My Celiac Blog

Last weekend we put the finishing touches on two new websites designed for people with celiac disease. Celiac Snacks is all about gluten free snack food items and nothing more. Snacks can be an especially challenging food category for people forced to follow a gluten free diet. Celiac Snacks is designed to help. You'll find pages with information about various types of gluten free treats, and the entire site was designed by a person with celiac disease (that's me!).

Our other new website is Gluten Free Pastas. It is devoted exclusively to information about the various brands of gluten free pasta, with information about the most popular brands and the companies behind them. There is a page about each of the largest manufacturers of gluten free pasta, with information about ingredients used which might be very useful if you have other dietary restrictions in addition to avoiding gluten. Visit Gluten Free Pastas to learn more.

Technorati Tags: gluten free, gluten free shopping, gluten free snacks, gluten free pasta

Having visited Britain several times, even staying at the home of a British/Sri Lankan couple once, I've been introduced to the concept of Curry. Virtually anything can be curried, it is the process of cooking food in the traditional Indian style, especially with certain specific spices. Usually the set of spices used in making a curry will include coriander, lemon grass, chiles, cumin, turmeric and more. Turmeric often provides the nearly fluorescent bright yellow color often associated with curry dishes.

Things to watch out for, if you are on a gluten free diet, include flour sometimes found in cheap brands of curry powder, and soy sauce, which as you know usually contains wheat.

I love to cook curries at home and often make curried cauliflower or Aloo Gobi which is a dish based on cauliflower and potatoes. You can also buy various brands of curry mixes and ready to heat curry sauces or dishes online, as the popularity of curry continues to grow in the United States.

Here are the best deals we could find on gluten free curry products.

	Spaa Natural Foods Red Curry, Spicy Bamboo Shoots Jasmine Rice Meal, 11.2-Ounce (Pack of 12) List Price: $57.36 Sale Price: $44.12 Average Rating:

	Green Thai Curry Sauce (9 Servings Per Pouch) Sale Price: $9.95 Average Rating:

	Spaa Natural Foods Green Curry, Basil and Eggplant Jasmine Rice Meal, 11.2-Ounce Box (Pack of 12) List Price: $57.36 Sale Price: $44.12 Average Rating:

	Spaa Peanut Curry, Peanuts Potatoes with Rice Meal, 11.2-Ounce Box (Pack of 12) List Price: $57.36 Sale Price: $44.12 Average Rating:

	Red Thai Curry Sauce (9 Serving Family Pack) List Price: $9.95 Sale Price: $9.95

	Thai Pavilion Single Serve Microwavable Green Curry, 2.57-Ounce Units (Pack of 6) List Price: $25.68 Sale Price: $22.19

	Ajika Besan or Chick Pea, Chickpea, Specialty Garbanzo Flour, Gram Flour for Soups, Pancakes, Desserts List Price: $40.70 Sale Price: $3.99 Average Rating:

Years ago when I was first diagnosed with celiac disease the common wisdom was that people with celiac disease had to avoid oats. As science began to determine that this was not exactly correct those who were more militant in their condemnation of oats gradually retreated to a position of "all oats grown in the United States are contaminated with wheat".

As a person inclined to rational analysis and skepticism, claims that include the word "all" get special attention in my way of thinking.

Recent studies have determined that a minority of people with celiac disease react in exactly the same way as they do to wheat when given absolutely pure oats. These people must avoid oats. But these studies also found that a majority of people with biopsy confirmed celiac sufferers are able to eat oats if they are not cross contaminated. For these people eating oats does not provoke the characteristic immune reaction as determined by blood work and biopsy samples. I seem to be among this larger group of people that can tolerate oats.

In fact I have eaten instant oatmeal packets indiscriminately for years, but then others with celiac disease managed to convince me that cross-contamination, especially with wheat, is a serious concern for the gluten free diet. Fortunately there are some growers and mills that co-operate to produce oats they can guarantee are gluten free. This was comforting news to me, because my gut feels really happy and content when I eat oats for breakfast.

We found the listings below by searching on Amazon.com for the term "gluten free oats", however we make no representation that these products are actually gluten free. Please do your own due diligence if you have celiac disease or any other medical requirement for a gluten free diet.

	Gluten Free Oats - 32oz Sale Price: $15.95

	Bob's Red Mill Organic Scottish Oatmeal, 20-Ounce Units (Pack of 4) List Price: $17.04 Sale Price: $12.81 Average Rating:

	McCANN'S Quick Cooking Irish Oatmeal, 16 Ounce Boxes (Pack of 6) List Price: $28.80 Sale Price: $19.94 Average Rating:

	Bob's Red Mill Old Fashioned Steel Cut Oats - 24 oz Sale Price: $4.49 Average Rating:

	Cream Hill Estates Lara's Rolled Oats, 1.1-Pound Box (Pack of 8) List Price: $49.60 Sale Price: $37.71 Average Rating:

	Bobs Red Mill Bob's Rolled Oats Thick Box Of 4 32 oz List Price: $5.76 Sale Price: $15.80 Average Rating:

Recently I was craving a snack at about the same time I was visiting Amazon.com. When I saw a product called FoodShouldTasteGood Olive I was intrigued by the unique spelling and name.

On a whim I decided to order a case of 24 1-oz bags of these gluten free tortilla chips. They are much like ordinary corn tortilla chips but with powerful olive flavor. If you like the flavor of green or black olives, the chips contain both, chances are you'll like these too. The percentage of broken chips seemed to be less than with most similar products, but more than anything it is the delicious flavor of these chips that led me to order another case this past weekend.

The 1 ounce package size is just right for a mid-afternoon snack, leaving me feeling satisfied until dinner time.

I can attest to the fact that my grumpy tummy did not complain about these chips, so I do believe they are actually gluten free. Here is the list of ingredients: Stone Ground White Corn, High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Black Olives, Green Olives, Sugarcane Fiber, Garlic Powder, Sea Salt.

	FoodShouldTasteGood Olive, 1 Ounce Bags (Pack of 24) List Price: $23.76 Sale Price: $18.28 Average Rating:

Technorati Tags: gluten free snacks, gluten free chips

I have a new favorite breakfast treat these days, gluten free english muffins, toasted, then smeared with lots of creamy peanut butter. I usually have a side of either fresh or canned fruit as well, usually peaches, a navel orange, or canned mandarin orange segments.

Buying canned fruit is a risky business, not that the fruit is going to harm you in any way, but because so often it turns out to have been overcooked making it mushy and disgusting. This seems much more likely to happen with store brand canned fruit.

As far as the english muffins go, since I'm vegan as well as gluten free I am locked out of some types of gluten free muffins, but the ones made by Ener-G are VGF and I have developed a taste for them. I prefer the darker variety that has added sweet potato and fiber.

Because this breakfast has fiber from the muffins and the fruit, as well as protein and fat from the peanut butter, it gets metabolized more slowly and I'm rarely hungry again before lunchtime. It makes me feel like I've had a healthy and well balanced breakfast.

I also often use these english muffins as hamburger rolls when having one of the Wildwood tofu burgers I've blogged about before.

Here are the deals on offer from Amazon for gluten free english muffins.

	Ener-G Foods English Muffins, 15.1-Ounce Units (Pack of 6) List Price: $36.24 Sale Price: $27.88 Average Rating:

	Ener-G Foods Brown English Muffins with Sweet Potato, 17.21-Ounce Packages (Pack of 6) List Price: $39.36 Sale Price: $30.28 Average Rating:

I was hankering for a delicious gluten free and vegan snack about a week ago when I looked at the Amazon Daily Deals page and saw Prana Organic BarCashew Almond on a sale that reduced their cost to about a dollar each. Since I'm a cheapskate with virtually no income these days (I paid $40 taxes last year) I thought I might give these a try.

They are absolutely delicious, wonderful, a delight in every way. The bars are made primarily of date paste in much the same way as Larabars (which are also OK) but the percentage of delicious tasty nuts in these bars is much higher than in Larabars. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that they do cost a little bit more.

After eating one of these for my mid-afternoon snack it was not at all unpleasant to wait until 6:30PM for dinner. And when you do eat one of these truly delicious bars you really do get the sensation that you just ate something nice.

They are clearly gluten free and vegan, but if you are allergic to tree nuts run away!

	Prana Organic BarCashew Almond, 1.7-Ounce Bars (Pack of 24) List Price: $54.96 Sale Price: $38.11 Average Rating:

I'll certainly be buying more of thes in the future. I give them 5 stars.

These days, with the economy so badly off, we are looking for less expensive ways to shop just like everyone else, affected by celiac disease or not. In fact we spend more time working on shopping websites than anything else at all. Our latest trick is a new way to offer items listed for sale at eBay.
Here is an example, a search for gluten free vitamins:

NOW Foods ADAM -Superior Men's Multi Vitamin - 120 Tabs

US $23.95

15h 38m

Stabilized R-Lipoic Acid - 60 veg caps - Doctor's Best

US $20.59

1d 21h 46m

ULTRA PREVENTIVE X 240c by Douglas Labs MULTI-VITAMIN

US $34.99

22d 20h 8m

GNC Pro Performance Thermo Burst 90 Tablets New in Box

US $15.99

3d 17h 34m

With this new method we can search for anything sold by eBay. We've added a few new pages here for books related to celiac disease and GF cooking. Since used books are often available on eBay, these book pages might help to stretch your shopping budget, we hope so.

I build websites. That's what I do. Today I built another website for people on a gluten free diet. It is called Gluten Free Celiac. This site uses the SMF discussion forum package with a front end portal add-on. I also set up some bots to fetch gluten free recipes and food items for sale and post them as messages. There are already 99 recipes and about 50 food items listed, and this part will continue automatically.

What the site needs now is human users. Human users make all the difference in the world. You seem to be a human, so I'd like to invite you to visit the site: http://glutenfreeceliac.com/

Of course it is and always will be free!

Our latest website designed to help people with celiac disease is now online, and it supports users of cell phones and other mobile devices. Gluten-FreeStore.com features GF food items from the two largest retailers in the gluten free food market, glutenfree.com and Amazon.com.

The site uses Wordpress blogging software, and features listings of a number of gluten free food categories you may select. Prices are shown on the individual item pages, which are in effect each a blog post, and in addition there are pages that list top selling gluten-free items at Amazon.

If you access the site using a mobile device it detects your device type and formats the display layout to better fit your screen.

Please consider visiting http://gluten-freestore.com/ for your GF shopping needs, you can compare the deals from the two top vendors in the business in order to get the best pricing and shipping available.

Technorati Tags: Gluten-free, wap, mobi, shopping, cell phone, mobile web, 3G, celiac, celiac disease, Wordpress

Woo Hoo! Food scientists working together at Washington State University and Oregon State University are planning to develop a new variant of wheat that would not contain the gliadin proteins which cause trouble for people with celiac disease. This, if it comes to pass, would be earth shatteringly good news for those of us with grouchy tummies!

An article on the website Capital Press, which caters to the agriculture industry, reports the good news.

I'd like to thank these food scientists for caring about this issue, and wanting to help overcome this annoying disease.

Imagine sinking your teeth deep into a nice French Baguette like the one shown here, then pulling it ever so slowly away, teeth still clenched firmly, and watching as it stretches and then tears in a way that gluten-free bread just does not do at all.

Imagine eating bread that tastes like bread. Oh yes, I am so there. I might gain 10 pounds in the first week such a wheat-based gluten-free bread becomes available, but I would cherish each and every one of those pounds. Sock it to me, science!

Technorati Tags: celiac disease, celiac diet, gluten-free, food science, research, GF wheat, woo hoo!, gluten free bread