lpellegr

Nope... nothing on the menu... just rice pudding.

I can see the rationale... I imagine that orzo or whatever pasta they use holds up better in the creamy sauce... but HALLOOOO... don't call it rice when it's NOT.

Ewww, orzo pudding? I wouldn't have eaten that before my diagnosis! Definitely write and praise the waitstaff but boo the menu writers and whoever is supposed to educate the waiters.

Hi Patti,

I'm in Woolwich Township/Swedesboro, NJ. We are one exit away from Mullica Hill and about 10 mintues from the Delaware border.

I'll let you know when I check out Mr. Ritts -- we are about 20 mintues from Philly now and I really want to see what kind of stuff they have.

Do you attend any Celiac groups or anything? I was diagnosed in June of 2005, right after the birth of my son, so I'm fairly new to the celiac way of life. I did attend a Gluten Free Cooking class at the Whole Foods in Princeton, NJ which was helpful. I wasn't much of a cook before going gluten free, so it's REALLY a challenge now

Maureen

Maureen, when did you go to the Whole Foods class? I went to one there in October or November and we tried to get the group there to meet there once a month (with store permission) and never really managed it more than once. That Whole Foods has a good selection of gluten-free foods, including the frozen baked stuff, but a lot of them are scattered and not collected in the gluten-free section. One of the managers is also celiac! Since there seem to be a lot of Jersey/PA folks in this thread, here's some shopping help for this area: north of Princeton, in Plainsboro, is a big Asian grocery store for anyone looking for cheap rice flour, tapioca, etc for making your own gluten-free flours. There's a small store at the Trenton Farmer's Market that carries a freezer full of gluten-free baked goods and some flours and pasta, but it seems even more expensive than most. There's a Wegman's in West Windsor (near Princeton) that has lots of gluten-free stuff and has a list of their own products that are gluten-free (including some "normal" cereals - a rare find!). Supposedly we are going to get a PF Chang's near the Marketfair Mall, which would be welcome since there are no good gluten-free restaurants in the area. I really want to try out Jules Pizza, especially if they open one in Newtown! Let me know if anybody wants directions to any of these places. Keep them in mind if you're in the Princeton/Trenton area.

Just watch out for the Aveeno products and some of the Neutrogena, which are also J&J, because a lot of them do have oatmeal extract in them. I knew to avoid the Aveeno, which has oatmeal in everything, but even some of the Neutrogena lotions had it. Read the labels.

Our Aldi's has all these no-name products I've never heard of, but I have found several things that are gluten-free just by checking the labels. They have pudding mixes and chicken rice soup, for example, that don't list any nasty ingredients like modified food starch or hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and everything is so cheap! But it's a different shopping experience than the usual grocery store in many ways. Bring your own bags and a quarter to rent a cart.

The Clan Thompson Smartlist of gluten-free food that I buy for my PDA has a ton of Publix products in it, so they do seem to know what they carry. If they don't have a list on their website, maybe yours is still in the mail.

How about Funyuns? I hear they are gluten-free. Before my diagnosis I had used fat-free onion melba toast, crumbled, in fat-free green bean casserole, but I wouldn't know what gluten-free products could substitute for that. Any ideas?

Here's a site I just came across, and they link to interviews with some chefs who cook gluten-free:

Open Original Shared Link

I don't know if these chefs do gluten-free all the time or just for special occasions or for spas, but you might be able to find out more from them or about them. Also consider, once you're established and educated and can do your own thing, whether a place like New York's Risotteria would want to franchise or expand. There are gluten-free restaurants out there and we all wish there were more of them! Don't give up, but for your own health consider another type of restaurant for now! Best of luck.

I can't seem to find these by doing a search here, so I'll just ask. Are Armour brown and serve sausages safe? Except for the usual unidentified "flavorings", "seasonings", "spices", etc, they don't look unsafe, but I'd prefer to hear from people who survived eating them without being glutened. This forum is the best place to get the real scoop.

If you bake from scratch, you will find lots of the odd flours and raw ingredients you need at Whole Foods. Rice flours, tapioca, potato starch flour, buckwheat, egg replacer, xanthan gum, etc. If it's in the Gluten-Free Gourmet cookbooks, you'll probably be able to find it at Whole Foods. And the frozen pizza crusts and Prairie Bread from their gluten-free bakery are great.

Yeah, I wasn't born in Jersey, but I've been in reach of the Philadelphia TV stations all my life and lived in NJ long enough to speak the lingo.

Here's the update: I got an answer from the parent company of Axelrod, Crowley, and Penn Maid brands regarding gluten (from the modified food starch):

Penn Maid/Axelrod/Crowley

Cottage Cheese (All)

Sour Cream (Reg, Lite and Nonfat)

Yogurts (All)

Are gluten free.

Some of you Pennsylvania and New Jersey folks might already know this - are the Penn Maid products gluten-free? They list modified food starch in some items, but at the end of each ingredient list they print in bold "Contains MILK". Looks to me like if there was wheat in there they'd say so, but can't make assumptions about gluten, can we? Sour cream and cottage cheese are what I'm most interested in. Yo, any celiacs in the Ewing/Trenton NJ area?

The easiest recipes to have come out "normal" are the moist sweet breads like zucchini bread, or the muffins. Start with those - the muffins usually freeze well so you can microwave a couple for breakfast.

These are recipes from the "GFG Cooks Fast and Healthy" that worked for me:

Velvet Brownies - taste good, but texture is kind of strange. But hey, it's chocolate! And easy.

Onion Crackers - lots of work, and you ought to cut the salt down to 1/4t, but the crackers were really good.

Easy Pizza - the best gluten-free pizza crust recipe I've found.

I just made the Caraway Rye bread from the GFG Bakes Bread, and it was wonderful, but I've been trying various recipes for a year - some work, some fail, you learn something each time. If one recipe doesn't come out right, don't give up, just try another one. And a Kitchenaid mixer is a huge help - you can't mix the xanthan gum doughs by hand very well once you add the water - they just seize up. The 4-flour mix does make a better bread than the original gluten-free flour mix, but most of the breads I've tried have been at least partially successful. And all leftovers are keepers for crumbs for breading or meatballs!

Also get the original "Gluten Free Gourmet" and "More from the GFG" if you want even more breads to try but I think the GFG Bakes Bread is the best so far. Santa brought me a bag of sorghum flour and some garfava flour, so I've been trying them out!

Sometimes solid shortening seems to work better than oil for prevention of sticking. Try that AND dusting with cornmeal. I had success with the Easy Pizza recipe from the Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy, which contains yeast, but I put it on a greased non-stick pan. That's the best recipe I've found for thick crust - I grew up on Sicilian style pizza and used to make it once a week for my family until my diagnosis. The best bought crust is from Whole Foods' gluten-free bakery. Hope this helps. Don't give up on that homemade pizza!

Through sheer luck, I think, I got this recipe to work in a cookie press just like the original wheat recipe. I find the easiest way to use a cookie press is to not try to make the individual shapes, but to use the small star-shaped hole (if it came with one) and press out long snakes and then shape pieces of that into circles or "S" shapes or candy canes. If it doesn't have that it usually has a long flat crinkly hole and you can make long strips of that and cut it to bite-size pieces - these hold a lot of decorative sprinkles, too. Try this:

1c (two sticks) butter, softened

2/3 c sugar

3 egg yolks

1t almond or vanilla flavoring or extract

2c brown rice flour + 1/2c sweet (sticky) rice flour

(1/2t salt - I find rice flour blander than wheat - this is optional)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add egg yolks - don't use whole eggs or you won't get that shortbread texture. Mix in flavoring. Gradually add in flour, adjusting for how the dough feels - less if it's stiff, more if it's too wet. Put through cookie press onto ungreased sheet. Bake 7-10 min at 400.

These held together surprisingly well with no xanthan gum - I think it's the eggs. It works best with butter - if you substitute margarine, make sure it has high fat content (at least 70%) or the dough will be wet.

I forgot to mention that if you're going to mix your own gluten-free flours and do your own baking, the cheapest place to get most of the flours is an Asian grocery store. I get white rice flour at 3-1 pound bags for $1 - Bob's Red Mill can't beat that and the Asian flour is much finer. They also have tapioca, potato starch flour, and sweet rice flour just as cheap.

I made the rounds of all the local health food stores at first, getting potato starch flour here, brown rice flour there, but online is the easiest if you're trying to assemble the assortment of flours used in the Connie Sarros and Betty Hagman cookbooks. You just have to resign yourself to paying more for gluten-free food - once you're over that, buying online is great, even with the shipping costs. You can order directly from Bob's Red Mill for flours, the Gluten-free Pantry is good, and the Gluten-free Mall has a big selection. If you look around you can find all kinds of links from this site and others. It was so exciting when I found places where I could buy gluten-free macaroni and cheese and individual packs of crackers! If I need something right away, Whole Foods is one place that has most of it in one store, although scattered throughout the store, but they're not in every state. Wegman's has begun labeling all their store-brand products with a G when they're gluten-free, so that's a help. Shop-Rite has a decent selection of gluten-free stuff in their health food aisle, but in general you're not going to find many regular grocery stores with a lot of gluten-free foods, especially baked goods, so either get a mental list of where to find the gluten-free foods in your area or start thinking about online shopping and find some storage space for when you stock up.

The ingredients for Welch's grape soda look okay but you never know what lurks in the flavorings. Anybody know if it's safe? I have such a craving......

Whole Food's gluten-free bakery Prairie Bread is great - seeds and nuts all over it. It doesn't fall apart before I finish my sandwich, which my homemade breads inevitably do. Their pizza crusts are good enough to serve to non-celiacs too (but at that price they can buy their own).

It's not glamorous and gourmet, but I believe La Choy teriyaki sauce is gluten-free, as is their soy sauce. Should be easier to find than brands you can only get at health food stores.

I usually have leftovers because I do a lot of cooking from scratch, but for days when I don't have anything available I keep a drawer at work stocked with individual size cans of tuna and Bush baked beans (buy a manual can opener if they don't have pull-tab tops), Nut Thins crackers, squeeze tubes of peanut butter (but these can be hard to find), soups in "juice box" style packaging in single sizes and gluten-free snack bars. I also keep a plastic bowl and plate, a supply of plastic utensils, and a small bottle of dish soap. My co-workers know about celiac now, but they can still be pigs, so I never eat any of my food if it falls on the common table since I don't know what crumbs were there last. Spreading out a napkin helps avoid that and gives you a clean place to lay your utensils. Yeah, you can get a little paranoid about this! I also have my own bottles of soy sauce (La Choy is safe) and salad dressings in the common fridge and allow people to use them as long as they don't contaminate them - even at home my stuff is labeled with a green dot that says "gluten-free" to tell the family it's for my use only or it's safe to cook with when they cook for me. Congrats on the job!

Anybody in need of a good meal in Central Jersey can check out the Lambertville Station restaurant in Lambertville, NJ, across the Delaware River from New Hope, PA. Our company just had their Christmas lunch there and although I had been there before, this was my first time there as a celiac. I called ahead to see if they could accomodate me, and when I got there they had picked out items they thought I could eat, then took my homemade dining card back to the chef, then came back several times to double-check the ingredients. The food has always been great there, and they did a good job making sure I was okay. They also had a vegan entree available for our group's vegetarian. And New Hope and Lambertville are great places to spend a day shopping in unusual stores and looking for antiques, so now I can recommend at least one place there.

Ipellegr

Where in Central NJ are you? I am in Union Twsp.

I have the same question about Ricotta cheese.....I didn't like the texture and taste of the Sargento mozzerella cheese. Polly-o is the best, I did email them, they are owned by Kraft and follow the same labeling procedures as Kraft, but Polly o is not made by Kraft themselves, so I have hesitation about it.

I spoke to Lioni (makes a fresh mozzerella) & they couldn't guarantee vinegar issues (as it is processed with vinegar).

Let us know if you find anything out

I'm in the Trenton area. I would love some fresh mozzarella, but I don't eat anything without a label on it, and all the ones with labels just say "vinegar". Still looking for gluten-free ricotta. I'll have to see if Wegman's or Whole Foods or Wild Oats has any that are safe, when I feel like doing all that investigating. I was hoping the community here would save me the work!

I know Sargento's ricotta is safe, but I can't find it around here (central NJ). Has anyone eaten Sorrento brand or Shop-Rite brand safely? I have Tinkyada lasagna noodles, now all I need is the cheese...

I have also found variations in generic Claritin (loratidine) - I took one store brand for a month with no problem after checking the ingredient list. Then I switched to a different store brand, and on the 3 days that I took it (it took a while to make the association) I had the deepest, darkest depression! I never had that as a celiac symptom before, but the active ingredient should have been the same. The new batch had "pregelatinized starch" - has anyone had a problem with that?

As I made gluten-free pie crust for Thanksgiving and wonder whether my in-laws' brand of turkey will gluten me, I was thinking over some actually funny moments courtesy of gluten-free food. Like the first time I tried to make gluten-free cookies and had to eat it as handfuls of crumbs from the pan where I vainly attempted to make bar cookies of the remaining batter after the drop cookies melted into a sheet; or last year's horrible attempt at pie crust which had us all reaching for new synonyms for "gritty"; or the Enjoy Life cookies that were devoid of every allergen known to man (we called them the "shellfish-free" cookies) and also devoid of any possibility of enjoyment (good lord, those were disgusting); or the mouse that nibbled food from everyone's stash at work except my gluten-free stuff (my coworker said why should mice like gluten-free food if humans don't?). Let's hear your funny gluten-free stories!