Bell & Evans Gluten Free Chicken Tenders

http://www.bellandevans.com/glutenfree

I stumbled upon these products at the local Whole Foods.  At first I was put off by the $9 price tag (me hates the expensive foodz) but I was eager to try them since I was dying for some chicken strips.  I had tried the Ian's strips in the past, which were a bit bland and also teensyweensy.  I hoped these would be more adult sized.

In my box there were seven strips.  Four were smaller and three were fairly large.  I'm sure you could eat them all in a serving if you were super hungry, but I found that eating the smaller and then the larger worked well for me.

The chicken strips reminded me of Applebee's.  I always liked those chicken strips because they were flat and thin and soft, so I think that's what really made me think of Applebee's.  The Bell & Evans strips are very thin and flat and not difficult to eat at all.  The chicken is moist and chickeny, and the breading is ... well, it's just sort of there.  It didn't taste like nothing, but it didn't have oodles of flavor.

All-in-all, I would call it a pretty good experience.  Except for the price.  Ha ha ha.

The strips are considered "gluten free" but are made in a facility that processes wheat.  So, eat at your own risk.  They do state on their website, "Our processing plant is monitored sensitive to less than 10 parts per million during production."  If you're super-duper-pooper sensitive, you might want to stay away.  I had no problem with them.  You might also want to avoid these if you can't handle corn, soy, or egg.

Their chicken is also raised without hormones or antibiotics, so you can feel secure knowing that it's basically just chicken in your chicken.  The ingredients list is pretty simple, which is always a bonus. 

A box claims to be 3 servings with 210 calories per serving.  Not bad at all, if you bake them.  They're also a good source of protein. 

Blah blah blah ...

The thing for me about chicken tenders is that making them is such a PITA.  You have to buy the chicken and all the ingredients for breading.  You have to buy oil.  You have to bread your chicken and then fry it, and get oil everywhere and then have your kitchen smell like oil forever, and then if you're single like I am, you have too much chicken around for eons.  No fun.  This is a great, simple solution.  And to be honest, probably costs as much per serving (if I assume 2 servings in a box) as some of those McDonald's chicken strips. 

The only thing missing was a basket and some french fries.  Man, I wish there were a good place to get fries near my house ...

Good for you! Bad for you!

I had a horrible time trying to find a coconut today.  You would think in freakin' Hawaii you could find coconuts, right?  I went to two Foodland stores and the only coconuts they had were fairly young and mostly moldy.  MOLDY.  I like mature coconut, and ... well ... non-moldy ones, too.  I went to both the Ala Moana location and the S. Beretania location.  Lots of young, moldy coconuts.

But I was pretty surprised to see they had both upped their GF selections!  The Ala Moana location had Tinkyada pasta, several Ener-G breads, and more than one variety of the Mi-Del gluten free cookies.  (Usually everyone just carries the ginger snaps.)  On previous visits they've just basically had Nut Thins and Tasty Bite curries, and that's been roughly the extent of their gluten free food selection.  So this was a big surprise!

Then when I went to the S. Beretania location, I noticed they had Rudi's and Udi's breads!  Wow! 

Wow ... wow ... WOW WTF THAT PRICE OH MY GOLLY GOSH.

See, it's all fine and great and good to carry what are considered two of the best GF breads, but ... geez.  Try to be a little more Safeway, a little less Whole Foods.

You see, Safeway recently has been carrying the Udi's and SOMETIMES Rudi's breads as well.  At Safeway the Udi's only runs about $5.50, and for a while was on sale for 4.50.  Rudi's is roughly $7.  At Foodland, Udi's was about $7.70 and Rudi's was a dollar more.  That's roughly what both brands cost at Whole Foods, which is a store known for its insanely high prices. 

I was so thrilled that Safeway got these breads, since the prices end up being so low.  I'm a little annoyed that Foodland is going more the WF route.  It isn't even very competitive, since most stores that aren't WF charge $6.60-7ish.  Rudi's at least has its scarcity on its side.  But Udi's is at almost every single Safeway, Whole Foods, Vim & Vigor, and Kokua.  Honestly, if you want to be competitive, you should try to be competitive. 

Speaking of Vim & Vigor, I used to enjoy shopping there, but I just discovered that a food product I purchased there expired last August.  Crap, I wasn't even in Hawaii last August.  And this product supposedly has an 18 month shelf life, so I wonder how long it sat in there.  (I ate it and haven't died yet.  Retort curry probably doesn't go bad.) 

You know what I really wish we had in Hawaii (other than coconuts, ha ha ha)?  Schar breads.  I really want to try those.  I want a baguette!  I wonder if I'll ever find one anywhere.

Glutino Vanilla Wafer Cookies

I bought these in the hopes that they would be something Kit-Kat-ish to fill that void that was previously filled by ... Kit-Kats.

I ate a couple on the way home, despite the horrid 50mph gusts ... and the rain ... and my umbrella being shoved in my face.  I managed to actually get two of these cookies into my mouth without them flying away!  And they were ... nothing special.

I'm not sure why they tasted like nothing.  I expected them to be more like those little wafer cookies you could get in the "select your own cookie bins" in the supermarket when I was younger.  Those kind of peach-colored vanilla wafers that had no coating but were oddly citrusy and delicious.  I thought this might be the chocolate-covered version, and I was wrong.  So, so wrong.

I took them home and put them in the fridge.  I was sure they wouldn't last outside the fridge, since it gets into the 80s during the day and that's a bad climate for chocolate. 

The second time I ate them, they were a bit better than the first.  Not flavorless as before, but kind of pleasantly sweet.

The last time I ate them, they had that interesting tang and the vanilla was actually detectable in the cookie. 

So I'm not sure what to say about these.  Open them, stick them in the fridge, and wait a week??  Honestly, I don't like buying foods with such complicated directions.  I might try another flavor in the future to see if it's any better straight out of the box, but maybe not.

I think the price was $4-5 or so for 16 wafer cookies.  Glutino sells larger "candy bar" wafers, but I chose these since a serving was 4 and I could choose to only have a little sugar or a lot rather than having so much thrust upon me at once in one of the larger bars.  Like most Glutino products, these lack nutrition.  They must have had something, since I actually bothered to buy them!

As an aside ...

Ants prefer Rudi's to Udi's 10000:1.

I never had ants attack my Udi's bread.  This morning I found a swarm of ants all over the inside of my bag of Rudi's.  Yuck.  Glad I got it on sale with a coupon to boot. 

Never had ants in my Udi's bread.  Must be that evaporated cane juice.  Does Udi's have that?  I know Udi's isn't SWEET at any rate.  Still, I was disappointed to throw out most of a loaf, especially since it's such a pain in the ass to find the stuff.

Rudi & Udi: Why You Got the Same Name?

I've been a pretty dedicated Udi-eater these past few months.  Safeway recently started selling their bread for a good price, so I was going there to get my bread rather than the few other shops that have it on hand most of the time (Vim & Vigor, Kokua, and Whole Foods generally have it in stock).  Paying $5.50 was way way WAY better than the $7+ the other shops charged.  It made me feel like a human being again.  Almost.

Then they printed off a coupon for me to use.  The coupons I got were, oddly, not for anything I'd actually bought but for KINDS of the things I had bought.  So there I was with Sargento cheese and Udi's gf bread, and I had coupons for Kraft cheese and Rudi's gf bread.  Since the coupon was for $2 off, I thought it might be worth it to try out Rudi and see if he (or she, I guess) was any better than Udi.

Conte's Frozen Pizza: Florentine and Margherita

http://www.contespasta.com/specialty.htm#

Frozen pizza is something I enjoy eating sometimes.  I do make a lot of pizzas, but I don't like always having cheese and sauce and toppings on hand.  Sometimes I just want to pop a pizza in the oven and enjoy. 

I tried Amy's frozen cheese pizza.  The cheese was all right, though there wasn't much of it, but the crust was too gritty and slightly bitter, like brown rice. 

I tried Glutino and it was "okay," but not super.  Kind of like a really cheap frozen pizza, except it cost $8.

I went to Whole Foods and spied a different variety of pizza that looked actually delicious.  Conte's makes some pasta items that also look interesting, but with my limited kitchen resources, I haven't been able to try them. 

The first pizza I took home was the Mushroom Florentine.  It was $11 and as one person I ate it in two servings, which means $5.50 apiece.  Not bad.  The size isn't huge, but probably comparable to Amy's.  I would guess 10" since it fits in my 11" skillet. 

I don't think I let this one cook enough, because it had almost no flavor.  It's hard to cook in a little skillet, so the crust wasn't singed enough.  When I re-heated the other half, keeping it on the bottom of the skillet rather than on the rack, it tasted much better.  But what I think was still lacking in this case was a clear ... sauce.  If it had had sauce in it, I think I would have liked it more.  There was just nothing salty or flavorful enough to pop out and enhance the flavors.  I'm not sure what it "needs," but the somewhat flavorless crust and cheese and mushrooms together just kind of melded into one big ball of bland. 

Given that, I thought the Margherita flavor would be better. 

It cost the same and was the same size as the Florentine pizza.  Margherita is a traditional flavor of pizza, with tomato and basil.  (It's supposed to be like the Italian flag.)  The picture shows giant tomato bits on top that almost could mislead you into thinking that the pizza has pepperoni on it.  Actually, when I opened the pizza I expected to see tomato.  No, it was just cheese.

This time I let it cook more than I did the last time.  It definitely made the crust tastier.  It needs to brown/singe just a tad on the bottom, in my opinion.  Basil is just an interesting flavor, and the pizza is quite basil-y.  This one was, in my opinion, better tasting than the other just because it had enough "different" flavors for them to stand out.

You'll also be glad to know that these pizzas do NOT have an overabundance of sauce (something traditional frozen pizzas often have) and have plenty of cheese. 

My big, giant complaint about these pizzas is ... the box.  When I was trying to pick one out, the boxes all felt weak and encased in ice,  I picked one that didn't have any ice on it, but by the time I got home (about 30 minutes) the box had basically ... melted.  It was soaked and torn and misshapen.  The same thing happened with the next pizza.  I feel like for all that the pizzas are pretty good, the packaging is made out of ... paper.  I buy a lot of frozen foods and sometimes wait 40 or 50 minutes or even an hour to get home.  I don't have a freezer and store everything in the coldest part of my mini fridge, or cook it as soon as I get home, so the thawing isn't a huge deal.  But oftentimes I get home 40 minutes later or whatever, and the food is STILL TOTALLY FROZEN.  And the boxes are holding up fine. 

So I don't understand why the boxes in this case just disintegrate.  It's peculiar. 

Food For Life English Muffins

One thing I wish I could still eat is the simple and tasty Egg McMuffin.  Think about it:  Of all the fast foods you can buy, an Egg McMuffin is probably the healthiest and most real items you can get at a mainstream fast food restaurant.  You know what's in it.  You can't hide much.  It's an English muffin, a slice of Canadian bacon, an egg, and cheese.  Fake cheese, okay.  But cheese.

I have tried to mimic this with some success.  I had some rice buns in Japan that were good enough for mimicking English muffins.  I could use one of those microwave egg poachers and then ordinary sliced ham to make a replica that was delicious enough.  But what I really wished I had was an actual English muffin.  *sigh*

I saw these in the store long ago but had no desire to buy them.  I finally bought a pack ($6.09) with the hope that I could make some attempt at mcmuffining.

The first time I ate one of these muffins, I actually opted for jam and butter.  They are already somewhat split and need to be cut the rest of the way and toasted.  I was apprehensive because the muffin literally felt like drying cement as I was putting the knife through it.  It was dense and heavy, and I worried that it wouldn't turn out very well.

But actually, after two rounds of toasting (real English muffins are also persnickety like this) it was crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, somewhat dense, and tasted ... like an English muffin.

I later tried it as a sandwich, and it worked quite well.  Sometimes the muffins aren't split in a very symmetrical fashion, so you end up with a tiny lid and a big, heavy bottom.  This is sort of a problem, but not a huge one.  Overall I think they satisfy a need that we all have for living a normal life, including enjoying the various types of breads we enjoyed before and make a very good substitute.