lpellegr

That was great! Between cell culture and celiac disease, cross-contamination takes up a good part of my thinking, but never quite so entertainingly. Thanks!

I don't use any of the premade mixes, but I can give advice on making your own. For the graham cracker crust, find any good gluten-free cookies and crush them. I used Pamela's pecan shortbread for a cheesecake and it was really good. As far as real pie crust, are you used to making your own, so you understand how to cut the shortening into the flour and then add water a little at a time to pull it together? If you can do that, this will work for you. The best gluten-free crust recipe I found that actually compares well with a normal pie crust is the Vinegar Pastry (Revised) from the Gluten Free Gourmet by Bette Hagman, with my version of the instructions below.

1c white rice flour (I recommend the fine kind you get at Asian markets)

3/4c tapioca flour

3/4c cornstarch

Note: you could probably substitute a commercial gluten-free flour mix for the above.

1 rounded teaspoon xanthan gum (check to see if this is included if you use a mix)

3/4t salt

1T sugar

Mix all the dry ingredients above in a medium bowl. Cut in with a pastry blender:

3/4c shortening (like Crisco) until crumbs are like rice in size, maybe a little smaller.

Mix together:

1 egg lightly beaten

1T vinegar

Add these to the flour/Crisco until blended. Then sprinkle in, 1T at a time, 2-3 T ice water. It may take more or less, the goal is to add just enough that you can gather the dough in a ball that doesn't break apart into dry crumbs and isn't wet and slimy. After adding 2 or 3T, gather the dough with your hands and decide if it needs more. It's okay to squeeze it a little. When all the dry crumbs are incorporated, you're done. Divide it in two and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 min to firm it up. When ready to use, roll each out between two pieces of wax paper or plastic wrap dusted with gluten-free flour. Peel off the top sheet, lay your pie pan on the dough, upside down and centered, then put your hand underneath and flip it over so the dough is in the pan. Pat it into place, then peel off the plastic. Now you can shape the edge and follow your recipe for the filling of choice. If you're going to prebake it, use 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes. You can also freeze the balls of dough and thaw them later - they still work fine. All the gluten-eaters proclaimed this pie crust as good as my old ones at the last two Thanksgivings. Hope this helps!

I wouldn't take the chance. It would be too easy to have cross-contamination from other parts of the plant during growth or harvest. I'd save these leaves to eat when every other food on the planet has been consumed.

I find that adding a little water to the meatballs as I mix them can make them softer when cooked. Part of the reason to include bread crumbs is to absorb moisture. I like mine fried and crunchy on the outside, but if his highness likes soft meat then I recommend cooking them in a crockpot or in a pot in the oven. They will get crunchy on the outside even with these methods if cooked too long, but you can check occasionally to see if the centers are cooked through and stop them before they get dry on the outside. Another option is to make a meatloaf with the same mixture, because once you cut away the outside of it, all of the inside will be soft, as opposed to meatballs, each of which have an outside dry/crisp layer. Very small meatballs can also be cooked in broth or soup - just drop them in raw. That will keep them tender. And you can use any kind of ground meat, even chopping it yourself in the food processor.

You can adapt any chicken casserole recipe you have used before, if you know what to sub for flour or condensed soup mix. Pacific Natural Foods now makes condensed cream of chicken, mushroom, and celery soups that are gluten-free. Substitute cornstarch, tapioca, rice flour, or a mix for the flour used, if any. Instead of saltine or Ritz cracker crumbs or bread crumbs on top use crushed potato chips or Rice Chex. Hellman's mayo should be fine to include (check the label - I use the regular kind all the time). If you have never had a casserole recipe and are looking for actual recipes, just confirm and people here can help with that too.

I tried the new brown rice gluten-free Rice Krispies and found them disappointing. They taste just like the brown rice cereal from Erwhon or any of the other hippie brands that I turned to when first diagnosed. Not exactly like the old RKs in either taste or texture. But they do snap, crackle, and pop. I'll stick to Rice Chex unless I need to make Rice Krispie Treats.

Yes, avoid Applebee's. The way they handle their "gluten-free menu" shows that they don't understand it or how it is used or how it affects customers. I had a similar experience. Just because they have a list of items on line that are gluten-free doesn't mean the restaurant staff knows their butt from a hole in a donut.

Although I have not tried this yet, I was thinking of making a batch of homemade bread dough, dropping spoonfuls of it into a bowl of cinnamon/sugar and rolling them around to completely coat, then piling all of the balls into the loaf pan and baking as usual. Kind of like monkey bread, could be pulled apart or sliced. Could be that it would be better to dunk each ball of dough in melted butter before rolling in the sugar/cinnamon to make it more gooey.

I think most of us would just never assume that anything is safe without reading the label or asking a lot of questions. Here's what you want to ask your server if you're contemplating nachos at a restaurant:

Do the corn chips have wheat in them? Are they fried in the same oil as flour tortillas or breaded foods? Do they sit on the same counter as flour tortillas during preparation?

Can I see the ingredients in the cheese sauce? Is there any flour used to make the cheese sauce?

Are all of the toppings safe? Is there any flour or unidentified starch in the sour cream? If there are meats, do their sauces have flour in them? Is there flour in any of the seasoning mixes? Are there bread crumbs in any of the toppings/seasonings?

If the answer to any of this is "yes", then you don't eat the nachos. If you crave nachos, then find a chain that's known to have some safe gluten-free food (you can search this site), go there and still ask them questions to make sure, or get bags of tortilla chips (again, check on this site for safe ones because some have cross-contamination issues) and jars of sauce with labels you can read. Then you're likely to have a safe nacho feast.

This recipe is really good - gluten-eaters can't tell the difference.

Vinegar Pastry by Betty Hagman. This makes two crusts.

1 c white rice flour

3/4 c tapioca flour

3/4 c cornstarch

1 t xanthan gum

3/4 t salt

1 T sugar

Combine all of the above. Cut into it: 3/4 c shortening.

Blend together:

1 egg, lightly beaten

1T vinegar

Add this to the flour mixture.

Add ice water, 1 T at a time, and toss with a fork until it holds together when squeezed without being crumbly or sticky. Divide in 2 and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 min. At this point you can freeze it.

Roll out between pieces of rice-floured wax paper or plastic wrap, remove the top one and invert into the pie plate. Finish and bake as usual for your pie recipe. Bake all the scraps as well, spread them with jelly, and pretend they're pop tarts. A frozen ball of this stuff keeps pretty well, so you can make a pie now and one a few months from now.

Mmmm, trifle! I was looking for a good pound cake recipe, thanks! And for those of you who don't know what trifle is, it's awesome: layers of pound cake, fruit preserves, and pudding.

A lot of people think of Campbell's pork and beans when they think baked beans, and those have some wheat product in them last I looked (which was years ago, admittedly). There are plenty of brands that are okay, just read the labels. If you crave something similar to Campbell's, look for Heinz beans. I think they are imported from England, but they are very similar. I think the Bush's and B&M brands are usually sweeter than Campbell's.

You could also try letting it rise less before putting it in the oven. It seems counterintuitive, but make sure it doesn't go any higher than the top of the pan at its highest point before putting it in the oven.

Give us more details of what you're making so we can help troubleshoot. There are an infinite number of things that can make gluten-free baked goods go wrong. Let us know what you're doing, and we'll see if we can help. Too much liquid and too high a temperature seems to be a starting point for things that get burnt on the outside and stay sticky and soggy on the inside. I usually have to use about 3/4 of the liquid that the recipe calls for, lower the baking temperature, and increase the time to get bread to come out right, but it took a lot of trial and error to figure all that out. Keep trying.

Brown rice pasta seems to be the sturdiest, and Tinkyada is the best easily available brand. But don't cook it as long as they tell you - start with half the time it calls for, and then check every minute. It takes very little time for rice pasta to overcook. It's also best to rinse it when you're done because it gives off a lot of starch and will stick together, which would be okay in a casserole. Tinkyada elbows make great mac and cheese, but only cook them 12 minutes. Their lasagna also works well, and both of these freeze well.

Homemade split pea, lentil, or bean soup. These are best put in the fridge to thaw the night before or even 24 hrs ahead because they're so dense.

Homemade mac and cheese with Tinkyada pasta (only cook the elbows 12 minutes, regardless of what the package says).

Tinkyada lasagna also freezes well if you don't overcook the noodles.

Just about any casserole works - I make chicken tetrazzini (cream sauce) with spaghetti pasta and freeze individual servings and it comes out fine.

The crockpot is a real help, as long as you can plan ahead. And then you freeze individual servings of your crockpot leftovers and voila.

I also make Bob's Red Mill pizza crust on a really big baking sheet (so it's rectangular instead of two round ones), bake the pizza, and cut it into squares, which I wrap individually in plastic wrap and freeze. The advantage of the pizza is that a slice or two will thaw by lunchtime and if you have to go somewhere without refrigeration or heating available, the pizza will be thawed and perfectly edible for lunch or dinner if you get it out the night before or that morning.

I have been using the Shop Rite store brand of onion soup mix with good results. Their label doesn't show any gluten, but for all I know it's the same story as the Lipton. In any case, I haven't had a reaction to it, so looking for store brands might work for people.

Don't give up, you'll find something. If you're a Sam's Club member they have generic Cetirizine (Zyrtek generic) that is gluten-free. If you can't find generic Claritin, try looking for generic Zyrtek. A lot of the CVS products are gluten-free, and check other generics from the big chains like Rite-Aid. You might not get immediate help if you call at odd hours, but keep trying.

Yeah, also not impressed with Applebee's. I was taking a road trip to FL and wanted one nice dinner out. I looked up their gluten-free list online, saw that they had one, but it wasn't like an actual gluten-free menu. When I got there the hostess had no idea what I was talking about, but she found a manager who did. The manager brought me a binder with the same list I had seen online, along with all of the other allergen info lists. Half of the stuff on the list wasn't even on their regular menu. They then sent me a waitress who said she had celiac relatives, so she knew not to bring me bread, etc. I ordered conservatively, since I had seen enough on this site to know not to trust them. I got a steak, some mashed potatoes, and their veg of the day, broccoli. It was mediocre for restaurant food, and although I didn't have a full-blown reaction it seemed of all the risk I had to take on the trip, this was the one that caused me some internal distress. And it was a crappy steak even if I didn't have celiac. Which was a shame, because I couldn't even say that the dinner out was worth the reaction!

I have started teaching a gluten-free class for newly diagnosed people to help them get started, because we all know how little useful information your doctor has. This forum is my biggest recommendation for new people to get answers, thank you all very much. But I'd like to have a list to hand out of items that are gluten-free and easy to find in a grocery store or convenience store, with brand names. I don't mean specifically gluten-free breads or cookies, but things like Nut Thins, tuna cups, cheese sticks, yogurt, etc that will do when you need a quick lunch and don't have the means to cook. What are your favorite on-the-go foods?

Here's a starter list:

Nut Thins

tuna in pop-top cans

cottage cheese

Yoplait yogurt

cheese sticks

BabyBel cheeses

Rice Chex

Pirate Booty

Hormel or Boar's Head sliced pepperoni

Oscar Mayer prepackaged lunch meats

There are other things that I would recommend with a warning, because of possible cross-contamination, like Lay's products. And some things that would be good if you have access to a microwave, like individual cans of Bush's beans or some of the Hormel lunches or Dinty Moore beef stew.

Suggestions?

Here's a pasta dough recipe from Bette Hagman's Gluten-free Gourmet cookbook. This is pretty good. I don't think your dough will hold together without xanthan gum.

1/3 c tapioca flour

2 T potato starch flour

1/3 c cornstarch

1/2 t salt

1 T xanthan gum

2 large eggs

1 T vegetable oil

Beat eggs and oil together. Combine dry ingredients, then add egg mixture and stir. Knead a minute or two. Dust the counter with cornstarch and roll out. Good luck!

Put chops in an oven-safe pot or casserole, dump on a can or two of sauerkraut, put lid on, bake at 400 F for 1 hour. Serve with mashed potatoes. Can also do this in the crockpot and use other cuts of pork.

Here's a link to someone who researched Indian food before eating in India, and what to avoid. In the comments section there is more info on how hing can be sold as the resin, or ground with some kind of flour. Also has good info on what's likely to be cross-contaminated.

Open Original Shared Link

I forget where I saw that hing was not acceptable, but it might have been on my Triumph dining cards. It's possible that some brands are okay but others are not. Or it could be outdated info. Until I know otherwise, I'll avoid it.

Asafoetida, also called hing, is something we can't have. So that might be your answer.