Home made gluten free Chicken Katsu curry

No longer feel like I'm missing out on a Waga's! I used M&S Made Without Wheat breaded chicken and made my own sauce with onion, garlic, apple, banana, turmeric, garam masala, curry powder and tomato ketchup. Add a bit of water, boil for 15 minutes and blend. Found the edamame beans in the freezer section in Tesco and just added salt and chilli flakes. All washed down with a Duara beer! 

Nestlé GF Honey Flakes

Spotted in Tescos - eaten for breakie next day 👍

Gluten free goodies from True Food in Emmer Green

Pilgrims Ice cream Parlour - Plymouth Barbican

A visit down to Plymouth is not complete without a walk along the Hoe, and I was lucky enough to plan a trip to see my parents on the weekend that Spring decided to make its first appearance.

The sun was out and I'd never seen so many people on the Hoe (expect for all the runners finishing way ahead of me in the half marathon)

If you ever find yourself on the Hoe on a sunny day, be sure to head down to the Barbican and visit the Pilgrims Icecream Parlour, and ask for a gluten free cone.

Not all of the flavours are gluten free - here is the list to choose from...

And since you're in Devon, it's not frowned upon if you ask for a dollop of clotted cream on top too.

Dover - La Scala

From what I can tell there aren't many chain restaurants in Dover, and with a 6am ferry crossing in the morning, a La Tasca or Prezzo would have been a god send last Thursday night when we just needed a quick meal before an early night.

A lot of the pubs and restaurants also seemed to insist on net curtains, which I would normally consider a bad thing, but was proved wrong with La Scala who have gluten free pasta as a choice on their menu. I ordered the Scialatielli Alla Siciliana, which was pasta cooked with swordfish, onions, tomatoes, basil and white wine. Simple, but very yummy.

La Scala has a lovely Italian feel and almost tricked us into believing we were abroad already. We only remembered our early start in time to stop us ordering a second bottle of wine!

http://www.lascalarestaurant.org.uk/
19 High Street, Dover

Goblin Abroad - Prague

Prague - famous for goulash, snitznel, dumplings and beer halls. The ideal destination for stag parties, but not necessary coeliacs.

But who needs a beer hall when there is a 100% gluten free restaurant around the corner.

Na Zlaté křižovatce is a little way out of the centre of Prague, but really easy to get to on the subway - just head to Florenc and it's around the corner.

The four owners each have a coeliac in their family and as a result have learnt to adapt traditional Czech food to be gluten free. Here is the beef goulash I polished off for lunch...

We also had gluten free bread to start, and as if the choice of dumplings, schnitzels and strudels wasn't enough, I also had a draft gluten free beer.
Here I am tucking into an aptly named Celia beer...

We did actually go to the oldest beer hall in Prague called Flecku which dates back to 1499. There isn't bar, just a man in little shorts holding a tray of beers who makes his way around the beer hall. I politely declined a very dark beer from the man in shorts, and was possibly the first person to do so in about 500 years!

Supernoodles

I use to live off Supernoodles. Especially during my time at University. I would sometimes venture out to the students union for cheesy chips, but my cooking ability back then only reached as far as heating noodles in water and adding a flavoured sachet to it. The flavour was usually bacon, which resulted in Frazzle burps for the next few days at least.

I went off them a bit though. Nothing to do with them not being gluten free. But once I got so drunk on quadruple vodkas that I was sick and supernoodles came out of my nose. Gross. I soon learnt to cook after that - even Pot Noodles made me feel queasy.

I now feel ready to try some noodle based convenience food again and it looks like Tiger Tiger have come to the gluten free rescue with these Thai microwave noodles.

Christmas Goblin

All families have their traditions at Christmas. Some families go to midnight mass, some insist on watching the Queens speech, and there are those strange people who don't open the presents until after Christmas dinner. But I'm yet to meet another family who eat chocolate biscuits for breakfast on Christmas day.

Keen to keep this tradition going, this year I provided a selection of gluten free biscuits that put that old McVities tin to shame.

Ingredients for Christmas day breakfast :-

Pink Panther Gluten Free Pink Wafers

Trufree chocolate fingers

Doves hazelnut cookies

Trufree custard creams

Trufree chocolate digestives

Birds Eye Potato waffles...

They're waffly gluten free

Goblin Abroad - Milan

I was treated to a wonderful romantic trip to Milan for Valentines day this year. As pure coincidence, Spurs were also playing AC Milan the next day, so my boyfriend suggested catching the match as well.

I thought I might be in for a few days of salads and sneaky rice cakes in restaurants, but was in for a massive surprise when we found Be Bop Restaurant with a gluten free pizza and pasta menu.

Here I am enjoying a pizza and beer in Italy - so tasty!



And here I am next to a poor waxwork Ruud Gullit - not so tasty.



To fill our pudding pockets we went to Grom a few times. Their pistachio gelato was amazing, even in the rain...


http://www.grom.it/eng/celiachia.php

Abby and the Gluten Free Factory

I had the best gluten free day ever on Saturday. It started with the postman delivering a sample of Juvela’s Special Flakes. I’m not sure how they came up with that name for the cereal, probably something to do with them being for people with a ’special’ diet.

Then I met the Cake Crusader - a real superhero, although she didn’t have her pants on over her apron. She had a cake stall at the Harehatch Sheeplands market, and makes the best gluten free millionaire short cake I’ve ever tasted. All of her cakes are gluten and wheat free, so we brought four cupcakes, a brownie and a millionaire shortcake. There are none left today.

Already loaded with yummy cakes, we thought we’d have a quick look in the farm shop. It was like some kind of gluten free version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Clive’s pies, Dietary specials Yorkshires and pasties in the freezer, Mrs Crimbles, Kallo rice cakes, Bryon Bay cookies and so much more, even ice cream cones . I could have stayed there all day, but was in real danger of becoming Augustus Gloop!

Surviving Japan, only to end up in Hell

I'm so pleased my big sister and her husband have returned to England from Japan. I loved Tokyo and survived eating gluten there. I also survived a massive earthquake and then being in a typhoon half way up Mt Fuji, but that's a different story.

I took my own bottle of gluten free soy sauce everywhere I went - luckily nothing is weird in Japan. Most Japanese restaurants have a mini BBQ on your table and you cook the food. As long as we ordered without sauce this was great for me, expect the time we nearly set fire to the restaurant...




Of course it helped having two Japanese speakers with us to avoid those Lost in Translation moments, but with places like Coco Curry having an allergy menu, it's possible to visit Japan and eat out gluten free.

So although their return has scarpered my plans to return to Japan on the cheap, at least they're returning to Clapham where Hell Pizza deliver gluten free pizzas. So they'd better get used to much more frequent visits from me!

Back to Basics

In the search for an alternative to Hula Hoops, I discovered Sainsbury's Basics Potato Rings. They're so cheap that they probably can't afford to add the barley malt extract that may or may not be in plain Hula Hoops.

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1286126025691



The only down side is that I look like a pikey at lunch time in work. However the plus side is I can once again eat the cheddar cheese filled Hula Hoops snack I saw on Freaky Eaters.

Pikachu Soup

I'm reading Gluten Free Girl by Shauna James Ahern at the moment, and have been inspired by her to try new and different foods.

So, I bought this lil' fella at the farmer's market in Winchester on Sunday.



Part squash, part Pokemon, it seemed a shame to have to chop him up and put him in my soup!

Wheat Prices Crisis

Let's see how everyone else likes paying £3 for a loaf of bread.

Animals are cute – fact

There comes a time when all teenager girls realise animals are in fact too cute to eat. Some parents are very helpful and encourage this lifestyle choice. Others aren’t so willing to make the rest of the family eat tofu just because their 13 year old daughter just watched Babe.

My attempt at not eating cute things didn’t go well. I was under the impression my mum was being helpful. She said she wouldn't cook me separate meals, but I could either a) cook for myself or b) pick the meat out of dinner

I opted for option B thinking it would be easy. There followed a week of Chilli Con Carne and Spaghetti Bolognese, not only two of my favs, but also leaving me with little choice but to inevitably eat it a little bit of the meat.

As it turns out, its a good job mum wasn't so corporative and I was a lazy 13 year old unwilling to prepare my own meals. Being a vegetarian ceoliac isn't easy.

But it is easier than I thought. I could eat at Mildreds every night! Its a completely veggie restaurant but also one that marks the menu with those thoughtful little GFs. I fully embraced my inner hippy when we went there this week, drinking organic wine and eating sweet potato curry.

The guilt of playing with the reindeer recently at my friend’s wedding was therefore doubled.

A sight for sore eyes and gluten free pies

After squinting continually at the telly, I thought it was time to get my peepers tested. Turns out I need glasses to see things in the distance. So I put on my new specs for the telly, the cinema and those dreaded powerpoint presentations at work.

I love my glasses and think I look sophisticated in them (even when watching What Katie Did Next), but I always forget to take them with me. They could have come in handy in Warwick at the Merchants pub this weekend. The menu was on blackboards at the other side of the pub so I didn't immediately see the little (g) symbols next to the gluten free dishes. The idea of a steak chips for a fiver won over the laziness and I made the trip across the pub to read the menu properly. I skipped back to the table to tell my friends 'I can even eat the chips!'

Tonight I'm going to try a Dietary Specials steak pie. I'm usually a Clive's Pie kind of girl, but thought I'd try this one as Clive only seems to sell his pies to random health shops. Pie and mash, isn't a typical Easter weekend meal, but after two days drinking in Warwick, it's going to sort out the hangover (the Creme Egg for pudding will sort out Easter!)

Wispa Gold, always believe in your soul

Somethings in life are not worth questioning.

Like, for example, the fact that Wispa Golds are gluten free, but the run of the mill Wispas are not.




No point shouting at Cadburys or campaigning via Facebook, I'll just quietly enjoy my Wispa with loads of gooey caramel shoved on top!

Flipping 'eck

Whose stupid idea was it to go out on Pancake Day? The only day of the year that it's acceptable to heap ice cream, Nutella, and banana onto one plate, and I found myself in rainy London, arguing with a waiter over poached salmon.

It's not often that a restaurant won't cater for my gluten free requests, often offering to cook something totally different than what is on the menu.

Not the case in Auberge, where they couldn't confirm if the poached Salmon was gluten free, because it had been cooked by a different chef in the morning. At 8pm, suddenly the thought of old fish with a possibility of added gluten didn't seem so appetising. And by then my friends, (in the spirit of those Carlsberg adverts) said if I couldn't eat there we were leaving. Probably the best friends in the world.

Just as we were about to start fighting over the last few eggs and Jif lemons and call it a (pancake) day, we stumbled across Cafe Rouge. I've never been to one before and it was brilliant when they reached into a cupboard and pulled out a gluten free menu for me! Had a lovely fresh salmon fillet with roasted veggies.

I will be having belated pancakes sometime this week and will give up going to Auberge for lent!

Approaching 30, fast....

Long gone are the days of drinking cider in the park before gigs. The last two bands I've seen, we started the evening in a nice restaurant, with a nice bottle of wine. A clear sign I'm growing up.

Pete and the Pirates were great at the Plug and Play, following a posh meal in Myalacarte in Caversham. And before Stornaway (a folk band, another indication of my age) we went to Las Iguanas by the Oracle in Reading.

Both these places mark their menus with gfs, which is great and means I spend less time worrying about what I can eat and more time concentrating on the pre-gig drinking, which ultimately results in the same level of teenage drunkness obtained from two cans of White Lightning up the park!