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Review: Conte’s Gluten-Free Ravioli

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After hearing a lot of positive comments about gluten-free ravioli from Conte’s, I picked up the regular cheese flavor and tried it myself. It was pretty good, but not as tasty as the stuffed shells from the line. Spinach is something I try to eat a lot of so when I spotted Conte’s Spinach Ravioli at the store recently, I decided to try it as well.

The pasta itself is the same for both the cheese and spinach versions of Conte’s product, but for some reason, the filling in the spinach ravioli seemed to make the pasta taste better than the cheese version. In color theory classes, you learn that the exact same color can look different based on what colors you put next to it. With this ravioli, the filling inside really makes a difference in the overall taste of the product. Now that I’ve tried the spinach ravioli and found that I prefer it over the cheese version, I’ll probably stick to the spinach-filled pasta from now on. Like many convenience foods, Conte’s pasta isn’t on the cheap side. That makes them less than ideal for families, but the contents of the gluten-free pasta bag are just enough for two for dinner. The ravioli is very easy to prepare – just boil, drain, and top with sauce. I like a nice tomato basil sauce with the pasta, but Alfredo sauce would work well too.

The ravioli, an Everybody Eats multi-grain baguette and a nice green salad makes a lovely meal. There are just a few things I miss being able to order when eating out and ravioli is one of them. Therefore, it’s nice to be able to find something like Conte’s pasta meals in the store freezer. I’d prefer fresh gluten-free ravioli instead of frozen, but for now, Conte’s spinach ravioli is a nice option to have. The Conte’s frozen pasta meals make for a quick and tasty weeknight dinner which is something I can appreciate. The story of how Conte’s Pasta company came to be is interesting. There is a full line of gluten products and several gluten-free items as well. Now, if they would just make a gluten-free version of their lobster ravioli – that would really be exciting!

Review: Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 1 Comment

When I made my weekly trip to Trader Joe’s last week, one of the store employees asked me if I had tried the new gluten-free Snickerdoodles. I had not tried them yet, so I was excited that the employee reminded me that they were now sold them. I love their gluten-free gingersnaps and use them for a pie crust or cookie crumb crust in desserts.

Upon first glance, the box & cookies remind me of the cookies made by Enjoy Life. The ingredients are very similar, too. The cookies have 130 calories, 4.5 g fat, 2g fiber, and 1g protein per serving (2 cookies). In addition to not containing any gluten, the cookies are also vegan and free of the 8 common allergens. There are 6 servings or 12 cookies in a box for under $3.00. I love the simple, understandable ingredient list:

sorghum flour, date paste, grape, apple, and pear juice concentrate, brown pure cane sugar, expeller-pressed vegetable oil (safflower and/or sunflower oil), natural rice dextrin, ground flaxseed, water, xanthan gum, baking soda, vanilla, salt, cinnamon, rosemary extract.

The cookies are extremely moist and have the perfect balance of sugar & cinnamon flavor. Jon said that he thinks they are better – a bit moister – than the Enjoy Life version. I enjoyed them with a nice cup of hot tea on a chilly, fall afternoon.

Trader Joe’s has a nice variety of gluten-free products under their name. Some of those items are:

  • pancakes
  • brownie mix
  • pancake mix
  • granola
  • gingersnaps
  • waffles
  • French rolls
  • flourless chocolate cake
  • brown rice pasta

In addition to those items, they also have many others that are included on their gluten-free list. The list can be viewed here. To find out if there is a Trader Joe’s near you, click here. Have you had a chance to try the new Snickerdoodles yet? What are your thoughts?

Review: Gluten-Free Coffee Cake

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 5 Comments

For my gluten-free profile of Asheville, NC (summer 2010 issue of Delight gluten-free magazine), I was fortunate enough to visit the World’s Best Carrot Cake bakery just north of the city. The owners of the company are some of the nicest people around and the business is family owned and operated. I also profiled the fabulous carrot cakes in this article, in case you are not familiar with the North Carolina bakery’s wonderful gluten-free wares.

When I entered the recent gluten-free vendor fair in Atlanta recently, the very first table I noticed was that of The World’s Best Carrot Cake. The owner Avi and her husband Morgan were there so I went over to say hello. As I headed back to my own table, Leah McGrath (dietitian from Ingles) asked me if I’d tried the new coffee cake from the Asheville bakery. I had not so I did a 180 and grabbed a small sample cup of the cake. Even at room temperature, the coffee cake was absolutely divine! I dashed out to get some cash and returned to buy a whole Pecan Coffee Cake. I wasn’t sure how many they had and I didn’t want them to run out before I got a chance to return to the show floor.

For many reasons, I did not overload on carbs at this year’s event. Because my job involves getting so many products to review, I just don’t feel the need to taste every single gluten-free item out there these days. Everything I tried at the fair this year was very good or great, but I didn’t taste that much compared to every other year I’ve attended. In years past, I’ve not been able to eat much for a day (or two) after the show due to overdoing it at the event. This year, I was excited to have coffee cake for breakfast the next morning. Due to the way the cake is packaged, I loosely wrapped the whole thing in foil and heated it up in a 250 degree oven. It took about twenty minutes for it to get sufficiently warm.

As I opened up the foil that surrounded the cake, the aroma of homemade coffee cake wafted through the kitchen. It was stronger than the turkey bacon my husband was cooking and I could hardly wait to taste it. My husband had not tried the cake before so he had no predisposed notion about how it might be when heated up, but I was ready to taste some gluten-free greatness. One bite of the delicious coffee cake was all it took to take me back in time. When I was a child, something called coffee can bread (bread baked in a coffee can) was all the rage and some people also made “coffee can coffee cake”. Back in the day coffee cans were made of metal. There was not any plastic involved in the packaging so you could use the cans to bake in.

As I looked at the shape of the coffee cake with a nut crumble topping, I realized it looked like it had been baked in a coffee can. I’d made a vanilla glaze for the cake, but decided to taste the cake before putting any glaze on it and I’m so glad I did. Not that the glaze could have ruined the cake, but the cake was perfect just the way it was. It was rich, moist and decadent and best of all – it was light and fluffy! There is no way I can explain how incredible the coffee cake was, but anyone who used to eat sour cream coffee cake with gluten in it might want to try this incredible new offering from The World’s Best Carrot Cake bakery.

The bakery offers online ordering and Whole Foods should be picking up the new Pecan Coffee Cake soon. Whole Foods carries several of the World’s Best Carrot Cakes, including gluten and gluten-free versions. Because the bakery is not a dedicated gluten-free facility, they take every precaution you can think of (and some you never would) to keep the gluten-free items safe. Those precautions include using color coded scissors and box cutters to open the gluten-free ingredients and the boxes they come in. Everyone at the bakery takes the issue very seriously, to say the least. I’ve never seen so many non food items labeled gluten-free in my life!

It was so much fun to learn about the World’s Best Carrot Cake company and to get the know the people that created such a special place. After our behind the scenes tour of the bakery earlier this year, Avi was kind enough to give us some cupcakes to take to our hotel in Asheville. As we tasted both the regular and chocolate carrot cake cupcakes later that day, we debated over which flavor was the best and why. We finally decided that we could not decide. They were both phenomenal so it’s no wonder that the new Pecan Coffee Cake cake meets the high standard Avi has set for her products – regardless of ingredients.

*Special thanks to Avi for our chocolate carrot cake cupcakes.  They were fabulous – as always!

Review: Mellow Mushroom Gluten-Free Pizza

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 4 Comments

There is quite a bit of competition for the gluten-free pizza business in the Atlanta area. The only pizza we’ve had here that could compete with the incredible options we had in NYC were the ones our pizza joint owner, Phil, made with the Domata Living Flour. The only reason that those crusts were made in the first place was because of a supply issue on the Domata crusts and it seems that the problem is ongoing. After finding out that the Domata crusts were still out of stock at our normal pizza place (Pepperoni’s) for the third week in a row, I decided to risk trying the gluten-free pie at Mellow Mushroom again.

Even though I didn’t care for the gluten-free pizza at the Mellow Mushroom in Conyer’s, I think that everyone deserves a second (and maybe a third) chance when it comes to trying to get it right for the gluten-free crowd. Let’s face it – we are difficult customers to prepare meals for. If the staff is trained properly on gluten-free service, they know that one slip-up such as a misplaced pizza cutter could make their gluten-free guests incredibly ill. No one gets into the gluten-free menu game to make people sick and many places really do care about getting it right. The truth is that quite a few of them simply just don’t get it.

In the case of the Mellow Mushroom location we visited last week, the staff not only “gets it” when it comes to safe gluten-free service, the staff members don’t understand why they’d have gluten-free pizza, but not offer gluten-free beer. They aren’t thrilled that only about half their gluten-free customers report that they actually like the gluten-free crust either. This news shocked me because I thought the people that didn’t like the crust offered there were in the minority. The two employees we spoke to admitted that if their choice is to offer something that the majority of their gluten-free guests don’t love, they would rather not offer a gluten-free crust at all. To be fair, these people have only compared the gluten-free crust (which they’d both tried themselves) to their gluten crust. Neither person mentioned having better gluten-free crusts elsewhere.

At this particular Mellow Mushroom location, the gluten-free crust has brought in a lot of new business which actually surprised the staff there. The gluten-free option has only been available for about a month and the number of gluten-free people coming in to order it has been much higher than they’d anticipated. It’s certainly true that everyone has different tastes when it comes to food of any kind. However, for a company like Mellow Mushroom, serving a product that doesn’t live up to its own high standards in terms of customer satisfaction seems a bit odd, to say the least. There is no way that the company would serve a gluten crust that only 50% of their customers loved.

As for the taste of the pizza during this visit, it was much better than the one we had in Conyer’s. Based on tips from others, I ordered the crust “extra crispy” and while it was not crispy at all, it was also not soggy so that was a huge plus. Also, I ordered the Greek salad and which came with feta cheese and it was delicious. At Conyer’s Mellow Mushroom, I was told the feta cheese was not gluten-free. In any case, during our second visit at what will remain an undisclosed Mellow Mushroom location, the Greek salad was delicious and is something I’d go back for and the pizza isn’t something I’d get again – unless they changed the crust.

Top 5 Gluten-Free Pastas

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 6 Comments

There are so many new products rolling out to the the gluten-free market these days that I can’t keep up with them all. However, I do my best to try new items that are available in our area and those I’ve heard are great that I have to order online. The first consideration for me regarding gluten-free replacement type items has more to do with taste than anything else. The price and convenience factors are secondary considerations. My motto is the same as what I read once on a blog (and I can’t give proper credit here because I don’t remember where I saw it), I’d rather go hungry than eat horrible tasting gluten-free food.

For me, pasta is something I’ve always loved. Like many American kids, I grew up on the mac-n-cheese made from the famous blue box. My tastes grew more sophisticated when I went out into the world and had to buy my own food. For years we scoured the Atlanta dining scene for the hottest new restaurants. Capo’s in the Highlands was a favorite, as was Capo’s ex-wifes place, Lindy’s, in the Peachtree Battle area. We’d drive across town to Scalini’s in Marietta just for the garlic rolls and the fare at Ember’s Grill was hard to beat in Sandy Springs.

The biggest challenge I personally faced when dining out gluten-free was not being able to order pasta. Now we can have pasta at several places around town and hopefully, a smart chef or two will start offering the amazing fresh option from RP’s Pasta when it hits this region via restaurant distributors later this year. Thankfully, we can have amazing pasta at home any time  we want it. My top pasta list has changed a bit since posting this article, as I’ve tasted some new products since then.

The first pasta listed below is without question the best gluten-free pasta I’ve had to date. It is also better than many fresh gluten pastas we’ve had. The rest of pastas listed are not in any particular order.

All of the above brands, and most other gluten-free pastas I’m aware of are MSG free. Some of them contain corn, soy, quinoa, rice and potatoes or a combination of those things. The only one that is made from one grain is Le Venzianne and it’s made from corn grown in a certain part of Italy near Venice. If you’ve tried corn pasta made here or in Canada and didn’t like it, you might give Le Venzianne a try. It is nothing like any of the other corn pastas we’ve tried. In fact, it’s hard to believe that two pastas made with the same basic ingredients could be so vastly different.

As far as I know, Tinkyada pasta (made from rice and rice bran) is the number one selling brand of gluten-free pasta in North America. It was the first gluten-free pasta we tried and we were not impressed. That product line fills the need for many allergen-free consumers since it’s free of corn, soy, dairy, wheat and gluten.  For budget friendly gluten-free pasta, the options from Heartland Pasta are worth checking out. Several online website sell the pasta listed above including, but not limited to, Amazon.com.