Gluten free and vegan on Top Chef

A friend of mine just emailed me that Zooey Deschanel was a guest on Top Chef last night. She is gluten free, vegan and soy free. Here's a link to the episode on Zap2it.com: Top Chef Episode

Obviously, Bravo is on channel 61 on my cable provider so you'll have to change over to yours. As of right now the episode is on another seven times in the next two weeks.

Enjoy!

Fast Food Review - Chipolte Mexican Grill

I ate for the first time in a Chipolte Mexican Grill this weekend and loved it! I had previously visited their website and knew that most of their menu items were gluten and dairy free. When I got to the counter, I mentioned my dietary restrictions and the counter person handed me a small white card which listed all of their menu items and all of the allergens (both wheat AND gluten were listed). Only the flour tortillas and soft flour tacos contained gluten and only their two obvious dairy items (sour cream and cheese) contained dairy.

The store is set up like a Boston Market where everything is laid out infront of you at the counter. You have a choice of bowl, salad, crispy taco and (if not a celiac) soft tacos and buritos. Add to that your choice of meats (chicken, beef, pork), beans (black or pinto) and rice, as well as sides of chips and three different salsas or guacamole. Overall, it was a little spicy but excellent.

I'll definitely be going back.

Fast Food Review - Chick-fil-A

I recently learned that Chick-fil-A has a gluten free menu. I used to eat at Chick-fil-A quite a bit before realizing I had Celiac disease and truth be told was still occasionally cheating with their french fries. I checked their website and found their Gluten Free list (click on Nutrition & Health on the left side and then look for "Gluten Info" on the top menu bar on the resulting page).

As expected, their chargrilled chicken was gluten free (without the bun of course) and two of their salads are as well (the Chargrilled Chicken Garden Salad and Chargrill Chicken & Fruit Salad). What I was really excited to see was that their Waffle Potato Fries are GF too. Now of course, there are issues of cross contamination so I emailed them to ask about that.

It turns out that all of the breaded and fried chicken at Chick-fil-A is cooked in some sort of covered pressure fryer. The Waffle Fries are the only item fried in their Waffle Fry Fryer! Not willing to take corporate's word for it, I stopped by a Chick-fil-A in a mall on my way home and confirmed with the local store that this is indeed the case!

Ah, happy days, I can eat fast food french fries again! At least at Chick-fil-A that is.

My Favorite Celiac Holiday is this Week!

My favorite Celiac holiday is this week - Passover! Technically, my holiday is the day after Passover when supermarkets mark down all of their Passover products. I must warn you however, that Passover does not require that products be gluten free and can be made (and often are) from Matzo meal which most certainly contains wheat gluten. Due to religious restrictions (which I don't pretend to know) most Passover foods are dairy free which is a big bonus for me.

Every year, I stock up on Shabtai cookies and cakes, Geffen GF noodles and cookies, dark chocolate peppermint patties, potato starch, and other candies, cookies and cakes. I've even found a brand of gluten and dairy free blintzes (but they're hard to find). Last year, I didn't run out of all of these assorted items until over the summer sometime.

My advice is to check out some supermarkets before Wednesday and see which (if any) in your area are carrying Passover products. Even though Passover doesn't end this year until April 15th, I find most supermarkets start their markdowns the day after Passover starts (this year it starts at sundown on April 8th). Again, I want to stress that not everything that is for Passover will be Gluten Free. You need to look for a label of "Gluten Free". It seems that a lot of Gluten Free foods are also labeled "Non-Gebrokts" but I can't be 100% sure that that is a direct translation of Gluten Free. (It looks like everything gluten free is non-gebrokts but not everything non-gebrokts is necessarily gluten free!)

Happy shopping!