Have you seen this great infographic? We came across it via GlutenDude and MindBodyGreen.

Avoiding gluten often translates to more time in the kitchen, either modifying gluten-laden recipes or cooking to avoid gluten in cross-contaminated environments.

A bread maker is a good gift for a celiac because they can bake from scratch or mix, adding or subtracting ingredients to get the best possible outcome.

This Zojirushi, pictured at right, gets rave reviews. Couple it with one or more of the Triumph Dining Baking Guides and you’ve got a big ticket holiday gift.

Just in time for the holiday social season and gift giving, the 6^th edition of America’s #1 Best Selling Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide  is here.

More than half of the 8,500 restaurants in the book have new content or are new altogether. In fact, there are more than 1,500 new restaurants in this guide, places you can now enjoy safe meals. We’ve also noted menu items for 120 National and Regional chain restaurants.

This 6^th edition of the award-winning guide has 570 pages of restaurant information in all 50 states. Even in paperback, it’s a big book. Consider buying two, one for your home, one for your car.

More information can be found here.

This year, for the first time in 70,000 years, Hanukkah starts on the night before Thanksgiving. This presents some interesting opportunities for the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah meals, both having their own set of traditions.

The recipe below came from Bay Area Bites one of my favorite blogs. The recipe was easily modified to be gluten-free.

Pumpkin Latkes with Cranberry Applesauce

The recipe’s author incorporated cranberries into traditional applesauce. Cooking the latkes is a simple as scooping about 1/4 cup of pumpkin mixture per latke into a hot, fat-slicked cast iron skillet and frying them until they’re well browned on each side. Keep early batches warm in a 300 degrees F oven while frying the remainder of the pumpkin mixture.

Makes about 18 latkes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 1/2 pounds apples (3–4), peeled and diced (Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Fuji, Jonathan, McIntosh, Gravenstein, and Honeycrisp apples all make great applesauce)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup apple juice, cider or water
• Juice of 1 lemon
Kosher salt
• 1/2 (4–5 pound) sugar pumpkin
• 1 small onion, minced or shredded
• 1/2 cup your favorite gluten-free flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• Rendered turkey fat, olive oil, or a combination

Instructions:

First, make the cranberry-applesauce: Combine the cranberries, apples, brown sugar, apple juice, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Bring mixture to a rapid simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to simmer until the cranberries have burst and the apples are soft, about 15 minutes.

Mash apples and cranberries with a potato masher until smooth. Season to taste with salt and additional brown sugar. Let cool to room temperature.

For the latkes:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Peel and seed pumpkin half, and cut into chunks about 2 inches wide. Shred the pumpkin using the shredding disk on a food processor or a box grater. You should have about 4 1/2 cups.

Combine the shredded pumpkin, onion, flour, black pepper, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt in a large bowl. Mix well to distribute the flour. Fold in the eggs until combined.

Heat 2–3 tablespoons fat or oil in well-seasoned cast iron skillet or nonstick skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Using 1/4 cup-sized measuring cup, scoop pumpkin mixture into skillet, forming small cakes. Press each latke flat using the measuring cup or your fingers.

Cook each latke until well-browned on each side, 3–5 minutes per side. Adjust the heat as needed to allow the latke to brown evenly and cook through.

Transfer cooked latkes to a cookie sheet and place in oven to keep warm. Continue cooking latkes in the same way until all of the pumpkin mixture is used up. Replenish the fat in the skillet as needed.

Serve latkes with applesauce.

In our search for an interesting take on gluten-free cranberry sauce, we found this super simple recipe from Living Without Magazine. No Thanksgiving dinner is complete without cranberry sauce and this one sounds extra tasty! Click to continue reading »

I’m not much of a baker; the need for precision takes all the fun out of things. I’d much rather toss together savory ingredients and see how it turns out. Still, this is the time of year to bake. There’s just something about looking at the snow outside and having the oven on inside. Besides, there are big meals to be shared and gifts to give.

Next up: Thanksgiving pumpkin pies. Thanksgiving is at our house so that means gluten-free pies. I think baking gluten-free is even more of a drag than regular baking. I don’t do it often so my pantry isn’t stocked with all of those alternative flours around that are often required to make a gluten-free recipe taste good. And picking up a store bought crust isn’t easy to do. Click to continue reading »

Growing up, my friends and I liked this one pita place so much that we’d be the first ones there when it opened. We knew the servers by name and they knew our order. I still like Mediterranean food but once I went gluten free, it meant skipping the pita and certain other dishes I used to enjoy.

I have found a new love in Roti Mediterranean Grill. Not only do they offer fast, tasty Mediterranean food, but they also provide gluten-free pita bread. (It does contain honey, almond meal, yeast and egg whites, in case you have further restrictions).

When you arrive at Roti, you have the choice of a sandwich, rice plate or salad. From there you choose the main protein or topping: chicken, steak, salmon or vegetarian, all of which are gluten-free except the Click to continue reading »

Who among us isn’t busy?! Between working out of three office locations or traveling for work, plus keeping up with the schedules of two kids, I’m always on the go.

My busy lifestyle and needing to follow a gluten-free diet means that I try to never leave home without food or a snack. Lately, my easy breakfast of choice is a yogurt parfait. Naybe it’s not so much of a parfait as it is yogurt with granola mixed in. I like yogurt just fine, but sometimes I need to add a little crunch. I know they sell those pre-packaged yogurt-and-granola concoctions all over the place, but I find that they often don’t have the granola ingredients listed on the package so I just end up making my own. Click to continue reading »

Much has been written about the link between celiac disease and Type 1 Diabetes, and the challenges of living with both. Unfortunately, when you suffer from an autoimmune disorder such as these, your odds of developing another are increased. For this reason we are always interested to hear about new research with a goal of reducing the instances of these conditions.

Research has shown that the intestinal microbiome plays a large role in the development of Type 1 Diabetes and now, recent research at Mayo Clinic has found that gluten in the diet may modify the intestinal microbiome, increasing instances of Type 1 Diabetes. Click to continue reading »