GF Goodies

I had shared previously that we ordered a haul from Katz and we’ve started to try a few things-one of them being the gluten free apple pie. This is highly recommended by the whole family and our girlie said she “would definitely eat it again”!

We were at Whole Foods looking for new gluten free snacks and came across the brand, The GOOD Crisp Company. Our girlie (and non-celiac son!) wanted to try a few different kinds, so we bought the Cheddar Cheese Balls, the Spicy Cheese Balls, and the Classic Original Potato Crisps. The favorite out of the bunch, for everyone, was the Cheddar Cheese Balls.

Our girlie is a chocolate chip pancake lover. We had to find a good substitute that would make the whole family happy and Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Pancake Mix did! We’re so happy that it didn’t take long to find a mix we liked (it was only the 2nd one we tried). This is now one of our go-to breakfasts. We have ours with a pile of bacon and that makes for a very happy girlie!

Right before Thanksgiving, we picked up a Katz Pumpkin Pie and it was amazing! (review in a previous post) My husband looked to see if Katz made anything else, and came across their whole amazing gluten free website! They sell so many amazing treats that we had to try more of them. We ordered right around Christmas and were able to try one of their special holiday items!

One of the most difficult things to find after our girlie got her celiac diagnosis was a good gluten free loaf of bread. She didn’t like the taste of a lot of the bread we tried or it just fell apart when she was eating it. Until we tried Canyon Bakehouse Hawaiian Sweet bread! My dad went on a mission to find her the best bread (because he’s a great grandpa!). He told us about the awesome reviews of this bread and bought us a loaf to try from Kroger. We tried it for a PB&J sandwich, and our girlie instantly told us it was her favorite! It’s the only bread that we keep in the house for her these days, unless it’s sold out because apparently we aren’t the only ones around here who love it.

Our girlie is notorious for not being a big sandwich eater at lunch. She loves yogurt, fruit, maybe some gluten free chips or pretzels and something sweet. We needed to add some additional gluten free protein to her lunch, though. I read great things about Chomps sticks and I wasn’t sure what she would think. After doing a small taste test of the Beef flavor, she thought they were great!

It’s everyone’s favorite post-holiday time of year here, Girl Scout cookie season. Our girlie used to love it since she’s a Girl Scout and we order plenty of cookies from her. This year will be different, though. There is only 1 kind of gluten free Girl Scout cookie, and it’s not great. We found a new cookie, Goodie Girl Mint Cookies, and our girlie loved them. They taste just like Thin Mints and are gluten free! Now, she’ll be able to enjoy this season as much as everyone else with our new cookie substitute. I LOVE when we can find foods that are just like the gluten version. Now when everyone in her Girl Scout troop is eating Thin Mints, she can, too!

We’ve been a little MIA here but only because we were enjoying our time off for the holidays! Hope everyone is enjoying them as much as we are! I’ll do a full recap of our first gluten free Christmas but check out the highlights!

Costco has a great selection of gluten free options - including this bag of Organic Tortilla Chips. They are certified gluten free! The bag itself is huge and easily feeds the entire family. We’re happy to share that It’s also a winner with our 10 year old girlie. She likes them for a snack by themselves or as a side when we have tacos. Our non-celiac son loves them with the small guacamole cups that are also sold at Costco. This is a snack that is gluten free, tastes great and is a great deal!

Who doesn’t love a good Christmas cookie? Our 10 year old celiac daughter especially loves them - which is why we had to find some gluten free substitutes. One awesome substitute we found was Cheryl’s Cookies! They have an amazing selection of gluten free Christmas (and regular) cookies. We tried the buttercream frosted cookies with both white and red icing, chocolate chip cookies, fudge brownies and an aatmeal raisin cookie.

Our girlie definitely loves her sweets! We found these Unreal Dark Chocolate Coconut Minis and she loves them. We noticed them right away at Costco because we saw the Certified Gluten Free symbol when we were in the snack aisle.

When you’re 10, trying to find the best pizza that you can still eat is a top priority. A lot of local pizza places have cross contamination, so we’ve found the easiest thing to do is to buy a pre-made gluten free pizza. We tried the Digiorno Gluten Free pepperoni pizza and it was great! Our girlie liked it a lot! She said she likes this one for a thick crust and still likes the Milton’s (that we’ve shared before) for a thin, crispy crust.

Pop Tarts were a breakfast treat in our house but only every once in a while. While looking for new gluten free food options, we saw the Summer Strawberry Flings and got really excited that we may have a Pop Tart substitute. We were wrong. They looked nothing like the package right out of the box that our girly didn’t even want to try it. I took a closer look and didn’t blame her. I feel like we may not have been so disappointed if the photo on the package looked more like the actual product.

Our girl had the Katz Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie for dessert on Thanksgiving and LOVED it! My husband also had a small piece just to try it and he said it was even better than the regular pumpkin pie that we had for everyone else. They both agreed that the crust was perfectly flakey and the filling was great.

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! We’re back with a recap of how our first gluten free one went. It was great spending time with family and the food was great, too! We did make a few modifications based on last minute requests, so let me share what we did have for Thanksgiving.

It’s my daughter’s first Thanksgiving with celiac disease and we want to try to make it as normal as we can. Typically, she’s really just a turkey, masked potatoes and rolls kind of girl and we know that most of that will be just fine for her to eat (minus the rolls). I feel that lately she is sad about not being able to eat things that she didn’t even eat before - so we’ll make sure she has most of the options that everyone else has at Thanksgiving. Then she can decide what she likes and would want to eat again. Stay tuned for the after-Thanksgiving recap!

We’ve found another delicious gluten free item at Trader Joe’s - the Gluten Free Cheese Ravioli! Our girlie has always loved pasta, so when we found gluten free cheese ravioli, we were excited. The cauliflower pasta dough had me a little worried, but these were an OVERWHELMING win.

These Organic Coconut Rolls by Tropical Fields were a new gluten free treat that we tried in our last Costco haul. It turns out that they are delicious. It quickly became our girl’s go-to after school snack. It also became the entire family’s go-to after school snack, so we ran out of them quickly. Next time, we’ll buy a few bags!

Does our daughter like cauliflower….nope. She’s 10, she barely likes vegetables period. So when we tried this pizza for the first time, we didn’t mention the cauliflower crust.

Trader Joe’s has a good selection of gluten free items, but our daughter’s favorite there is BY FAR the Gluten Free Double Chocolate muffins. She said you can’t even tell that this muffin is gluten free! And you know it’s good when she has to argue with her non-celiac brother over who gets the last one.

This was a huge win in our house! One of our girl’s biggest concerns when she found out she had celiac disease was about chicken nuggets. If she couldn’t have gluten, how could she still enjoy one of her favorite foods. We’ve hit the jackpot with this find at Costco!

Our family has always been fans of Tru Fru products, so we were extremely happy to find out that most of them are gluten free! These strawberries covered in white chocolate and milk chocolate are delicious, have the gluten free logo, and get a thumbs up from our girl.