WHICH GRAINS ARE GLUTEN FREE - WHICH GRAINS ARE

gluten free

A gluten-free diet is a diet completely free of ingredients derived from gluten-containing cereals: wheat (including kamut and spelt), barley, rye, Malts and triticale, as well as the use of gluten as a food additive in the form of a flavoring, stabilizing or thickening agent.
a product is classified as Gluten free if it carries an appropriate mark, symbol or declaration to that effect (including if a pack is labelled as being suitable for coeliacs).
There is not wheat, rye, barley or oat gluten present in the product. Products are randomly tested to ensure that there is no contamination of gluten from other sources.

grains

(grain) foodstuff prepared from the starchy grains of cereal grasses
(grain) a relatively small granular particle of a substance; “a grain of sand”; “a grain of sugar”
(grain) ingrain: thoroughly work in; “His hands were grained with dirt”
The seeds of such cereals
A single fruit or seed of a cereal
Wheat or any other cultivated cereal crop used as food

buckwheat pancakes

buckwheat is a tricky one, I am finding. firstly, it has a weird flavor—not unpleasant, but distinctive, and it doesn’t jive with just anything. it makes me think of walnuts and indonesian coffee. Kim Boyce, author of Good to the Grain, calls it a mineral flavor, which is fairly accurate. secondly, it’s a dark flour, and if you’re expecting the pale, golden effect usually achieved with white wheat flour, the resulting goods are pretty hideous.

anyway, having tried a lot of things that didn’t work, I retreated to the history books to see what people USED to make out of buckwheat. Russians and eastern Europeans since time immemorial have made blini with this cold-climate pseudocereal, so buckwheat pancakes were a natural next step. these are about 80% buckwheat, 20% sweet rice flour (to lighten them up a bit), plus the usual salt, sugar, soda, buttermilk, a little melted butter, and an egg to hold the whole business together. pretty good!

7 Days: Day 3 (ZOMG FREE COOKEH!)

These are the things Trader Joe’s was out of today:

~Multi-Grain milk (gluten-free)
~Medium-sized eggs
~Hash browns
~Jelly Bellies (discontinued in favor of TJ-brand which is NOT gluten-free. Sad.)
~Pancake mix
~Holiday mix of yummy-smelling decorative greens (pine/holly/something else I forgot)

Fail, Trader Joe, fail.

But! The guy checking me out (har, you know what I mean, yeah?) took pity upon me and gave me my holly free and went and grabbed a box of gluten-free snickerdoodles (also free of the other 7 most common allergens!). So I forgive Trader Joe. (Honestly, I can never stay mad at him for long, anyway.)

Also, you may notice:
~The CRAZY RAIN. I don’t even know how to handle that.
~My fancy new hat, crocheted for me by a friend. I like to think of it as Ravenclaw colors.
~Borders is closing. TJMaxx coming soon. Sadness.