Gluten Free

I have been experimenting with gluten free recipes. I have also been experimenting with pre-packaged/manufacture made gluten free items (YUCK-O)... which is what led me to the purchase of the gluten free cookbook... and then to the experimenting of the gluten free recipes. :-) Why I am doing this??? Well, that's a whole story in itself, so for now, I'll just say that I'm hoping it will lead to better health.

So far, I've made gluten free pancakes from scratch. I don't have a photo, due to the fact that we ate them too fast! They were so good! I thought they tasted very similar to regular "from scratch" pancakes - not the bisquick kind, but the betty crocker kind. Chad is looking forward to me making them again! :-)

The second thing I made was a beautiful pasta salad. You'll have to take me at my word that it was beautiful, because again - no picture. I took it to a church function, and nobody could tell it was a gluten free dish. Anyways, it was made with Quinoa pasta, and had a spicy, oil-vinaigrette type dressing. This is going to be my new favorite dish to take to potlucks.

My biggest fear of going gluten free was giving up bread. Not just bread, but toast... peanut butter toast, cinnamon toast, toast with butter and jelly, french toast... I love toast! It's simply not possible to live without it. Chad loves bread too - especially in the form of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We have bought 3 kinds of store bought gluten free bread, and I can say I would tolerate them if I HAD to. Toasted, with enough stuff on them, they were actually edible. But they really would not work for a regular sandwich. They are just WEIRD. They were also almost $5 per loaf, and were only 1/2 the size of a "regular" loaf of bread. Pretty spendy stuff to only tolerate. So... I got brave and tried the homemade kind.

Ahhhh... I have toast again! :-) Here is a pic of my first loaf. I think I let it rise a bit too much and that's why it's so tall. It was pretty exciting watching it get taller and taller and taller in the oven though. I was just waiting for it to get stuck to the top of the oven!

Despite it's funny appearance, this bread is soo yummy it will definitely be a new staple in our house.


The other "must have" are tortillas. How does a person go through life without tortillas??? So, that was my most recent test... and once again we have a winner! YAY! Chad actually likes these better than regular store bought flour tortillas.

My new cook book ROCKS!