Here we are, 5 days and almost 10 hours in to the gluten free experiment. I am still debating whether or not to even have a blog, so I'm kind of behind on posting. BUT, yesterday and today I did some gluten-free shopping and ran into some interesting things.
For example, today I spent $5 on a loaf of gluten-free bread. And by "loaf" I mean a doll-sized loaf. Really, it's funny. I opened it at home and it was hard as a rock! Then I read the packaging which said I needed to microwave or toast the bread briefly. So I did. And it became soft. And then I ate it. AND then it was gross!!! Truly, it was the most foul bread I've ever had. It was stretchy, for crying out loud! So that was a dud, and a loss of $5.
I'm snacking a lot less because there really isn't much to snack on. That is probably a good thing, and I'm interested in seeing whether I drop a few pounds from all of this. To alleviate my snacking issue, I bought some special GF (gluten free) snacks including crackers and chips. Chips I can usually have without any special buys, but you have to be careful. Crackers are always a no-go. The crackers were surprisingly delicious. They, too, were very hard. I'm sensing a pattern. Really it was hard cracker with ranch powder on top. The chips were decent, too. I bought some dried banana chips and they were horrible. Apparently I found the ones with no sweetener. Blech. May as well have bought cow chips.
I ran into something interesting today -- obviously no wheat, rye, barley, etc. But "malted barley syrup"? Sounds like a definite no, but I found it on the back of a rice krispies box. Rice krispies are supposed to be one I can eat!! I guess it depends on the brand.... was really looking forward to rice krispy treats in the microwave tonight. But it's little things like that which confuse me. That wasn't a very good example because it had the word "barley" right in it, but there are other things like different starches that just really make me go "huh?" I can't tell you how many times I had to whip my phone out in the middle of the grocery aisle and Google "_____ gluten free?" But, I'm learning.
It really hasn't been as bad as I've heard or expected, so far. Sure, there are things that frustrate me. Like today, in the healthy living aisle at the giant new mega-Kroger, they had a freezer of different things. In one section they had frozen burritos. I saw one that said "gluten free" then looked around and saw that whatever brand it was had several burritos, and all of them were on sale, EXCEPT the GF one. Honestly, for about 5 minutes I stood there wondering if I should get a manager and complain. I bet I could have convinced them to give it to me at the sale price (and oh how I would have embarrassed my husband!)....but really, it's the principle of the thing. I really do see that companies in the food industry are taking advantage of the growng GF population. I should have taken a photo just to emphasize my point, and I may go back and do so. 3 shelves of burritos all from the same company just with different flavors, all with big sale tags underneath them with a discount of nearly $1. Then there was one, lone box of burritos with the same logo and tiny words "gluten free" and there was no sale tag beneath it. Mind you, the base price before the sale was all the same, gluten or no gluten. But Kroger *chose* to have the gluten-free burritos excluded from the sale. Unfair!
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