought at Winco on the last shopping trip was Bisquick Gluten Free.  I grew up with Bisquick, the preferred agent in our home for making pancakes, waffles, and biscuits.  (You know, the kind where you roll out the dough, keep folding it over, and then, after 64 or 128 layers, you use a cup to cut out the circles.) 

A few years back, I stopped buying Bisquick for pancakes, and started buying the Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix, as well as their waffle mix.  Partly this was because Bisquick, while it makes fine biscuits, is a bit salty.  The pancakes and waffles just were not that tasty, compared to Krusteaz.  Another reason was that Krusteaz mix had everything except water.  There were too many occasions when I decided to make pancakes, and found that we were out of eggs.

Anyway, my daughter suggested that I get some of the Bisquick Gluten Free, which she says tastes just regular Bisquick.  Today, I used it to make the cakes for strawberry shortcake--and yes, I agree!  The flavor is the same, although the texture is a bit more crumbly.  Gluten really is remarkable stuff.

Looking at the ingredients list, I see rice flour, potato starch, and xanthan gum--about what I would expect.  It's a bit expensive (as are all prepared gluten free alternatives), but I can see buying it again, for making biscuits, and maybe for pancakes--although the pancake mix my daughter put together for me as a Christmas gift is just splendid.

Gluten Free Breads

So far, I have tried three different gluten free breads, from two different makers. 

One is Ener-G Foods of Seattle's White Rice Loaf.  I'm disappointed enough that I will not be finishing the loaf.  The packaging alone should have made suspicious: it was double bagged, rather like something toxic or dangerous.  (Sodium metal, for example, is often sold in a can within a can.)  When I cut open the inner lining, the smell of yeast was strong--and yet, something was not quite right about the smell--something sharp. 

As bread alone, the texture isn't right, and it is heavy, with a flavor that is just strong enough to be unpleasant.  Even smothered in strawberry jam didn't overcome the flavor.  It was barely tolerable when I used it to make French toast.  Even though this was $4.29 at Fred Meyer, I expect to throw away the last half rather than use it as food.  (There might be a case for using it as a structural/insulating replacement for Styrofoam.) 

The ingredients list does not sound bad: filtered water, rice flour, tapioca starch, high oleic sunflower oil, pear juice concentrate, yeast, methylcellulose (okay, that sounds bad), sodium carboxymethylcellulose (and it is all downhill from there).  Perhaps Ener-G's weakness is that it is not only gluten free, but also milk and egg free as well--leaving little room for substitution.

Much nicer is Udi's Gluten Free Foods of Denver, which makes both a white sandwich bread and a whole grain bread.  You are not going to mistake this for Wonder bread--or even a more traditional wheat or white bread, but it is close enough to conventional bread that you might persuade yourself that you are eating something made from wheat.  It helps a bit to toast the bread first, but even untoasted, it is a tolerable sandwich construction medium. 

I notice that the ingredients list is a bit different in what is in there, and what is the biggest components: filtered water, tapioca starch, brown rice flour, potato starch, sunflower oil, egg whites, tapioca maltodextrin, evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup oil, tapioca syrup, yeast, xanthan gum, salt, baking powder, mold inhibiter, enzymes.

This was $4.98 for a one pound loaf.  As I have mentioned before, the ingredients (with the exception of xanthan gum) really aren't that expensive.  These are just not high volume goods, and are expensive (and probably quite profitable) for that reason.  I suppose it is time to see if I can start making this at home.

The Gifts That Mean The Most

The Christmas gifts that mean the most are the ones that show thought and effort--not just spending money.  Since my wife went gluten-free because she's allergic to it, and I've gone along mostly out of curiosity, I have recounted some of my experiences with various gluten-free alternatives.  I can't see any difference in my health from going gluten-free--and even on those occasions when I have had something with gluten in it, no obvious or immediate differences.  I am doing so at least partly because if I can find something gluten-free that I am happy to eat, then it is a simplification for meal making in our house.

My daughter's Christmas gifts this year included several very large glass storage containers with gluten-free pancake mix and gluten-free chocolate cake mix that she mixed up from recipes that she has found--and the results were really quite impressive.  The gluten-free pancake mix was indistinguishable from Krusteaz pancake mix; the gluten-free chocolate cake mix is slightly different in mouth feel from the commercial cake mixes--but not worse: just slightly different.

Obama's Revenge On Idaho!

Since my wife and daughter have gluten-allergies, potatoes are a bigger part of our diet than formerly.  Yet Hans Bader's opinion piece in the December 27, 2010 Washington Examiner points out that the Obama Administration has gone anti-potato:

Chris Voigt lost 21 pounds and improved his health by living on a potato-only diet for 60 days.  Potatoes are more nutritious than other starchy foods like rice and bread, and “are a good source of vitamins.”  They have a lot of vitamin C (much more than a banana or an apple), and potassium levels slightly higher than potassium-rich bananas).

But the Obama Administration, which does not understand nutrition, has banned white potatoes from the WIC program (for school lunches and poor mothers), based on the false belief that potatoes are unhealthy.

Bader points out that the U.N. declared 2008 the "Year of the Potato" because of its nutritional value to the poor, and that the Obama Administration remains committed to the absurd corn ethanol subsidy program.

Beyond Gluten

For the first few days, life without bread and other wheat products isn't so difficult.  Then you start to miss bread, pancakes, cake, etc.  Fortunately, there are gluten-free flours out there.

I bought Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour substitute, and followed their instructions on using it as a substitute in making bread.  When I pulled the loaf out of the bread machine this morning, my first thought was: "There's a bread version of the chestbuster in Alien?"


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It really did look like something ripped its way right out. It doesn't have to look good; I often use bread machine bread to make French toast, for which it is quite yummy. Perhaps Bob's Red Mill flour substitute would work okay for cookies or something. For bread, it was really not particularly pleasant. It just did not taste right. Not disgusting, but not particularly pleasant, either, and a bit gummy.

The other experiment worked out a bit better. Hodgson Mill Gluten Free Pancake & Waffle Mix is not a complete mix. You add oil, egg, milk, and sugar to it, but it produced completely credible looking pancakes that actually tasted pretty good.


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They have a bit more of a nutty flavor than traditional white flour based pancake mixes, but still quite pleasant, with a nice texture. I tend not to glop on the syrup, so I notice the flavor. My daughter, on the other hand, describes pancakes as "a vehicle for syrup."

Both of these products are pretty expensive if you are used to buying conventional flour. The materials aren't all that unusual: it isn't like they make them from unicorn hooves or Bigfoot fur. But as with most things, because the market for gluten free flour is small, there are not the economies of scale that come from conventional flour production.

Bob's Red Mill is, I think, on the my permanent "don't buy" list. The Hodgson Mill product, while expensive, makes a very nice pancake alternative, and I will buy it occasionally for that reason.

My wife also made cornbread this evening that was gluten free, substituting rice flour for wheat flour. I could barely tell any difference, and it was only different--not inferior.

Birthday

My wife, daughter, and granddaughter went out to lunch at Madhuban, an Indian restaurant in Boise.  They are rather proud of being named best Indian restaurant in the Boise area the last three years.  Of course, many (all?) of the other Indian restaurants in the area have gone out of business as the economy of Boise has curled up in the fetal position and began whimpering.

Still, just because they are almost alone now is not a criticism.  Some of their competitors, such as India Palace, were both unimpressive and more expensive.  I can't honestly claim that I have had better Indian food elsewhere than Madhuban.  The lunch buffet is $7.99 a person, with an impressive collection of dishes available.  I can't remember all of them right now (at least, I can't remember the names, although I can remember the flavors).

The chicken vindaloo, yes, that I remember, and it was splendid, as was the lamb curry.  The goat marsala was the only disappointment, largely because the big chunks that I assumed were meat were actually bone.  It's good thing I didn't bite down on one of these. 

They have a variety of nan breads, but at the moment I am experimenting with a gluten-free diet.  My daughter and wife have both discovered that they have a gluten allergy.  Both have experienced dramatic health improvements and weight reductions since going gluten-free, so I am joining the experiment for a few weeks.  Since allergies are often genetic, and my wife often asserts that my genes stomped all over her genes when it came to our daughter, it's worth an experiment.