Glutino French Bread and Pizza Mix Review

Hello everybody!

It’s Spring Break, so I’m at home. When my sister and I were in elementary and middle school, my family used to get pizza every Friday. We decided to bring back the tradition, but this time, make gluten free pizza so I could eat it.
Luckily for us, my father works right by a Whole Foods; so on the way home, he picked up a pizza mix. He was looking for the Whole Foods 365 Brand, but apparently he didn’t see it, so he bought the Gluten Free Pantry French Bread and Pizza Mix (which is made by Glutino).

The ingredients were fairly normal for a college student to have, the only thing I wouldn’t have had at school was the vinegar, and even at home we did not have the correct kind, but we substituted with red wine vinegar.
The directions left it unclear if we were supposed to the dough rise like the French bread or if we should just mix the dough together and make the pizza. We decided to let the dough rise, figuring that it couldn’t hurt.

The dough was pretty sticky and a little bit difficult to spread on the pizza pan. I ended up sprinkling the pizza pan with all purpose gluten free flour, splatting blobs of the dough, and just spreading it over the pan with a spoon. It took awhile but it worked. After we spread the dough on the pizza pan, we would put it in the oven for about 8 minutes to let the dough get hard so the pizza would not get soggy. Then, we would put the ingredients on the pizza and put it back in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

It actually says to put the oven on 450, but we ended up putting it on 425 and cooking it for a little longer so it would not burn.

Yall can put whatever yall want on your pizza, but we ended up cutting traditional tomato pizza sauce, Pizza style cheese, Italian seasoning, Italian sausage, mushrooms, and red onions on our pizza, and it was DELICOUS. It was better than Boston’s Pizza!
(Did yall know that Boston’s Pizza has gluten free pizza? It’s good, but it made my stomach hurt last time I went...)

I would highly recommend this pizza crust mix because it is by far the most delicious gluten free pizza we have ever made. I am a person who cannot eat out because I am overly sensitive to cross contamination, so it was amazing to have such an amazing pizza with a light crisp crust. It was one of the best pizzas I have ever had! (including before my gluten allergy...)

The only thing I didn’t like was how long it took to make. Because it made so many pizzas, we had to wait for each one to get out of the oven and it just seemed to take forever. If you were at school maybe you could freeze some pizza dough for later? Even though I really enjoyed it, I think at college it would take too long, unless my boyfriend and I planned our date night around making pizza.

I hope you get to enjoy some pizza! I know I was happy to!

-Anita

Does laundry detergent contain gluten?

Does laundry detergent have gluten?

As a kid, my mom took cleaning seriously. The only brands of laundry detergent she ever bought were Tide and Gain. I grew up thinking that even though I had food allergies, at least my skin was not sensitive to soaps and scents.

My freshman year, after the laundry detergent my mom had given me had run out, I decided to go to the store and pick up some. When I saw how expensive laundry detergent was, I picked up “Sun” which was $2.99 for 32 loads! What a deal, right? Wrong! The first week I used it I noticed I was a little bit itchy, and it made me uncomfortable. The next week I made a huge mistake. Along with washing my clothes, I washed all of my towels and bed sheets. Oh my goodness. I cannot describe to you the pain my skin was going though. I was constantly itching and my skin eventually just started burning from the nails against my skin. But, silly Anita, I did not even think that it was my laundry detergent. I just thought that I was bitten by a mosquito (all over my body?), and it would go away. Finally, my friend started asking me questions, and the question “did you just change your laundry detergent?” came up. YES! Of course, that was it! So, I went to the store and bought Gain (original fresh, mmmm) and washed all of my clothes, towels, and bedding, and sure enough, the itch finally went away.

You would think I learnt my lesson about buying cheap laundry detergent… wrong. Just a couple of weeks ago, sophomore Anita ran out of Gain, so I went to Target, and saw “All Small and Mighty” was $3.99 for 32 loads. That was the best deal that I saw, so of course I bought it! Literally, the same thing happened. The first week, I was a little itchy, and the week after when the towels and bedding was washed, I was MISERABLE! The thing that made me upset about this in particular, is that I have used “All” brand before. My aunt uses the normal blue bottle of “All” and it had never made me break out. There must be a reason that the new “small and mighty” is so cheap, and I think it is because either cheap ingredients that I happen to be allergic to, or GLUTEN FILLERS!

When I went laundry detergents websites, I felt like the only thing I was finding out is if the laundry detergent was high efficiency, or environmentally friendly: the websites say NOTHING about the ingredients.

It just makes me upset that this happens. Has anybody else seen the commercials for shampoo with “wheat complex”? It just makes me so angry, why is there gluten in EVERYTHING?!

Well, at least I have learned a lesson. When buying laundry detergent, I will stick with the good stuff. I see lots of Tide and Gain in my future…

Easy, cheap, Mexican Chicken

Hello everybody!
I am really excited about this recipe. It is literally one of the cheapest, easiest meals to make. I wish I took pictures of everything, but it's okay, I can just tell you...

What you need..

• About a pound of chicken (cut into strips or bite size)
  (I seasoned my chicken with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, but you probably don't have to season it at all)
  
• 1 package of taco seasoning (I like to buy the low sodium kind, but any works)
  
• 1 15oz can of black beans (drained) (I also bought low sodium, but any works)
  
• 1 can of Mexican style corn (undrained) (whole corn kernels with red and green peppers) (I bought Del Monte brand 15 oz, but I know Green Giant sells "Mexicorn" in the 11oz as well)
• About 1/4 cup of water
  
• Corn tortillas (...if you feel like it..)

The only kind of chicken I buy is a big bag of chicken tenderloins. I used about 7 or 8 of them. I cooked them on my off-brand George Foreman grill, but if you don't have one, you can just some cooking spray to a skillet and cook the chicken in there.

When the chicken was done cooking, I cut the chicken into thin strips, and then I ended up cutting those in half, so they ended up being bite size pieces of chicken.

Then, I drained a can of black beans and put it in a skillet, then I added the can of Mexican Style corn, the taco seasoning, and about 1/4 cup of water. I put it on medium-medium high heat and just let it cook until most of the liquid was gone.

Then, I just warmed up a couple of corn tortillas put the filling inside. Rolled it up and ate it. It was DELICIOUS! :)
I think it would be really filling even without the corn tortilla. I just like wrapping it in something to keep it neat and tidy.

I got the idea from http://www.bettycrocker.com/

I love this meal so much because not only is it quick, but it's VERY healthy! There is lots of fiber and protein, so it a very filling meal!

This is definitely a meal that any broke college student with barely any time can make! Enjoy!

-Anita