So this past weekend I went to the , or, a, Gluten Free Expo in Dallas.  Thank you Lisa for asking me to join you!  The Gluten Free Expo, from what I can tell is a brain/heart child of Debbie Deaver, who was diagnosed with Celiac in 2009.  And then within 3 years of, she has a nation wide Expo to tout. Unlike this wanna be the queen of gluten freedom for the past 18 years.  GREEN EYED wanna be.

I digress.

Always.

So the expo.. It was GREAT! Met a lot of people to be jealous of.  A lot of people who are wanting to, and are changing this gluten FULL world one bite at a time to be gluten less. Here is a list of some of those I stopped and saw, that I made it home with cards with.

 El’s Gluten Free Crunchy   REally great tasting snacks, pretzels, toasty cracker things, cornnuts, and other crunchies and flavor.  Just like they offer in the hotel bar for snacks. 😉 The night before the expo, Lisa and I were sitting in the lobby/bar area for wifi access, with  our drinks the waiter delivered a bowl of snacks also. Lisa and I looked at the pretzels and crackers and smiled politely at the waiter, thanking him, and glanced at each other with the knowing it has gluten winks. We set the snacks aside. The next day at the Expo as we stopped to chat at the El booth, Lisa noticed the snack looked like the one offered the night before, the El girl confirmed she had given the bar Crunchy snacks to give to the hotel guests the night before. MAN!! If we had only known!!!!  I bought 4 bags for myself and the other Petty families. YUM

Better Batter : Brownie Mix, Pancake and Biscuit Mix, Chocolate Cake Mix, Yellow Cake Mix, Seasoned Flour.  And and fun and informative web page! Lot’s of info for those dealing with Autism and GFCF diet.  AND a YouTube channel. BetterBatterGF’s channel

Local Oven – I can still taste the onion bread, mmmmmmmmmmm. The biscotti needed a cup of coffee and the Eifel tower in the background and I would have been pretty near heaven. Check out the find our product tab, it is amazing how many restaurants in Dallas area serve gluten free!!! At the bottom of the product detail tab is a click to print a Product Request form, for each of us to take to our favorite eating spot. Ingenious.

Allergy Free passport:   Great lists of restaurants around the world. Travel tips. Apps http://glutenfreepassport.com/allergy-gluten-free-apps/allergy-gluten-free-fast-food/ for we that app. Ebooks, books, lots and lots of info for we that continue to live in this world gluten free.  I am not on this list yet, but I will get me there soon;)  Lisa and I went to a ‘class’ given by Passport, fun and informative.

Little Aussie Bakery  My FAVORITE go to place in San Antonio. My FAVORITE FAVORITE gluten free pizza crust.  They had a booth and Rita did a teaching on making her icing.  Fun people– Love the accent.  Bought their flax bread, something I have not tried before, it is great!!

Brain Balance   No food for the stomach but lots for the brain!  These people are treating and teaching and helping all of those kids (and adults) with the brain ‘problem’ labels.  They KNOW what I keep trying to tell everyone… What goes in your stomach does not stay in  your stomach, it goes every where, it affects everything.  So much of this confirms all that I KNOW happens with my kids and theirs and myself and all of those who I meet with gluten issues.  It is NOT your gall bladder or ADHD!!  I will admit I always am a bit ‘saddned’ by these fabulous centers, these non conventional therapies, because I so wish this knowledge and teaching was ‘out there’ 22 years ago when we were finding Evan needed something.

Bards Tale Beer —  this is Keith and the guys favorite GF beer. Nuff said. Other than the Midland distributer won’t distribute to us 😦 So we bootleg from Dallas, San Antonio and Lubbock, every opportunity we get.

Chebe  I found Cheb when Evan was going to ‘school’ in San Antonio, this is a great bread.  Brazilian bread.  It makes a really good pizza crust too.

Pamela’s Products – great cookies and mixes

Rudi’s GF Bakery – They have tortillas!! Spinach, plain and fiesta– Really tasty!

 Udi’s They had their cinnamon rolls and blueberry muffins on the breakfast buffet.  The muffins were good, the rolls were like every packaged cinnamon roll I have ever had.. Not so good. I love Udi bread, our local Natural Grocer, http://www.naturalgrocers.com who was also at the expo carries Udi, and I always buy a loaf. No need to home bake a loaf as long as Udi’s is around.

 EZ Gluten  a tester kit for gluten in foods.  Interesting but to be honest, I don’t see it being practical.  First, it cost $25 for 2 tests– Way more than the food you would be testing, I would guess. Then to take the test it takes 2 minutes of shaking food with test liquid that you have in a vial. Then 5 minutes of waiting, then dropping liquid with dropper into vial, then test strip it, then wait 10 minutes. So about 20 minutes later you find out if the squash casserole from Cracker Barrel has gluten in it, which it does, then what? You have ordered it, it is on your plate and the rest of your food is cold. IF this was like a ketone strip and the minimal cost of the same, and you just touched your food with it and it turned red if wheat is in it, it could be a useful tool. EZ did say these would make fun science projects.

 Glutino   These guys make my favorite ‘oreo’s’. I love their pretzels plain and chocolate coated. Their crackers are a main staple on my shelves, grandkids have to have them. And now they have Bagel Chips!!! They say they will be/are on the shelves of Walmart. I know I find my crackers at Natural Grocers and HEB now.  Their site shows them to have far more product than I know about, I think I need to talk to my grocer.

San-J international  I love their soy sauce it is much better than La Choy- I tasted the other sauces at expo, tooooo good!!

Others I noticed at the Expo: 123Gluten Free , Against the Grain Gourmet, Blackbird Bakery (really ‘pretty’ cookbook),Outrageous baking , Crunchmaster , Living without magazine , Kinnikinnick,   (they have SOFT bread),   This is just a small list of the vendors.

The Utah Gluten Free Expo shows to have even more!

I am finding we gluten free are not a few, but many! The products ARE available, we just need to let our grocers and restaurant’s know of them.  It seems gluten free foods are like gluten intolerant/celiac diagnosis; it is not rare it is just that many are ignorant of it.