In the 16 years since my daughter, Amanda, was diagnosed with celiac disease, a stunning number of foods have gone from wishful-thinking to actual products on store shelves.
A short list:
Pretzels — first the hard kind Amanda and I tried to make by squeezing dough out of the corner of a plastic bag into skinny sticks (Not very successfully!) and now the soft kind sold by both Miss Roben’s (http://www.allergygrocer.com/) and Noah’s Pretzels (http://www.noahspretzels.com/).
Hostess Hoho’s — pretty good copies have been made by Shabati (http://www.shabtai-gourmet.com)/ for a few years.
Bagels — made by a number of companies, with decent ones (http://www.glutino.com/) now available at my local Giant supermarket (this was another goodie we use to try to make following multiple steps that I seem to remember involved both boiling in water and then baking.)
Pizza and beer — we devoted a whole section of Gluten-Free Living (It’s in the Spring 2007 issue) to these two previously elusive items.
You get the picture.
I have to admit I still get pretty excited when something new is available. I found gluten-free whoopie pies (http://www.glutenfree4me.com/) in another local grocery and called my daughter at college even as I was loading up my shopping cart.
But some of the thrill has faded. I think we have come to expect all the ingenious gluten-free chefs out there to whip reluctant gluten-free flours into all the foods or our dreams.
Still, my heart went aflutter recently when I read about a company that makes gluten-free cookie dough ice cream. (Technically its a dairy-free frozen dessert.) This is a product I never thought anyone would go to the trouble to make — but here it is.
I tried to buy a pint of Turtle Mountain’s Purely Decadent cookie-dough flavor (http://www.turtlemountain.com/) right away just because it seemed so wonderful. Alas, it was sold out locally. So I can’t tell you how Amanda thought it tastes. Right now that doesn’t seem matter — though it will in the long run if the “ice cream” is to last. For now it’s enough that someone decided to make it at all.
