roland quinoa and other grains on sale at amazon.com

I love quinoa. It's the supergrain that the Aztecs warriors ate. It's packed with protein and for the pregnant ladies it's a good source of folic acid. Roland quinoa, along with polenta and rice, is on sale from Amazon.com. Throughout the month of March, select Roland products are 15% off with the coupon code ROLAN655. You'll save an additional 15% if you sign up for Subscribe & Save.

Note that not every product on this page is gluten-free, so read descriptions carefully.



*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

udi's gluten-free granola on sale at amazon.com

Granola is not always gluten-free. You have to make sure it's made from oats that haven't been contaminated and make sure the dried fruit hasn't been dusted with wheat flour. Here comes Udi's to the rescue. It's great with milk or yogurt or baked into muffins. Throughout the month of March, Amazon.com Groceries has select Udi's granola on sale for 15% off when you use the code UDISO3II at checkout. You can save an additional 15% with subscribe & save.

Note that not every Udi's product is gluten-free, so read the descriptions carefully.

*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

dosa masala

Dosa are thin rice-flour pancakes stuffed with spicy yummy fillings. They're often served for breakfast with side sauces. They're a convenience food that you can buy from a cart off the street.

We have two dosa sources within walking distance of our house, a cart and a restaurant, and dosas have become my favorite fast food. A plain dosa is usually filled with onion. My favorite kind is dosa masala, which is stuffed with masala-spiced potato. I've also had dosa palak paneer, which is stuffed with spinach and cheese. The sauces are usually a coconut chutney and a lentil soup. One of the restaurants near us also serves dosa with a ginger chutney, which has been my favorite sauce so far.

Here's the tricky part about dosa. Despite the fork and spoon shown in the photo, dosa are traditionally eaten with your fingers, with just your right hand. It takes some practice to rip the pancake, scoop up all the filling that falls out, dip your fingers in one of the sauces, and get it all into your mouth (and in our case, without dropping any on the baby's head) with one hand. I'm getting the hang of it.

new year new you sale at amazon.com

A couple more Amazon.com sales that I'm excited about...

Select Kind bars are 5% off with the coupon code KINDNYNY through January 31 and if you subscribe you'll get an additional 15% off. I'm a big fan of the Kind Plus bars with calcium, since I don't drink as much milk here in India as I probably should.











Select Bob's Red Mill products are 15% off with the code BOBSNYNY through January 31 and if you subscribe you'll get an additional 15%. Note that not every product on the page is gluten-free, so read the item descriptions carefully.











*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

Our Dinner Guest of Honor

(First published at Where in the World Am I? on 26 December 2010.)

After Thanksgiving Mike read the Facebook status of one of our friends who had enjoyed a succulent duck for dinner (We've had her duck. It's amazing.) and Mike wondered if we could get duck here. Well, with the help of our driver, Mohammed, my Christmas present to Mike was a duck for dinner.

On Tuesday Muffin and I went to the bird market in the Old City, where there are all sorts of live birds for both dinners and pets. We were surrounded by blue and green parakeets (budgies), geese, turkeys, blackbirds, guinea hens, and chickens. Ducks were scarce but Mohammed assured me we'd find some. First I was offered geese. They looked good, but they weren't what I wanted. And they looked too big to fit into our tiny oven. (I'd been instructed to buy the biggest duck I could find, but I was thinking of the biggest duck that would fit in our small oven and small selection of cooking pans.) The first ducks I found were mallards. They were cheap, but covered in flies. In an outdoor market like this, there are going to be some flies, but I wanted to shop around see what my other options were.

We walked down the street, peeking into every storefront. The parrots and parakeets where beautiful and I wanted a cage full of little blue ones to bring home for our terrace. There were also some beautiful ornamental hens and I wish I had a yard for keeping some in. I saw two of the biggest turkeys I've ever seen in my life. Mohammed said that if Americans want a big turkey they must wait for Christmas; at Thanksgiving time only small turkeys are available. There are enough Christians in the city to demand big Christmas turkeys, but not enough Americans to warrant big Thanksgiving turkeys. (Not that the big ones would fit in our oven anyway.) We passed by dozens and dozens of guinea hens, small turkeys, and geese but after several storefronts we still hadn't seen any other ducks.

Just when I was resigning myself to the possibility of guinea hens instead of duck we came to one of the last vendors on the block, the one Mohammed buys the Americans' Thanksgiving turkeys from. He happened to have two big ducks as well. They were pricier than the first ducks I'd seen, but the conditions seemed cleaner. No flies, less smelly. And the right size -- the biggest I could find and the biggest that would fit in our oven. We made a deal for the three kilo male duck, the larger of the two, for 1200 rupees (about $26). It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but honestly I have no idea how much a duck should cost. He tried to sell me the pair for a bargain price and it didn't occur to me until the ride home that I could have bought them both and put one in the freezer.

Many Americans get excited over buying fresh meat but then make a mistake, only once, about delivery of the animal. After seeing friends have live turkeys and other live animals dropped off at their houses, I knew to ask for the duck to be prepared for us. Plucked, cleaned, no neck, take out the organs, for an additional 100 rupees ($2 -- probably the best $2 I've ever spent).

On Thursday Mohammed went back to the market with a cooler full of ice, picked up our prepared duck, and brought it home. Our housekeeper cleaned it off and wrapped it up to sit in the refrigerator. Mike had his Christmas duck.

Mike did all the cooking yesterday. I'm not confident in my meat-roasting skills, but I was able to stock the kitchen with all the groceries he needed, plus keep Muffin out of the way, tidy up the presents-opening mess, and set the table while Mike went to work with his bird.

Muffin helped a little.

It was delicious. It wasn't perfect, but that's due to us still figuring out the nuances of the oven and the toughness of the bird had to do with the life it led before it met me. But it was tasty and something we'd like to do again. The potatoes and carrots roasted in duck fat were amazing and if duck fat is readily available to you I highly suggest you try it. With some seasoned rice and a cranberry log our friends brought over, dinner was complete.

Note the cranberry log standing upright on the plate...

We had a great dinner with some of our new friends and we couldn't have asked for a better day. I hope everyone else celebrating yesterday had as happy a Christmas as we did.

year-end deals at amazon.com

It's been a little quiet around here as we adjust to our new life in India. Come the new year, I have plenty of product reviews and local food stories to share. Until then, enjoy some gluten-free end-of-year savings from Amazon.

The GoPicnic Energy Boost Care Package includes hummus, multi-seed crackers, popchips, organic energy chews, and other high-energy, gluten-free treats. It's usually $29.99 and is on sale for $9.00. Stock up for your favorite college student who will be returning to late-night study sessions soon.











A case of Pamela's Chocolate Chunk cookie mix is down to $25.20. I love all of Pamela's mixes and packaged cookies and biscotti.













Bob's Red Mill products on this page are 15% percent off when you use the code BOBS2010 at checkout. Note that not every product on that page is gluten-free so read the descriptions carefully.












That's enough commercialization for now. Cheers to a happy, healthy 2011. Happy New Year!

*I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

breakfast is served. in india

For those of you who don't follow my other blog, Where in the World Am I?, here's a summary of the last few months. We moved from Burundi in June and had the baby in August in the United States (a little girl named Sophie, who goes by Muffin in the blogosphere). Last week we moved to Hyderabad, India.

We are temporarily living in a furnished, "full-service" apartment. One of the services provided is breakfast. We have a choice of Western, which is an omelette and toast, or South Asian, which is idli (steamed rice pancakes) with savory sauces. I don't like eggs and can't eat the toast, so I get a plate of idli with fresh fruit. And I yank a little of the sweet red jelly from Mike's tray because my stomach isn't ready for savory sauces early in the morning. They don't go well with coffee.

Wait, let me be more precise here. On the weekends I get a plate of idli and fresh fruit. Because on the weekends we request breakfast at eight o'clock. But during the week we request breakfast at seven o'clock and they can't source their idli that early in the morning. So despite our protests that we have plenty of fresh fruit, Mike's Western breakfast is served with an additional plate of fruit for me. (I can't wait until our blender arrives and we can go back to making smoothies, which is an excellent way to consume all the freakin' fruit that gets hoisted upon us.)

glutino frozen pizzas

While I was home in the United States this summer and fall, my pizza addiction led me to try Glutino Duo Cheese, Pepperoni, and Three Cheese frozen pizzas. They were all decent, for frozen pizzas. I doctored them up a bit, adding extra veggies. I also found that I needed to bake them in the oven for longer than the instructions recommended in order to get an acceptably crispy crust and the crust was inconsistent. Sometimes piping hot, sometimes cool in the middle, even though I baked the pizzas the same way.

My favorite was the Three Cheese. The Pepperoni was tasty, but I preferred adding slices of Aidells Italian style sausage to the plain cheese pizzas. The Pepperoni and Three Cheese have brown rice crusts, which was a better crust. For some reason it seemed to cook to a more consistent crispiness and had a better flavor. The cheeses and sauce on all three pizzas were flavorful.

No frozen pizza, gluten-free or otherwise, is as good as a restaurant or homemade fresh pizza. On the scale of frozen pizzas, I'd put these toward the high end if you like a thin, crispy crust.

Image from Glutino.com. I was not compensated in any way for this post. Items were purchased by me for personal consumption.

against the grain frozen bagels

Whoever labeled these packages "bagels" has never actually eaten a bagel before and apparently doesn't know a single person who has, either, in order to conduct a taste test. This, sir, is no bagel. It's round and that's where the similarities between bagels and whatever this is ends.

It somehow manages to be light and airy in appearance (which is the first clue that it's not a bagel) yet chewy in an undercooked pastry dough kind of way (chewy is good in a bagel; undercooked dough is not).

They were also greasy in a pastry dough kind of way. On their own website Against the Grain admits that people have compared them to croissants. A bagel that can be mistaken for a croissant isn't a bagel.

These bagels just weren't for me.

Images from Against the Grain. I was not compensated in any way for this post. I purchased items myself for personal consumption. 

eat more

I had a consultation with a nutritionist this week. My blood sugar levels have been up and down and my doctor wants them to even out a bit. Not to worry, everything is absolutely fine with the pregnancy. My doctor is just being extra cautious because I’m here rather than in the United States. He found me an American nutritionist who lived in Nairobi for several years, so has a good idea of what kinds of food are and are not available and she knows what life in general is like in this region. She’s also worked with celiac disease and gestational diabetes (ugh, I hate that term, but technically I have it based on a couple unusually high glucose readings).

Basically, I have to eat more. My weight gain has been slow and steady, but she wants to see it increase a bit now that I’m entering the third trimester. I have to stop eating so much dried fruit and stop drinking juice and I have to increase my healthy fats. I should start taking a calcium supplement, since I’m not getting as much dairy here as I would be in the United States. That all sounds reasonable enough. I just have to buckle down and force myself to eat the same foods, day in and day out, until I get back to the States in a few weeks. And see if any other Americans around here have some TUMS I can buy off them, for the calcium.

And the nutritionist knows this, too. She understands that I’ll basically be on a peanut butter and avocado diet for the next month, since they are the easiest of the healthy fats for me to obtain here. She knows I snack on the dried fruit to add a little bit of variety to the limited fresh fruits that are available. And she knows I’ll expand my dietary horizons as soon as possible. It was nice talking to someone who has an understanding of what it’s like here. Other nutritionists I talked to didn’t really understand the living conditions and gave me lists of foods that are impossible to find here, which I can’t really fault someone for if they haven’t been here; but they also didn’t seem to grasp the gluten-free diet, which is troubling.

So, no sugar, no gluten. But eat more. It's hard to do that when your food options keep getting narrower.