A litte anchovy grape jelly to start my day!
Today I’m enjoying some Udi’s White Sandwich Loaf Bread, toasted, along with Great Value Anchovy Grape Jelly.
Mmmm!
Gluten Free Emergency Rations
Emergency Gluten Free Rations - No Refrigeration Required!
I’m in the marketing biz for a high tech company and this week the whole team was on the road to put on our annual client conference.
Location? A large hotel conference and banquet facility in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. There are a number of restaurants nearby where I could get a safe, gluten free meal, but with the requirement to be there and working from 6am until sometime in the evening, dining out was not an option. I had to rely on hotel food.
Yummy.
I’ve written a lot about the challenges of eating while on the road, but the gluten free dining nightmare equivalent of Saw 3D has to be dining in a large banquet facility. I have about as much faith in the safety of gluten free meals from a banquet facility as I do in Chloe Kardashian winning the Presidency in 2012. (For those of you not really into reality TV and politics, that means I’m not really all that confident.)
Given the number of times I have either gone on hunger strike out of fear, or gotten sick from restaurants, I’ve started to bring my own food when I travel. This usually puts me frighteningly close to the 50 pound luggage weight limit imposed by most airlines. Usually I bring snack foods like Glutino Pretzels and Riceworks Chips. You know, TV snacks appropriate for football games – not meal replacements. This time, with some creative inspiration from Aunt Rissy, I took one step closer to “gourmet in a suitcase” with the following:
- Hot-Kid Sesame Rice Crisps
- Hormel Pepperoni (Turkey and Beef because I felt guilty about all that fat in the beef ones. Yeah, like the turkey ones are healthy…)
- Laughing Cow Original Creamy Swiss Cheese Wedges
Besides the fact that 2 out of 3 of these items have really silly names, they were actually chosen for another reason: None require refrigeration prior to opening and one could argue that refrigeration may never be required. I think I saw some of these things in the trunk of Mad Max’s car.
World Famous Pepperoni Cheese Cracker Sandwich!
The real genius in this selection is that you have everything you need for mini-sandwiches. A lot of them. The recipe is pretty simple and can be prepared in a hotel room without utensils, if you’re willing to spread the cheese with your hotel room key card.
- Two rice crisp crackers
- A boatload of pepperoni slices
- A sizable gob of creamy swiss cheese
- Eat in one bite. I found out the hard way that trying to take small bites out of the mini-cracker-sandwich generates lots of crumbs and the housekeeping staff gets cranky.
An added benefit is that these mini sandwich gems contain all four basic food groups essential to joyous living:
- Bready stuff
- Greasy meat product
- Cheese! (Did I mention I really like cheese?)
- The stuff you get to lick off your fingers when you’re done
In all seriousness, this turned out to be an awesome plan. I had them for lunch three days this week and was quite satisfied. They are tasty! And I really like that Laughing Cow Creamy Swiss Cheese. I figure 4 or 5 of these are equivalent to a real sandwich, more or less. Add some rice chips on the side and I felt like a real human.
Definitely a do over!
I’d love to hear about your creative solutions for dining on the road. What ideas do you have?
Emerald Nuts Cashews: Food Labeling Done Right!
Emerald Nuts Cashews ingredient allergy label
Since being diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I’m constantly amazed by the odd variety of things that make my day just a little bit better. Things like:
- Finding Kettle brand chips in airport or hotel gift shops (great emergency gluten free travel food!)
- Being able to have ‘normal’ cereal for breakfast. Like Arrowhead Mills Buckwheat Maple Flakes
- Finding out that one owners of my favorite restaurant, Crave in Mount Pleasant, is a celiac too and she has the kitchen trained
- @AuntRissy brings home some Pamela’s Pecan Shortbread cookies form the store
- The hotel where I’m staying has an omelette bar
Today, my celiac joy was looking at the label on a container of Emerald Nut Cashews.
This is a great example of how food labeling should be done.
ALLERGY INFORMATION: Manufactured on shared equipment. May contain other tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, milk or sesame seeds. May contain shell pieces.
As a customer (and celiac sufferer) I really appreciate the information placed on the label. This way, I have the information I need to make an informed decision about whether they are safe for me to eat.
Thank you Emerald Nut Company! Love the cashews!
Footnote: I eat these anyway and have not had a problem with cross contamination.
Corporate Doublespeak – Kelloggs Gluten Free Rice Krispies
I admit that when it comes to complex legal matters, I may not have a razor sharp intellect.
If the first step is admitting you have a problem, then the second step must be to ask for help.
I admit that I am having a problem understanding some fancy, businessy, legally, stuff. So now I am asking for your help.
When I heard about new Gluten Free Rice Krispies, scheduled to hit the shelves this May, I was about as jazzed up as Snookie in a Hoboken Gold’s Gym mens locker room. However, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve gotten sick from some mainstream product claiming to be on the gluten free bandwagon, I would be opening a gluten free Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Pop-Tarts factory rather than writing this blog. So before I stocked up on a 144 pack of the new Rice Krispies from my local Sams Club, I decided to write to Kellogg’s to ask just how pure the new Rice Krispies are going to be. I thought my question was pretty clear:
“Can you please tell me whether the new gluten free Rice Krispies will be made in a gluten free facility? Or will they be manufactured in a facility that also produces products that contain gluten?”
As I’ve written about before, you have to have a whole lot of faith in proper cleaning procedures to feel completely safe eating gluten free food made on the same equipment as food that contains gluten. So I simply want to know whether Kellogg’s gluten free products will be made in a gluten free facility. Like Betty Crockers new gluten free mixes.
Back to the point. Here’s the response I got. I’ve failed to understand how this answer in any way relates to my original question, so I’m asking for your help. I know that you all are really, really smart.
Kelloggs Gluten Free Rice Krispies doublespeak
Please help. Lawyers and corporate doublespeak confuse me.
*** UPDATE ***
I received a follow up reply from Kellogg’s in response to my second question about the new Gluten Free Rice Krispies manufacturing facilities:
Thank you for replying back. The new gluten free Rice Krispies® will meet the FDA requirement for being gluten free and will be made in a gluten-free facility with gluten free testing after every batch produced.
Sincerely,
xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx
Consumer Specialist
Consumer Affairs
This is great news! I wish more companies would simply communicate right up front about the real gluten free status of their products. As far as I am concerned, anything made in a shared facility is not gluten free. But that’s just my opinion.
When (Buck) Wheat Is Gluten Free
Arrowhead Mills Buckwheat Cereal
I made a quick trip with Aunt Rissy to our regular grocery store last night to pick up a few things for the week. By regular I mean the neighborhood grocery store where normal people shop, not the Whole Foods 15 miles away where most of my gluten free foods are stocked. Factoring in the current price of gas, I figure it costs me about $375.27 to make that run.
Anyway, we both made the mistake of going grocery shopping before dinner. In other words, hungry. To make a long story short, our planned 3 minute visit to pick up lunchmeat and milk turned into a $155.82 equity investment in Publix Supermarkets. Apparently we’re now entitled to front row seats at the annual shareholders meeting.
On the bright side, while stalking the aisles like a politician in search of a baby, I stumbled across a new find.
Arrowhead Mills Maple Buckwheat Flakes Cereal.
It sure doesn't look like wheat does it? (image: wikipedia.org)
I’ve had some Arrowhead Mills stuff before with good result, so I scarfed up a box, even though it clearly said wheat on the label.
As most gluten free dieters know, buckwheat is not really related to wheat and is entirely gluten free. You see, buckwheat was named by the same marketing dude that came up with that whole Chevy Nova in Mexico thing. You know, the story about General Motors offering the Nova for sale in South America where “no va” means “no go.” Yeah, I know, that story is an urban legend, but it does support my claim that somebody somewhere did a really poor job of naming buckwheat.
Back to buckwheat. It’s not even a grass or cereal at all. It’s much more plant-like. That’s my scientific explanation anyway. The fruit of the buckwheat plant is actually similar to a sunflower seed. And as you can see by the included illustration, it has green leaves and everything. There are lot’s of fancy latin names for buckwheat, but all I care about is the fact that it’s good! Buckwheat cereal is really good. Especially the maple-flavored Arrowhead Mills kind.
And it’s all gluten free. So disregard the poor choice of name and enjoy your buckwheat!
After an 18 month adventure through the catacombs of the medical system, I was formally diagnosed with Celiac Disease. The bright side of that journey is that I know 3,712 nasty and horrible conditions that I do NOT have. 