I have been gluten free for 1 year now.  WOW.  It was scary to take the leap and pursue this avenue in my life, but it was well worth it.  I lost over 20 pounds last year by changing my diet through eliminating gluten, and have been able to keep it off.  I can only hope this next year brings more weight loss!  When I stopped eating gluten I immediately felt better.  In days I no longer had a sluggish feeling I had lived with for years.  In weeks I felt ‘alive’.  It was clear to me that gluten was an issue for my body to process.  In this past year I have had many box products.  I can tell you my favorites we buy regularly.  I can tell you which pancake mixes are really bad.  I have eaten a variety of brands and am becoming more brand loyal.  In the beginning I made a lot of stuff from scratch, but had mixed results.  Like most people today I want something easy.  Eating a special diet is hard enough, so box products are great when they are good.

I found an amazing one today.  Gluten Free Pantry is a staple in our house right now.  They are also nut free in most cases.  Yep, just checked their website and ALL are US products are nut free.  Can you say “love”?    I picked up their “Coffee Cake” on clearance from a local health store.  Let me tell you right now…you would never know this is gluten free.  It was FLUFFY.  A lot of my favorite box products still have a dense quality you just put up with.  Gluten free does not equal fluffy.  Ok, I have some gluten free products with nut flours that are fluffy, so let me restate this.  Gluten free AND nut free is rarely FLUFFY.

The coffee cake was perfect.  I plan on buying a case for my next bulk gluten free order!!!  The taste was light.  The texture just like wheat flour products.  If someone had served it I would have sworn it wasn’t gluten free.  After a year you would think I would have found this but today was a first for our family.  It ROCKED.

So I went to link to this page and guess what?  IT IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

After my shock I went searching.  Nope, it’s truly ‘out of stock’ everywhere.  Explains why it was on clearance!  I emailed the company begging them to bring it back.  When I eat another piece tomorrow it will be a slow, enjoyable moment.   I can only hope that their change of logo explains the demise of my newest, favorite dessert. 

I admit, once I find a mix I like I stick with it.  When tree nuts were thrown into our allergy no-no list I figured we would be okay.  I was wrong.  Our favorite gluten free items from Bob’s Mill are all processed on equipment sharing tree nuts.  Okay you think, but it’s just a trace right?  Well it may be just a trace.  But just a trace leads to black eyes, diarrhea and crankiness like you won’t believe!  And our Dr. keeps telling us the more exposure to tree nut ‘traces’ the more likely for a severe anaphylactic reaction in Bugaboo.  I don’t want to experience my son gasping for his breath and possible dying when I can avoid these ‘traces’.

On our last visit to Navan Foods I bought some new mixes.  One was of great interest to me since I had heard a lot about this new ‘patent pending’ flour mix.  Jules Gluten Free is supposed to be this wonderful new baking opportunity.  I did not rush out to try this stuff.  I researched.  I found she is using a modified tapioca starch in the mix.  MODIFIED is my concern.  Expandex is the labeled stuff and I am seeing it more and more.  It is not natural.  It is modified.  So I have some hesitancy.  We really try to eat healthy.  Meats, veggies, fruits and not a lot of sweets.  Since I have to make the sweets it is not often, lol.  I really hate doing all the dishes.   So until now I have avoided the Jules bandwagon.  They offered classes using her flour mix to get people to try the flour.  I declined.  I have seen the expensive, large bag of flour on the shelf before and resisted.  This visit to the store Daddy convinced me to try one of the cookie mixes.  Ok, I am always looking for new cookies.  Especially since our favorite graham cracker has tree nuts in it, ugh.  I made a ‘graham cracker’ version on the mix last night.  The first pan went in the trash.  Complete crumbs.  The second trays of cookies are intact.  Very dry.  Even with cream cheese frosting on top I licked the frosting off and dumped the cookies.  A $7 waste.

Allergy people have this cost.  I will not be rushing out to get this amazing, new flour mix to try more.  I will not be buying the other mixes the store offered.  Nope.  I had a feeling I would not like it.  I did not.  There are too many other brands out there that deliver better cookies.  We don’t get cookies every day.  So when we do, they have to be amazing.  Sorry, Jules just did not cut it in our house.

I have added some gluten free/nut free links on the side bar.  Check them out.  I will be adding more as we find other brands we like.  Our favorites are listed here.  Have one you like?  Leave a comment!

So Daddy recently had to go to Charlottesville and went to the Whole Foods store there to pick up a few allergy free items for us.  (How come a town of 41K gets Whole Foods but Hampton Roads does not?)  He brought home a ’365′ brand in several options: Pancake Mix, Muffin Mix, Pizza Crust.  Upon further review I realized it is the store brand.  Hmmmm.

We baked the muffins Sunday morning and added Enjoy Life Foods chocolate chips to them.  They were yummy.  Fluffy muffins!  Gluten free/nut free muffins!  We were in heaven.

Sunday night we made the pizza.  It was good but different.  It was FLUFFY.  Now, gluten free products don’t do fluffy most of the time so this was odd to us.  It was a fine pizza.  We had sauce, cheese and pepperoni on it.  Everyone liked it.  But we also had the idea that with all the fluffiness perhaps it could be made into a *gasp* biscuit????  But we have no more of that box to try.  So as soon as we can we will try to make biscuits out of the Pizza Crust.

We have more of their products to try but so far we are 2 for 2 and happy with the taste/texture.  We have not had pizza in a long time.  We had not had muffins in a long time.  I like finding new box mixes that my son and I can both enjoy.