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Food

Finally – A good gluten-free pizza in Jacksonville!

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Attention gluten sensitive pizza lovers in Jacksonville: Tommy’s Pizza on Southside is offering a great gluten free pizza

Before last week, it had been about three years since I actually enjoyed a pizza. Sure, I had tried a few of the frozen ones from those trendy places that sells overpriced soy products, but they were just as awful as they were expensive. I even tried to start off with a cheese pizza and add my own ingredients, and while this made the cardboard crusts a little more edible, it ended up becoming a huge project that consumed a whole bunch of money & time, and still wasn’t worth talking about or repeating.

Anyway, so I heard that Tommy’s selling a gluten free pizza so I had to try it out. They were more than happy to load up the pie with the works, so I had all my favorite favorites in one: (a few kinds of) pork, peppers, onions, olives, tomato, and cheese. They informed me that the meatballs that usually come with the Jack Murray Pie did have gluten in them, so I asked them to switch that out for some ham. No problems.

If you’re worried about cross contamination, its understandable. I normally wouldn’t eat at a place where wheat flies around daily, or I would at least ask a hundred questions and go in with some anxiety anyway. But everything I wanted to ask I was able to find out about online, and this gave me a whole lot of confidence that they understood the minutia of trying to stay gluten free. Not only do they prepare the pizzas off to the side with dedicated utensils, they’ve even got a special filter to put the crust on when its in the oven. Now, I can’t say that all those peppers and pork products didn’t give me some heartburn and drowsiness, but I definitely haven’t felt any gluten-related symptoms from two pizzas.

The price is pretty high for a small loaded pizza, but its actually not bad at all when compared to my earlier attempts of building my own pizza loaded with toppings. The price is really only bad when compared to wheat-based pizzas, so I’ve got nothing to complain about except my own picky immune system. The home version and Tommy’s version each ended up costing me about $20, but Tommy’s was delicious and ready in 20 minutes, while mine took at least an hour’s worth of cooking, some shopping time, and didn’t even taste any good. While this new treat will probably set my budget back a good bit each month, I’m finding it hard to say ‘no’ to a great hot pizza that doesn’t make me sick.

Food

Steak and Eggs as Cheap and Easy Breakfast

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There’s nothing quite like a hearty breakfast to start the day off right, and there’s something special about the way steak and eggs wake you up in the morning. Well, steak isn’t particularly cheap, but the eggs are! So between the two, you can enjoy a great meal with plenty of fat and protein for about a buck and fifty cents. That will hardly buy you a cup of coffee at a retail eatery!

Here’s two tricks to making pan-fried steak and eggs into an easy meal:

Butter, butter, butter the pan

Without a bit of real butter on the pan, those eggs get sticky. If they’re even slightly overcooked, cleanup can become a huge pain! So make sure to thoroughly grease the pan with some butter or olive oil before cracking the egg and cooking it up.

Get some thin cut steaks

There’s two advantages to the thin cut steak. First, you have cheaper and smaller portions: you can eat the “whole piece” and still only consume 2 to 3 ounces. With a $4/lb steak, that’s just about $1 worth of meat for a very decent breakfast.

The other distinct advantage of using thin cut steaks when frying steak and eggs is that they cook as quickly as the eggs do. There’s nothing worse than having the perfectly cooked egg and seeing a bloody piece of meat that needs more time or a higher heat!

For the last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying this meal for breakfast almost exclusively. Once in a while I’ve switched in some fried pork and vegetables, but the egg and meat combo is still one of the best ways to start a day!

Food

Eat Well, Eat Cheap

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Here’s an example of what I got on my last trip to the grocery store. Just because you can’t eat gluten and don’t have much money to spend on food doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy healthy and delicious meals:

3/4 lb lean steak – $3.50
1 lb 93/7 ground beef – $3
1 lb asparagus – $2.50
2 lb broccoli – $3.25
2 boxes Chex – $6.30
1.5 lb muscadines – $4
1 gallon milk – $2.50
8 oz mozorella – $2

That’s about $6.50 for meat, $6.50 for green veggies, and $6.50 for grains. Dairy and fruits are about $4 each.

This will last me a week in addition to some things that are left over. Eggs, coffee, sugar, butter, all those basics are pretty cheap and don’t have to be purchased every week.

Just make sure you’re stocked up on pepper, salt, garlic powder, and some basic herbs like oregano, thyme, and rosemary. From there, you can make a lot of delicious meals in no time, for low cost!

Right now, I’m sitting around, waiting for a few of those thin-sliced lean steaks to sear up a little bit. There’s also about a half pound of brocolli steaming next to it. Despite the steak and eggs I had for breakfast, and the multiple bowls of cereal in between, my body is ready for the next round of healthy foods and my energy levels are staying high.

Now, if I could just get a little more disciplined with exercise, I might actually resemble a healthy person! For all the years I ate gluten unknowingly, I never would have dreamed that I could feel this good again. Healthy food and a bit of physical activity just makes it even better.

Food

Muscadines – Yum

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Muscadines are a relative of grapes who happen to enjoy the particularly hot and humid climate of Florida.  With summer winding down, a crop arrived recently at the produce section of the local Walmart.  Since I had just read a Wikipedia article about them while searching for potential crops that could be grown in the yard, I decided to check them out.

muscadine

The look of the thing is very much like a grape, but the similarities mostly end there.  For one thing, the skin is very tough, and needs to be peeled away rather than eaten.  The large seeds also end up being spit out.

The taste and texture of the fruit is quite unique.  Its sweet at the same time its extremely tart.  I can see why that combination makes a popular wine.  The fruit’s pulp is also a little bit slimier than a grape.  Its quite juicy, but the liquid doesn’t readily separate from the fibers.

Since my stomach is pretty sensitive to new things, I was afraid that these fruits would leave me aching.  But its been eight hours since I tried a couple, and I’m just about ready to have a few more.

In fact, I wouldn’t mind having a bush or two of these growing in the backyard at all!

Food

Gluten Free Chex – Awesome!

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If you’ve ever scrutinized the ingredients in a cereal isle, you’re sure to know that almost every single box contains some form of gluten.  Even if the cereal itself isn’t made from wheat or cross-contaminated oats, malt is one of the favorite flavoring additives of breakfast cereal.

The good news though, is that Chex is paying attention.  This means General Mills.  Finally, someone really big in the grains business is taking Celiac in to consideration.

The only change in the Chex formula is the new lack of malt.  This means people on a gluten-free diet can enjoy all the crunchy rice and corn cereal you can care for.  And they’ve got a few really good flavors to choose from, too.  The cinnamon reminds me of a glutenous favorite:  Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  It might be a little heavy on the flavor, though.  The honey nut style is also a sweet treat – just maybe a little too sweet for my breakfast tastes.

Ultimately, I find I most appreciate the plain-old Rice Chex.  A few raspberries or blackberries on top can add a punch of vitamins and minerals to an already healthy bowl, and it adds an incredibly sweet burst into every other bite.

After almost two years of rarely eating any kind of cereal or grain, its really nice to have something back in that spot of my diet.  I’m starting to wonder how I ever survived without it!  Now that I know a cheap brand of gluten free cereal is readily available, my stomach doesn’t want the box to run out.