And the winner is ...

according to our random number generator--Lauren Brown!!!

We will your your prize to you, an i heart keenwah bag and three packages of i heart keenwah treats. They will be coming to you via snail mail. Enjoy!

BYA Meeting Tonight

Scott McMahan will be the featured speaker at the Backyard Association tonight at 7:00 pm at the Coweta Extension Office. He"ll be presenting “Garden Greats from Garden*Hood.” 

Scott is owner of McMahan‟s Nursery in Clermont, Georgia and the “Garden* Hood” in the old Grant Park section of Atlanta. He will spice up his interesting plant presentation with tales of plant rescues in faraway lands. Hope to see you there.

Also, don't forget to leave a comment for the giveaway this week! i heart keenwah is a great product.

I heart a giveaway!!

This week, thanks to i heart keenwah, we will be giving away three great quinoa snacks plus an adorable bag covered with even more adorable "keenwah" hearts. i heart keenwah has developed a healthy and nutritious snack that is gluten-free with all the health benefits of quinoa--an ancient grain that's more nutritious than most of the grains usually substituted for wheat.

This product is a great snack food that will hold you between meals without being filled with empty calories. It's delicious, crispy, chewy and has a simple ingredients list that you actually can pronounce! How refreshing! Our 8-year-old likes it, too. That is quite an endorsement.

We will be giving away a Cranberry Cashew, a Chocolate Sea Salt and a Ginger Peanut package of treats plus a handy bag.

Check out their website to learn more about their story and their delicious treats.

Then leave the comment, "I want to try i love keenwah!" We will announce the winner on Saturday.

Gluten-free Lemon Blueberry Cake

Nothing says summer like blueberries, so I decided to post the first recipe from our summer cookbook (coming out soon). As the title suggests, it is lemon blueberry cake. I decided to make a gluten-free version of this cake after seeing a picture of the wheat version on Pinterest. It turned out really well, and we found out something else. My father, who has never like lemon desserts, really liked this cake. We figure that what he doesn't like is imitation lemon flavor, but this is full of fresh lemony goodness (and cream cheese frosting - that always helps).

Gluten-Free Lemon Blueberry Cake

1 cup sweet (glutinous) rice flour
1 cup potato starch
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup corn starch (or tapioca starch if you can't do corn)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2/3 cups vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 3 lemons
1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries (not frozen)

Combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and mix with a wire whisk. In your mixer or with a hand mixer, blend the vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla. Add the lemons and zest. Slowly add the flour mixture. Stir in the blueberries with a spoon. Bake at 350 in two 9 inch cake pans 25-30 minutes until the edges are brown. Cool. Remove from pans and allow them to cool completely before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla flavoring
1 (one-pund ) box confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream

In a mixing bowl, mix cream cheese and butter until creamy. Add vanilla flavoring and mix. Slowly add confectioners' sugar until blended. Add small amounts of cream until the frosting is creamy, but not too thin. Cover cake in thin layer to contain any crumbs, then spread on the rest.

Atlanta's Gluten-free bakeries begins with American Gra-Frutti

During the next few weeks, I will be giving a shout-out to our local Atlanta area bakeries who specialize in cooking up gluten-free treats and make up mixes for people to buy.

One of my very favorites is American Gra-Frutti, owned by Marilyn Santulli.

Marilyn found she was gluten intolerant as she was about to open her bakery and quickly turned her business into a celebration of gluten-free baking.

We tried a number of her products and they were all just great!

Her cheese straw, cheese buttons, and graham crackers were simply wonderful! (Yes, I did say gluten-free graham crackers!)

My obvious favorite were the graham crackers though the cheese straw were not far behind. They were crisp and tasty with the perfect amount of heat. The cheese buttons were greatly appreciated by our gluten-intolerant young tasters. I think they could replace any cheese cracker on the market.

Marilyn has been on the news, featured in magazines and is now being sold at Whole Foods. This is quite an accomplishment for anyone, especially someone who makes a gluten-free product.

We will also trying out one of her bread mixes this weekend and will give a full report on that, too.

American Gra-Frutti is located in Roswell but their full line of products can be found on their website. It would be worth your while to at least check out since there are a number of very interesting recipes on this website, too.

Go to www.agrafrutti.com to explore. All her recipes and products are gluten-free and everything I tasted was very good.

More good foods from the GFAF Expo

At the GFAF Expo this past weekend I saw a number of new gluten-free products I would like to mention. I tried many of them and most were very good, especially to those who hadn't been eating any cakes, cookies, pies, fried foods and one of my favorites--tortillas.

Many vendors were really rolling out and baking pizza after pizza for attendees. It was a popular item. (To be fair, some of our local pizza places now have a gluten-free menus, including my favorite, Partners II Pizza which is the best pizza ever--but that is a topic for another day.) Above is the pizza served at the Smart Flour booth.

But back to tortillas--Rudi's has a new tortilla in several flavors and I tried a quesadilla they were dishing up. It was better than any gf tortilla I have tried so far. Rudi's has a compete line of organic wheat breads sold at Whole Foods. The gluten-free products have only been around a few+
years.

Other new products on the horizon:

Ener-G is coming out with a new line of bread mixes and have hamburger and hot dog buns. Imagine that. They also have flours, dough amendments and a line of cookies, bread mixes and too many products to name. It will be very interesting to try their new breads.

Smart Flour is out with pizza, crusts, desserts and amazingly, hamburger buns. They were telling me that they are beginning to sell their gf crusts and buns to local and national vendors--so, when you go to a restaurant, you may be tasting a Smart Flour product. They also have a flour that is a mix of sorghum, amaranth and teff that they call "ancient grain." I would love to try it but I haven't seen it in local stores around here.

Udi's, clearly the biggest player in the gluten-free market is really one of a group of companies in the "healthy-eating/lifestyle" business. They have almost everything you can name, including a whole line of breads, muffins, snack foods, pizza crust and well--everything. Some of their products are good and some are very, very good. Go to their website to see their full line of products. They offer coupons, too.

Glutinos, a partner with Udi's has those really good gluten-free pretzels, seems to be branching out with new products, especially snack foods, cookies, baking mixes, and even a sports/energy drink that is a bit like a milk drink. Also, they have a toaster pastry. How mainstream is that?

 Plentils is a snack new product we tried by Enjoy Life. They also have their full line of delicious cookies that my daughter raves about and their new chips that include lentils were good and come in SO many flavors. Enjoy Life also carries gf chocolate chips so we have liked them for quite a few years for that. They seem to specialize in allergen-free products, not just gluten-free. If you tried them in the past and weren't that impressed, try them again. Their cookies and snack bars ARE better than ever. You can also get a coupon on their website.

Nature's Path and some giveaways

As I think about this past weekend's GFAF Expo at the Cobb Galleria, I first think of Nature's Path who was the author's sponsors for the Expo. Nature's Path is a company you may already be familiar with because of their complete line of organic breakfast cereals, granola bars and other breakfast goodies. One of their products is the popular Envirokidz cereals. They also have a line of gluten-free cereals, oatmeals and chia cereals (Qi'a).

We were right next to this company and they made it a happy place because in addition to the coupons they were giving out, they were getting folks to "taste-test." They had several cereals in little cups to taste and they would ask passersby to taste and tell them their favorite. 

Mine, of course, was the Sunrise Crunchy Cinnamon cereal that in addition to a quick breakfast meal, would make a wonderful snack for kids and adults alike. All of their products are certified organic and non-GMO certified. The cereals are super crunchy without being too hard. How do you do that? The other choices were good, too. One with vanilla was getting high marks.

 One thing I really liked about them is that they were so friendly and nice to everyone, especially all the kids who could count on a big smile, a "how's it going?" and a perfect fist bump.

In addition to their sale in most local groceries, Nature's Path has an online store and I think you would like their cereals. The cost is not too high for organic cereal, especially with the price of regular cereals in the grocery store. (The online price is $4.39.) It would be worth a try for breakfast and for snacks. There is sugar (cane sugar), but the Cinnamon version also has corn, quinoa, flax, buckwheat and amaranth--all healthy grains.

Also, today we will begin a giveaway for Delight Magazine. Just leave a comment (Enter Me!) and win two magazines. One for you and one to give away. We were right across from them and they gave us some of their current issues to give away. Very nice!