Gluten Free Treats

My husband is allergic to wheat. No fun. He also loves to cook and is quite the foodie. We have 4 kiddos too. Our son can't have wheat either, although he also can't have really any "grains" at all. Our family has tested nearly every mix, treat, recipe, and tip out there. We have spent, over time, THOUSANDS of dollars on specialty foods. Some are, uh, not so yummy. But we have discovered quite a few gems - companies that make gluten-free foods and mixes that actually taste good, are easy to make, and that everyone enjoys.

We LOVE pizza! Since the local delivery place is out of the question, we've learned how to make our own that is inexpensive, EASY, and yummy!

Chebe Flat Bread Mix is easy to prepare. Just mix with water, knead a bit, and press on to a baking sheet. Chebe products are free of all common allergens - no wheat, soy, corn, dairy, eggs, oats, rice, or sesame. They're vegan and the end product is soft and thick like a real pizza crust should be!

Bake until just browned and then add your toppings.

Since my husband is allergic to tomatoes, he uses olive oil, crushed garlic, and fresh, crushed basil to make a basic pesto sauce then tops it with cheese and organic sausage crumbles.

I like "white" pizza, so I use the same pesto sauce base and add feta crumbles, black olives, chopped, cooked, chicken, and artichokes.

The kids use natural tomato sauce, a ton of cheese, and a ton of veggies.

Then, just pop the pizzas back in to the oven until the toppings are lightly browned and the cheese is bubbly (if you use cheese).

The crusts can be made ahead of time and refrigerated until you're ready to use them.

In 1941, Pamela Giusto-Sorrells' grandparents owned one of the first health food stores in San Francisco, the Golden Crescent. It was a small neighborhood natural food bakery and store offering "brick-like" rice, soy, and potato/lima bean breads, as well as rice and soy cookies. These were some of the first available gluten-free foods. In her youth, she had one of the few "female" jobs in the bakery as a cookie packer. Even as a child, and then as a bakery employee, "I was continually amazed that dedicated customers were so thankful to find our gluten-free foods. I personally thought these products looked and tasted awful and wondered why people ate them. The typical reply was, 'Let them be happy there is something on the market for them to eat,'" she says.
Always the dessert baker at home, and after all those hours on the cookie line in the family business, she started experimenting with wheat-free baking. The challenge was to make products that tasted so good that no one would be able to tell that they were wheat-free. "My career was born," she says. "In 1988, I left the family business taking one small pallet of my belongings with my first forklift and moved two blocks away." On April Fool's Day, Pamela's Products became an independent business featuring wheat-free and gluten-free foods, each bite prompting the incredulous food lover to ask: "Are you sure these are wheat-free?"

Pamela's, based in Ukiah, Calif., continues to maintain its indulgent reputation by using the finest natural ingredients, and always striving to delight the customer with delicious, decadent wheat-free and gluten-free cookies, biscotti, and baking mixes. Its products can be found throughout North America.

Why Wheat-Free & Gluten-Free?
People who have a wheat allergy or gluten sensitivity suffer a range of physical symptoms (for example: abdominal bloating, diarrhea, gas and low energy) as a result of eating certain grains. Gluten Intolerance, also known as Celiac Sprue, irritates the intestinal lining preventing the absorption of nutrients into the body through the small intestine. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, possibly oats, and other grains.

I learned the hard way that food allergies don't have to mean giving up your favorite foods. Trust me, I made some pretty, uh, yucky stuff here in my kitchen. The neatest trick that I learned was just to look at our favorites in a new way. Take a favorite "regular" recipe and look at the components that you can't eat do to allergies, then figure out what to replace them with, leaving the remaining ingredients intact. Don't be afraid to experiment. Fair warning, though, sometimes experiments are a bit hard to swallow.