The Gluten Free Table on the Road

Kalimera my fellow travelers! The hardest part about eating gluten free on a vacation is dealing with cross contamination so I compiled a list of tips I picked up traveling in Greece. When I decided not to eat gluten in solidarity, I realized it's so easy to accidentally gluten other people's food. It's not just the knife that someone else used to butter their "regular" toast, it's the butter container which has the crumbs from the knife that went in for a second helping to cover the rest of the toast. It's seemingly impossible to keep your food gluten free when traveling with others who eat gluten. A few tips I found on my vacation help you keep your sanity and enjoy your trip:



1. Use disposable plates and utensils when possible. That way you avoid crusted on gluten remnants as well as any contamination that may be left behind on the sponge or in the dishwasher.


2. Keep your food in a small cooler in the fridge. If you have a refrigerator, keep a cooler full of gluten free cookies and bread in there. People will really have to go out of their way to put their gluten covered mitts into your bag of gluten free chocolate chip cookies. Also, keep one or two dips and spreads you want in the cooler.


3. Have your own bottle of a beverage. Who can resist the urge of drinking out of the bottle. Certainly not you, so you can understand when others do so without thinking of the gluten they contaminate the bottle with when they put their lips on the rim. Put aside a liter of your favorite and give people a heads up that it's yours by putting it in the cooler.


4. Bring along bars and meal replacement drinks. You don't have to be a wet blanket in the instance you can't find a dish at a restaurant that looks gluten free. These will tide you over and keep you from getting too hangry.


5. Learn to change the conversation quickly from gluten at restaurants. Keep it short and sweet, don't dwell on the details. When you have a chance to find a market, head to the gluten free section. A gluten free loaf of bread comes in handy at restaurants when they serve bread before the meal or as an accompaniment to a chicken salad.


6. Use your best judgment but remember that you are the keeper of your health and others may accidentally serve you something with gluten. While it my take a long time to cope with that fact, understanding that you are ultimately responsible for taking your health into your own hands, especially abroad, will make you a happy traveler!


7. Have fun and meet lots of new people. Remember that vacation is a time to relax even though it's hard to break out of the usual routine. Hopefully these tips will keep you from screaming at your fellow travelers and binge eating that baklava that everyone else in the car is swooning over. Cheers!

Goat Cheese and Chive Latkes

Last year, I made these gluten free latkes for a friend’s holiday party. I barely got to eat one and they all disappeared. Hope you enjoy the recipe!

I have tried a few iterations of this delicious Hanukah treat, including a zucchini strings version, and found that this is the tastiest one so far.

Goat Cheese and Chive Latkes

-          3 large potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold

-          2 large egg whites

-          ½ cup rice flour

-          ½ cup crumbled fresh goat cheese

-          2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

-          1 teaspoon salt

-          ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

-          Grapeseed oil for frying

Fry latkes until just golden brown

Grate the potatoes and rinse them until the water running through it is clear. Squeeze the potatoes dry and pat down with a kitchen towel. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and add the egg whites, rice flour, goat cheese, chives, salt and pepper.

Heat grapeseed oil in a pan on medium-high. Scoop ½ cup of the potato mixture and drop into the pan. Flatten the potato mixture with whatever you used to scoop it. Repeat spacing the cakes but filling the pan as much as possible. Fry the cakes until golden brown, three to four minutes. Flip and fry on the other side for 2-3 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pan and drain on paper towels. Repeat with remaining potato mixture. 

Sweet Broom of the Intestines

The broom of the intestines, otherwise known as shirataki noodles in the US seem to have swept the gluten free diet community. What are these “miracle noodles”?

My sister recently made a batch of clear noodles with some soy sauce and splenda. She says she has been eating it all the time while she is away at school. With zero calories, it’s satisfying effects fit right into her low calorie diet. I have to give her credit for her ability to keep the calories down, but now I know her secret. These noodles are great!

I experimented with some recipes [1]and this is what I came across. Replacing the soy sauce with tamari sauce makes the dish gluten free.

Shirataki noodles are high in a soluble fiber called glucomannan[2]. The noodles come from a vegetable called a Japanese yam or kannyaku in Japanese. They have been used for centuries in Japan for weight loss and constipation. You can find these noodles at Asian markets or in the tofu aisles of most super markets for around $1.29. Make sure to choose the pure yam noodles and not the variety with tofu if you want to make a zero calorie meal.

Sweet Shirataki Noodles

-          1 cup cloud ear mushrooms

-          ¾ cup tamari sauce

-          4 tbsp brown sugar

-          1 tbsp pepper

-          7 oz shirataki noodles

-          A stalk of chives

The noodles out of the bag will have a fishy smell. Drain the noodles in a colander and rinse them for two minutes in cold water.

Dry fry the shirataki noodles in a frying pan. Add the tamari sauce and cloud ear mushrooms. Allow the soy sauce to evaporate as you finish dry frying the noodles. Add the sugar to the mixture and allow the crystals to melt.

Dice the chives and mix half into the noodles. The other half can be used to garnish the dish.

Easy as pie and delicious. Serve while hot. Can be reheated.

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[1] http://www.livestrong.com/article/279267-are-shirataki-noodles-gluten-free/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucomannan

Raw food all week, gourmet style

In the past we were able to pick and choose our foods. If I ate cheese last night, then got sick, there were two options, I either had rotten cheese or my stomach was telling me I did not like cheese. Today, everything we buy, from food to furniture, is already prepared. We never see the ingredients in our food, we only know it tastes good.

Going through the cleanse process was not an easy process. The hardest part was figuring out which process worked for me. On the first day (Wednesday) I tried the lemonade and cayenne pepper diet. That failed miserably.

 I am an active person and burn a lot of calories in the day. When I decided to go out to Burbank to browse around IKEA I realized by 5:00 p.m. when I was loading all our finds into the car that this diet was not going to work for me. The next day I woke up (Thursday) and thought, “this next week is going to be aweful if I don’t think of something else.” Luckily I had promised to write this next blog post so I kept going. I then though, “well I guess I have this goal to remove the gluten from my diet, while I’m at it lets see if there are any other allergens I can work out of my diet.” So I said, “why not do the raw diet.”

At first, eating only raw fruits and vegetables sounded disgusting. I imagined myself eating raw broccoli all day. But I actually found that I was feeling better and making better food choices. What I liked about the raw food diet was that the food I picked up had less steps in processing, therefore, I had less need to look up the ingredients. I was also finding that cooking fruits and vegetables often masked the flavor of the fresh produce rather than improves it. Not to mention that produce loses a significant amount of its nutritive value when it is cooked.

Despite a few setbacks, (I have a weakness for cheese), I am on my way to my gluten free diet. I decided that, starting today, I will allow myself to have cooked fruits and vegetables as well as fish to my diet. But I will continue trying to eat raw when I can. I discovered a great cookbook for the raw food diet. It’s called RAWvolution by Matt Amsden. Don’t be put off by his bizarre writing style, these recipes are delicious and fresh! You can find more recent recipes he’s posted: http://www.thedailyrawcafe.com/2010/03/matt-amsdens-recipes.html

That’s all for now folks. Next week I’ll be back with some more stories. In the meantime, you can add me on Facebook “Nogluten Trip” where I post interesting articles and more resources for living healthy and gluten free.

See you next Wednesday!