Persimmon bread

I love persimmons! My mom made gluten free persimmon bread from a recipe we found on foodista.com. It wasn't very good.

Baked goods

My mom loooooves to bake. (that's an understatement). During previous visits to my parents house I've gotten sick from the wheat flour in the air when my mom bakes with gluten. So this holiday season, she's only baking gluten free. Yay!

Lucky for my two more family members have recently switched to a gluten free diet (and seen significant improvements in their health). that means I'm no longer expected to eat all the baked goods that my mom makes, like the pictured cinnamon rolls.

I think the easiest thing to do if you're new to being gluten free and you want to make holiday sweets is to stick to recipes that don't have flour. Using naturally gluten free recipes is much easier than trying to convert a review to be gluten free. (I'm not speaking from personal experience but I did hear my sister day she made three recipes of gluten free cookies last weekend and they all tasted like sawdust.)

My favorite naturally gluten free sweets? I've definitely had more than my fair share of meringues lately (oops no picture because they all got eaten). Make sure any flavoring you add is gluten free. My mom also makes these date-coconut-walnut balls.

Sorry about the formatting. I'm posting this via email because my android's swyping technology makes it pretty easy to type one handed.

Apple cranberry walnut rum cake

Surprise! A new post. My mom makes a delicious cake the other day, apple cranberry walnut rum cake. She used the Betty Crocker gluten free yellow cake mix and doctored it up. It was perfect with some whipped cream.

In other news, during my bicycle commute one day in July, while stopped at a red light, I got hit by a truck. So blogging hasn't really been high on my priorities. Anyone still reading this other than the baker of this cake? I'm not exactly doing much better yet but I thought maybe I'd do some short posts here and there.

New Cascadia Traditional (gluten free) Bakery!

My sole reader (hi mom!) is harassing me for a new post, so here you go.

While in Portland back in May with my family, I went to the New Cascadia Traditional Bakery twice. Everything is gluten free and lots of things are vegan. My mom (pictured left) is a cinnamon roll connoisseur, so it's what she gets just about everywhere, although I am pretty sure she likes her own homemade cinnamon rolls the best. I can't remember, but I imagine she gave me a bite of this cinnamon roll, and I imagine I liked it and she thought it was "meh."

Meanwhile...... I ate a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese. I thought it was pretty groovy.

I picked up a morning muffin to go, which seemed like a blueberry muffin with a delicious crumble topping to me. I ate it in the afternoon.

My dad ate a scone. His review was: "it's dry and bland with no flavor." He went back with me to the bakery the next day and ordered it again. He liked it the second time around. Or pretended better.

We got a strawberry rhubarb galette and lemon cupcake to go:

The galette was absolutely incredible. It was hard to resist getting another one when I returned the next day.

Lemon cupcake close-up:

Lemon cupcake has lemon filling too! Delicious and very rich. I kind of wish I'd saved a few bites for the next day.

Overall, I would definitely go back to the New Cascadia Traditional Bakery every single time I'm in Portland. I had a piece of their teff bread with a lunch at a different place (I'll post about it later, I promise) and it was delicious too. Two thumbs up. Five stars.

Deschute's Brewery in Portland

Eating gluten free can be tough while traveling! Eating in Portland though isn't too hard. Lots of the breweries have gluten free beer. I had a really yummy grilled veggie sandwich off the gluten free menu at Deschute's Brewery. They even fry their delicious sweet potato fries in gluten free oil. (I was impressed with the server's knowledge if cross contamination issues and what the restaurant does to avoid problems.) If you are vegetarian the menu is limited, but otherwise there were plenty of things to eat. Just one gf beer, a northwest pale ale, which was described as a mix between pale ale and IPA. I liked it.

My Coworkers are Awesome

A recent post on another blog pointed out some examples of anti-gluten free sentiment with which celiacs are presented. Some people think our gluten free diets aren't serious. It's really frustrating for those of us who know we'll get sick if we have even the tiniest bit of gluten. When I first had to go gluten free, I was a little shy about it; I didn't tell many people and would just avoid eating in social situations. But then I decided to raise money for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness in connection with my Ironman Florida race, so I kind of had to start talking about having celiac disease and eating gluten free. My coworkers have been insanely supportive, a lot of them made donations to the NFCA and helped me with my Ironman training by switching days on call. Here are just a few more examples of why I am so thankful to work with these amazing people.

Every month at work, we have a gathering to celebrate birthdays with food. One or two people sign up to bring treats for the month. Every single month this year, the person in charge has brought a gluten free option and I'm the only one out of about 20 people who has to eat gluten free! I generally try to sign up for my own birthday month so that I will have something to eat, but both last year and this year I wasn't able to choose March. Last March my floor supervisor made a very yummy (mostly) flourless chocolate tart (I gave him a few tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill's gluten free flour mix to use). This January my new floor supervisor made a delicious gluten-free dessert bread (I can't remember the flavor now but it was very yummy! and she gave me the leftover gf flour mix, although I still haven't ventured into baking). In February, I brought a gluten free chocolate cake that I bought at Gluten Free Specialty. My coworkers brought my favorite cinnamon rolls for my birthday in March. Today for birthdays there was a Trader Joe's flourless chocolate cake, and the guy in charge of birthdays even popped his head into my office to say "Just so you know, I remembered to cut the gluten free cake first!" (Visit this link for another GF blogger's review of the TJ's cake with pictures.)

Another reason my coworkers rock is that there are really only three restaurants nearby where I can eat, yet people are still willing to go out to eat with me sometimes! One of the restaurants is a brewery and I can only order one item off the menu (a salad, without a lot of the toppings) so that gets kind of old. The other two are a yummy sushi place and PF Changs - both have gluten free menus. A few of us went out today to celebrate the impending arrival of a coworker's baby. Since she's pregnant, the sushi place was not an option. PF Changs it was! It is a bit bizarre having someone else's lunch event planned around where I can eat. It doesn't seem fair to them and I feel incredibly high maintenance, but they are always willing to accommodate me and my gluten free diet! Plus they are always willing to tell me how cute Sierra is. (Don't worry, I don't actually let her drink my wine.)

Vacation is good!

Vacation is so much healthier than two months straight of sitting on my butt at a desk! I'm on day four of a week vacation and so far I have gotten more exercise than probably the entire last two months put together. That may be a slight exaggeration, but only slight. My hip got worse and worse as the long hours at work got longer, but it is feeling good now. The dog and I have been taking longer and longer walks. While she does like to stop and smell the roses, or in today's case, the daisies, she is happy to maintain a good pace while we're actually moving.

Now try not to laugh at me, but we did 2.87 miles today and I'm happy about that! I definitely could've walked more, and I was very tempted to, but since we just started at about 2.3 miles a few days ago, I think I need to increase my mileage slowly. I'd rather be itching to go farther than wishing I hadn't. We are aiming for 3.0 painfree miles in the next few days  - I think it's going to happen! Lots of stretching happening too. I actually got sore from yoga the other day! 

Yesterday's walk was shorter, probably only a little more than a mile, but I rode a combined 8.4 miles on my bike during the day. My car is not quite as drivable as I would like - or more accurately, it's not quite as parkable as I would like - there is no more reverse! So I've been biking more. (I must admit I find a little bit of irony in riding my bike to my asthma doc's office.) My local gluten free shop definitely gets more of my business because they don't mind if I bring my bike in the shop. It's a lot more convenient to just stop in for a few things if I don't have to worry about locking up my bike. Although I have an ultimate goal of achieving complete relaxation during this vacation, I do need to find myself a new car. (I seriously considered just going car free, but I don't feel safe enough biking anywhere on dark rainy days.) I'm trying to find a triathlete-friendly, dog-friendly, environmentally-friendly car. It is a lot of work for someone on vacation.