One of our favorite summer treats is Rita’s Water Ice, and I am a huge fan of the Gelati made with vanilla custard and a fruit flavored ice.  You can imagine how pleased I was to find that many of their products are gluten free.  A little bit of common sense will steer you in the right direction, i.e. no Birthday Cake or Fudge Brownie, but they do have a copy of the allergen information in the store.

Here is a link to the latest chart.  It is very thorough and covers wheat, soy, milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, fish and shellfish.  No, they do not currently offer any fish flavored products, they just detail the allergen information very well.

http://www.ritasice.com/uploads/documents/Allergen_Chart03.13.09.pdf

After reading a few articles on Late Blight coming to the Northeast I found my potatoe crop ravaged by it.  My daughter and I salvages the potatoes from the plants that seemed unaffected, but tonight I went out to start cleaning the spuds we pulled only to find that the fungus was on several of the tubers and when I began removing them from the lot, they burst open into a mass of oozing gelatin, dripping onto the others in the pile.  Trying to be gentle and sift slowly through caused others that were infected to rupture.   As a result, our entire potato harvest is a loss this year.  I can’t trust any of the remaining ones not be diseased.

Here are further articles discussing the infection affecting so many this year:

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/07/05/Late-blight-hits-early-in-Northeast/UPI-89851246769782/

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/31/disease_that_spawned_irelands_potato_famine_hits_new_england/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/nyregion/18tomatoes.html

I was one of those kids who grew up on Friday night fishsticks and fries and as an adult still like a nice crisp fish fillet.  My brand of choice was always Gorton’s.  With my recent dietary changes, I knew I could no longer have any of the breaded products, but am concerned about cross contamination of other products, so contacted customer service.  Here is their response:

Any Gorton’s product containing gluten-based ingredients will list those ingredients separately on the label.

However, Gorton’s is sensitive to the fact that some consumers are very concerned about non-gluten containing products manufactured in an environment with gluten-based ingredients. Although some of our products do not list any gluten-based ingredients, Gorton’s cannot guarantee that any product is entirely gluten free. Products produced in a plant that is responsible for production of other Gorton’s products that do contain gluten-based ingredients. It is possible that all Gorton’s products may contain trace amounts of gluten from the production facility.

I also returned to their website to look at the non-breaded products and was surprised to see that when you click on the individual items are taken to a page that includes the ingredient and nutrition information. From looking at this information the following items are gluten free, though there is the possibility of cross contamination.

• All Natural Lemon Pepper Grilled Fillets
• All Natural Garlic Butter Fillets
• All Natural Lemon Butter Fillets
• All Natural Cajun Blackened Grilled Fillets
• All Natural Italian Herb Grilled Fillets
• All Natural Classic Char Grilled Fillets
• Salmon Lemon Butter Grilled Fillets
• Tilapia Roasted Garlic and Butter Grilled Fillets
• Tilapia Signature Grilled Fillets
• Shrimp Scampi
• Lemon Shrimp Scampi

If you’ve checked a food label lately, you have seen High Fructose Corn Syrup in more products than  you might imagine.  That lead me to find this information uncomfortable.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html

http://www.grist.org/article/Some-heavy-metal-with-that-sweet-roll-/

When looking at Wegmans website the other day, I plugged Gluten Free into the search bar and was surprised by the number of items that were returned, including not only products (1,190), but also recipes (378).   You can then pick through the list and add items to a custome shopping list which can be printed with aisle locations on it to make shopping considerably more convenient.

If you are located near a Wegmans store in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania or Virgina, definitely check out the website, it makes living Gluten Free much easier.  For those of you who don’t, think of contacting your local grocery store and see if they will add a similar feature.

I was going to post an article about some gluten free corn dogs we had picked up a few weeks ago, but in pulling up the name in a web search, found out they were by no means gluten free.  That lead me to this article by the Chicago Tribune about Allergen threats in foods.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-allergens-storygallery,0,5158411.storygallery

What is the most disturbing part about all of this is how many food recalls occur because of hidden allergens and are not reported to the public.  Even reading labels isn’t enough to be safe.  For those of you with severe allergies, please take care of yourself and be careful with what you eat.