Friday, December 31, 2010

Ener-G: Light Tapioca vs. Brown Rice

One plus side for the Ener-G breads is that you don't have to freeze them and that they are shelf stable.  Although I bought a six pack that came with one covered in all kinds of furry green-ness, they do keep quite well for a long time. 

Their big problem is their taste.  They taste ... weird. 

When it came to the light tapioca loaf, I wasn't too repulsed.  It was a weird flavor, but thus far I had had nothing but weird flavors from gluten-free breads.  The Gluten Free Pantry mix tasted weird, the mix I got in Japan tasted weird, and this bread tasted weird.  Hey, it's bread without gluten.  It's going to taste weird.

The light tapioca bread reminded me of rye.  It had a light sourness to it that wasn't unpleasant.  You could usually overpower it with whatever you were putting on the bread.  Butter and jam on a toasted slice would cut the sourness easily.  Grill it in butter with some ham and cheese and you would barely taste it at all. 

I thought the brown rice loaf would be similar.  Yeah, I need to stop thinking things.

At first I didn't mind it.  But then as I tried to finish off the loaf, the extreme sour flavor of it kind of got to me.  I just couldn't hide it the way I had with the light tapioca.  I tried butter and other sweet toppings, but only putting a BUTTLOAD of stuff between two slices could make it edible.

Fortunately for me, I've tried another brand and found something better.  Not just edible, but legitimately GOOD.  But if you're stuck with the Ener-G, I would suggest the light tapioca, at the very least.  I haven't tried all their breads, but after slogging through the loaf of brown rice, I don't think I'll be trying much more.  I hope those hot dog buns in my cabinet aren't as bad.

Food For Life Rubber Tortillas

I mean, brown rice.  That's what I meant.  Brown rice tortillas.

I love Mexican food (as you may have noticed in some other posts) and one thing I really missed was tortillas.  Not only are tortillas good for making Mexican fare, but they're also good for those times when you want to make a sandwich but not use bread.  My local convenience store had these roll-ups with vegetables, roast beef, potato salad, and sweet chili sauce.  They were really, really good.  Too bad I couldn't eat them anymore ...

So not only did I want to make Mexican-ish stuff, but I wanted food wraps.  When I finally found these tortillas and remembered to buy them (found at Whole Foods; forgot to buy), I had every intention of making some kind of turkey sandwich.

The tortillas were frozen when I first got them, so I put them in the fridge.  I did not have real access to cooking/heating implements apart from the microwave, so I didn't heat them up any.  I just took out a tortilla, assembled my stuff, and went on with my life.

The first one, which was the freshest, I suppose, wasn't so bad.  It was a bit chewy, but it was flexible enough and wrapped fairly well.  It was the subsequent attempts at rolling up the now rubbery and extra-chewy tortillas that resulted in breakage and much gnawing.  I felt kind of like a dog with its chew toy, only a chew toy that's actually edible at some point.  It was, in a word, unpleasant.

And then I got my cooking implement.  Well, I thought, I can give these another shot and see if they cook up very well.  If they do, then at least it's not a total waste (since I had another package in the freezer). 

Actually, for quesadilla purposes, these turn out quite nicely.  Very crispy and they have a pleasant flavor.  I'm considering giving up on bread all together and just using these instead (okay, we still need bread for peanut butter purposes.  I cannot eat pb&j on a hot, crispy tortilla.  That's just wrong

But anyway, I think they are very good when grilled, either with oil or without.  They just aren't very good raw.  They might be good if you heated it and then used it to make your roll-up sandwich, but I haven't tested that theory and probably won't.  Hopefully this next bread I'm going to try will be good enough and I'll forget all about rolly sandwiches. 

(More on bread later.)

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Taco Bell Chicken Quesadilla ... OR IS IT??

I had an idea yesterday with that tasty, tasty hummus. 

It involved:

Two slices colby-jack cheese
One Food For Life brown rice tortilla
Hormel grilled chicken strips
... and that organic hummus.

I spread the hummus on half of the tortilla and put the tortilla in my skillet.  Then I placed cheese so that it covered the surface of the skillet.  I waited for the cheese to get melty, and placed chicken on one half of the tortilla, so it was almost covered.  Then I folded in half and heated on both sides for a bit.

The result was not just tasty, but it also reminded me of those Taco Bell quesadillas with their jalapeno sauce.  I always found those incredibly tasty, but of course they are now forbidden as per my intestines. 

And really, this is probably a lot healthier.  Not sure if it's cheaper (survey says: Probably Not), since Taco Bell is the cheapest of cheap.  What's a quesadilla, $2.50?  Let's see, six tortillas for $4.50, ten slices of cheese for $5, six servings of chicken for $6 if we buy two packets and hummus was $4 ... so we'll call it $20 for six servings if we're conservative with the cheese ... yeah, not cheaper.

Healthier.  And no gluten. 

I wasn't crazy about the Food For Life tortillas at first, but now that I'm using them for quesadillas I find them much more appetizing.  I had wanted to make cold wraps, but after the first one they were pretty unappetizing.  Just dry and rubbery.  They do crisp up nicely. 

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I Love Hormel

I suppose this means I am cheating on Amy and Annie and ... someone else?  Crap.

I always loved Hormel's chili.  See, I never knew good chili for the longest time.  My mom's chili was a tomato-overload, full of ketchup, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, canned halved tomatoes, and probably some actual raw tomato thrown in for good measure (I don't really like tomatoes).  She also used kidney beans.  So it was all kind of sour an tomato-like, with undercooked and giant red beans in it. 

It was not delicious.

I tried chili at school and found it pretty good.  I could not figure out why school chili (school food!  supposed to be bad!  usually wasn't!) was good, but home chili (home!  home-made!  good for you!) was not. 

I tried Hormel after years of chili-trauma at home, and was surprised that it was like school chili.  I liked school chili.  So I basically just used Hormel as my go-to for chili from then on.  Frito chili pie, yum yum yum.

Now that I and gluten have parted ways, I have been glad to find that my beloved Hormel chili and I can continue to be friends.  This is super.  But what's even more super is that most Hormel products seem to be clearly labeled as being gluten-free if they are. 

One thing I was aching for on coming back to America was deli meat.  This included the sliced, squishy kind, but also the "hey it's real meat" kind, like chicken breast strips or whatever.  And when it comes to Hormel, it's all labeled.  If it's gluten-free, the package says so.  Pepperoni by other guys?  I have to guess.  Pepperoni by Hormel?  Right on the label.  Go ahead and eat it.

It's a nice, meaty slice of peace of mind.  With Oscar Mayer I realize they will tell you if there are wheat-derived ingredients in the meat, but I really hate scanning the labels.  I hate going, "Well, I THINK it's okay."  I haven't memorized the big list of gluteny ingredients, so I always find myself popping on the internet in the supermarket (and getting glared at by customers) to see what might or might not contain gluten.  But with Hormel, you know where you stand.  And that's excellent.

KUDOS TO YOU, HORMEL!  BIG THUMBS-UP!  HAPPY GRIN!  GOLD STAR STICKER ON YOUR HOMEWORK!

Monterey Gourmet Foods Hummus

I don't often talk about foods that aren't specifically gluten-free.  Usually it's boring stuff like turkey or cheese (either you like turkey or cheese or you don't, right?)  But sometimes there is something that is technically or labeled GF that is so good (or so mediocre) it's worth mentioning.

I went to Down to Earth today on my way back from a very uneventful trip to Waikiki (I saw a beach!).  I guess I was under the impression that Ruffage Natural Foods would have more of a grocery selection than the few sad shelves of flours that they had.  Maybe I was missing something. 

Down to Earth is a vegetarian superstore (well, superstore if you're stocking it with only veg/vegan products) full of vegetarian, vegan, and organic foods (there's a Venn diagram to be made here, but you get the picture--no meat).  I am a meat-eater, but they don't exactly card you at the door or kick you out if you come direct from Burger King (kind of across the street) with Whopper on your breath.  They have an exciting variety of gluten-free foods.  I spend too much money there.

I was in there today just hoping to buy some bits and pieces to eat.  I have a rule right now that I don't buy anything that isn't an accessory to another food, because I have too much food right now and need to eat it all.  I get food-bored easily and need a variety of things around me, you see.  So I have a tendency to just buy and buy and buy, and I need to stop. 

Anyway, at home I have crackers that just weren't very good with cheese.  But they're onion crackers, so they aren't good with peanut butter either (in theory).  I needed to eat them with SOMETHING.  I spotted a variety of flavors of hummus in the fridge section (with the cheeses and soy cheese products and tofurkey and so on).  They all sounded pretty good, but given my love of Mexican food, I went with the smoked jalapeno and garlic flavor.

I took it home and tried it with my weird crackers.  Wowwww.  It was like a magical Mexican bean dip with the cheese already in it.  It's kind of amazing, since there is nothing cheese-like even in the hummus, but it somehow tastes as though there is.  The texture is very smooth (like whipped frosting?  That's a bad comparison) and the jalapeno is mild enough to leave a very slight burn on the back of your tongue that you didn't notice while eating.

The price wasn't so bad.  I think it was around $4.  And the top of the tub labels it as gluten-free.  I don't know if I just enjoy this flavor too much to want to try another flavor, but it may happen in the future. 

Friday, December 24, 2010

Ian's Gluten Free Chicken Tenders

I was in the middle of my Whole Foods stupor when I saw something big and yellow.  The amazing yellowness drew me out of my stupor long enough for me to see things like "fish fingers" and "chicken tenders" and "french bread pizza" and "gluten free."

Ian's appears to be made to appeal to smaller kids who can't eat those yummy things that their peers would be eating in kids meals.  They have all sorts of healthy and allergen-free foods that appeal to kids, like mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and corn dog bites. 

Of course, we adults also enjoy those things ...

At Whole Foods I paid about $8 for a (small, small, small) package of chicken tenders.  When I opened the package I found three relatively thick tenders (still small) and two skinnier ones that were mating.  Unfortunately, they had not given birth, otherwise I might have gotten a serving of tenders worthy of eating half the package. 

See, five tenders is a serving as far as I'm concerned.  If it were six, I might be able to split it 3/3.  Three is almost a reasonable serving, and then I could eat some kind of side dish.  =meal.  But five ... see, two would be a very pathetic serving.  So I just baked all five.  $8 lunch at home.

Okay, so hopefully they would taste good.

After some struggling with the oven, I managed to bake my tenders and get them into my room.  I took out some salad dressing for dipping (honey dijon) and set out to test my tenders.

I have to say that they are pretty good.  My attempts at cooking tenders in the past had resulted in the breading just falling right off.  So I was glad when the breading stayed on these.  The chicken was cooked all the way through despite my oven issues, and the breading was crispy except where oil had kind of seeped out of it, as happens when you bake things. 

The only real issue I had was that they were decidedly unsalted.  I'm one of those people who has blood pressure not affected by salt (in fact, my bp is lowwww), so I don't mind a heavy dose of salt.  These are very, very unsalted.  The salad dressing helped balance that out, so it wasn't so bad.  Just, a little bit of seasoning of some sort might have been nice. 

All in all, after over a year of missing out on chicken nuggets and tenders and patties, I was very pleased.  I would definitely buy these again if I won the lottery and try the other varieties of foods available.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Oatios

One thing I really miss is Cheerio's.  Plain, ordinary Cheerio's.  I'm not a huge fan of sugary cereal, and I wish that Cheerio's didn't contain that pesky wheat starch.  I'd bought a giant box of the stuff before having to go GF and ate one bowl of it just to see what happened.  The result was not good.

Oatios are not GF per se.  They contain no wheat, and if you can tolerate oats they are supposedly fine for you to eat.  The jury is still out on oats, and these are just oats. 

I thought that since they looked like Cheerio's and were oats ... well ... they would be like Cheerio's.  Right? 

I opened the box to see what they were like dry.  They were puffy, very porous, and very light to crunch.  Not like Cheerio's.  More like a hybrid cheerio-fruit loop.  Also, very bitter.  I thought maybe milk would change this, so I poured some into a bowl and put some milk on it.

Basically, it was a bowl of bitter, soggy oat rounds that I had to force myself to finish and which my stomach went, "WHAT ... IS ... THIS???" to.  I saw another brand of wheat-free oat circles, and I'm kind of clinging to a hope that those will be any good.  This box, which I just bought today, will be going into the trash.  Blecch.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Drinky-pie

No, I'm not talking about pie.

Let's take a break here and talk for a second about drinks. 

I just came from Japan, where tea and coffee are king.  You can go to any vending machine and get a variety of teas or coffees in bottles and cans, with a few soft drinks or other beverages like sports drinks and soda alongside.  It's something I miss in America, because not only are there so few vending machines and convenience stores compared to Tokyo, but also because the variety of beverages ... well ... sucks.

Coming back to the US I'm figuring out why people get fat.  If you're ingesting a third of your RDA of calories in beverages ... yeah, that's bad.  And even if it's 0 calories with fakeyfake sugar, it's still not good for you.  Possibly worse. 

What is wrong with unsweetened beverages??  The only one I can seem to find is water.  Every variety of tea here, with the exception of the few overpriced bottles of Ito-en green or jasmine (sometimes oolong) you can find here and there, is full of crap.  I only like sweet tea if it's milky.  I can't stand sugar or flavoring in tea.  To me, it tastes like some kind of bathroom cleaner or air freshener or candle or something. 

I'm going a bit nuts.  I boil my own tea, but now finding that the water's full of hexavalent chromium has me concerned.  Also, hot tea in Hawaii = not so great in the middle of the day.  So I'm drinking big bottles of water.  I occasionally drink something else--Nesquik (I do enjoy Nesquik) or a bit of gatorade or some kind of organic fruit beverage--but as a small female person nearing 30, I can't afford to give up so many calories per day to drinks

I really wish that more people in the US would become tea drinkers.  Not sweet-sugar-crappy tea drinkers, but straight tea drinkers.  I want more tea!  Cheaper tea!  Until then I guess I'll just be lugging as many 1.5L bottles of water home as possible.  Hopefully that stuff isn't full of chromium ...

Oskri Coconut Bar

I love coconut.

Not sugary sweet coconut like in Mounds (that's all right), but fresh coconut.  I cut the crap out of myself some months ago because I wanted a darn coconut and spent hours hacking and whacking one open in my apartment.  It was $10 but it was a delicious thing.

I'd tried to find coconuts since arriving in Hawaii.  I thought Hawaii = coconut.  Now I can't find a damn coconut.

I was at Long's looking at the Lara Bars and then at the other bars around them.  That's when I saw these coconut bars.

Coconut?  Coconut??  DID SOMEONE SAY "COCONUT???"

It was $1.20 and the ingredients were listed as coconut and rice syrup.  Is that all?  Sounds good to me.  I was starving and couldn't help but start eating it when I was on the way home.

It wasn't like a Mounds.  It was much less sweet.  It tasted a lot more like a natural piece of coconut than I was expecting.  I would definitely prefer real, fresh coconut, but this is a good alternative.  Gluten-free, lactose-free, kosher, halal, vegan ... good for everyone, assuming you like coconut.

Or aren't allergic to coconut. 

Glutenfreeda Banana Maple Oatmeal

I used to like eating oatmeal because it would leave me with a heavy feeling in my stomach.  I didn't particularly love the taste of oatmeal, but I liked that I could eat something so small and be left feeling full.


I did try to eat Quaker's instant oatmeal since going GF, but it just was not agreeing with me.  I realize oats are not glutenful per se, but mostly suffer from contamination.  The reaction I got from it was not the usual reaction, but it just was not pleasant.  So I don't think it was contamination, but honestly, I don't know what it was. 

So that's where I was before picking up Glutenfreeda's oatmeal.  I was aware of it.  I was aware of other brands, but let me be honest here:  I want to sit down and pour a single serving bowl of hot cereal.  I do NOT want to boil a whole pot of it or measure it out or find my own toppings.  I want convenience and speed.  But there just seemed to be nothing available that met those needs.  Except this.

I am not crazy about bananas.  I'll eat them, but something in the texture bothers me (which is probably why I prefer greener bananas).  I wouldn't have bought this flavor, but it was the ONLY ONE THEY HAD.  And I haven't seen this stuff anywhere else I've been.  So this very well may be the ONLY FLAVOR IN HAWAII.  I have no idea.  I can't check everywhere else, so as far as I'm concerned IT IS THE ONLY FLAVOR IN HAWAII.

I bought it and I gave it a shot, hoping it wouldn't bother my guts.  And it didn't!  It was good.  The dehydrated banana came out pretty good and you couldn't really make out the maple except for a light sweetness.  My only real problem with the oatmeal is that it's not shoved full of vitamins.  I prefer to eat foods that are shoved full of vitamins.  Most gf foods seem to be lacking that. 

It was kind of amazing after years of a heavy feeling to not have that after eating oatmeal.  I've lately determined that the heavy feeling I got eating stuff like oatmeal or pasta (I could never eat much pasta without feeling suddenly full) must have been an inflammatory response.  So I would swear that these oats are cleeeean.

I paid about $6 for a box of 6 packets.  A dollar per packet?  Kind of stupid, but it's not as if I have a choice (THE ONLY GF OATMEAL IN THE MY UNIVERSE).  I would hope to try some of the other flavors someday.  Ha.  IF THEY EXIST. 

(Seriously, if you live in Honolulu and you know where to get any other flavor ... I will figure out how to get a bus there.  I don't want to be stuck eating just banana.)

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Tasty Bite

I've had a few of these Tasty Bite Indian dinners, so I just want to make a general review.

These are listed as gluten-free and some are also listed as vegan.  Obviously, anything with the paneer cheese in it is not going to be vegan.

You can cook them in the microwave (not recommended) or by submerging the foil pouch in boiling water for five minutes.  They do not require any refrigeration before cooking, which is awesome.

I haven't had a whole lot of authentic Indian food.  I lived in Japan, where bastardized Indian food is king, and where even in Indian restaurants run by Indians (or people from that general area) you aren't sure if what you're getting is authentic or catered to the weakling tongues of the general population.

I ate at an Indian restaurant once, it was pretty good, but it did not agree with me in the slightest.  I don't think it was a glutening, but it just did not ... agree.

These, however, are great.  They aren't too spicy (sorry if that's your thing) and cook up quick.  They're relatively healthy, and surely all that beans or spinach is good for you.  And no gluten.  Amazing.

I've seen them retail from between $2.50-4.50 depending on the store.  Which is probably way less than you'd pay in the restaurant.  Some people mention them tasting nasty microwaved, so I recommend boiling.  There are quite a few varieties to choose from, so why not try them all?  So far I've had about four different kinds.  I'm still partial to the palak paneer.  Yum.  And since I have a boiling water pot in my pod (no kitchen in here) it's something I can cook without going into the main house!  Joy!

(No, no one paid me to say this.)

Mi-Del Gluten Free Ginger Snaps

I had this really amazing ginger-molasses cookie the other day, and because it's Christmas and Christmas is gingerbread season, I felt myself hankering for more of that gingery goodness.  Unfortunately that other cookie, while amazing, was also $2.79!  For a single cookie!  A cookie that claimed to be two servings!  Too much horror for one beautiful cookie!

So I looked to alternatives.  I knew this would mean giving up soft, chewy deliciousness for crispiness.  I didn't care.  So much.  Kind of.  A little.  (30%)

The stores I went to had several brands of cookies.  They had those dateful Enjoy Life cookies.  They had various cookies bearing lady-names (Pam's?  Lucy's?  Something like that.)  But then there was Mi-Del.

I'd had a pretty good experience with Mi-Del and their faux-reos.  Also, some other cookie.  So I thought they could be trusted, at least a bit.  Additionally, the ginger snaps were what I could find (the only gf cookie) in a mainstream supermarket where I was already buying groceries.  I make special trips to the natural foods stores, but sometimes don't buy anything.  (I get points or something for buying at the normal supermarket.)

Here's the good news:  It's all good news.

Although they are crunchy cookies, they aren't overwhelmingly so.  Five cookies clocks in at 140 calories, and they contain some minute bit of nutrition (I refuse to eat food that does not contain nutrition).  They are flavorful, gingery, and delicious.  They would probably make a fantastic pie crust or addition to pudding.

I think I paid around $4.50.  I'm beginning to notice that at the supermarket, any time there's a regular product next to the gf version, the gf version is like, 2-3 dollars more.  Hurrah.  Like they're blaming us for having irritable intestines that have a kind of stigmata reaction when they see wheat.  "Well, we know your body is broken and you're probably on a lot of pills, so as a consolation prize we're going to charge you more for food.  COOKIE TAX.  PAY UP, BROKE-TINES!"

Monday, December 20, 2010

Amy's Mexican Casserole Bowl

After the slight disappointment with Amy's tortilla bowl, I was a bit hesitant to try this other Mexican-flavored bowl.  But I was hungry and dammit, I am on this total Mexican kick after being denied Mexican food for so long.  I slit that thang and gave it cancer.

I must say that with the tortilla bowl, I had just walked 40 minutes home with it in my bag and so I thought in the 4-5 minute span, I could just put it in for 4:15 or something and it would be fine.  It was underdone in the center.  For this one, I gave it its full 5 minutes, but it too was a little under-done in the center.  I'm not sure if this is a problem with our microwave or just with the cooking time. 

This bowl contains a chili-like substance, masa, corn, peppers, and cheese.  It claims there are olives in there as well.  It is, in a word ...

Fantastic.

Even though I had to throw it in the cancer box, it was still so good.  A nice, balanced mix of ingredients and flavors that left me feeling very satisfied when I was done.  And relatively healthy, too.  I got the full sodium variety, but they also have a low sodium type. 

My only problem with this ... is that ohhhhh it's like $7.  They have it at most of the stores around me, and it ranges from $6.50-6.99,  One thing I like about frozen food is that it's cheaper than eating out, but this is not.  The only convenience is that I can eat it at home without anyone judging me.  And it's probably lower in calories than Wahoo's or Taco Del Mar.  But as a student who is already paying the Hawaii premium and the GF premium ... ouch. 

Come on, Amy.  I love you.  Yes, I'm two-timing you with cinnamon, but we can all get along, can't we?   

Van's Gluten Free Cinnamon French Toast Sticks

I love cinnamon.  Right now we're working on the whole gay marriage thing, but once that's done I want to legalize marriage between one person and one shaker of cinnamon, because I love cinnamon that much.  There isn't much that can't be improved with a dash of cinnamon.

Since I'm riding the Gluten Free Train and baked goods are kind of difficult territory, I often find myself wishing there were more cinnamon-based products I could indulge in that were pre-cooked and didn't contain dates (I hate dates--you hear that, Enjoy Life?).  Or raisins.  Don't go thinking you could just swap out the dates for raisins and trick me. 

I want a cinnamon roll or a coffee cake or some really GOOD snickerdoodles, and of course this is a hard thing to do unless you're keen on baking by yourself.  Right now I don't have a kitchen per se.

So when I saw Van's cinnamon french toast sticks at my local Whole Foods?  Well, I haddd to buy them. 

After a few recent disappointments, I was really worried about these.  But I had nothing to worry about.  I opened the box and found toast-shaped slices with indentations (each slice can be broken into three "sticks").  You can stick them in your toaster on a medium setting, and voila!  French toast!

The cinnamon scent and the residue of cinnamon left on my fingers was pleasantly overwhelming.  I took one slice and popped it into the toaster.  It actually didn't cook all the way totally (slightly cool in the center) but was still okay when I ate it. 

Actually, more than okay.

CINNAMON PARADISE. 

It was so good, but I had just had lunch and couldn't have another just yet.  The sticks broke apart so easily, and apart from realizing I would need to set the dial a little higher next time, there were no cons to speak of with these beautiful bits of toast.  The only thing I would say is that their status as "french toast" is pretty questionable.  They don't contain any egg or dairy.  So I would call them more like, "Cinnamon toast-shaped patties" than french toast sticks.  But still.  Delicious.  I can't wait to try the waffles I bought.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Amy's Tortilla Casserole Bowl

Oh, Amy.

I fell in love with Amy in college, when I first discovered her cheese enchiladas.  They weren't spicy or overpowered with weird sauce.  They were just cheesy and good. 

Then I fell into this chasm for several years which contained no Amy's products.  My hometown grocers didn't carry them, and then I was in Japan.  In Japan I could get verrrry few products, but fortunately those enchiladas were one of them.

I had held off buying any Amy's until now because I wanted to try all these other mysterious GF products in the supermarket.  But today I had a hankering for Mexican and I knew I wasn't going to make it all the way to Ala Moana or one of these mysteriously hidden Taco Bells.  I picked up two Amy's Mexican bowls at the supermarket and trudged home.

The first on my list was the tortilla casserole bowl.  I like tortilla chips, so I thought this would be tasty.  Since I'm sharing a kitchen with umpteen people, I decided not to be an oven hog (even though no one is ever home) and make it in the microwave. 

I think my review of this item is, "Hmm."  It wasn't really bad but it wasn't really good.  I would have liked some more cheese than the bit flicked on top.  The tortilla part tasted okay on the edges, but in the middle was soggy and dry at the same time.  I wasn't sure what else was in there (it's a casserole, after all) but mostly could just taste corn chip and a weird sweetness that I assume was some tomato substance.  It had the veggie sweetness of bell peppers.

The black beans were pretty nice.

So I don't know if I would buy this again.  Maybe, if I had an oven all to myself, I would go for it.  Or maybe I'd just be better off buying a can of beans, some tortilla chips, salsa and cheese.  Or making my fantastic Taco Bell "relatively gluten free mexican dinner I think" of nachos, beans, and rice.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Glutino Multigrain Crackers

Ever since arriving n Hawaii I found myself looking for crackers.  I had grown to enjoy those Ener-G crackers quite a bit, and I was sad that I had so much trouble finding them.  On the day I finally did find them, I also found these Glutino crackers, available in several flavors.  I thought multigrain sounded like a great option, but I should have read the label.

See, I hate fennel seeds.  Hate hate hate.

Who expects fennel seeds in their crackers?

Anyway, so I was a bit disappointed in that regard.  But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

On the box, Glutino's crackers look like crackers of the Ritz variety.  Glutino and I are having a strained relationship.  Their penne was terrible and their breakfast bars were so-so (I didn't review that yet).  I was really hoping that their crackers would at least be edible. 

When I opened the box I was very surprised, because I expected the usual individually wrapped tubes of crackers, like you get in a box of Ritz.  No no no.  I guess as a cost-saving measure they decided to just THROW A BUNCH OF CRACKERS IN A BAG.  Not even one big bag.  Two smaller bags.  Why is this a bad idea?  Don't they do that with other brands of crackers?  I seem to recall that Wheat Thins do this, but Wheat Thins don't break very easily.  This sort of cracker?  Breaks. 

So I opened up a baggy to find a lot of broken and some whole crackers.  Not exactly pleasant.  I took one out and tasted it.  Fennel.  Fennnnnnnel.  But it wasn't terribly overpowering.  I'd survive.  I think these crackers are best suited to the meat and cheese approach.  Too bad I bought them for peanut butter. 

So I dug out my peanut butter.  It did cover up the fennel well enough.  It also completely overwhelmed the cracker itself.

It isn't a bad cracker.  It's just ... there's a certain nuttiness I expect from multigrain crackers, and that's missing.  Perhaps because there's no (or very little?) salt on it, the flavors don't really come out in the cracker itself.  But I wouldn't be very harsh on these.  6.5/10 or thereabouts.  They serve their purpose.  They aren't gross.  They lose a point for poor packaging and the FENNEL.  (WHO PUTS FENNEL SEEDS IN CRACKERS??) 

But definitely not bad.  And not Nut Thins.  Sorry, Nut Thins, but if I wanted to eat things that tasted like Fritos ... I would buy Fritos.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Hawaiian Gluten Free Paradise

One of the biggest factors in my leaving Japan was being unable to eat food.  I like food.  I'm not one of those people who can cook a vat of chili and eat it for two weeks straight.  My body just will not consume food it does not want to eat, and if it's bored or uninterested in something, I can't argue.  If my body wants pizza and I try to give it rice, it will shut down the hunger after a few bites and I feel full but unsatisfied.  Of course, I get hungry again about 30-60 minutes later.  Horribly inconvenient.

So just a week or so after moving here, I have pretty well scouted out the best and worst places to get anything gluten free within my own little sphere of the world. 

Keep in mind you're not only going to be paying the gluten free tax, but also the Hawaii tax.  Food is expensive here.

If you're staying in Honolulu, I'm going to bet you're in Waikiki.  If you aren't ... well ... too bad.  But surely you can find something you can eat near you. 

The first store I hit on my gf run was Down to Earth ( http://www.downtoearth.org/ ).  They're an all-vegetarian store with a huge amount of gluten free food.  I'm not vegetarian, nor do I have any desire to be, but they don't card you or interrogate you or sniff you for essence of meat before you go in. 

They had a lot of frozen items (the usual Amy's as well as some other stuff), cereals, crackers, bread, pretzels, pasta, etc.  The only item I was hoping they would have that they didn't (but the brochure said they did) was tortillas.  They had the Annie's deluxe gf, so I was happy. 

In their deli/bakery they had a couple of pizzas that were listed as gf, as well as wheat-free cookies (I assume not gf due to the potential for cross-contamination).  I was intrigued by both, but a bit turned off by fake meat (dude, if you're going to eat meat ... just eat meat) on the pizza and dates in the cookies.  I just have a thing about raisins or dates in cookies.  Can't stand them.  Always taste them.  No good.

The next on my list was Whole Foods.  This is in the Kahala Mall and a bit of a trek if you're ... anywhere.  I had to take two buses to get there, and by the time I got home I had spent over an hour and a half on buses and my food was melting.

It was my first time in a Whole Foods, but I think they're pretty standard, yeah?  Really expensive, but lots of gf stuff.  I was very tempted by the doughnuts, pie, and carrot cake.  Ohhhh carrot cake.  But I can't afford $12 in carrot cake or $16 pumpkin pies!  They had a lot of nice stuff and I spent a lot of money on it.  Mostly things I hadn't been able to find at Down to Earth or the other supermarkets in the area.

The next was Kokua Market ( http://kokuamarket.ning.com/ ).  Fortunately for me and my tortilla lust, after forgetting to buy them at Whole Foods, Kokua had some for me.  They also had a decent selection of items, including Glutino crackers, bagels, frozen items (mostly Amy's), and instant oatmeal in a flavor I would never touch (ewww banana).  They had a bit more pizza than Down to Earth had, and since they're just down the street I bet they stay a little bit competitive in pricing.  A little.  Chicken noodle soup!  Hurray!

All in all, not bad, and probably the least I've spent on groceries thus far, even though I got several items. 



Now, don't think you have to go to these hippy-dippy crunchy earth-loving vegan all-natural shops to get your food on. 

Walmart is not the place to go for anything.  It's not a grocery store for all intents and purposes, and is more of a tourist destination for Japanese people who want to be able to say they went to a Walmart. 

The Japanese version of Walmart, in a sense, is Don Quijote (or "Donki" as we usually called it in Japan).  I actually found several gf foods in Donki, such as cereals and pastas.  It was kind of odd, considering I'd just left Japan due to its dearth of gf food.  Of course, in Japan they don't sell the same foods ...

I haven't been to Times, but the Safeway I went to has very little in the way of gf stuff.  A few Amy's dinners, a couple of bags of pasta.  They do have some lunch meat that is labeled gf (Hormel, IIRC) at least.  It's a little disappointing, since it's my nearest store. 

Foodland in Ala Moana has a few items (mostly Amy's), but the other Foodland I went to on S. Beretania had a LOT of stuff.  Waffles and chicken tenders and cereals.  They even had some breads in the freezer case.  A decent selection at a relatively normal store.  The prices are still kind of insane, but at least you can get one of those little shopper cards and pretend you're getting a discount. 

So there you go.  Just a short list of my findings.  If I find anything else ... I will report back.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Amy's Cheese Pizza with Rice Crust

While I was in Japan I had almost no problem getting rice crusts with which to make my own little pizzas.  And they were good, too.  I just hated having to buy all the ingredients and assemble them.  You never know which cheese is any good, or which pizza sauce, and then I had to figure out ingredients.  Black olives and mushrooms were easy.  Green peppers a little more difficult.  Ham couldn't be counted on to taste any good, and pepperoni?  What I really wanted was pepperoni.

So I dreamed of a time when I could just go down to the store and get a frozen pizza and be done with it.  Oh sure, I could pay the $17 and go to Z Pizza and have them do everything for me.  But until that time, I just wanted to taste a real frozen pizza like I used to make when I was aching for a pizza but didn't want to go out to get one.

The Safeway nearby stocks the rice crust pizza, as does just about every other supermarket I've encountered so far (Walmart is not a supermarket and does not count).  It was probably $12-14 as I recall.  A bit pricey, but still better than Z Pizza's $4 GF markup.  I got it home and took it to the oven.

Now, I'm in a bit of a contamination pickle (nothing to do with actual pickles) here.  I share a kitchen with several other people.  Amy is telling me to stick the crust on the oven rack and I know I can't do that.  So I put it on tin foil.  I'm sure this affected my baking.  I just know it.  But it was my only option.

In pretty much the time stated on the box I had a hot pizza waiting for me.  But let's first go into how the thing looked, right?  It looked cheesy enough, I guess.  There wasn't a lot of sauce trying to escape, as there often is in these kinds of pizzas.  So that was a plus in the "not much cheese" department.  The crust looked nice too.  It smelled kind of frozen pizza-ish on the way out, but no matter if it tastes good.

I would have to say I would give the pizza a 3/5.  I am taking into account that it is frozen pizza and that frozen pizza is frozen pizza.  The cheese had almost no flavor or texture, which was weird.  When I got a bite of the inner part of the pizza all by itself, I could usually taste the cheese, but if there was any hint of that large outer crust, I could not.  The sauce might as well have not existed, and then there was the crust.  It was floppy due to my tinfoil predicament, and the texture was as you'd expect from GF food.  Gritty.  But the flavor was nice.  It reminded me of those artisan-type breads you'd get at Panera.  You know, garlic and sun-dried tomato herb bread or something.

On the whole, I think I might buy it again if I could find some pepperoni to put on it.  And maybe some more cheese ...

Glutino Penne Alfredo

Of course it's delicious!  It says so right on the website!

Now that I'm in America and have at my disposal a seemingly limitless supply of GF yummies, I had to run out and buy ... everything.  Well, as much as I can carry at one time and that I can afford, since I quit my job and moved back to America.

I went to Whole Foods and gawked a bit, but ended up buying a handful of frozen items including this Glutino Penne Alfredo.  I love me some alfredo.  I love me some penne.  And if it looks anything like it does on the box, well, count me in!

After paying my $6-8 (it was something like that), I expected quality.  So imagine my disappointment when I opened up the box and saw this sad plate of frozen, gray noodles staring at me as if all crying out for me to end their pathetic, gray lives.  Okay, I know brown rice pasta is going to be a little sad-looking, but where was the sauce??  Maybe the sauce was hiding.

I put it in the microwave and some sauce started to peek out as it bubbled and rotated in the cancer box.  It smelled pretty good.  But what about flavor?

After dodging my quasi-housemate's (too hard to explain) dogs to get to the front door, I sat down in my room, stirred up my pasta ... and ...

Wait, all my penne had broken into sad fragments of its former penne shapeliness.  What the heck?  But that doesn't mean it can't still taste good, right? 

I took a bite.  It was ... underwhelming.  There was the mildest hint of creaminess, like when you reheat macaroni and cheese in the microwave and it mostly tastes like bland noodle and a little bit of cheese.  There was just no flavor.  So it wasn't bad.  It was edible.  I didn't throw it away or anything.  But it just tasted like nothing.  Noodle and noodle. 

I wondered if it would be better in the oven.  Normally I would cook things in the oven.  But I didn't see any baking instructions (even though it refers to microwaving as "baking" on the back for some reason).  So if that were a possibility I would try it.  However, I don't think I'll be purchasing this--or that mac and cheese I saw next to it in the freezer case--again.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Oh, that's disgusting.

Ener-G Foods has vacuum-sealed bread that supposedly stays good for a year on the shelf. 

So I would love to know why I plucked this loaf out of the case of 6 and opened the outer bag to find ... wow, that's kind of a dark green-gray shade on that side.  And flipped it to see ... wow, that's a bright chartreuse on that side.

So ... I pulled out another loaf and it was fine.  Still.  The moldy loaf is so moldy that part of the loaf is eaten away by it.  Gross.  At least it's vacuum-sealed, but ... still gross and a waste of money to boot. 

Monday, August 16, 2010

Glutening Tokyo: Convenience Stores

I used to love convenience stores, with their ever-changing selection of items and hot, greasy fried slabs of chicken.  Now, since quittin' the gluten, not so much.  Going to the convenience store is this awful trial that requires a lot of holding packages over my head (can't flip them over and the ingredients are printed on the bottom), sighing, and shoving them back on the shelf.

What can you eat?  Well, there's the typical stuff.  Drinks are usually fine.  I've yet to find a drink that wasn't.  Ice cream, basically you need to use common sense.  Cut fruit should be okay.  After that?  Beware.

Salad:  Most salads are fine.  Watch out for "pasta" salads that have cold spaghetti at the bottom or salads with fried or marinated meats on top.  I've also encountered totally safe-looking salads that list wheat as an ingredient.  I can only guess it was in a marinade for some vegetable piled on the top.  Salad dressings are hit or miss.  I went to Family Mart the other day and they had ZERO safe dressings.  Out of six. 

Sushi:  Sushi in the convenience store is iffy at best.  The ingredient label may lump in soy sauce with the regular sushi ingredients, so sometimes it's hard to tell if it contains wheat there or elsewhere.  Usually the varieties available are "salad," "natto," "negitoro," and a combination of various types of sushi.  The variety pack is iffy, as the eel (maybe in there) and egg (definitely always in there) are not safe.  Because the pack does not individually list ingredients for every type of sushi, I wouldn't trust it.  Negitoro is mashed tuna with onion.  It usually lists wheat as an ingredient, which could be the soy sauce, but since the tuna is mashed, I have no idea what's in it.  Natto might be okay.  Except it's rotten soy beans.  Salad flavor almost always contains wheat in the mayo.

Onigiri:  Onigiri are rice balls.  I'll lump maki-zushi in with this (looks like a sushi tube).  These are almost never okay if they contain any sauce or mayo.  A plain onigiri with just salmon in it is usually okay, but be careful and check for 小麦 on the label.  Lawson is the worst offender.  They seem to shove wheat into everything.

Desserts:  Most of these contain cake.  Frustrating, yes.  Pudding is even only safe about 50 percent of the time.  Even things that look like they should be okay are usually not okay.  You need to check for wheat. 

Meals:  These are almost never okay.  I have found TWO entrees in the past year that were okay.  One was a mistake (shipped to the wrong area, whoops!) and the other disappeared as well.  One was jambalaya (at Sunkus) and one was a kimchi pork on rice meal (at Family Mart).  Similar meals at other convenience stores were and are not safe to eat.  Basically, most meals contain soy sauce or oyster sauce or some kind of sauce.  What's in the sauce?  Wheaaaat.  You can read labels if you want, but it's pretty futile.  You can definitely eat the salt-grilled fish at 7-11 and white rice anywhere.  Make sure the white rice is not mixed with barley.

(I saw a website talking about the gluten-free fried rice dishes at Lawson and balked.  Nothing in Lawson is or has ever been safe to eat.  Fried rice in Japan is never ever safe.) 

Fast Food:  Most convenience stores have hot snacks up front.  Your options are limited. 
Family Mart: Nothing
7-11: Hot dog on a stick should be okay, in Tokyo.  Sometimes this is different for different areas.
am/pm: Pretty sure nothing
Mini Stop: French fries, Idaho stick potato, hot dog on a stick, ice cream (in a cup), and some parfaits are okay
Lawson: Pretty sure nothing

Packaged foods:  Chips and chocolate are not always safe!!  I've found salt flavor potato chips with both wheat and pork in the ingredients.  Watch out for chocolate, as it often contains rice crisps (malt).  Also, m&ms and Snickers both use wheat starch here.  Plain chocolate should be okay.  Plain Choco Flake is okay (no malt).  Pringles are not (same as home--wheat starch), but Chip Star (plain flavor) is fine. 

I hope this helps if you're about to trek off to Japan.  Worst case scenario, you can just buy a lovely, individually wrapped banana. 

Unless you're allergic to bananas.

Nut Thins - Almond

What on earth are these things?  I opened them up expecting a cracker, but instead was greeted with a rice wafer with some dots on it.  Huh?  Okay.

My first impression was:  Salt.  I don't like salty foods so much, and found the salt overpowering.  Then I thought, "Fritos."  They do taste a lot like Fritos. 

I don't know if I like them.  They're odd.  But because they're a lot like Fritos, I thought they might be nice in chili.  So when I tried that madras lentil stuff, I dipped in a nut thin.  Not bad. 



Still not sure what these things are though.  They aren't a cracker.  They aren't a rice cracker.  They're just ... ricenut coins of SALT.

Madras Lentils

I like curry, but most Japanese curry contains wheat flour.  Even some Indian and Thai curries produced in Japan contain wheat flour.  So when I saw that Tasty Bites had Indian that was gluten free?  Well, sign me up!

I picked this one at random.  I'd already tried another variety and it was good, so I thought I would try another.

I boiled it in the bag, as I usually do with curry.  Microwaving is never a good idea if you can help it.  When I opened it, the first thing I thought was, "Chili!"

I love chili.  This is vegetarian, but it absolutely smells like chili.  Kind of looks like chili.  And hey!  It tastes like chili too!

It's a bit spicy, but not awful.  The lentils make up the bulk of it, and there are some larger red beans mixed in somewhere.  But basically, it's a lot like a vegetarian chili.  But not vegan.  It does contain butter.  And cream.  (Mmmm, butter and cream.)

It's not really what I was expecting--I thought it would have more of a curry flavor--but it's tasty nonetheless.  The end.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

DeBowling - De Boles Rice Pasta and Cheese

I was looking for a mac and cheese after several failed attempts at making my own with the limited resources available.  And Annie's was not available from my supplier.  D'oh. 

Well, the only one that wasn't creepyvegan was De Boles.  So I ordered 4 boxes, thinking that would get me through the year.  Annnnd they sent me 4 cases.  48 boxes of macaroni and cheese.  I'm still waiting to see if anyone but me has noticed this, but in the mean time, I might as well try it.

De Boles is not a single serving the way I felt Annie's was.  I like a big helping of mac, but according to De Boles, one box of mac is about 1000 calories.  And I didn't use low-fat milk or unsalted butter, so I'm sure that would make it more caloric (and delicious). 

Because I live alone and can't stand reheated pasta (or reheated mac in general, bleh), I decided to make a portion of it.  I'd save the other pasta just in case I needed it for something.  I used dry measuring cups and found that the box contained about 1 1/3 cups of noodles.  So I took out about 3/4 of a cup to boil and saved the other portion. 

I accidentally went a bit over the time limit and boiled it for 12 minutes.  It was fine.

Two tablespoons (pats--I get pre-cut butter and assume that each pat is about a tablespoon) of butter, 60ml of milk (Japanese milk is usually pretty high-fat), mix ... add powder ... mix ... try to stomp out the clumps ... stomp stomp stomp ... fail ... and ... eat.

Actually, it isn't bad.  Not at all.  I'd read it was bland or that it was unpleasant to look at, and while the latter is true, the former isn't.  It tastes like mac and cheese should.  Tangy, cheesy, and good.  The pasta's texture wasn't bad, even though I overcooked it.  I do prefer more sizable elbows, but this does the job I need it to do, which is to be macaroni and cheese. 

But I do agree that the color leaves something to be desired.  The pasta is the taupeish shade you expect from rice pasta, and the cheese sauce is white.  Not exactly the most pleasant look, especially for someone like me who despises milk and anything that looks like milk.  (IT COMES FROM A COW'S BOOB, OKAY?  GROSS.  Process it any way you like so it looks different, but ew, milk.)  Some color would be appreciated. 

I would buy it again, but first I need to get through some of these bajillion boxes I have.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Japanese Foods!

If you're in Japan and trying to avoid gluten, it can be a trial.  CR Supply has some gluten-free foods that are so-so at best, but the pizza crusts are fairly good.  You can buy those here or at cr-supply.com.

For bread, I prefer this brand.  This bread makes pretty good toast and reasonable sandwiches.  The raisin bread is good too, but impossibly tiny.  The size of a business card.  This bread is about the size of a credit card.  (Are those different sizes?)  Anyway, if you toast it for about 10 minutes, even from a frozen state, it will hold up as sandwich bread. 

The same brand's pizza crusts are all right, but you have to bake the crap out of them to make them any good.  Too puffy.

I also tried out these curry croquettes.  Quite nice.  Not sure what all is in them in an "I hope there's no gluten" way, but they don't contain any wheat, at least.  You pop them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and they appear to be mostly sweet potato on the inside.  The curry flavor is nice and overrides any other flavors (I am not a sweet potato fan). 


I also got some hamburgs, but these are not nearly as good as the ones that Nippon Ham produces.  I guess because they are "Japanese flavor" and as far as I can tell that means "watery miso something flavor."  They kind of need something else.  Ketchup?  I dunno.  When I drained all the juice out due to a bag issue, basically I was left with a well-cooked but moderately flavored hamburger patty.  Better than nothing, I suppose.

I would definitely buy more of the croquettes, but the hamburgers not so much. 

These little cookies are pretty good and have a nice coconut flavor.

These are interesting because they taste like La Choy rice noodles. 

It's hard to know what has gluten in it, and so I repeat again that I can't vouch for these being 100% gluten free.  I do know they are wheat-free and in Japan that's sometimes as good as you can hope for.  I've gotten poisoned by foods I thought were "safe" before and can't wait to get out of here and "know" that foods are safe.  But these "should be" safe. 

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Mrs. Leeper (who needs a name that does not make me think of an illness that causes necrosis) produces an array of pastas and Hamburger Helper-type meals, including something akin to Tuna Helper, mac and cheese, and chicken alfredo. 

I found Mrs. Leper--I mean LEEPER.  Leeper.  I found Mrs. Leeper's beef lasagna dinner on FBC and decided to give it a shot.  I'm always looking for things to eat that don't require a lot of work.

What do you need?  You need about a pound of ground meat or tofu, the box, and some water.  Brown your meat (does tofu brown?) and drain it.  Put the meat stuff or not meat stuff in with the sauce mix and 3 cups of hot water.  Boil it and then add the pasta.  Cook it covered for 10 minutes and then remove it from heat.  It will be violently, horribly, tremendously, dangerously hot.  Don't even attempt to eat it for like, a half hour. 

I speak from experience.  I burned the CRAP out of my mouth by just waiting 10 minutes. 

Add a little cheese and voila, it's a meal!

The noodles are good and have a consistency like egg noodles.  The meat is what you make of it.  The flavor of the sauce and everything together reminded me of Stouffer's frozen lasagna, which isn't great but is pretty good.  And even better if you can't eat lasagna! 

Because I'm single and live alone, I packaged up the rest of it and put it in the fridge.  How did it hold up?  I microwaved it for 3 and a half minutes (my wattage is probably lower than yours) and stirred it halfway through.  The pasta was fine, not mushy at all.  The flavor was still good.  And it wasn't as LAVA-LIKE as it was when I first cooked it.  It passed the leftover test!  Hurrah!

So I would recommend this.  I don't know about the other meals, as I can't get them.  But now I would love to try them and see how they are.  It seems that even though Mrs. Leeper might have an unfortunate name, she does not have an unfortunate product. 

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Envirokidz Gorilla Munch

Cereal is so easy and fast to prepare, but the variety of cereals here in Japan is seriously lacking and the box always recommends pouring it on salad. 

The other problem with Japanese cereal is that it contains that enemy villain evil dude guy, barley.  Barley!  Barley is no!  No barley!  I've found a couple of edible cereals, but they're always so expensive and flavorless (and in tiny, tiny packages).  Apparently the only way to get an edible cereal is to get one with two ingredients.  Uhhh ... yum?

So I broke down and turned to the internet.  I picked up some brown rice cereal and this Envirokidz Gorilla Munch.  I don't really like sweet cereals, and this one looked kind of like Kix.  So I went for it. 

It is almost like Kix, if Kix was sweeter and crunchier.  Kix is corn, but it's fairly crispy and light in texture.  Gorilla Munch is heavy and has a texture like ... like ... well, I don't even know what it's like.  I have a feeling I've eaten something like this before and I can't remember what it is.  It's pretty good by itself, but very, very crunchy.

With milk, it did what I expected.  It gets a little bit slimy.  (I KNOW I have eaten a cereal like this before.)  But it still tastes good.  And gets a bit less crunchy.  Still a bit sweeter than I'd like, but if I want to eat something that isn't organic corn flakes, I might just have to put up with that. 

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Stupid Slow Food Lady

I normally review food, but this is totally food-related.  Bear with me.

I saw this lady on Bill Maher's show the other day, promoting "slow food."  Apparently "slow food" is when you cook everything from scratch in the slowest way possible.  Like we used to in the "old days." 

I understand that this is healthier.  I'm not going to argue that it isn't.  It is way healthier to make everything from scratch.  But really?  Unless you absolutely don't work and have a lot of money, it isn't always very feasible.  She argued that it was totally possible to eat "slow" and be poor.  I might give you that if you have conveniences like electricity, a fridge/freezer, access to a good supermarket, and no special dietary needs.  I know from my experience that the first hurdle is dietary needs.  If you don't have to supplement your diet with soy milk, egg replacer, or gluten free bread, you are going to spend a lot less money.  Great.

Next we need access to a supermarket.  Possible in more rural areas but less possible in the city.  I realize we're talking about America here, but my experience is that here in Tokyo the supermarkets are smaller and more expensive, while the ones just outside Tokyo are a lot larger and cheaper.  I'm prettttty sure this is the same back home.  And let's not forget that, like I am here in Tokyo, you may be limited to what you can carry if you can't afford a car (or just car-less in general).  So that economical bag of beans is out.  So is the economical, wholesale package of chicken parts.  You're stuck buying smaller amounts of things, which are already more expensive.  When you can choose a frozen dinner or 20 ingredients to make it from scratch, which are you going to choose?  Probably whatever is lighter.

Then you need something to keep it in and heat it up.  You can buy a Hot Pocket and heat it up at the convenience store if you don't have a microwave at home.  Even if you do have cooking implements, you're going to need cooling implements.  If you're rather poor and don't have a fridge or even electricity, there is no way in hell you are going to buy or cook enough of anything to be remotely economical.  The McD's dollar menu is your best bet.  Once again, being that I live in Tokyo, I know what it is to have no fridge or freezer space.  If you have a small fridge or freezer, even if you HAVE it, you are still limited on the amount of bulk cooking you can do.  (I won't get into how my kitchen is basically a gas burner and a sink.  A single burner.)

I wish Maher had prodded her when she said that poor people could easily do the slow food thing.  And not just for the points I just made.  Also for the point that OH MY GOD FOOD TAKES TIME.

Yes, we have crockpots to do some of that work for us, and I guess those count as slow food.  But most food that requires stoves and ovens is going to require a person sitting around and minding that.  If you're poor and working 2 or 3 jobs, when are you going to find that time to mind the stove?  If you have 3 kids swarming around your legs, how are you going to mind the oven and still get stuff done?  The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, the last thing some people want to do is cook.  And it's not satisfying to simply just eat an apple.  You want to eat something satisfying, but you don't want to spend an hour or two preparing it.  And then another 10-20 minutes washing dishes and cleaning up.  This sucks for anyone, but even more so when your time is at a premium and you're worked like a dog for slave wages all day long.  And when "second shift" becomes third or fourth.

Slow food is a great idea if you have the money and the time, or a personal chef to make stuff for you.  I would eat "slow food" all the time if I had a personal chef, slave, robot butler, or house elf to do it for me.  As it is, I find myself opting for the fastest "slow food" I can find.  Like scrambled eggs.  Or peanut butter from the jar. 

I think I would actually like cooking a whole lot more if I weren't FORCED to do it by the circumstance of Japan being stupid about intolerances and allergies. 

Monday, April 5, 2010

Enjoy Nastiness

Did I mention in the other Enjoy Life review how much I hate cookies that are made with raisins and dates as a binder (not as a visible ingredient like chocolate chips are a visible ingredient, though I'm no fan of that either)?  Yeah.  I hate it.  Usually I would see this with "low-cal" cookies to cut the calories in the eggs and milk and whatever.  These have no eggs or dairy.  And with something that contains absolutely no ingredients, you gotta use something to keep it all together.

So your good news, if there is any, is that these cookies contain no gluten, wheat, nuts, soy, eggs, or dairy.  They even don't contain fish or shellfish, which seems very "duh," but which also might have improved the flavor somewhat.  Two tiny little cookies contain 120 calories somehow.  And these are really really tiny.  Even compared to the snickerdoodles.  Just incredibly teensy.

I am not sure how one makes a chocolate cookie with no dairy.  Apparently the answer is "badly."  I could smell the odor of dried fruit from the moment I opened the package.  This one also uses dates, as well as grape, apple, and pear juice.  I guess I'm of the mindset that a chocolate cookie should never contain fruit.  But what do I know?  I decided to give them a shot anyway. 

Horrible. 

The texture was the same as the snickerdoodles, but more offensive because the flavor was just so terrible.  It was like eating a wad of date puree masquerading as a chocolate cookie.  There was probably something like chocolate in there, but it didn't really taste like chocolate.  It tasted like it was something trying to be chocolate.  I suppose if you're a celiac vegan and you've forgotten what a brownie tastes like, maybe it works out for you.  If you're simply celiac, then I hear Betty Crocker has some gluten free brownie mix (I have some in the cupboard, actually, so I'll review it at a later date) that's pretty good.  I wouldn't even bother eating these. 

The only time someone should eat these are:

1.  You're the aforementioned celiac vegan with multiple other allergies
2.  You're stuck on a desert island and this is the only food available
3.  Your mother buys them for you, thinking she's doing something good for you, and you don't want to see her cry

And I might be flexible on #3.  Hopefully your mom could deal with the fact that the cookies she bought you tasted like ass.    

Saturday, April 3, 2010

I fixed it! I fixed it!

If you add cheddar cheese to your Tostitos salsa con queso, nuke it, and then put some chopped up, raw tomato on top (I generally use cherry tomatoes because they're less gritty) it is actually pretty cheesy and good! 

It also takes all the spiciness out of the "medium" flavor.  Which I don't mind at all.  But you have been warned. 

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Mi-Del Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

I must have some sort of body part that is dedicated to metabolizing Oreo cookies.  In the absence of Oreo cookies, it triggers a reaction that causes me to salivate and obsess over and crave Oreo cookies.  That's all I can figure.  I love Oreos more than life itself and would jump in front of a train for them. 

So it's been hard to not be able to eat them.  I see Oreo cheesecake and Oreo ice cream and Oreo this and that, and I want it soooo bad.  But really, I just want an Oreo.  How can I have an Oreo?  I needed something like an Oreo.  NOW.

Well, I found these lovely friends and decided that I would give them a shot.  After all, they LOOK like Oreos, right?

They are not Oreos.

They aren't horrible.  But let me explain how this works, exactly. 

When I opened the package, it was like staring at Oreos again.  Hello, fake Oreos!  And I pulled one out and bit into it.  Absolutely vile.  Like chewing on cardboard.  Just disgusting.  But then as I chewed and took another bite, the flavor started to catch up with itself.  Slowly it became the flavor of an Oreo cookie. 

When I bit into the second cookie, it was a convincing Oreo substitute. 

The aftertaste leaves something to be desired, though.  I'm sure this is a common problem, like my bland cheese problem. 

Well, so here's the thing.  You can eat these Mi-Del sandwich cookies in place of your beloved gluteny chocolate sandwich cookie of choice, but you need to be warned that you MUST eat two cookies in order to appreciate the flavor.  One will not do.  And at 130 calories per two cookies, you're wasting about 70 calories of your day on a cookie that tastes like paper products. 

Enjoy.

I wonder if they would be any good in something like a cheesecake.  I ordinarily eat my chocolate sandwich cookies by halves, but when I tried that with these cookies, found the frosting too bland.  Blah.  (I don't eat them with milk because milk is disgusting, but they might be good for that.  I have no clue.)

Mi-Del Arrowroot Cookies

Back in the early days of my colitis-ing, I had a lot of "safe" foods I would turn to when I was feeling icky or needed something "easy" to eat.  The irony is that now those foods exacerbate my colitis symptoms.  Really amazing, that. 

One of my safe foods (among Teddy Grahams and Goldfish) was animal crackers.  I really like animal crackers because they are just little animal-shaped puffs of cookie, lightly sweet, very crunchy, and not really good or bad for you.  They just ... are. 

It's been a real struggle to find something to be my "safe" food since then.  Most foods are not safe to begin with, and then those that are "safe" often contain hard-to-digest things like oodles of fiber or nuts or tough, fibrous fruits.  I can't get Rice Chex in this country. 

I was pretty thrilled to find these gluten-free animal crackers in the "special diet" section of Foreign Buyers Club.  Animal crackers!  That I can eat!  Oh joy of joys!!  I put them in the cart and waited my 32-39 days.

These cookies, I feel I should start, contain eggs, milk, and soy.  They are not good for people who are sensitive or allergic to those items.  And they claim to be produced in an area full of wheat and nuts, although their products meet "gluten-free" guidelines.  Okay, we've got that out of the way ...

On the front of the package I can see a bear, a buffalo, a camel, and a ... a ... is that ... what on earth is that?  It looks like a cross between a baby cow and a bear.  What on earth is a cross between a cow and a bear?  I can't even adequately make a humorous combination of the two words.  All that comes up in my mind is "crowbar."  I guess that almost works.

I opened the bag and there was a pleasant vanilla scent.  I don't know if these actually contain vanilla ("natural flavorings") but they do smell like a nice cookie.  (The bag has an excellent design so that you can fold it over and keep the cookies as fresh as possible.  I have to say I was impressed.) 

I pulled out a cookie.  We'll say it was a camel.  My first impression was that it was flat, not puffy like an animal cracker.  Then I bit into it.  It wasn't crumbly either, like either kind of animal cracker (the kinds in a plastic tub or the kinds that come in the train car box and taste like McDonaldland cookies).  It was kind of hard.  I bit through it and the cookie was very buttery, like a shortbread cookie but with a different texture.  It was a good flavor, but not an animal cracker flavor.

I ate a few more.  They were pretty good, and pretty un-caloric.  A serving of crackers is 10 and that gives you about 130 calories, so they are very diet-friendly like an ordinary animal cracker.  As for nutritional value, you won't find much more than a little iron and protein.  I suppose, like an ordinary animal cracker. 

After eating a few I started to notice the aftertaste.  I'm not sure what flour or ingredient causes it, but they do have a pretty unpleasant aftertaste.  Kind of sour and bitter.  And the only cure is to eat another cracker, which may be some kind of devious plot on the part of the folks at Mi-Del.  (I guess you could also eat/drink something else.) 

So in conclusion ... good flavor, bad aftertaste.  I can't really recommend these for people who are aching for an animal cracker, as they don't resemble them in anything but shape.  But if you've been dying for Walker's Shortbreads?  These are like a flat, crunchy version of those, shaped like bear-cows.  And they would make a good snack for you or your kids (or you if you're a kid) or whomever else.  They come in a conveniently tall bag and they don't have any trans fat.  So if that's one of your big worries in life, worry no more.  Huzzah.

Ragu Double Cheddar Sauce

I remember back when I was a university student in Japan for a year abroad.  I was pining for macaroni and cheese, which was impossible to find anywhere.  I found a jar of this Ragu cheddar sauce and mixed it with pasta and ... was extremely disappointed.  There was absolutely no flavor.  I gave it one more shot, thinking I had just undercooked the pasta or not drained it enough or something, but no.  It was just awful sauce.

Fast forward to my wheatless state.  I had been purchasing cases and cases of Annie's delightfully delicious macaroni and cheese--deluxe--which was the bestest macaroni and cheese EVER, and I was not about to give up eating macaroni and cheese for something like a wheat intolerance.  So I went back to Old Cheesy and hoped I could make it edible.

I read around on the internet and found some people discussing how to add flavor to it.  So I poured some of it in a bowl, added salt and pepper, and then some grated cheese.  Microwaved it.  And put pasta in it.  And it was surprisingly edible.

See, here's the thing:  Ragu needs to think about upgrading their Double Cheddar to maybe Triple or Quadruple Cheddar, because there is no %@#a&ing cheddar in this sauce.  If this is DOUBLE, then maybe quadruple or quintuple would make something with some actual flavor.  When I buy a jar of something, I want to use it straight from the jar.  I don't want to have cheese on hand to add to cheese sauce.  Because that defeats the purpose of buying a sauce.  I could make my own sauce. 


What is up with all these bland, lackluster cheese sauces?  Come on, guys.  I checked just to make sure that Tostitos and Ragu were not in cahoots, but Tostitos is Pepsi and Ragu is Unilever. 

Do not buy this sauce unless you are either really desperate or else want to add your own special touch to the sauce.  It is not worth it.  It's simply bad by itself.  The alfredo sauce isn't much better, as I recall.  There just HAS to be a better cheese sauce out there you can use on pasta or chicken or whatever.  Has to be.  HAS TO BE!!

Tostitos Salsa Con Queso Medium

That's a big jar.  Cheez.

If there's one thing Japan is not quite clear on, it's Mexican food.  Not even Tex-Mex style Mexican food.  In the mind of Japan, Mexican food = "tacos."  Not even ONE taco.  It's always plural.  "Tacos."  There's also Okinawan "taco rice," which people either don't know is pseudo-Mexican food or don't know is Okinawan.

Oh sure, there are a few Mexican restaurants here and there.  There are some El Torito outlets about and a few independent restaurants.  But what I miss are nachos.  Not just nachos, but nachos with neon orange cheese goo.  I found a couple of jars and cans of goo, but they were either not very good or contained ingredients I couldn't eat.

I turned to my friends at Foreign Buyers Club to see what they had.  They didn't have much.  A giant tub of something that would be impossible to store.  Six jars of Mrs. Renfro's, which either was not very good (according to someone on the internet) or fine (wishful thinking).  And Tostitos brand.  I know Tostitos brand is edible for people like me, and it was something I'm sure I'd had in the past and was edible enough.  It would do.

I bought some salt-free tortilla chips and waited for my jars of cheesiness to arrive at my door.

Now, the Tostitos cheese goo isn't terrible.  It's just not very good either.  (Desperate times call for desperate measures.)

I don't generally prefer medium heat, but that was the only one available.  And it was delightfully medium.  It isn't too spicy and it isn't unspicy.  So that's accurate.  And there sure is salsa in there to make it salsa con queso.  There are bits of peppers and things that you can see and eat and everything.  Great.  But I have a slight quibble with the queso part.  Yes, it looks like cheese.  And it tastes almost like cheese too.  But very watered down cheese.  When I want orange goo I want a thick, rich, cheddar cheese flavor.  This has a mild, bland, timid cheese flavor that seems to want to avoid upstaging the salsa element, but didn't realize that the salsa was going to be about 10 minutes late.  Whoops.

So what else can I say about Tostitos's salsa con queso?  It does the job, I guess.  I didn't have much of a choice.  It went well with my salt-free tortilla chips (as well as bland cheese product can) and it won't make me ill, at least from a wheat/gluten standpoint.  But if you can choose something else I would definitely recommend it.  Tostitos should be a last resort or a next-to-last resort.  If you can't eat gluten, it's a safe choice, but surely something else must be safe too.  Perhaps you could add a little cheese to it and make it taste more like what it's supposed to be.  Like I had to do with the Ragu cheese sauce.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Hormel Chili

Why on earth would I review a can of chili?  Namely because I can, but also because I just ate it. 


When I was a kid, I didn't like chili.  I didn't realize that this was because my mother, who is NOT A COOK or a chef or anyone who should ever produce food, used to make chili using ketchup, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, and kidney beans.  I'm sure there were other ingredients, but good lord, I do not like tomatoes all that much and all the saltines in the world couldn't make her chili taste edible. 

Then one day I decided to sample the school cafeteria's chili and was surprised to find that I actually liked it.  And I wondered why the heck my mom's chili was so awful and the school's chili, which was SCHOOL food, was so good.

I also liked Frito Chili Pie.  I tried it once at Sonic and that was it.  I was hooked.  Frito Chili Freakin Pie.  And I decided I wanted to make it at home, too.  But who wants to MAKE a pot of chili to do that, right?  So I picked up a can of Hormel and hoped for the best.  And I was very surprised that not only was it good, but it was the same level of good I had experienced at school. 

This might not sound like a glowing review.  "It tastes like school food?  What?  Ew!" 

Dude, it's chili in a can.  This is not gourmet food.  But when you want chili and you want it now and you don't want anything really offensive to the stomach (it isn't spicy or anything) and that doesn't contain weird stuff or taste ketchupy, Hormel is like some kind of magical deity floating down from the heavens and bestowing fantastic cans of bliss upon you.  Plus, I can get it in Japan EASILY.

Unfortunately, Fritos are something that were available briefly in Japan for about two months and are almost impossible to get.  Ditto for Velveeta.  So my Frito Chili Pie must be re-created with tortilla chips and actual cheese.  Which is good enough.  It would be hard to fake the chili.  Then you'd be either making it (annoying) or using something like curry (kind of gross). 

Additionally, Hormel is meat.  And protein.  Being in Japan where everything is slathered in soy-based sauce, meat is difficult to get pre-made.  If I want something meaty and don't want to cook?  Hormel is there for me.  I love you, Hormel.

Byron Bay Gluten Free White Chocolate Macadamia Cookie

National Azabu is a supermarket hidden away in the somewhat un-Japanese area around Hiroo Station.  I used to go there for various goodies (cheese, cereal, frozen meat pies), and since being unable to eat most foods, I've taken to going there to get the few random gluten-free foods they carry.

There are very, very few.

So I was really surprised when I turned around to humor myself at the cracker and cookie kiosk and saw the words "GLUTEN FREE" staring back at me from a display of cookies.

"Whaaaaaat?" I said to myself in my head.  And I grabbed up one of the white chocolate macadamia cookies and two of the triple chocolate cookies (the only two that were left).

I am a cookie racist.  I automatically assume that a chocolate cookie will be better than a white cookie.  So I only bought ONE of the white cookies despite a relatively full display.  And I ate it relatively soon after purchasing my cookies, thinking it was "the bad one."  I always save the best for last.

Oh no.  No no no no no.  It was the good one.  Nay, the BEST one.

I'm sure I had a Byron Bay cookie in the past, when I could eat the wheatins freely.  I don't remember it being exceptional.  But somehow the flavor of this particular cookie was just ... awesome.  Oftentimes cookies are too sweet in a really odd way, like the way my old nemesis RAISINS are sweet.  These cookies are pleasantly sweet, but not too much.  The white chocolate and macadamias are almost indistinguishable by texture and sight, but both have a distinct and lovely flavor.  (And let me be honest, I do not like white chocolate.)

My only gripe would be that the cookies are fairly crumbly, but that's something you expect from gluten-free goods.  And crunchy cookies.  See, I don't usually even like crunchy cookies.  But this one tastes so good that I don't care that it isn't chewy.

Oh, and I have another gripe.  EXPENSSSSSIVE.  I thought I was being ripped off at 315 yen per cookie here in Japan, but then I saw that if you buy the cookies in US$ they're about $3 each anyway.  I think the company is Australian, so maybe that has something to do with it.  (Australia is full of hardy, Vegemite-eating, kangaroo-ass-kicking people who are 8 feet tall and can handle paying $3 for a cookie.) 

Friday, March 26, 2010

Enjoy Life Snickerdoodles

I really like cookies and I really like cinnamon.  I often bake my own cookies (using rice flour) or make cinnamon sweets to satisfy those cravings.  But you know, sometimes I get tired.  Sometimes I would rather not buy ingredients.  Sometimes I wish I could just go out and buy a damn cookie.

But I live in Japan, and that's not possible.  Japan barely knows what it means to have an allergy, let alone a sensitivity to anything.  They occasionally get on this kick of "let's use rice flour!" to promote domestic consumption (since they don't grow wheat), but they still use wheat gluten in those products, or mix the rice flour with wheat flour.  Lame. 

A friend sent me a box with some goodies in it.  Among those goodies was a box of Enjoy Life Soft Baked Snickerdoodle Cookies.  I was pretty excited, because I'd seen these on Foreign Buyers Club (a site where you can order largely American goods and have them shipped to you in Japan), but they were only available by the case.  I didn't want to order 12 boxes of them, so I had passed on the opportunity to try them and figured I just never would.  At least, until I could reach some kind of American shore, which was not in danger of happening anytime soon.


Let's start with the box, shall we?  The picture shows some cracked, beautifully brown little cookies.  One of them has inexplicably been broken in half (it hasn't been bitten into, so I suppose someone tore it in half and ate one half and just left the other one on the pile for someone else to find later).  The box tells us it's "nut and gluten free" but also devoid of wheat, dairy, egg, soy, fish, shellfish (thank god, no shrimp in my cookies), peanuts and tree nuts.  And just for the heck of it, it also does not contain casein, potato, sesame, or sulfites.  Good to know.  Very few people can't not eat these cookies.  This is a good thing.

A serving is two cookies, and there are six servings in the box.  (They're packaged in twos in a plastic tray in the box.)  Each serving has 130 calories and 4.5 grams of fat.  There isn't much redeeming content, but they do have 6% of your vitamin A and 2% of your calcium and iron.  To be fair, I think Oreos have quite a bit of your iron as well, so this isn't some kind of huge achievement in healthy cookie-ing.  Two cookies will also give you 8% of your fiber.  I could make a comment about this, but I'll move on to ...

The flavor!

Of course, you want to know how these taste.  Well, so, imagine you're at a party and there are chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies.  The chocolate chip cookies were homemade by someone's grandmother, but the oatmeal cookies are from a box.  You've been DJing the whole time and when you finally get to the cookie table, hoping to try one of these giant, scrumptious chocolate chip cookies, only the oatmeal cookies are left. 

Well, you still want a cookie, so you eat it.  It's okay.  It's not bad.  It's a cookie.  But it's not the cookie you wanted. 

The Enjoy Life Snickerdoodles contain grape and date, and you can tell.  I mean, you can actually see what I assume is bits of date in the cookie if you bite into it.  So while my first impression on my first bite was, "Cinnamon!"  My second was, "RAISIN.  I TASTE RAISIN."  And it wasn't raisin, but close enough.  I would, to be honest, be far more offended if this were a chocolate cookie, as raisins are used in low-cal or low-fat cookies to try to pretend to be chocolate flavor.

The flavor is kind of dark, like an oatmeal cookie.  The cookies contain brown sugar, which would contribute to that.  When I think of snickerdoodles, I think of a kind of sugar cookie with cinnamon in it.  This is more like a cinnamony oatmeal cookie but without the oatmeal.  But with the raisin flavor and without the raisins. 

Which brings me to the texture.  I've seen a lot of complaints about the texture.  I just figure when you go gluten free you sacrifice a lot of texture in the name of ... well ... being gluten free.  The cookies are soft.  In fact, so soft and sticky that each set in the package is like a mated pair, bonded for life.  Definitely not dry and crumbly, as gluten, egg, and dairy-free goods will be.  But the texture is a bit gritty.  Chalk it up to the dates or the flour.  But it's really no worse than an oatmeal or whole grain type of cookie.

Besides, beggars can't be choosers.  And that's pretty much the summation of my feelings on these cookies.  Oh, you could bake your own cookies, but sometimes you just don't want to ( or can't) do that.  If your problem is just gluten, there might be a better cookie out there.  If you have other allergies or sensitivities, you might be out of luck.  This might be your only hope for something like a normal cookie life.  So they serve their purpose.  Can't say I love them or would crave them desperately, but they are definitely edible.      

Hola.

This is a blog I set up because I often find myself scouring the internet for product reviews.  When it comes to foods, it's a bit difficult because tastes are different.  But I want to do my part for the "sensitive" community. 

Largely, I'll be reviewing wheat and gluten-free foods.  Because I'm a lazybutt, I'll be linking to Amazon when possible.  But that makes it easier for you to purchase the product.  (I'll probably link directly to the product elsewhere when Amazon is not a possibility.  Take pictures myself?  Oh goodness.  Not yet.)