Adventures in Gluten Free

Although I'm sure my Italian family, both living and dead, would likely have a panic attack if they are or were able to read this, I am nevertheless going to write about my experience with Gluten Free Pasta. GASP!!!

I'm not a huge fan of food trends, that is, suddenly becoming obsessed with some type of food for no apparent reason, however as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have been curious about the anti-gluten craze. Generally speaking, most gluten free is out of my budget and since I haven't been tested and told I'm allergic to gluten, I don't feel the need to rush out and buy tons of it. That said, I've read a bit about gluten and it really is in almost everything we eat. I'm fairly distrusting of the processed foods we eat on a regular basis, so I'm curious about these products, plus I grew up having all kinds of crazy digestive problems, so I find alternative concepts interesting.

I purchased gluten free pasta (gasp!) some time ago and have yet to have the motivation to try it, until the other day. This brand was called Tinkyada and is made of brown rice. Yea, I was skeptical too. How could this possibly live up to REAL pasta? The package claims it will be al-dente and not mushy, which I'm guessing is a problem with some other gluten frees.
As I watched it cook up in the boiling water I was a bit concerned about the residue in the water, which had a different look from pasta water, obviously. It did deliver on texture though. I tasted one to make sure it was ready and sure enough it had the right texture, much to my surprise. Eaten just on it's own without any sauce it tasted a lot like brown rice, but I cooked up a nice mixture of peas and onions to go with my sauce and poured it over the top.





It was good! It really was. I don't think I would have known the difference if someone just handed it to me. I'm genuinely astounded and I'd recommend this brand to anyone who finds themselves in need of gluten free.

As far as nutrition though, it really doesn't differ much from regular pasta. In fact, it has slightly higher sodium, slightly less vitamins and about the same of everything else. So, maybe it won't win any awards as far as ultra healthy, but it is made of brown rice, which can be good in moderation ( or possibly not, as brown rice contains some substantial amount of arsenic apparently. But can't everything possibly kill you?). Either way, it's a tasty pasta alternate, although there doesn't seem to be a tremendous benefit to eating it over pasta unless you have to. Thumbs up gluten free.
Stay tuned for my investigation into the pros and cons of Soy products.

Awesome Birthday Soup

One of my room mate's birthday is today and so I offered to cook something ( for yesterday cause I had work today). I was planning on going for cupcakes or something dessert related but he requested creamy potato and broccoli soup. He's somewhat lactose intolerant so he asked if it could be made with as little dairy as possible. I'm always up for a challenge so I browsed through a few different types of recipes to get some ideas. I looked at potato leek soup, Panera cream cheese potato soup, non-dairy mashed potatoes and a few others. At the conclusion of my research I had a pretty good idea of how to create a nice non-dairy soup. I think that it came out pretty kickin' considering that I've never made potato soup before. I might have added a little less broccoli and cooked the potatoes for a little shorter so they held together better, but I think overall it achieved success. A little cheese thrown on top wouldn't hurt either.

So here's my recipe for Vegan Potato Broccoli soup: (I didn't measure anything so it's a little vague)
Ingredients-
2 small or 1 large head of broccoli
3 russet potatoes
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
Olive oil
Plain Soy Milk
Vegetable stock ( or chicken stock if you're not cooking for vegetarians)
Toffuti 'cream cheese'
1 tsp Flour
Sprig of Fresh Rosemary
Salt, pepper, Onion powder to taste

Instructions:
Peel potatoes and cut into small chunks. Add potatoes and vegetable stock to a pot. Potatoes should be covered so add water if there's not enough stock (ideally all stock would be better but I didn't have enough). Boil potatoes until just tender.

Meanwhile, dice the onion and the garlic and saute in a pan with oil until nicely browned. Chop broccoli florets into halves. Add the onions and garlic to a large soup pot with the broccoli. Add a little oil to the pan and cook the broccoli. After 2 minutes add a few teaspoons of water to the pot to help steam the broccoli.
When the potatoes are tender add half the stock water to the large pot and continue to cook the broccoli. Add all the potatoes. Mash a few of the pieces to release starch and to thicken the soup. Add soymilk until creamy. Make sure you use plain soymilk, not vanilla or the taste will be sweet. The soup will still be pretty thin at this point. Add three healthy tablespoons of tofutti. Add Rosemary for taste. Add salt and pepper for taste. Onion powder can be added as well.

If soup needs thickening ( which I think it does) mix flour in a small bowl with a small amount of soy milk. Stir until mixed thoroughly and add to the soup. This will help thicken it up nicely.

Taste the soup to see if it needs anything. I needed to add a bit more salt and pepper. The soup has a nice creamy quality without having any dairy in it! Of course you can add a nice sprinkle of cheese on top if you want too. Enjoy with a bagel flat!

And what else goes well with a delicious soup? Pie of course! I had a can of pumpkin so I couldn't resist making a nice pumpkin pie. It's insanely simple, except for needing to buy the spices. It's basically a can of pumpkin + sweetened condensed milk +Eggs+ ginger, nutmeg and Cinnamon and a pie crust. Bam! Pumpkin Pie!

Updates from the new place and fun foods

Since I've moved into the new house this past weekend I have not had internet. Only a week so I have just been checking in on essentials for work. At the moment I'm seated comfortably in Starbucks with my Chai Latte. Yay!

So I wanted to update on the cooking adventures I've had. So far not many but I saw this awesome swiss chard in the store the other day and I had to buy it because it was called "bright lights" chard and the stems were pink and yellow. How can I say no to that? It was also a huge bunch of it so I figured it would go a long way. Sadly my kitchen is pretty dark so my pictures don't really do it justice, but it is pretty! You can see from the picture up top that I borrowed from the interwebs what it should look like.
I decided to split my chard into two batches and cook it all so it didn't go bad on me. One batch was just cooked up with some garlic and the other was cooked up with some garlic and onions and then turned into soup. I added chicken broth and water and a little bit of onion powder and then some tofu and voila! Soup! It was actually really tasty, I must say. Yes, the chard lost its pretty color but it tasted delicious.

Yuppie Drinks

When I walk into a store like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Wegmans, or any other health food or high end type grocery, I am instantly attracted to the wall of shiny and colorful bottles of juices, waters and beverages that can't be qualified by any known category. These drinks are what I fondly refer to as yuppie drinks. I can't help it, but I'm seduced by the array of packaging and bright colors every time, even though, in my experience, these drinks rarely live up to their lofty descriptions. Occasionally I succumb to reason and pass by these cases, but yesterday while in the city with R we stopped in at Whole Foods and I decided it was time to try something new. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me at the time to give you the full effect of the size and beauty of this drink case. The store itself, being in the city, is fairly compact, but luckily they felt the need to keep the drink case at proper size.

I felt in the mood for something with carrot in it. I don't drink carrot juice very often but every once in a while it seems appealing, and it did yesterday. The problem with yuppie drinks is that they tend to be obscenely priced, as are most things in Whole Foods. They had the standard array of juices including the Naked juices which is probably as close to drinking a whole fruit as you can come. I didn't feel like paying $3.50 for a tiny bottle so I opted for something else, which I suspected from its cheaper price would be less carroty than a few of the others, but seemed intriguing. I also love things that are orange, particularly foods, and this met the bill %100.

The drink I chose was by a company called Ralph and Charlie's and was titled Carrot Everyday Beverage. I read the ingredient list which consisted of Carrot pomace (30%), concentrated lemon juice, water and sugar. So I assumed it would be a bit lemony with a carrot flavor. I didn't really know what carrot pomace was but I imagined it was some sort of carrot pulp. As it turns out, pomace is the solid remains of fruit after its been pressed for juice. So I'm drinking the remnants of something after it was made into juice, which let me tell you, doesn't leave much room for carrot taste.

The experience of drinking this "everyday beverage" was quite unique. I wouldn't say I don't like it, but I'd be quite fine if I never tasted it again. It's sitting here next to me right now and still causing me much confusion. It tastes like several things simultaneously, none of which are carrot. First off it has body, you can see it clinging to the side of the bottle, which is what I expect out of a veggie juice. Second, when you open it up it smell a bit like tomato juice, or V8. Third, it tastes somewhat like lemonade since its sweet and lemony, but at the same time it also tastes like drinking a yam. I'm not sure if that's reinforced by its orange color, but I definitely get the feeling of drinking a lemon flavored yam. In no way do I feel I am drinking a carrot.

Reading the ingredients and nutrition facts makes me realize that this shouldn't be surprising at all since its basically composed of carrot waste ( grape pomace is used in winemaking, but carrot pomace seems to be a topic for discussion among the food industry). So despite the fact that this drink says right on the label that its "Fresh and Healthy," there is really no nutritious value at all. The nutrition per serving (1/2 a cup) of which there are 4 servings per bottle is as follows:
Calories: 60
Total Fat:0g
Total Carbs: 13g
Dietary Fiber: 0g
Sugar: 13g
Not a significant source of cholesterol, sodium, protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium and iron.

So basically its sugar and carbs and no nutritional value whatsoever. That's what you get for drinking pomace. Don't think this will deter me from trying more yuppie drinks though. R tried some sort of cold tea which turned out not to be overly remarkable as it basically tasted like tea. We also found a remarkable array of cheeses in several stores including a log of goat cheese the size of my arm, but I'll save that for another entry since I could go on and on about dairy products, particularly cheese.

"Natural" Pepsi trial, "Healthy" chips, cops and donuts and one sinful cupcake

Being in the land of post-graduation, non- self supporting joblessness, I've been looking for lots of ways to get some spare cash. One way I've found is through research groups who pay you for your opinion. I've actually been part of this group, Fieldwork East, for a long time but I either wasn't available for the dates they had or didn't qualify for some reason. This week I did manage to qualify for a survey about soft drinks. Perfect. Food+ Money= happy.

I've never done one of these things before so I wasn't sure entirely what to expect except $60 at the end of an hour and a half. About 40 people, most of them looking fairly young, were lined up at tables in a mirrored room and given 5 soda samples to try over the course of the hour. The samples all have numbers and not everyone tries the samples at the same time. This particular study was to research Pepsi Natural, a cola drink made from natural ingredients. We were asked to rate the samples on sweetness, carbonation, how natural we thought it tasted, if it met our expectations of a natural beverage, if it was fun to drink ( I still don't really understand that question), how refreshing it was, if it tasted like regular or diet etc. It was an interesting exercise because they definitely all tasted different, but each time I moved on to a new sample it was hard to say exactly how it differed from the last one. They all started to taste the same really. I'm assuming that at least one of the samples was regular or diet Pepsi but I'm not sure. At first I would have one idea of how "natural" it tasted but then after drinking more I wasn't sure any more. The only one which was very different was the last sample I tried, which was obscenely carbonated and much darker in color than all the others. Depending on how we answered we would either be invited to stay for Part two, or sent home with our money. Sadly, I was sent home with my money, but I'm not complaining.

After filling my stomach with carbonation and completing some work I had to do, I found myself some lunch nearby at a sushi place/ deli. It was a pretty neat little place with a lot of natural foods. I wanted a little something to go with my tuna and avocado roll and amongst the interesting selection of chips and Pirate's Booty, I found Popchips. These chips claim to be healthier than normal chips, and they are neither baked nor fried. Some combination of heat and pressure allows these potatoes to 'pop'. I tried the barbeque variety and I was very pleased. They have a slightly similar texture to a rice cake, but much more pleasant. I'd say they are a pretty good compromise for chips. They certainly have more personality than a rice cake or even a baked chip and 1 oz has 4 grams of fat. Maybe I have to taste the plain ones to see if they really are a winner but for now they have my vote. Check them out here : http://www.popchips.com/

All my food healthiness abruptly came to a halt later in the night when I indulged in a ridiculously chocolate cupcakes at Starbucks in Barnes and Nobles. Ok, maybe the healthiness cut out somewhere around the eggnog latte I had after the sushi, but shhh. The cupcake was actually way too rich to finish. This sort of cupcake involves team work. The chocolate blackout cupcake lived up to its name, and indeed it would likely cause a diabetic to blackout. Rich chocolate cupcake plus REALLY rich frosting = a win. I don't think this is made by Starbucks because there was some other company listed in the display case, but I forget what the name was so I'll have to go back and find out! They also had desserts by the Cheesecake Factory, but this wasn't one of them. Either way, I was content to sit with my crazy cupcake and a newly discovered fantastic book, The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm. If there ever was a book written for me, this is it.

One final thought for the day, I realized while driving down the hellish route 4.There was a car behind me which was either a cop or a fireman, I think fire. He was drinking coffee and eating a donut so I thought, perhaps, I'm looking at the wrong career path. I've neglected the one which combines the two topics of this blog, food and driving. Maybe I need to look into public service since cops and donuts go together like, well, like cops and donuts. Seriously, what is it about cops and donuts?

Dunkin Donuts Pancake Bites

I know I've been talking about Dunkin Donuts a lot recently, but they seem to be inescapable in my life these days. I hear ads for them constantly on the radio and they are constantly trying to outdo themselves ( and Starbucks). I even got a free coffee from them the other day as my work took me to a gas station/ Dunkin.

Anyway, the latest product from DD is the Pancake Sausage Bites. Essentially its breakfast condensed into a bite, also known as a maple flavored pancake wrapped around a little bite of sausage. Now, in theory, I like this idea, because I like the sweet and savory, and as breakfast foods go, pancakes and sausage are pretty awesome; however, in practicality I am terrified of what sort of meat might be in said sausage ( please refer to my previously mentioned fear of strange meat products, particularly in ground up form). I just wanted to bring some attention to these because they seem like an interesting food invention, but I decided to do a little research before writing the blog post and I found that they already have a pretty good bit of press.

Aol and SlashFoods reviewed them with a fairly positive review, although their picture looked a lot less appetizing than the official DD press picture seen above. This reviewer thought it might be a good idea to chuck the maple flavor and add dipping syrup. Despite the positive review, the write up did mention that just three of these little bites are 300 calories and that the ingredient list is quite lengthy for such a small bite.

I looked at the ingredients and it seems like a lot of preservatives, and a surprising amount of different types of flours and starches. Look for yourself if you like.

Another article I found from the Chicago Tribune also approved of the bites and said everyone needed to stop freaking out about crazy sounding fast foods like the sausage bites of the infamous double down. The Tribune cited another article titled "Dunkin' Donuts Pancake Bites Scare Everyone-- Even Its Employees!" as being a ridiculous overreaction to this food. The author, Kim Conte, had this to say about her experience:

Was it just me being hyper self-conscious or did the employee at Dunkin' Donuts actually snicker when I ordered the new Sausage Pancake Bites?

Nope, nope, I definitely wasn't imagining it because of what happened next: She turned to another employee and said something I couldn't understand; but I do know it ended in "Sausage Pancake Bites," an eye-roll, and then peels of laughter. Yup, they were definitely laughing at me. Oh, and when they called out my order, the male customer next to me muttered, "Ew, gross" and shot me a look of utter disgust.

Having not tried this invention myself, I can't really weigh in yet, but there seem to be a fair batch of mixed reviews. At 300 calories though, I don't know that its really worth it. I'll just have a donut. Yum.

Halloween Peeps.... chocolate covered

I saw the chocolate covered pumpkin peeps in the store weeks ago and couldn't decide my feelings on them. Fortunately my mom bought one each for my dad and I so I got to try one. When I opened the package I was surprised that the pumpkin has kind of a creepy face. It sort of like a freaky baby, or like a bath bar from Lush.

Anyway, I was excited to find that when biting into the pumpkin that it was, in fact, orange! I love orange food! Or orange anything.
There doesn't seem to be any crunchy layer of sugar, the way normal peeps have, but there's definitely some gooey sugary something between the marshmallow and the chocolate. I dissected the last bit of mine...

As it turns out, Just Born created chocolate covered chicks for Easter, though I don't recall ever seeing them. And the pumpkins also come in dark chocolate versions as well. All in all, I wasn't thrilled by them. They were actually a little too sweet. Peeps are meant to be too sweet, that's why they're awesome, but this is the wrong kind of too sweet. The whole experience was just ok, but not exceptional so I probably won't go out of my way for them in the future.

And as a throwback to living in Allentown, I found this from The Morning Call

Kiwi Syrup

So there are lots of interesting food things going on this week but I'm going to start with something I found while walking around H&Y Asian market. I wouldn't say it's particularly asian, except for the brand, but I'd never seen it before and I was intrigued.Kiwi Syrup!! The chocolate syrup makes sense but kiwi syrup? What does one do with such a food? Well, according to one company that makes this syrup it can be used in Italian sodas and mocktails. I'm not entirely convinced I'd want to drink this, though I'd be willing to give it a try. Maybe an Italian Soda would be nice.

Here's one recipe I found for a drink.. I couldn't find too many mentions of kiwi syrup in recipes.

Fruit Cocktail Recipe
Grapefruit Juice
Kiwi Syrup
Lime Juice
Mango Juice
Passion fruit Juice
orange juice
Pineapple Juice
Shake with a glassful of broken ice and pour unstrained into a wine goblet. Garnish with fruit, add straws, and serve.