I have some fun & exciting news! I have just become a seller at OpenSky!! I can now share my favorite products with you all and you will be able to purchase them directly from my blog. The purchase will come from OpenSky, but you don’t have to worry about navigating away from my blog and trying to find your way back. You can add things to your cart directly from my blog by clicking on the blue “Add to Cart” button . How cool does that sound? The first product that I am going to share with you is one that I have really come to depend on over the past year or so – my digital kitchen scale made by EatSmart.  If you have baked gluten-free, you know how important it is to measure your flours out and the easiest way to do this is with a digital kitchen scale. Additionally, I have been tracking protein & calcium intake recently and weighing my meat allows me to be a lot more accurate in my tracking.

* EatSmart Precision Pro Sensor Technology * Compact Design and easy two-button operation * Tare Feature; Subtract the weight of any plate or container * 4 measurement modes: grams / ounces / kilograms / pounds * Max weight 11 pounds / 5 kilograms * Auto-Calibration; 3 minute Auto-Turnoff * 2 AAA batteries, included * 2 year EatSmart guarantee * FREE Calorie Factors book – helpful for calorie counting and portion control * Perfect for everyday tasks from weighing food or ingredients to calculating postage.

Keep your eyes out for more of my favorite products over the next week or so!  Also, have questions?  Don’t hesitate to ask – either email me or leave a comment below.

This morning was my first run since my injury where I felt like I was actually running and not making jogging motions at a walking pace. It was surreal. I was scared at first that I was going too fast, but then I settled into a nice pace. Still following the return to running plan and I am at about 11:00 min/mile right now. Funny how that felt fast! LOL! I can’t believe how good I felt (mentally) when I was done running today. I have missed that.

While I was running I was reading the September issue of Runner’s World and came across an article titled “Good Grief“. This article is much like my “Acceptance” post I wrote back in June. That seems like such a long time ago! My foot is still feeling good, but has a little achiness to it. I suspect that the muscles aren’t used to running anymore and have to adjust. I would bet that is one of the reasons why this part of the return to running plan only allows running every other day. I will be swimming on my “off” days. By off days, I mean non-running days. I am also taking 2 full days off per week to allow my foot and legs to rest & recover.

*****************************************************************************

Wanted to share a brief tidbit about my dinner out last night with Aaron. We went to Eddie Merlot’s. Eddie’s is a higher end steak house, much like Ruth’s Chris or Hyde Park. I didn’t think eating gluten-free would be an issue there, as most higher end restaurants make most of their food in house, therefore knowing exactly what goes into it and what is safe. I have to say that for the first time in a long time, I was really nervous about eating out. The server didn’t really seem to know what gluten was – yikes! I asked to speak with the chef or manager – the chef was off – double yikes! The server had gone back to the kitchen to ask what salad dressings were gluten-free and came back to tell me to stay away from the blue cheese, maple vinaigrette and honey champagne vinaigrette. According to him, the balsamic vinaigrette was probably okay, as was oil & vinegar. It was at this point that I asked to speak with the manager. I was interested to know what was in those dressings that contained gluten. I don’t like blue cheese, so that wasn’t an issue, but what about the other vinaigrettes? The manager said all of the dressings were gluten-free except for the blue cheese. While this should have made me feel better, it didn’t. Why would one of the kitchen staff tell the server otherwise? I asked about the ingredients of the balsamic vinaigrette & determined that was safe. I asked about other menu items -sushi, steaks, salmon and sides. While I really wanted sushi, I didn’t feel confident ordering it there. I asked about the cedar plank salmon, which apparently is prepared with an orange glaze that I didn’t get the ingredients for, so I opted to have it dry with a little salt & pepper. We also ordered a baked potato and broccoli (sans bearnaise – as the manager said it contained gluten). Dessert was the star of the show….watermelon sorbet garnished with kiwi & mint leaves. This was to-die-for! I may go back just for dessert and wine! 😉 The food was good, but it is hard to go someplace and spend so much money & have food that I can make more flavorful at home or get someplace else. Hyde Park, Mitchell’s Steak House & Ruth’s Chris either have a gluten-free menu or are well versed and can tell you which items to order that are safe. These items have the accompanying sauces & such. It seems to me that Eddie Merlot’s is behind the times and could only benefit from developing a gluten-free menu. The server did apologize at the end, though it isn’t his fault. He did mention that the chef wanted to get a gluten-free menu in place as they get asked about one on a regular basis.

Have you or anyone you know successfully dined at Eddie Merlot’s gluten-free? I would love to hear about it.

Let the countdown begin! School starts in 10 days! My son is going to be a freshman in high school. I would like to know when the heck I got so old! I remember my first day of high school very clearly – I was terrified! LOL! Obviously it all worked out okay, because I am here today. My sweet, innocent Hannah is going into 3rd grade. At least that makes me feel a little younger.

My tomato plants have a gazillion green tomatoes on them, so I have a feeling I will be drowning in tomatoes shortly. I have 2 tomato plants, 1 cherry tomato plant and a basil plant outside. I have been loving all the fresh basil and use it in my salad daily.

Sunday – Date night – new restaurant & seeing The Other Guys (I’ll make sure to let you know how it is)

Monday – Steelhead trout (rotisserie chix for the kids), coconut brown rice, steamed fresh green beans & salad.

Tuesday – Filet Mignon, baked potato, steamed broccoli & salad

Wednesday – Turkey burgers, sweet potato steak fries, roasted zucchini & salad

Thursday – BBQ pulled pork tacos, roasted root vegetables and salad

Friday – Pizza, roasted okra & salad

Saturday – Breakfast for dinner

Baked Goods

Something with my Gluten-free Bisquick

********************************************************************************

Heidi is having another giveaway – click here to enter!

Shirley is giving away a gluten-free consultation with her for those new to the gluten-free diet or struggling with it. Shirley is very knowledgeable & helpful, so the winner of this giveaway is in for a treat. Click here to enter.

Amy made cheesecake ice cream with blueberries this week. OMG…I need to make this!

This truly is a gem – 2 different bloggers wrote about gluten-free pieorgi this week! My little Polish heart almost jumped right out of my chest! Alta, of Tasty Eats at Home, and Lauren, of Celiac Teen. My mom and family all enjoyed pierogi this weekend that I sadly could not eat, so she promised to make me some gluten-free pierogi soon. Psssst….Mom…..check out these blogs! 😉

Check this desk out that Erin, from Gluten-free Fitness, has. A treadmill desk!

I wrote about Quaker Steak & Lube’s gluten-free options.

Recipe: Fire Roasted Tomato Chickpea Sauce

Review of Carol Fenster’s 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes

I reviewed Tanka Bar products.

Boulder Canyon chips review.

Arby’s offers up a gluten-free menu

Udi’s hits mainstream stores in Columbus.

First, the good news. Good news is so much more fun than bad news, right? So, lets start with the fun stuff to help raise us up and then maybe the bad news won’t be so bad.

The winner of the “Add up the Savings” event is……

Colleen
August 11th, 2010 at 11:43 pm · Edit | Delete | Spam
I actually plan to get some Progresso Soup that is gluten free on the buy eight save $4 special. If the chicken and rice is not included that I will have to get soup for my family and “skip” it for myself!

Congrats Colleen!! Please check your email & get me your shipping information.

*******************************************************************

More good news….my foot is cooperating nicely with my “Return to Running” plan. I am beyond thrilled that I am able to run, even if it is slow. I’ll take it.

******************************************************************

Now, bad news. Trader Joe’s has temporarily discontinued their gluten-free French rolls. 🙁 Sure, there are better bread options out there, but these rolls are really good used as a base for tuna melts or pizza. Also, under $4 for 4 rolls is a good price for gluten-free rolls. After speaking with 2 Trader Joe’s employees it seems as if they are looking for a new baker for the rolls. I suggested that they bring the Trader Joe’s English muffins into this region. They are available in other regions, just not Ohio. We will see. In the meantime, tuna melts will have to go on Food for Life English muffins or my favorite, Udi’s bagels. Good thing I can find Udi’s bagels at my local grocery store now and a special trip to Whole Paycheck Foods or Raisin Rack is not required.

*******************************************************************

And, the last piece of bad news….our A/C is out! ACK! It was 80 degrees in the house at 6:45 AM. The temp is supposed to reach 92 with a heat index of over 100. Fans are going and a mid-afternoon trip to the freezer aisle at Wal-mart may be in our future.

Ever since I got my iTouch, it is attached to my hip. Imagine if I had an iPhone or iPad? It may be a good thing that we are with Sprint (and in a contract) for now. 😉 I love all of the different apps available and one of the coolest apps that I have come across so far is the Cook IT Allergy Free app. What does this app do? Check this out:

Custom Tailor Any of the Recipes

Hundreds of Gluten Free recipes that can be customized to meet most Food Allergy needs

More recipes being added all of the time.

With a simple tap, trade out your Allergen(s) in any of the recipes with safe substitutions. Now no recipe is off limits!

Find substitutions within the recipes for: eggs, butter, milk, yogurt, buttermilk, cream, sour cream, cream cheese, cheeses, nuts, nut butters, corn syrup, and soy.

Customize your recipes and then share them through Email, Facebook, and Twitter .

Find great tips for allergy free cooking that will help to give you delicious results.

Save Your Customized Recipes to your Grocery List and Recipe Box

Save your recipes to your Grocery List and have all of the ingredients you need, including your substitutions for your allergens, at your fingertips.

Your list will be organized by Aisle or by Recipe. Add items from your daily list as well.

Check off items as you shop single ingredients, entire recipes, or your entire list with simple taps.

Your custom-tailored recipes can also all be saved in one place: Your Recipe Box.

Keep your own notes within each recipe to remind yourself of what you liked or didn’t like about your results. Allergy Free cooking is all about “trial-and-error”

There are over 200 recipes in this app. You can save your customized recipes in your “recipe box” and have offline access to them at any time. The Cook IT Allergy Free website has lots of useful information as well. Kim, the founder, began cooking gluten-free when her son and then husband were diagnosed with Celiac Disease. She quickly found out that buying prepackaged gluten-free foods can be expensive and decided to begin work on her Master’s in Nutrition. On the website you can find allergy cooking tips, gluten-free tips and food allergy information. The app is available for the iPhone ($4.99; this also works with the iTouch 2nd generation on) or the iPad ($8.99).

Thank you Kim for creating such a wonderful tool! **Kim graciously provided me with a free copy of the app to review. I am not sure that I will ever quit playing with this cool app!

Okay, so the “Slackerville” isn’t completely accurate, but in the area of menu planning it is. I have been swamped! Not only have I had “normal” craziness going on, but my baby turned 8 last week and we had a cookout on Saturday and spent the day Sunday with Grandma L. at the pool. That has left little time for my extra “normal” stuff. So here we are now on Tuesday. I will go over what we had the past 2 nights and continue with the menu plan from there.

Sunday – Leftover grilled chicken, zucchini & chickpeas and salad.

Monday – Steelhead trout with sweet Thai chili sauce, quinoa, green beans & salad

Tuesday – Turkey burgers, sweet potato fries, roasted okra & salad

Wednesday –Mexican pizzas, refried beans, corn & salad

Thursday – Sushi with my friend

Friday –Mini-pizzas on Udi’s bagels, steamed broccoli and salad

Saturday- Family Reunion

Baked Goods

Dessert for family reunion

Chai Scones

**************************************************

Weekly Recap

In case you missed yesterday’s post – a new giveaway for a $25 Kroger Family of Stores gift card.

Another post on calcium intake and sources.

Boston Market offers many gluten-free choices.

First Watch coupon.

Review of Udi’s Chocolate Muffins – not to be missed!

Recipe for Pesto Baked Salmon

Review of The Celiac Maniac English muffins

Review of Trader Joe’s Lite Kettle Corn

*************************************************

Check out these great posts by some of my favorite bloggers:

Heidi makes some Corn-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free, Gluten-Free & Soy-Free Chocolate Pudding. YUM!!

Amy makes a great looking Zucchini & Brown Rice Gratin.

Shirley makes some really great looking crepes. Now I am really hungry! 😉

The Kroger Family of Stores, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark and MyBlogSpark are running a new event from August 8, 2010 through August 21, 2010. This really cool event helps you save money and the school of your choice earn Box Tops. Want to learn more about this cool event?

Visit your Kroger Family of Stores (which includes Kroger, Ralph’s, King Soopers, City Market, Dillons, Smith’s, Fry’s, QFC, Baker’s, Owen’s, Jay C Food Stores, Hilander, Gerbes, Food4Less, Pay Less Super Markets and Scott’s Food & Pharmacy) to take advantage of their “Add Up the Savings” Event and stock up on your favorite General Mills & Kimberly Clark brands From August 8 through August 21, when you buy 8 participating items from any Kroger store, you’ll receive $4 off of your purchase. Some of the great participating brands include: Cheerios, Yoplait Yogurt, Pillsbury Cookies & Biscuits, Kleenex, Huggies, Betty Crocker Brownies, Cottonelle, and Lucky Charms. ***Please note that not all of the items are gluten-free, but General Mills has a wide variety of gluten-free products available. Click here to view those products.

In addition to these great savings, be sure to take advantage of the special Bonus Box Tops Offers and get a jumpstart on helping the participating school of your choice this year.

All you have to do, if you haven’t already, is register at www.RewardYourSchool.com. Once you register, you will automatically receive 5 Bonus Box Tops just for signing up! You will also receive custom offers for Bonus Box Tops for purchasing participating products.

These great offers are:
Buy any 4 Box Tops products and get 10 Bonus Box Tops

Buy any 8 Box Tops products and get 25 Bonus Box Tops

The offers you select will then load onto your Kroger Shopper Card to be redeemed once you purchase the items. It’s extra easy because there’s no clipping! Just remember to scan your Kroger Shopper Card and the Bonus Box Tops will automatically go straight the participating school of your choice.

Thanks to MyBlogSpark, Kroger, General Mills & Kimberly-Clark, I was able to take advantage of the great savings by stocking up on Yoplait Yogurt, Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Yellow Cake, Progresso Vegetable & Lentil soups and Chex cereals.

Want a chance to win a $25 gift card to take advantage of the deals, too? Here is what you do:

1. Leave a comment telling me which 8 participating products you would purchase to get your $4 off during the event.

2. Tweet about this giveaway make sure to include @kbouldin and #myblogspark Leave a comment.

3. Follow me on Twitter.

4. “Like” Gluten-free is Life on Facebook.

5. Blog about this and link back. Leave a comment telling me that you did.

Contest will Thursday at midnight. I will choose a winner on Friday morning. Good luck to you all!

****In the spirit of full disclosure, I am sharing that I received a $25 gift card to go towards my purchases. The opinions and views expressed here on this blog are my own and are not influenced by anyone or anything.

Yesterday my baby girl turned 8 years old! Can you believe it? I can’t! It seems like yesterday she was born.

Baby Hannah….

Hannah at age 8…

****************************************************************************

Now, down to business….the winner of the Oikos “Chocolate Indulgence” prize…..

Stephanie
August 5th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I just found your blog…just liked you on FB too!

Shoot me an email at kim@glutenfreeislife.com with your info when you get a chance. Congrats!

Thanks to all who entered! There will be another fun giveaway next week, so check back on Monday. 🙂

Do you like chocolate? You know I do! I have been enjoying a new chocolate treat recently….Oikos Greek Yogurts in chocolate and caramel! The chocolate is perfect for fruit & cereal, while the caramel is the perfect end to a great meal. Indulging in these great new products is guilt-free! Did you know each small cup has 10 grams of protein and only 110 calories? Everyone has room for that in their diet. I like them both so much that I can’t pick which one I like better.

Here is the deal….are you ready? From Oikos:

New Chocolate and Caramel pure pleasure-on-the-bottom Oikos Organic 0% fat Greek yogurt flavors offer a healthy, yet indulgent treat all in one convenient snack-sized cup. With only 110 calories and 10 grams of protein per 4 ounce serving, it’s a healthier way to satisfy your sweet tooth.

Because Oikos is organic, it’s made with organic milk from farms that don’t use toxic persistent chemicals and fertilizers, antibiotics or synthetic growth hormones. Through our purchases of organic ingredients, annually we support over 180,000 acres of organic land.

What’s better then guilt-free, organic Chocolate and Caramel Greek yogurt? Take a look at our chocolate-themed indulgence giveaway package -there’s no guilt when you’re eating and using organic items like these!

– 1 coupon for a free Green & Black Organic Chocolate Bar
– 1 sample of Numi Organic Chocolate tea
– 1 Dagoba/Eco Lips Organic Chocolate chapstick
– 1 Skinnyskinny real cocoa organic soap bar
– 2 free coupons for Chocolate and Caramel Oikos multipacks
– Recipe card set featuring Chocolate Cheesecake, as well Oikos spatula

Now, here is what you do to enter the giveaway. Leave an individual comment for each one to get a total of 4 entries:

1. “Like” Oikos on Facebook.

2. “Like” Gluten-Free is Life on Facebook.

3. Follow me on Twitter.

4. Leave a comment telling me what your favorite food of all time is.

The contest will run until Friday at midnight! I will choose a winner Saturday morning. Good luck!!!

Also, check out my post on Celiac-Disease.com with my Oikos review.

After writing the post “Stop the Madness” last week, I took some time to browse all of the great information I received in the comments and logging all of my food so that I can see where my calcium intake stands without adding in supplements. Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness shared this great site that has all kinds of good information on it. According to the chart on the page, I need 1000mg/day. I got down to work by making a list of the higher calcium foods that I already eat on the list:

• yogurt (Greek)
• cheese
• salmon
• spinach
• ice cream (daily habit)
• corn tortillas
• broccoli
• cream cheese
• figs
• almonds (almond butter)

Then, I signed up for MyNetDiary to help track my vitamin intake. It has tons of foods listed, including many gluten-free, and allows you to add your own. I liked this site because I was able to get the free app for my itouch and it is user friendly.

I normally don’t weigh all my food, but did this AM to get an idea of amounts so I can get the right amount of calcium in my food. I was a little shocked to see that my large fruit bowl may be classified as a little more than large – it weighed in a 1.03 pounds! Oops!! LOL! I weighed each fruit that I put in my bowl. Now wonder Aaron was laughing at me a couple weeks back saying I was eating too much fruit. I chose the following this AM:

• watermelon
• cantaloupe
• cherries
• blueberries
• raspberries
• blackberries
• strawberries
• plum
• peach

So, all of that added up to 206 calories, 6 grams of fiber and 4% of my daily calcium. 😉 I also had some rice cakes with PB & fruit spread.

I am looking forward to really seeing what fun foods I can add to my diet that can help my calcium intake. Some that I am looking into are:

• chinese cabbage
• kale (love kale chips, but keep forgetting about them)
• cottage cheese

I will make sure to update you guys on my “study”. Yesterday I consumed 70% of my RDA of calcium through my food. I am interested to see the data over a period of a week to a month.