What really is a cheese enchilada?

I thought I’d see for myself, so I bought Amy’s Cheese Enchilada’s.

Um, so what I discovered is that a cheese enchilada is basically a tortilla and sauce. I think there was cheese, I think that’s what ozzed out when I cut into it. But that being said, all I tasted was sauce.

It didn’t look like the picture, and I had to eat it with a spoon. And I think I’m still a little confused as to what would make a cheese enchilada distinguishable from say, a cheese burrito.

Now, with all that being said. I know who the target market of these products should be – Teenage Boys…and Husband.

I say this because all I can see is Husband walking in the door after work, throwing them in the microwave and zoning out in front of the TV watching TSN ESPN. It’s a guy thing. If it’s warm, low maintenance and spicy, it’s a meal.

One caution to my super sensitive friends out there: These left me with an uneasy feeling. I did a little more inspecting and saw the fine print on the back of the box that said they were produced in a facility that also handles wheat. So although there are “no gluten ingredients” that does not mean there is no cross-contamination.

WARNING: I’d like to note that there may have been other contributing factors here – like the fact that I have replaced all water consumption with coffee, and that I have a tendency to eat peanut butter on bread and call it dinner. So please, take all factors into account when you decide if this is a product you want to try.

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The Risotto Party!

Wow, I think I just heard you all judging me. Either way, you love me and that surpasses the judgment.

Okay, so how did I discover Risotto? I became a student living alone on a student budget.

You see, as an undergrad student, living on a budget was cool. It meant being creative about turning Ketchup into soup so that you could afford one more pitcher of beer that week. Being a Celiac graduate student on a budget, not so cool. I remember what it was like to have some money – not lots, but we had some. So I remember what steak and BBQ veg tastes like, I remember being able to eat out. Oh how I wish I didn’t remember.

So, why the new love of Risotto you ask? Because it’s my attempt to fancy up cheap food. Oh and it works.

If you want Budget Risotto: skip the chicken broth and the shallots and just use water. BAM, you have Budget Risotto. Some people would call it rice, but I prefer not to split grains like that.

If you want Romantic Risotto: substitute 1/2 cup of chicken broth with white wine. Wine is CHEAP here, so it still fits in the budget, and you can drink while you stir. It makes for a fantastic night.

If you want Fiesta Risotto: use Thai broth instead of chicken broth. I’ve seen these broths at Superstore in Calgary, as well as all over Arlington. Kind of makes you want to get a Chihuahua and name him Gunner doesn’t it? Okay maybe that’s just me, but that would be funny.

The options could be endless. I’m thinking I need to try Tail Gate Risotto and attempt to substitute in some GF beer, or maybe I can make a Rouge Risotto and use red wine as a substitute.

Please someone call an intervention here. I’ve clearly been living alone without any entertainment for too long.

If you have you’re own Risotto tricks please share – I’m always open to suggestions.

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In an effort to keep my thoughts straight, I’m going to channel Husband and the good old ctoverdrive random list of awesome.

First: You may now call me Non-Resident Alien. Why? Because, it kind of makes me a big deal. Maybe not for the best reasons, but it does make me special. I won’t get into the details here, that’s what my new and concurrent blog will be for – details on that as soon as Husband gets it finished.

What’s important to know is that: 6 weeks, endless hoops and a bruise on my forehead from the palm to forehead smacking, and I finally have an apartment to live in. We are now the proud residents of an Arlington Apartment. Not too far from campus and even closer to everything Washington DC.

In an effort to show you my new world, here is a wonderful little video on Arlington. Trust me, it’s worth watching. I also give you permission to laugh at me after.

Second: This is probably the only Country where a celiac could gain weight! Case in point: Schar products. ALL of them. I am an addict. It’s so bad I stopped looking at the nutritional facts because I could tell by my waistline. And holy dukes, they have online ordering options. Good thing #107 has a gym! Oh yes, I refer to our place by the apartment number. Some people tweet #yyc I tweet #107. Oddly enough, only I think it’s funny.

And for the record. As much I’m having a love affair with Schar products, I’m still dying for some GF Patisserie sandwich bread. I’d be willing to trade. How about a box of cookies for some bread? Any takers?

Third: Bob’s Red Mill Rocks. It’s no secret that I adore their products. And what is so awesome about them is that they are more than good food, they are a great company. I’ve always advocated for the local guys, and I love nothing more than good companies doing good things. Bob I think is a beacon of this. Just look what he did for his birthday – damn I wish I worked there.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB. Party like the Rock Star that you are.

Oh and to my American friends, does anyone know where to get Bob’s GF products in Arlington?

Fourth: If you see Husband aimlessly walking the streets of Calgary, please point him South and East. Unfortunately he had to take some time to close up shop in Calgary and has been eating a LOT of gluten in my absence – I think he’s been on a month long gluten hangover.

Finally: Now that I have a roof over my head and some utilities to light the place up I will be blogging more consistently. Thank you for bearing with me, there are some exciting things in the works and I hope you stick around to find out what they are.

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Caitlin: “Not likely.”

Mom: “Didn’t think so. We’re proud of you no matter how you do things.”

What is my mom referring to? She’s referring to the reason why I am blogging at terminal C28 in the Calgary Airport.

It’s not exactly a secret that I have been absent from this blog for awhile. For that, I will apologize to all of you. You are fantastic readers and you have contributed so much to my life. And I fully expect you to continue to do so. What is a secret is why I’ve been absent. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been hiding it from you on purpose, I just haven’t had a minute to sit down and really work on this. Okay, that’s not exactly the truth either. I’ve tried to sit down and write. I’ve written 3 posts on the topic in fact. 3 horrible, posts. And now I do what I do best – work under pressure.

Within one month, I have managed to get myself into a situation where I am experiencing two of life’s bigger events side by side. Event #1: Get Married. Fiance and I had the worlds greatest wedding on December 19th, 2009. You may now call him Husband. An epic engagement, a years worth of planning and the love and support of family all came together that night and created something that I will remember forever. I will blog more about this later because I’m sure you’re all wondering about things like food, cake, and people dancing with their pants down. For now, let’s talk about Event #2.

Event #2: Get a Masters Degree. Okay, seems simple enough. Well, do you remember my mom saying I don’t do anything the easy way? Well, I received my acceptance 5 days before the wedding and found out that I had to be at my first class exactly 1 month later.

Still seems simple enough right? Just get some paper and pens and get up to UofC for your classes. No. Since I like to maximize my experiences, I applied to do my Masters at George Mason University in Arlington Virginia.

Ha, you totally just panicked a little there for me didn’t you? How would she do that in a month? How would she get her visa, get a place to live, get flights, close her entire life in Calgary, and OMG what about Husband?

Don’t worry, these feelings will pass. How did I get my visa? I threatened to cause an international incident of epic proportion and when that failed I said “please”. Where would I live? With family friends in a different county until I could find a suitable place to live. So now I reside in Fairfax Virginia. Flights came courtesy of my fathers air miles. Packing up my entire life came courtesy of the internet and absolutely no sleep. And Husband is still in Calgary. He’s going to come later, when I have found us a place to live. Can you say epic road trip in a U-Haul with my dad and some cigars?!

Sometimes in life you need to leap off the cliff and look later. If jumping off of bridges attached to string, and jumping out of air planes with nothing but a prayer and a backpack with a shoot taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you just need to trust that you are equipped with everything you need even if you don’t know what the end result will be.

So what about the blog. It lives. It’s going to live for a very long time. Now instead of a domestically challenged celiac living in Calgary, it’s going to be written by a domestically challenged celiac living in Arlington, or Fairfax, or maybe even Washington DC. That will be determined when I’m no longer homeless!

A big thanks goes to my family for not only their support with the wedding, but their support through my epic journey to be something bigger than I am. And a huge thank you goes to Husband who has done nothing but support my endeavors since day one, and who has taken on this move in a way that is trully as much of a step forward for him as it is for me and for us. And please stay tuned, there may be a second blog on the horizon. Husband and I have been toiling around with the idea of a Turner Takeover website through which we blog our experiences and our thoughts on living this new lifestyle.

So to that, I say thank you for your continued support. I hope this blog brings you as much enjoyment as it did when I lived in Calgary. And I welcome your thoughts and comments along the way. AND, if anyone is coming this direction please let me know. I’d love to meet up with you as long as you bring me a loaf of GF Patisserie Sandwich bread!

Check back soon for all the details of the wedding and Christmas and life in the U.S.A

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Here is the article, courtesy of my fantastic cousin.

As a side note: Do any of you have issues with people thinking your just on a fad diet? They actually ask at Chianti’s now if your GF choices are a preference or an allergy. My new standard response to people in these situations is to ask: Are you calling me fat? That usually takes the conversation in a whole new direction. I’m thinking that even if my food is gluten free, it might no longer be spit free after that!

Oh and another side note: GF Patisserie, sorry for being so negligent about this. A few weekends ago you helped my mom outfit my bridal shower with the most amazing goodies. Thank you so very very much. I particularly enjoyed watching the gluten eaters be amazed that it all tasted so good. Oh and my niece would like to express her concern – she was really concerned that you never got to sleep because your house was a bakery. I told her it’s okay because we all keep you too busy for sleep. She’s three, I think that one went right over her head. Thanks again, you really do rock my world.

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Why are my Sunday’s so fantastic? Because we have football Sunday’s! JAM!

Every Sunday, Fiance and I head over to my parents house where we do laundry, eat lots of food, and watch 5 different channels full of football. The best is when rival teams play and everyone gets out their team poncho and trash talks the opponent. Poor Fiance loves the Seahawks – he takes the brunt of the trash talking.

The end of football season usually sucks. We tend to just sit there and stare at each other. Nectar Desserts and my favourite server in the whole world have come to our rescue.  They have Sunday Tea Parties. Oh yes family, you read that right, we’re going to start having Tea Parties when football season is over.

For $30/person you can go and have tea, bon bons, macrons, mini pavlovas and so much more. They even have GF scones and house made preserves. We are so making reservations and they are all going to LOVE IT.

Since I wont be able to make it until the end of the season, I highly recommend that you guys go and try it and then tell me how wonderful it is. The more positive things I can tell the family about it, the more likely they are to come with me!

Please mention when you make a reservation that you are a celiac, it will help them make sure that they have the scones etc that you will want. And please tell them that Scrumptious (aka Keegan) is the server of your dreams. He really is that fantastic and I think his boss needs to know it!

Thanks for the heads up Scrumptious! And happy tea partying to you all.

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And then, after diagnosis I learned that Oreos were not a necessity of life – but they sure were important to living a happy life.

Oh well, I adjusted.

And now I don’t need to adjust. All I need to do is make sure that there is enough Soy Milk in the fridge at all times.

KinniToos Rock! Made by Knnikinnick Foods, we found these wonderful cookies at Superstore. Initially, we only bought them so that I had something new to blog about. Now we buy them because we love them. Even Fiance will dig in with a glass of milk and call it awesome.

Try them, maybe even leave a few for Santa! (I have a feeling that our Main Man might be a Celiac too!)

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One of the most important parts is making sure that I have suitable GF replacements for my former gluten filled holiday favourites. Last year my focus was on Nanaimo Bars. Now that, that problem has been solved by our fantastic friends at GF Patisserie; it’s time to focus on the next big item: Land of Nod Buns.

Wait; hold on, now that I say that, I should really double check that Nanaimo Bars are still on the list at GF Patisserie. GF Patisserie, if you’re reading this, your Nanaimo Bars are the beginning and end of my world. I love them and you so very very much. (Does sucking up usually help the desperate?!)

Okay since that’s covered; let’s move on to the Land of Nod Buns. If you’ve never heard of them before, you’ve never lived. Here is the gluten filled version of the recipe. These are the highlight of every Christmas breakfast. Elbows are thrown, glares are given and no one will ever politely give the last piece to a family member. Darwin rules our breakfast table – actually, Darwin rules our entire family dynamic.

So why am I telling you this? Because I need your superior skills to get me out of a jam. You see, Darwin has played a really cruel joke on me. On the one hand, I was graced with the art of logic and sarcasm. These are skills that will never fail you in the academic and commerce worlds. However, if it came down to a deserted island scenario I would lose. It would be game over, because I have ZERO culinary skills. I would starve to death. So, now I lean on my far superior readers to bail me out. I NEED gluten free Land of Nod Buns this year. This is a NEED people, not a want. That makes it that much more important to my survival.

That being said, I lay down a challenge at your feet. The reader who can provide me with the most accurate and user friendly GF Land of Nod Bun recipe will win not only my love and eternal affection, but also a fantastic prize.

So here are the challenge details should you choose to take it:

• All recipes need to be received by email (caitlin@glutasic.com) by December 15^th.
• All ingredients need to be readily available. (Fiancé and I are getting married on the 19^th, so I don’t have time to run all over the city looking for random goods)
• It must taste as close to the original as humanly possible.
• Using pre-baked bread to replace the frozen bread dough is not an option. These buns come out of the oven piping hot with a crust on the outside and squishy white bread on the inside. A bread pudding type substitute won’t work.
• Lactose Free submissions will be given extra points for effort. I’d rather avoid the unfortunate circumstance of having dairy with that many people in the room!

I think that’s all the rules I’ve got. But I reserve the right to add some later if need be. Once a winner is decided, I will post the recipe for all of you, and a wonderful prize will be sent to them. And by wonderful, I mean SUPER FANTASTIC.

Thank you in advance to all you wonderful people that are going to help me out with this.

HAPPY HOLIDAY’S!

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I’m back. You’re so happy right?!

Sorry it’s taken me a whole week to post. In all honestly, I just didn’t have anything to post about. But now I do.

I want to talk about spoons and the role they play in the act of eating chili. I don’t think that they should have a role at all. Don’t get me wrong, I think spoons make wonderful tools for getting the chili into your bowl, but the job stops there. Chili needs to be eaten with bread. Not bread on the side, I mean replace the spoon with a great piece of bread.

Yes, there are clearly some obvious issues with this method. If the bread bends how do you get the chili to your mouth. If the bread gets soggy, how do you avoid dripping everything down the front of your shirt? Normally, I would say lightly toast the bread so that it’s firm but not crumbly. Well, nothing about life is normal for me anymore. So there had to be a Plan B.

Meet Plan B.

Lakeview Bakery’s Brown Rice Red is the perfect solution. It’s firm so no bending under the weight of the good stuff. It’s dense so no soggy mess down the front of your shirt. And it doesn’t really have any sort of distinct taste, so it won’t interfere with the awesomeness that is your chili. And just think – that’s one less dish you need to wash.

Now, I will say this: I wouldn’t say that it makes the best sandwich bread – for all the reasons it makes a great chili bread. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t really think this is a case of needing to have your cake and eat it to.

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Unfortunately, neither am I.

But I do have an uncanny ability to combine foods that shouldn’t be combined into tasty gold. So with my final post of the week I am going to blow your minds with a little something I have deemed The Dynamite Flake Chocolate Cookie Explosion…

To create the Dynamite Flake Chocolate Cookie Explosion you need the following.

At least two Glutenfreeda Foods line of ‘Real Cookies’. Of course you can bake you’re own cookies to make this dessert that much more Dynamite-tastic, but for simplicity sake these pre-made cookie dough goodies make a great base.

The only thing to remember is that you have under bake the cookies. The key is to have soft cookies and not rock hard cookies. A soft cookie will be able to soak up the some of the Ice Cream and Whipping cream while not falling completely apart. Just remember people Soft cookies are the key … Soft Cookies are the key.

Then you need the following three items:

1) Gluten-Free Whipping Cream.

2) Soy Ice Cream (for those who are Lactose intolerant and I know this probably negates the Whipping Cream in item 1).

3) A bar of Cadbury’s Flake Chocolate bar (Preferably imported from Ireland as it’s assured to be Gluten Free).

Then take one of the cookies and flip it upside down, so the base of the cookie is facing up. Then add a think layer of the Soy Ice Cream and a nice decent sized circle of Whip Cream. Follow this up with half a flake chocolate bar crumbled on top.

The results should look something like this.

Then the piece de resistance is to place the second cookie on top. So it essentially makes a glorified Gluten-Free (and slightly Lactose Free) Ice Cream Sandwich. But lets not dwell on the semantics, because look at this beauty.

It’s okay to step away from you computer for a personal moment, because I know you’re mind and your taste buds have been sent to Planet Chocolaty Goodness. A place that neither Capt. Kirk or Han Solo have discovered, but one that you can easily discover by clearing out some items in your freezer.

Enjoy, thanks for letting me entertain you for the week. It truly has been emotional.

Glutastic will be back later this week.

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