Ingredient review: Cup4Cup (gluten-free) flour
Over the past few months you may have noticed on the Daily Nosh that I’ve been talking a lot about gluten – whether it be a gluten-free alternative to an older recipe, or a reintroduction of something to my diet with gluten. At the beginning of the year I experienced many bouts of food poisoning while staying in the UK and with that came a host of unexpected side effects including vertigo and numb extremities. Needless to say, it freaked me out a bit. So when it was suggested that my body may not be able to process the gluten due to the food poisonings, I resolved to go gluten free for a couple of months while I tried my best to rebuild the flora in my gut (because, really, I couldn’t imagine not having any gluten for two months, let alone the rest of my life).
One thing I was sure of, though, was that I did not want to go out and find a plethora of gluten-free products to replace my gluten-filled products. First and foremost, I know what wonderful bread and homemade pasta tastes like, and I know gluten-free is never going to match that. Secondly, my husband said he would go gluten-free with me, and many of the gluten-free products out there contain chickpea flour, which he’s severely allergic to. So for the most part I focused on adding more vegetables to my diet, but I did keep a couple of gluten-free alternatives around to squash the cravings for my favored pastas. One was a quinoa pasta, which, while it didn’t soak up sauce the way traditional pasta does, and the texture was horrid leftover, it was quite tasty with my veggie spaghetti.
After two months, I began adding gluten back to my diet, and my husband did the same. Only while it was sitting okay with me, he realized he was doing a lot better without it in his diet. Uh oh! Suddenly mostly-gluten-free was looking more and more like a way of life in this household. So I decided to try Cup4Cup flour which I had seen earlier on in my gluten-free quest, but passed on since my 2 month hiatus was almost up. (more…)
