We’ve been extremely busy this month, and have been missing the ability to have easy meals - like ordering a pizza. After a bit of work, we finally came up with an easy GFCF dinner we were able to buy at our neighborhood grocery store. (Disclaimer: it’s a ‘gourmet’ grocery store for all of the rich people on the other side of the tracks…. you won’t find this stuff at Super Wal-Mart.) So without further ado - our easy four course GFCF meal:

1) Course one: Ian’s Sweet Potato Fries or Alphatots. They are both GFCF. The Sweet Potatoes have soy oil, so you’ll want to watch out for them if you are soy sensitive.

2) Course two: Applegate Farms Uncured Turkey Hot Dogs. I believe most of their hot dogs are GFCF and SF, but their website doesn’t make nutritional information easily accessible - so read the label before buying them (like you don’t already spend hours reading labels at the store)

3) Course three: Frozen veggies. Usually broccoli, as it’s a cruciferous veggie, high in vitamin c and antioxidants. Sometimes green beans or peas - especially if the organic ones are on sale!

4) Course four: lacto-fermented foods. We make our own sauerkraut and pickles, using the recipes from “Nourishing Traditions“. The ‘good’ bacteria help keep our intestines healthy and happy. They are pretty darn easy to make, and when we keep them handy (having a small serving at dinner) the sensitive stomachs seem to perform much better.

While this is still a lot more work than ordering a pizza, in 15-20 min we can have a hot meal - and if you keep the hot dogs, veggies and fries in the freezer it’s an easy meal that can be kept around long term, “just in case”.  We’ll have this meal when an experimental dinner recipe has bombed.

Sometimes it just seems that you need a little chocolate to get through the day - my DW is often quoted as saying “there isn’t enough chocolate in the whole world” after an especially trying day with Dorthy. When first going GFCF, chocolate was one of the things I missed the most - which is why these chocolate chips were truly a find. They are, of course loaded with sugar, and contain soy - so they are a sometimes treat for me and not an everyday staple. (GFCF soy free chips are available and I’ll review them soon, but they are a bit waxy compared to tropical Source). Sunspire has made Christmas and my birthday just a little bit nicer, with a GFCF chip that tastes even better than Hershey’s. They make candy bars as well, but I’ve only found them online by the dozen, and I don’t think I have enough willpower to ration them, so I haven’t tried them yet - once a bag of chips is opened it never lasts more than a day - even if the recipe only calls for 1/2 a cup…

We have enjoyed so many other Enjoy Life products that I thought I’d give their “granola” cereal a shot.My first surprise was that the cereal was black - they looked very much like crumbled asphalt. I didn’t expect that at all, but it wasn’t enough to throw me off my mission. (this may bee enough to make them a no-go for a child who judges food more by look than by taste).

After adding ricemilk, I took a bite. It felt as if I was eating crumbled asphalt - they were as hard as rocks. No problem, I thought - I’ll just let them soak a couple of minutes. Five minutes later I tried again. It was like eating crumbled asphalt with an 1/8″ layer of soggy cereal on it. The box could definitely claim “Stays crunchy in milk!”.

You might think from what I have written so far that these were a dud in my book. Quite the contrary - they were actually very tasty once you got over the hard texture! We ate the whole box in one sitting. After trying the Cranapple Crunch (it was much more like traditional granola), I decided that we just got a batch where the ‘clusters’ were way too big (each one was 1/2 - 3/4″ in diameter) their crusherator must have been on the fritz.