Here's the deal ...

I'm alive, but I went into this awkward stage of life where I had no internet for 8 months, then was supremely busy for the next ... well, until now.  And I'm not sure how busy I will be after this next week (once school starts), soooooo ...

On the plus side, I've been having trouble with dairy recently and so I've been trying all kinds of weird new things.

Wait, did I say "plus side?"  Actually, it's really horrible.  And fake dairy products are disgusting.  Pretty much.

Putting in a good word for ... Applebees!

I was down in SEK, visiting my family for a couple of weeks this month.  There isn't a lot to do in my hometown, and when I say that, people seem to want to compare it to far bigger cities.  (Hint:  18,000 > 120,000).  It's a college town where the university, school system, and hospital are probably the primary employers in the area. 

Notice I said "area" and not "my town."  Because unless you want to drive an hour or more (nearest "big" city is 2-3 hours by car), my hometown is ... it.  And basically we have some restaurants, theaters, bars, and a bowling alley.  Fun times.

One thing we do have is a small Applebees.  We also have a small Chili's.  That's about it, but we do have them.  I looked at the gf menu options for both and saw that Chili's was a lot of "no bread, bun, or sauce" options.  Applebees, on the other hand, had a mountain of sides and a nice handful of fairly complete meals.

Of course:   YMMV and cross contamination, etc. etc.

We asked for the allergen menu even though I'd printed the gluten page and brought it with me.  The hostess wasn't sure they had one.  We were seated, and within a few minutes a gal I presume was the manager came by with a stack of pages.   She checked that my page was up to date and seemed relieved that she didn't have to dig through the stack.

I got a NY strip, which comes with garlic mashed potatoes (yummmmm) and veggies.  Everything was good and I had no reaction.  The manager came by again to make sure everything was okay, and I took half my food home for later.

I went back a couple of times.  I had queso blanco and then sizzling chicken and cheese.  Both were tasty and didn't affect me except to make me full and happy. 

It was really nice to not play the "no gravy, no bread, no seasoning" game.  Although the list is still small, it's large compared to Chili's and full of flavor.  I've never been a fan of stripping all the flavor from food and going out only to pay $20 for flavorless steak and steamed broccoli.  So this is quite nice.  I felt like a normal person!

To bad we have no Appamublebees here.  :(

Again, ymmv.

You can find their allergen menu on their website, or just google "applebees allergen menu."

I apologize if the name is supposed to have an apostrophe.  I ... don't care enough to check.

Lucy's Cinnamon Thins

Right before I threw the box out ...

 First I'd like to ask why the cookie is called "Cinnamon Thin" when there are obviously several cookies in a box.  Shouldn't they be "Cinnamon Thins?"  For the purpose of this article, I will call them "Thins."  I really have a hard time calling a plural object by a singular name. 



There are a million brands of gluten free packaged cookies on the market these days.  Or at least, it feels like a million, doesn't it?  And so many of them are absolutely horrible.

They're too gritty, too dry, too weirdly chewy, taste like raisins, too sweet, not sweet enough, and so on.  I've had one brand absolutely wow me (Wow Baking).  A couple are fairly edible.  The rest have been disappointing and a big waste of money.

I like cinnamon, so when I saw these cookies on sale for $3.99 at Safeway, I was thrilled.  It was an opportunity to try a cookie that would normally cost at least a dollar more.  I've wasted so much money looking for a good cookie that I really really really wished that these would be good.

But they LOOK so nice, don't they?  A+ for pretty cookie.

I don't think they were awful, really.  They were just too sweet.  Really, really sweet.  I prefer a cookie to be a bit more buttery and subtle, but this was ... painfully sweet.  There wasn't enough cinnamon flavor, and there wasn't enough of any specific flavor, really.  At least they might have been really good sugar cookies if not for the sickening sweetness.

I had Lucy's chocolate chip cookies once in the past and I remember being pretty underwhelmed by them.  I would be pretty hesitant to give Lucy another shot in the future.

Each cookie is pretty diet-worthy at only 40ish calories.

Contains soy, soy, soy, soy, dairy, eggs and nuts.  (Seriously, there is a LOT of soy in there.) 

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Brownie Mix

The way I see it, there are different levels of convenience when it comes to baked goods.
1.  The pre-packaged baked good
2.  The refrigerated/frozen baked good
3.  Pre-packaged mix
4.  Making your own from scratch

The pro to pre-packaged mix is that it's convenient, but you still have a certain amount of flexibility in how you cook it.  If you don't like using butter, you can use margarine.  If you want to add chocolate chips, you can do that.  If you want to use egg replacer, that option is available to you.

There are several pre-packaged baking mixes on the market right now for gluten free customers to choose from.  Betty Crocker is, as far as I know, the only mainstream company to wade into this strange, unfamiliar territory.  The plus side to a mainstream company producing gluten free baking mix?  PRICE.  Not only is it cheaper than other mixes available, but because it's Betty Crocker it's often available in ordinary supermarkets (where other brands usually are not) and it may even be on sale!

(I bought this one on sale.  Whoo!  Sale!)

These brownies are pretty simple to make.  They only require half a stick of melted butter and two eggs.  Mix mix mix mix mix, spread into a pan or something, bake around 30 minutes, cool, eat.  Not only is that easy, it's the kind of easy you can do with kids or in your spare time.  (I like a good Tollhouse, but waiting for the butter to get soft, creaming it with x, adding y, adding z, etc. etc. is just a pain in the butt.) 

The four I didn't eat.

I don't have a traditional kitchen situation in my ... er ... house.  I have one of those electric skillets with a little wire rack in it.  I tried baking these before in the skillet and they were dry on bottom and undercooked on top.  It ... was not good.

This time I baked them in these little silicone baking cups.  I bought them ages ago (on sale in the supermarket ... impulse buy) and never used them.  It took quite a while to bake in the skillet (I had to pump it up to 400º) but they did eventually bake, and in the end I had six very large brownies.

I ate two.  One box is 2400 calories, so ... do the math there.

This is my third time using this mix.  As you can see, I liked it enough to buy it twice (it was on sale so I bought two boxes the second time).  The reason I like it is that it's a gluten free product but it tastes like a regular, glutenful brownie.  That is a big deal.  It isn't dry, it isn't bitter, it isn't gritty or grainy.  It's a chocolatey, moist, chewy brownie that tastes exactly like a brownie should.  So enjoy!  Add nuts, marshmallows, icing, whatever!  I once baked them with coconut shavings and almond slivers, just because I had them on hand.  Why not?

I paid $5.50 on sale at Don Quijote, and I've seen it on sale for a similar price at Safeway.  You probably don't live on an island, so you can probably get a better price.

The ingredients are:  Sugar, semi-sweet chocolate chips, cocoa, rice flour, potato starch, corn starch, xantham gum, and salt.  It contains soy (in the chocolate chips).  There are sixteen servings in the box (ha ha, yeah right), and each serving is 150 calories and 5g of fat (prepared).  If you like your food to have nutrition in it (I do), there's a little iron in the mix and it ends up with some vit A and protein when you're all done.

Other varieties available are white cake, chocolate cake, and chocolate chip cookies.

Good Nuze!

I was poking around the big Safeway in the Kapahulu general area region street district and lo!  They have a whole, tiny GF section!  I was so surprised!

At first I noticed the Gluten Free Cafe snack bars.  Then I realized they were near some gluten free granola bars.  Then I realized there was Glutenfreeda oatmeal above that and some Schar cheese bites below ... as well as pastas, macaroni and cheese, cookies, and so on.  All in a happy, teensy little section! 

I'm always thrilled when the supermarkets start stocking more GF stuff.  Foodland has been stocking a lot more of it lately as well, although Safeway is way cheaper.  I feel far more comfortable paying $5.50 for Udi's bread than the 7.00+ that other stores ask.  I think the next best price is usually at Vim and Vigor, although I'm sour on then after the WAY WAY WAY expired Tasty Bite.  (Yes, I ate it.  No, I didn't die.  It was still fine.  Just ... about ... 8 months expired or so, which is sad for a product with an 18 month shelf life.)

My birthday is in about a month and I'm trying to decide what I want to do for that.  Whatever I eat must be smothered in rainbow chip frosting.  I have been longing for rainbow chip frosting for years and years.  I might just buy a jar of it and eat that instead of a cake.  :D :D :D

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.