Thank you for contacting Toffee To Go All of our toffee is gluten free!

Wow! Their white chocolate macadamia nut toffee looks like heaven. There’s not much about the retail store on their site (just address and phone), but there’s some additional info and (glowing) reviews on merchant circle and yelp.

They may also be at the Saturday Morning Market in St. Pete. I didn’t see them there last week, but it was packed, and hot, so I may have just not noticed or dismissed it as “yet another iffy food vendor” – but they are on the vendor’s list.

I’m really looking forward to trying some toffee soon!

Last week we went to Hyde Park (Tampa) for an art festival. We hadn’t been to that area before, so the shops behind the art were new to us as well. One of the shops we passed was City Street Sweets. It looked tempting, but we had a picnic lunch waiting for us to get done with our walking around and oohing at the art. Also, I was a little to hot to be hungry (welcome to autumn in Florida).

Post-picnic, my husband asked if we should go back and check it out. I declined. Most importantly, I was full, but also it was a bit of a walk back, and I was a little tired, and three – I didn’t want to deal with asking if stuff was gluten free. I’m pretty shy, and it’s a pain, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Most often, people aren’t sure what gluten even is. Other times, they’ll shove ingredient lists at you, and sometimes that’s helpful, and other times it’s iffy (partially because it implies they don’t know anything about cross contamination and partly because memorizing the list of unsafe ingredients is a bit of a task – for example, Avena is unsafe and caramel color is iffy). Sometimes (okay semi-often) folks look put out to even be asked.

So once we were home, I Googled and wrote the shop: “Is there anything on your menu that is gluten free? I walked by your shop today and would love to stop in sometime!”

The response was pretty quick, less than a day – which is great, because I pretty much expect a four week turnaround time on emails like this anymore:

Yes we offer some items gluten free.
Please cme in and check us out!

So, yay, seeming to know what I am talking about AND having gluten free menu items. Two points in the really good column. I do appreciate it, even with the “but” coming below:

But… what if what they have that I can eat… I don’t like? I’m actually cursed with being a picky eater on top of a food intolerance. So, a list would be really nice. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it doesn’t have to be comprehensive (though that would be cool), as long as you don’t start adding gluten to gluten free menu items, it doesn’t even need to be kept terribly up to date. Just enough to tempt someone to go, “Oh, that sounds irresistible – I must have it!” (which, frankly, with many gluten free peeps, isn’t a hard reaction to illicit, our options are so limited).

Ideally for me, every business with a website, especially small restaurants, would have such a list. It would save a lot of time and hassle on everyone’s part, and I would think it would, depending on the area, probably drive business into the store. Especially considering we ran into another GF person while we were in the area. I hate going to chains, but if they’re the only ones posting anything resembling a GF menu, then that’s who I am probably going to default to when eating out: later that evening we ended up at Rita’s because I knew I could have their custard.

Will I go to City Street Sweets when we go back to Hyde Park? Absolutely. But I probably won’t make a special trip, and it will be with more caution than if I had more concrete information.

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa, though I still say it qwin-o-ah in my head) is a little on the pricey side. I paid just over $5 for 9 servings for organic quinoa (I haven’t seen any nonorganic prepackaged, and bulk bins make me a little twitchy – too many people using the wrong scoops in the wrong bins).

The first batch I made was pretty awful. I didn’t have a strainer, and then I bought the wrong size strainer and lost a bunch of it trying to rinse/drain, and then I put too much water in to boil so I had to drain it again.

So, step one for those wanting to try quinoa: get a good sized mesh strainer if you don’t have one. The one I eventually bought was 6 inches (IDEALISK, $2.99 at IKEA), and perfectly fine.

Once you have a strainer ready, you can get with the soaking. You can skip soaking if your quinoa is pre-rinsed, but I have no idea if mine is or not, so I soaked, and then rinsed in warm water (as above).

From there it’s pretty much like rice. I put 1 cup of soaked quinoa in a pot with 1.5 cups of water.

I brought it to a boil, then turned it down to a simmer, and left it with the lid on for 12 minutes, and it came out perfect, with no water left in the pan, and no burning on the bottom.

It’s hard to describe the taste. It’s pretty bland by itself, like rice is bland by itself, but it doesn’t taste like rice, and it definitely doesn’t feel like rice. The texture can be a bit to get over at first, but mostly it’s fun. A bit like tapioca, maybe? It seems like it would be versatile like rice, and has a major health boost, so worth the price, at least now and then.

I work from home, and my husband works outside the home, so I find it difficult to justify buying clothes for myself because it seems he always needs something (it’s the sort of job where clothes don’t last very long) so the clothing budget goes to him. I was down to four bras, and all of them either the elastic was shot or the hooks were, or they were about twelve sizes too small. One was at least eight years old, the others at least three.

The ones I bought a few years ago, one was a cheapy exercise bra, and the other two were Cacique T-shirt-type-bras. They were comfy and good for the Florida summers. I found them for $8 at a Lane Bryant outlet, and they served well, except being full coverage and difficult to wear with a lot of my shirts. And, well, the hooks were going, and the wires were poking, and, I really (with a great deal of some convincing) decided I needed to buy some bras.

I ordered two: the first was Avenue’s ONESexy Tuxedo Plunge Underwire Bra. I’d never bought a bra from Avenue, but it was pretty, would work well with my wardrobe, and was on sale at the time. I was afraid it’d be horrible. I’d bought plunge bras from Cacique before and they were, frankly, horrible. My boobs looked awesome, don’t get me wrong, and it could’ve just been a sizing issue, but I would cry at night after wearing them, they were so bad. But the Avenue bra is awesome. The cups run big – I’m normally a D, bordering on DD (well, one of them is, anyway), and I had to get a C to get the right fit. The negative is they are not machine washable. At all. Don’t try it. Mine has already been through the washer twice due to not snatching it out of the laundry basket before husband tossed it in, and there is pretty visible damage to the satin and the elastic. Get some Soak Wash and hand wash them. It’s no work at all, and they dry just fine even in omg-Florida-summer-humidity.

Otherwise, it is a beautiful bra and I had no pain or discomfort even wearing it for about 20 hours during a trip out of town.

The second bra was an exercise bra: the Magic Lift no-wire bra by Glamorise Sport. I think this is also sold by Lane Bryant as the “Glamorise back-closure sports bra.” There may be differences but they look the same.

The bra isn’t the type of exercise bra I would wear out without a shirt, and it’s not going to be helpful on its own for anything with a lot of bouncing, but it’s perfect for my needs, which is basically to keep the chest out of the way during yoga, Pilates, weights, biking, etc. I toss a tank top on over it if I’m going to the exercise room or wear it alone when working out at home. And the “Magic Lift” does actually lift without overly minimizing, so it actually looks good on.

On first wear I thought I wouldn’t like it because the band was pretty scratchy/irritating, but a few washes have softened it up and now I often forget to take it off right away.

So, amazingly, I bought two bras online and ended up with two awesome bras. I should’ve played the lotto cause when does that ever happen?

We bought tickets for a high attendance, but luckily for us, not sold-out, game, several days in advance, at the box office to make sure wheelchair seating would be squared away. The tickets were for section 353, seats 18 & 19. The seats there are folding chairs along a top row, and many of them are easy to wheel into. Others, there is a wall blocking wheelchair access, including everything from 15 or 16 to the end of the row, and yes, 18 and 19. So even though we arrived an hour before the game began, we actually missed the beginning of the game trying to get the tickets switched – which they eventually were, to where folks were already (mis)seated, so it took more fiddling (twice, actually, my husband left to get drinks and two other folks sat in the same wrong seats) to actually get us seated properly.

We were told that if the game had been sold out, there would’ve been nothing they could do. The only way I know to interpret that, is that we would’ve just be unable to watch the game.

I know you can’t expect much when you buy cheap seats, but surely you can expect tickets bought for wheelchair accessible seating to actually be wheelchair accessible? And that buying a ticket actually guarantees a seat at the game (barring misbehavior)?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Yovation is a frozen yogurt with probiotics. I think it’s really important for those of us on gluten free diets to get probiotics, so the idea of getting a little extra in “ice cream” sounded great. They have three flavors that obviously have gluten – cookie, brownie, and granola. The other three (Toasted Almond, Vanilla, and Pomegranate Blueberry) it looks like I’d have to scope out ingredient lists in the store:

Thank you for contacting Pierre’s about your interest in Yovation
Probiotic Frozen Yogurt. Our company does not provide a list of Pierre’s
products that contain no gluten. Our reasoning is that over time lists
could change, should there ever be a slight formula modification.
Ensuring that each inquiring party would have the most updated list
would present concern.

Pierre’s suggests that you carefully read the product label each time a
purchase is made. We work very closely with our ingredient suppliers to
confirm ingredient sources such as spices, natural flavorings, and
colors. Sources of gluten are clearly labeled in our ingredient
legends and would list “FLOUR” or “WHEAT FLOUR”, for example.

We thank you for taking the time to evaluate our products’ labels when
you are making a purchase. This is the most achievable way in which to
measure the safeness of our products for individuals with sensitivity to
gluten.

Sincerely,
Pierre’s Ice Cream Company

So it seems like they are saying they clearly label all sources of gluten, which is really helpful! Of course, that does not address cross-contamination issues at all. If the vanilla batch is done after the cookie batch on shared equipment, that is a problem. I personally would stay away, and just stick to safe yogurts or supplemental probiotics, but defer to your own diet’s tolerance of gluten.

I ordered the chocolate-banana shake to start with because I was starved and the husband was eating a giant plate of appetizer nachos without me (there are no GF appetizers on the menu). I hadn’t had it before, and didn’t really like it, so I didn’t drink it. The waiter took it off the check – even after we protested. I ordered my pizza, and apparently the first crust broke, so they also took that off the check, too, made me a new one, and offered a salad while I waited. Wow! The wait by Melbourne standards might have been long, but we were in and out of the restaurant in about an hour, which is not an unusual wait time to get seated and order in these parts, so the whole thing was way above and beyond.

The pizza itself is good. Not great, but good. The crust is very thin, and the sauce and cheese are awesome enough to cover up the crust’s faults. If you don’t have a non-chain pizza place nearby with a gluten free menu, it’s a great substitute for gluten chain pizzas. A friend suggested I order the rosemary chicken shredded and cooked on top. It might be worth a try.

On the way home we stopped at Starbucks and I tried the Orange Valencia cake. It tasted like an orange pound cake, really, IMO. It was very good. Moist, not crumbly, and sweet. The almonds are not really necessary, they could’ve left those off for the tree-nut/almond allergic crowd and it still would’ve been great.

It’s really nice to see more restaurants offering gluten free foods, even if they aren’t particularly healthy ones (though Uno’s did have some healthy options). A treat now and again, and being able to travel without worrying about having zero food choices, is really awesome.