GF Goodies

Our girlie was SO EXCITED when her dad came home from a grocery trip to Meijer with 3 packages of the new Gluten Free Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies! We kept seeing people talk about where they found them locally and a few Meijer stores even showed them “in stock”. However, when we went, there weren’t any actually in stock. This time, there was an aisle number in the app and we were crossing our fingers that meant that they were really there…and they were!

Katz is one of our girlie’s favorite brands lately! We got a handful of things at Fresh Thyme at our last visit and she loves all of them! We tried 4 of their items on this trip!

We made another trip to Fresh Thyme right before Christmas to pick up some favorites and food for our girlie’s Christmas dinner.

I’ll be posting about everything our girlie ate for Christmas dinner soon, but these are a few things we got for her…

My mom asked me to bring a gluten free dessert to Christmas this year so our girlie would have a great dessert just like everyone else. I showed her a handful of recipes and she picked an Oreo Ice Cream pie. The one we found was from a gluten free food blog called Fresh Ness (recipe linked). It is a gluten free Oreo crust with vanilla ice cream mixed with gluten free Oreos. The recipe was fairly simple and didn’t take long to make, however, my food processor decided it did’t want to work anymore, so I had to use a blender. That worked great and our girlie loved it! It’s now one of her favorite desserts and we’ll definitely be making it again!

We finally found them - the new gluten free Cheez-Its!! We saw some Columbus-area posts about finding them and we went on a search. We ended up getting them at a local Kroger store (but not our usual one - they were sold out). Our girlie had to try them as soon as we got them home and she loved them! She said they are “squares of cheesy, buttery goodness”! I tried one and thought they tasted just like the original. Hopefully, they’ll start being stocked and we won’t have a hard time finding them because it sounds like we’ll need more!

Merry Christmas Eve! It was time for our yearly Christmas tradition of building gingerbread houses! Last year, we found a great gluten free option and our girlie built them with Pamela’s gluten free graham crackers. We did the same thing this year and it was a hit again! Our girlie had fun with all of the toppings that we got at Target and said her house this year is “the elves partying after Christmas is over”.

Last Christmas was our girlie’s first gluten free Christmas so we were trying lots of Christmas treats to see what she liked We found the assortment of gluten free cookies from Cheryl’s Cookies and she loved them! We ordered them again this year and are so excited that she can have cookies from Cheryl’s, too. I’ve tried them and they taste almost exactly the same as the original! We highly recommend them!

I’ve seen so many posts recently about the Reese’s Oreos and we finally found one this weekend at Walgreen’s. Our girlie was so excited to hear they were gluten free! She was hesitant about them, though, because she’s not a huge white chocolate fan. I convinced her just to try them since it’s only a small layer on the top and she loved them! Reese’s - this is a huge win for everyone who is gluten free! Thank you!

Our girlie loves desserts, especially if it’s chocolate! We found this Chocolate Silk Pie by Raised Gluten Free at Fresh Thyme Market. She loved it! The crust and filling were both great and she topped it with lots of whipped cream, which made it perfect. We’ll definitely buy this again!

t’s getting close to Thanksgiving and we wanted to see if we could get some gluten free goodies for it. We found some great options that our girlie can’t wait to try!

Here’s what we got for Thanksgiving:

• Schar Ciabatta Rolls - you need some good buttered rolls to go with your turkey

• Kevin’s Turkey Gravy - our girlie is excited to try this gluten free gravy

• Katz Pumpkin Pie - we got these last year and our girlie loved it (and so did the family!)

• More to come!

It’s one of the hardest times of the year for a child with celiac disease - Halloween. We just got back from our school’s Trunk or Treat event and we went through our girlie’s candy. We Googled everything we were unsure of which is a typical thing we do with food. She was so happy to find that she had a decent amount of gluten free candy that she can keep for herself and not “donate” to her brother (he gets her candy with gluten).

One of the biggest thing that our girlie misses since her celiac diagnosis is a good donut. We found these frozen Katz Glazed Donuts at Fresh Thyme. Our girlie loved them and went through this package of 6 donuts so fast! Definitely purchasing them again!

We love Fresh Thyme for a lot of our gluten free goodies! This is what we grabbed last time we were there:

• Ava Coconut Crispy Rollers

• Feel Good Foods Three Cheese Pizza Snacks

• Feel Good Foods Mozzarella Sticks

• Annie’s Gluten Free Chicken & Pasta Soup

• Drumroll Chocolate Glazed Donuts

• Sweet Loren’s Fudge Brownie Cooke Dough

• Katz Glazed Donuts

• Annie’s Gluten Free Rice Pasta & Cheddar

It’s officially Halloween season when you step into most stores, including Target. And how could we pass up a bag of candy? We grabbed the Unreal Halloween candy bag that includes dark chocolate peanut butter cups, dark chocolate caramel peanut nougat bars, and dark chocolate coconut bars.

Goodie Girl Cookies are a great find for our girlie! She LOVES the Mint Cookies by Goodie Girl because they are similar to a Girl Scout thin mint, so we had to try these other flavors. The Fudge Striped cookies are just like the fudge stripes cookies that we used to eat when she was younger, and the S’mores are a delicious sandwich cookie with flavors of chocolate, graham cracker and marshmallow.

When we vacationed at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, we had to make s’mores! There was a fire pit in the backyard and it was a lake tradition to have a s’mores night. Obviously, we wanted our girlie to be able to make one, too, so we brought Pamela’s Honey Grahams.

Our girlie turned 11 yesterday!! It’s her first birthday since her celiac diagnosis, so we are still navigating the best way to do things. We celebrated with family over the weekend with pizza and an amazing gluten free chocolate-cherry birthday cake (recipe and pics coming!) In 2 weeks we’ll be hosting her friend birthday party, so I’ll also share details about that afterwards.

One of the best gluten free treats that we’ve found are Sweet Loren’s cookies! Our girlie is a huge fan of the Fudgy Brownie flavor and I have to admit that I think they are delicious, too. They are super easy to make that our girlie helps me when it’s time.

If you’re looking for a good gluten free dupe of a Rice Krispie treat, we’ve found them, MadeGood Crispy Squares. Our girlie liked them, said they were close, but not quite perfect. When you can’t have the real thing, though, it’s a great substitute.

What’s more Summerish than ice cream cones? Not much! And we hit the jackpot at Fresh Thyme today when we found these Let’s Do Gluten Free Cake Style Ice Cream Cones. I was so excited to share that our girlie hasn’t even tried them out yet but I can only imagine she’ll just be excited to have an ice cream cone again. We’ll report back after our first official ice cream cone since our celiac diagnosis!

Our girlie LOVES Target, so on our last trip, we searched for some gluten free goodies. We found a few that we’ve had before and a few new ones. I’ll review any of the new ones separately. Overall, we were really happy with our haul!

Our girlie really likes everything we get from MadeGood! This time we tried the Soft Baked Snickerdoodle mini cookies. They are the same bite sized cookies as the Soft Baked Mini Chocolate Chip cookies. These have a cinnamon flavor that our girlie really liked. It’s another great choice of cookies for her lunchbox. MadeGood seems to always be a win for her!

We make a habit of checking for new delicious treats from Schar when we go to the grocery store. Last trip, we found these Schar Chocolate Thins. Our girlie thought they were great!

We were shopping and wanted to treat our girlie, so we decided to try Graeter’s ice cream. Before getting in line, I looked to see if any of their ice creams were gluten free and they had quite a few. Our girlie loves mint chocolate chip ice cream so that’s what she wanted to try. When I ordered for her, I started by telling them that our girlie had celiac disease.

While picking up a few things for Easter at Meijer, we were looking for a good Mac & cheese to try and found this Kraft Deluxe Mac & Cheese. I made it for our girlie for Easter dinner and she really liked it. It had one of those cheese sauce packets included, also labeled gluten free. Our girlie said she would definitely eat it again!

We found a few more great gluten free Easter candies that I wanted to share. Our girlie has an expander in her mouth to get ready for braces, so anything chewy, gummy or sticky is out. We needed other options and found these great ones that were all gluten free. She was so excited to get all of them on Easter morning!

It’s our first Easter with celiac disease for our girlie and we really had no idea what Easter candy she could eat. A lot of the people I follow mentioned that most solid chocolate Easter bunnies that you could buy at Target were not gluten free. And a lot of other holiday candy is made in a facility with products that contain wheat. I was determined that our girlie would have a solid chocolate bunny in her Easter basket this year - it’s a tradition! After a lot of research, I found See’s Candies.

We found the Made Good Soft Baked Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies at Target and our girlie thought they were great! All of the Made Good products (that we’ve tried) have been gluten free, so I don’t have to worry when we pick them up at the store.

We were so excited to find a gluten free chicken noodle soup! It’s one of those winter staples that our girlie missed with her celiac disease. Thank you, Annie’s!

We had never had a coconut roller before our girlie’s celiac diagnosis, and we only tried them because they were gluten free. Surprisingly, coconut rollers are great! It’s just a little bit of sweet with lots of crunch. We got our first batch from Costco and had previously reviewed them (yum!). This set was from Fresh Thyme. The original flavor tasted very similar to the Costco version.