Amy's GF Non-Dairy Burrito

I'm gonna be honest here. I am not really a fan of most vegan food products. They're processed food, first of all. My general rule of thumb is that if my great grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, I'd prefer not to eat it. Of course, I do break that rule, but whenever possible, I like food that's for the most part, non- or minimally processed.

With that in mind, I bought one of these gluten free, vegan burritos the other day. 

Here's the label and ingredients list next to the frozen burrito on my plate..

Since I'm the one responsible for my health, I read every label every time. Just in case. Formulas and recipes can change without a complete label re-design.

This burrito looks safe. Time to nuke it.
It cracked a little. Big whoop.

Time to eat! It's pretty much all beans in some sort of beany paste. This needs some sort of sauce, and since cheese and sour cream aren't an option, I squeezed on a little mayo.

I put mayo on all sorts of things.

Don't frown at that - it's good!

Anyway, I actually liked this and now we always keep one on hand in the freezer for when I need something fast.

Etiquitte...and Stupidity

Over the years, while dealing with an on-again, off-again inability to eat wheat, people seem to have maintained the same fearful attitude toward food.

What I mean is that when people hear that I can't eat something, they become defensive about it, and that often makes a little thing into an ordeal. I get so tired of my spiel, asking specific questions about the ingredients and cooking method, that dining out isn't any fun. (Aside from my options being extremely limited once I apply my two filters to the menu.)

While I can't say "I've heard it all," I've heard plenty of hurtful, thoughtless, and stupid things, and I wish people could spend a day in my shoes to understand what it's like.

Comments and actions that haunt me at night, weeks and months afterwards are:


"May I see your allergy menu please?"
   "What are you allergic to?"
This restaurant manager's friend's mom eats gluten free, so this makes him an expert on the subject. I replied that my food allergies are complicated and hard to work around, and asked for the menu again, which he held in his hands and asked again to know my personal food issues. Not cool, not professional, and I cried in front of him. Then I sent a carefully written email to the franchise owner who apologized and promised to send me a gift card to try them one more time. The gift card never arrived, so I am not going to try them ever again.

"Are these dairy free?"
   "There's only a little bit of dairy in them."
I was at a party with another gluten free person, and the hostess had baked gluten free treats for us. When I asked if they're dairy free, she and the other host kept telling me that there's only a little bit of dairy in them. This is the same as saying, "There are only a few teeny glass shards in this," or "There's only a little bit of rat poison in this." I actually use the rat poison remark as my standard reply when people try to tell me that there's only a little bit of wheat or dairy in something. As if the amount of these two determine how sick I get.

The amount doesn't matter. In my body, it's poison.

"I'd like the burger with sauteed onions, but are the onions sauteed in oil or butter? I can't have any dairy and need to make sure they're safe for me."
   "They're cooked in oil. Do you want cheese on that burger?"
This is just plain stupidity. Why don't people know where food comes from? Don't answer; that's a rhetorical question. But why don't people know where their food comes from?

"No toast for me, thanks. I can't eat wheat." (This was said to a college roommate. She was in her 3rd year studying to be a nutritionist.)
   "Just have white bread instead."
Incredulous look, facepalm.

"May I have mayo on that lettuce wrap?" (This was after I explained that I can't have cheese.)
   "But mayo is dairy."
This prompted a brief and polite education on the lovely sauce from France (or Spain, depending on who you ask) called Mayonnaise, and that it is primarily egg, mustard, vinegar, and oil. And then the gal who thought mayo was dairy exclaimed,
   "But eggs are dairy!"

Oh dear lord... why don't people know where food comes from?
Cows = mammals = live birth = milk
Chickens = birds = eggs
I learned this in 3rd grade, and this kind of conversation was a regular kitchen discussion with my mom, learning about what we eat, why we eat it, and where it comes from.


Sigh.
End rant.

Image credit to: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/technologies/marsh.html

Mississippi Pizza

Date night at the laundromat.

Okay, this isn't just any laundromat, this is the place we lovingly refer to as "The Hipster Laundromat." Others know it a Spin City Laundromat. 

It's a great place for date night. Really. Buy an espresso drink after 10pm and get a free dry. They serve beer and wine. And gluten free snacks. This really is a neat place to do the wash.

But this blog post is about where we went after finishing up the laundry. It was 9pm and we were starving, so we drove up Mississippi a few blocks and landed at Mississippi Pizza. 

There was a live band on one side, and one little free table on the pizza side, so we meandered up to the counter and pondered our options. 

I explained to the girl behind the counter that I'm GF and DF and she said, "Oh! We can do that!"

Loved her attitude. This is what makes eating out fun - someone who is willing to help me find something tasty and safe. 

Almost all of the pizzas were available to me with only slight modification, if that, so it was great to have almost a full menu to choose from. She set me up with a chicken bacon basil tomato artichoke pine nut GF pizza with no cheese. She suggested a sprinkling of nutritional yeast on it to give it the tangy umami of cheese. I'd never tried that, so I said "Sure!" 

She mentioned that one of her vegan co-workers uses Daiya cheese on her pizza and would I like that as well? Not a fan of Daiya, so this was fine. 

Here's the finished product. I was so hungry and anxious to try it that I scarfed down the first slice before getting a picture. 

It was DELICIOUS.
One of the best pizzas I've had.

Dave ordered his own pizza with a traditional crust, meat, cheese, etc, and according to him, it was good. I believe him; he didn't box up any leftovers for lunch the next day.

The two pizzas plus soda ran us about $45, so it was a little spendy in my opinion, but we did order two whole pizzas. And I had leftovers the next day.

Now, on the local GF Facebook group I occasionally chat with, some have said they are sensitive to cross contamination here, and others have expressed horror at the amount of wheat flour in the air from making traditional pies. This is definitely an issue for some, but as long as I stay on the wagon consistently, I can handle a little bit of this.

Mississippi Pizza is a definite yes, and I can't wait to go back.

via Instagram

Our first attempt at making gluten free fry bread. Next time, it needs to be thicker, and made with a different GF flour.

Punchbowl Social

During the Christmas Party season, D and I found ourselves somewhere in downtown Portland, looking for supper. The "Find Me Gluten Free" app suggested a place called Punchbowl Social, and it wasn't too far away, so we parked at Pioneer Place and went up to the restaurant. 

Several company holiday parties were going on. Several area of the restaurant were roped off for private parties, and there was a wait for the rest of the dining area.

I like a busy restaurant. 

That tells me the food is probably pretty good. 

Our waiter came over and I went through my polite song and dance about needing to be GF and DF, and he was really cool about it. There wasn't much I could safely order, unfortunately, so I had a burger. 

Don't get me wrong, I like burgers, but I end up only being able to order a burger at half of the places we go to, so I eat a hell of a lot of burgers. 

It gets old. Really old.

On the other hand, I consider myself a sort of connoisseur of GFDF burgers. 

Which is why I started this blog.

...that and it was getting hard to keep track of who gives good beef.

(That came out wrong. You know what I mean.)

SO... onto the burger. I ordered a basic burger, to be safe, with a GF bun and fries. I didn't ask about cross contamination in their fryer and assumed there was cross contamination. I wanted fries dammit, and preferred to not know. 

Drinks were served up in Mason jars, dinner was served up in a frying pan. Cute.

My GF "bun" was two slices of GF bread, and they disintegrated about 2 bites in. I flagged down the waiter and asked for a fork, I also showed him the problem and suggested he tell the manager there are better GF buns out there. I even went so far to tell him how much better WOW Burger is (I'm ballsy like that) and that what makes Wow so great is their bun. (Wow uses Jensen's buns. They're like buttermilk biscuits, only better. And they hold up. Do you hear that Slide Inn? They hold up!)

The Verdict: 

It was a burger. I ate it.

The atmosphere seemed really fun. If there were more options for me to eat, I'd love to go back. 

But a Meh Burger with a fally-aparty bun doesn't get me really excited about the idea.

Here's their menu, anyway.

I'm writing this post a few months after the fact. Maybe there's slaw or kraut on the burger. I don't remember. 

Apparently it didn't blaze itself in my memory as the best burger I've ever eaten. 

That trophy goes to Bend Burger Co. 

Only 168 miles away from my home. 

Sigh. 

I'd like to go there today. 

A burger sounds kinda good right about now.

Kinnikinnick K-Toos Cookies

Today we're on a day trip to Newport, Oregon to see the sea lions and find some tide pools to explore. On the way there, we stopped in the little town of Toledo to grab some coffee at the local Thriftway.

Of course, coffee needs cookies... (actually, I was eyeing the doughnut case and wishing I could safely have one.)

I asked a lady who worked there if they have anything GF, and was thrilled when she said, "Oh yes! We just put in a big GF section, and we have several cookies for you."

Yay!

I bought a package of Kinnikinnick K-Toos. Never had them before, hoped they weren't too bean flavored. (Like soy flour or sorghum. Bleh.)

My verdict: Very tasty. I love how light and crisp they are, like the melt in your mouth feel of eating shortbread. Yum.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

Lugano Cafe

Today, I arrived early in Tualatin for a PT appointment, so I decided to grab breakfast at Luganos, the new cafe across the street.

The friendly barista greeted me and offered me their menu.

"Do you have anything GF?" I asked. It was a crap shoot, and I expected nothing. Well maybe fruit, but honestly I had low expectations.

"Oh sure, we have GF scones," she offered. Inside I yelped "Yay!" as I mentally did my happy dance. Yeah, calm down, I still needed to ask about dairy.

"... Oh wait," she paused, "I think they're sold out. In that case, the only other GF item we have on the menu is one of our scrambles, but you'd have to get it without toast."

At 9:45 am, they still had half a dozen each of other beautiful baked items, so either they had a run on GF items, or they bake less GF than the other items, or they don't carry any GF and she was making it all up.

I didn't want to go into the whole dairy-free song and dance regarding the eggs, and cringed at the $9 price tag for some scrambled eggs, so this is my breakfast: a vanilla soy latte.

Ho hum.