Finding Gluten Free Products

Bought these in Florida, but you can buy
cauliflower crackers at Costco in Orillia.

In Ontario it isn't always easy to find really good gluten free products ... at least not where I live. In Orillia, there aren't the same amount of choices available in the grocery stores, and we don't have a lot of specialty shops to find special dietary products.

In town, there are a few places that are beginning to carry more gluten free products, including one of my favourites - M&M Foods. Because we have local access, and they have good quality foods, I was really happy to find that they have a selection of some of my favourites that are now gluten free, including the delicious breaded chicken breasts (yes, real meat, not processed meat), the fish as well, and their chicken burgers. Now they also have some of the dessert bars in gluten free and all of this only discovered after we got back from Florida. Last year before we left, we didn't have any of those options available in gluten free.

A Surprising Kitchen Gadget

I bought this little gadget as joke for my husband. Have you figured out what it is yet?  It looks a little bit like an old-fashioned egg slicer, but it isn't.

My husband loves strawberries ... but me, not so much. In fact, not at all. He buys them at home (in Canada) in those little 1 pint packs, but then he sticks them in the fridge and won't eat them unless I clean them for him.  I don't eat them, nor use them so after a week or so, they go in the compost bin. It's supposed to be his job to clean and cut them, but never gets around to doing it.

Hillbilly Farms Gluten Free Bakery

While on our way to Dade City (from Lakeland, FL) one day we chanced a stop at this little gluten free bakery we found along the highway ... next to nothing really. There's a nice lot with grass, and a little outdoor patio, but the fact that it was gluten free is what made us stop. I'd been trying to find a bread that was moist, and not dry like most in the stores.

Hillbilly Farms Bakery - our fave place to stop.

Overdue Reviews - Gluten Free at Aldi's

Last year in November (2018) I had a few appointments set with my naturopathic doctor to see if she could offer any suggestions or help with an issue I was having with my thyroid. I was diagnosed with a non-functioning thyroid (hypothyroidism) the year before, and each time I went for blood work, my family doctor had to change the dosage. It never seemed to hit the right dose to keep my numbers where they should be.

Delicious Gluten Free Granola from Aldi's

The naturopath thought there might be a chance that I had Hashimoto's because I had several auto-immune diseases. There's really no simple test for Hashimoto's, but one of the things most sufferers seem to have found is that being on a totally gluten free diet helped them, a lot.  My naturopath suggested that I try that for a month.

The other thought was that sometimes a total diet change like that can kick start your metabolism, and I'd also complained about gaining a little weight that I now couldn't seem to lose. She said I wasn't eating enough calories (I was dubious about that), and that my body wouldn't burn them because it thought I was starving it (I wasn't.)

The Gotham Steel Low Fat Grill

I bought myself one of the Gotham Steel grills "as seen on TV".  I don't normally buy a lot of products advertised like that. Commercials like that always make me wonder if the products are as good as they say, or at least work the way they say.

My dad used to run out and buy all those "StarFrit" products that you used to see on TV.  He loved odd little gadgets like that but he didn't cook so he didn't really use those products. My mom would try them but in the end, she'd use the things she already had.

The Rolling Pin Saga

One of my pins ready for resale.

Have you ever found yourself in need of a rolling pin, and then not been able to find one? Just such an event took over my life a few weeks ago. Such a silly thing, yet something one needs to perform certain cooking acts, like rolling out pie dough, or cut-out sugar cookies. And at that point, a rolling pin wasn't something I had.

Actually, it wasn't something I expected to need either, until I did need it. Oh yes, I have several rolling pins ... at home in Canada. But not a single one in our Florida home. Back in Canada, I still have 3 or 4 rolling pins (out of the dozen I used to have, including a tupperware one) ... one is a solid rolling pin, and while it has handles, they are part of the body of the rolling pin. I don't like it to work with, but I kept it because it was handmade by a family member.

The Grill to Beat

Last weekend my daughter I headed out to an estate sale being held by some friends just outside of town. Outside was mostly bigger things like a car dolly, riding mower, (... mostly guy stuff) and went on inside. We started in the basement. Some furniture (my house is pretty full) and a couple of long tables with kitchen stuff, some camera equipment (that held my interest for a bit, being a photographer that stuff, even older, is hard to pass up), and some tools.

My daughter pointed out a toaster oven with attached coffee pot. I hadn't seen one of those before. I already have a toaster oven but it was worth a look just because ... although the coffee pot only held one cup. It would be great for a student, or even camping.

Ultimate Bars Cookie Brownie

Rather than this being a recipe for baked goods, it's a bit of a plug for a package mix that I tried for the first time. Yeah, I know - it's from a box, it isn't made from scratch. That's okay sometimes though, and when you have a surprise visit and need something to be in the oven fast, this (by all accounts) is a worthy package to have in your cupboard.

The instructions are simple, and it seems pretty foolproof (I bet even my non-cooking husband could do this), but the baking time is sort of long compared to a standard brownie. The box contains 2 packages of mix - one for the brownie bottom, and one for the cookie top. The brownie mix requires an egg, water and melted butter - pretty easy, you just dump the liquid in on top of the dry and mix it up by hand til it's reasonably smooth. Spread that in an 8" X 8" greased pan (even if it's non-stick you'll want to grease it).

Then the cookie mix - add water and softened butter (not melted butter, just soft). It doesn't say this, but it's best if you mix the butter with the dry cookie mix until it's sort of crumbly, then add the water and continue mixing til it's a somewhat stiffer dough without big lumps. Drop the cookie dough by spoonfuls onto the top of the brownie mix. Try to cover the top evenly with clumps of cookie dough.

Slice, Slice, Slice!

After spending several weeks looking for a decent kitchen slicer and at a decent price that would slice things "paper thin" ... I finally found one. Well, I found a few, but not many were available locally in stores, and those that were cost a whole lot more than I was willing to pay in order to "try" a recipe out. One site online had some that cost over $200 (some over $300) ... yeah, to slice taters.

Initially, I was looking for an old slicer that my mom had given me after I got married. She used it for years in her kitchen, until my dad got her a big old fully-chromed electric meat slicer. She used that meat slicer for just about everything ... veggies, fruit, bread ... and meat of course, but anything she wanted to slice thin, she used the electric one. The Dial-o-Matic ended up in my kitchen until I got a food processor. The food processor (big, expensive, and a pain in the rear to clean all the time) got it's fair share of use before I finally got rid of it. As my family grew, I stopped "canning" things, and had no need of the bulk or cleaning chores (back then, the food processor parts couldn't go in the dishwasher). But by then, I had already gotten rid of the the Dial-o-Matic as well.

Today, when cooking for two, a knife usually handles most slicing in the kitchen, but I needed to slice some potatoes super thin and as even as I could, and the one thing I'm not great at is slicing things evenly (doesn't matter if it's bread, meat, or veggies they're always thick at one end, and thin at the other).

Quick and Easy Kitchen Pizza

This quick pizza from your own kitchen tastes so good, you might be tempted to quit ordering in pizza. It's the first time I've made pizza from a prepared "store-bought" crust, but both my husband and son-in-law gave it 2-thumbs up. Even better, I liked it ... much more than I really expected to. I'm fairly picky about my pizza (my mom used to make her own, starting with her own yeast-dough crust, and before I married I used to help her, but it was a long process to get to the point where you could eat the cooked pizza) and won't normally eat "just any old pizza", so finding one I really like, that is made with my own ingredients (except the crust of course) and is fresh from the oven that I can prepare and be eating in half an hour ... that's worth doing again. I'd make this way before I'd order a $20 delivery pizza!

Pyrex Liquid Measures

One of the products I use every single day (and have used for over 40 years) are the heavy glass Pyrex measuring cups. I remember these from my childhood too, because both my mom and grandmother used them in their kitchens. While there are other similar measuring cups, those that are plastic are often a lot less durable, particularly if you need to "nuke" (microwave) something in them. Some plastics just won't withstand use in the microwave (some of the cheaper hard plastics), and some of them won't withstand dishwasher use. While the cup might survive the dishwasher, the markings will likely disappear after a few washes if they are embeded in the plastic.

I've tried lots of different ones, and usually end up grabbing my pyrex instead. Pyrex withstands most things - microwave, and dishwasher proof. My oldest measuring cup (41 years old) still has it's markings, though it's been exposed to the dishwasher for at least 35 years. While the Pyrex measures tend to be more expensive, for the long haul, they are worth the money.

The oldest one I own is also the largest - it's 8 cup capacity makes it pretty useful for more than just measuring. It's bowl shape, with handle lends itself to use as a mixing bowl and I've used this to mix up 4 or 5 pounds of ground meat for meatballs; used it to make cakes and muffins and cookie dough. And of course, it it's useful to measure out larger quantities of liquid too. Faded as it is, it's endured the test of kitchen use for a long time.

Lamontange and MacMillian Cookies

Every year for about the last 7 years our grandkids have sold fundraisers through their schools, and on occasions, through their sports groups. This is pretty much standard practice, even from the time of my childhood. Back when I was in school the offering was limited to boxes of Chocolate Covered Almonds. When I was in Girl Guides, we sold boxes of Girl Guide Cookies.

MacMillan's Fundraising

Groups today offer many different things. The schools sent out product booklets from a fundraising company called MacMillans, which offered several things from 3lb. tubs of cookie and muffin dough, to pies and tarts, and several other types of baked goods, and over the years morphed out into things like pizza and pre-cooked goods.

Thoughts from the Kitchen - An Introduction

An Introduction to Opinions and Reviews

I'm about to introduce a new section for this blog. There are sometimes things I'd like to share with readers that just don't fit into the cooking or baking sections, and they're usually related to things in the kitchen, like some of the products I use (or have used), whether those products are purchased (mixes, flour, pastas, etc.) for use in recipes, or whether it's a utensil, tool, or small kitchen appliances for use in cooking or baking.

I also have a few tales that could probably fit into the "Family Tales" section, but because they relate to cooking or baking (and might helpful to mom's everywhere) it seems more appropriate to include them in the kitchen section.