Some Product Reviews

I thought I would share with you some of my family's favorite gluten-free products, since it's always nice to know what someone else thought of a product that you're thinking about trying.
I'll start with the family's favorite pancake mix.  We use the Gluten Free Mama's Pancake mix.  Of course, I like my pancakes a little different than the recipe on the package, so I add some sugar, vanilla, a drizzle of olive oil and extra rice milk until it becomes a thinner batter.  It's a winner around here, even my son's friends gobbled them up and had thirds (and they don't have to eat gluten free).
Our pasta choices come for two sources:  Trader Joe's Brown Rice pasta (we usually buy the penne, but they have spirals and spaghetti, too) and the brand Tinkyada, which I buy from Azure Standard.  I've only tried the elbow macaroni, but we make good use of it for mac and cheese (with Daiya dairy free cheese), macaroni salad, tuna noodle casserole and goulash.  It's worked great in all those dishes.  The penne I usually buy for spaghetti as my son doesn't like spaghetti noodles, he says they "smack him in the face", so penne it is.
Bread is always a tricky thing when you're eating gluten free.  For a long time we bought Pamela's bread mix, but after a while it became apparent that it wasn't the right consistency and it was too sweet.  So, I either make my own using the Gluten Free Mama's Almond Flour blend or we buy one of two excellent gluten free breads, Udi's or Rudi's Bakery.  Just be careful if buying Rudi's bread, they make regular and gluten free bread and do follow the directions to keep it in the freezer and using only what you need.  I tried keeping in the refrigerator and it dried out rather quickly.  Udi's is all gluten free and they make several different products, bread, pizza crust, muffins, bagels, etc.  I've tried the bread, muffins and pizza crust and have been very impressed with the products.  Udi's can be found at Whole Foods Markets and locally I've found their products in Tumwater at the Fred Meyer and also at Gluten Free Joe's.  The drawback to buying gluten free bread is, it isn't cheap, it's somewhere between $5-$7 a loaf.  Udi's does offer a coupon to print out and when I bought some at Whole Foods, they had coupons placed by the product.  Rudi's can be found at some Costco's and they've been advertised the price is $6.89 for 2 loaves!  I know the Costco in Federal Way has these, it would be nice if all the Costco's started carrying their bread at that great price!
We have lots of "favorite" gluten free products, but if I highlighted them all I'd been writing a book instead of blog post!  These are some of our favorite that are products that were hard to do without or duplicate the right flavor at home (or just added convenience for us).
Hope you find some products that work for your family.  Next time, I'm going to be sharing links to some of my favorite gluten-free blogs and a link to a wonderful dinner roll recipe that's gluten-free!  It's actually soft!
Until next time...
Happy Eating!