Product Reviews – Gluten free Pizza and Rootbeer

I know I was bemoaning trying to go Gluten free…

After all, I was going to have to give up a lot of things I really like. Such as pizza. Really good pizza. How am I going to make it without pizza?! Is there even such a thing as decent gluten free pizza?! Thankfully, our local natural foods store was there, with lots and lots of things to absolutely positively make my poor little head spin.

I wasn’t raised eating the best of foods really, cheap foods were the staple of my diet for many many years. They still have been, as you get into eating patterns and it’s actually really hard to get out of such habits.

I’m still bemoaning the fact that I haven’t found a gluten-free Ramen substitute. Really, I love Ramen. 🙁 I’ll manage, oh yes, I will be strong.

Somehow.

I’m not sure what’s been up with me lately in general, but I haven’t really been feeling many toppings on my pizza. Just sauce and cheese please?

Which means I was pretty happy to be able to find this:

Glutino’s Gluten Free Pizza – Duo Cheese. Still I will admit I was shocked at the price tag. I can buy a cheap Totino’s party pizza for a little over $1, and this little guy was $5.46 if I am remembering correctly. Yikes!

Still, I wasn’t expecting much. How can a pizza without a gluteny crust actually, you know, taste decent?

What was even more surprising was the size, I thought it’d be closer to the size of the box. Yet the pizza was… actually kind of small.

Hmm, well it looks like pizza.

Sadly, the image of the pizza out of the oven didn’t survive my crummy ‘taking pictures with my cell phone camera’ skills.

Which means you have to hold the camera there long after you’d think you did once you’ve pressed the button. I didn’t realize it until today though. When I saw a blurred picture of my arm instead of… you know, a picture of the pizza? I’m awesome I tells ya, truly awesome. 😉

Originally, I was going to do a video review of this, but I got camera shy, and rambled. So I deleted it. Maybe some other day. ahem

So how’s it taste? Actually? It’s GOOD! It’s REALLY good! The crust is… very pizza crusty, the dough seems like normal dough, and even though there is a slightly different aftertaste than your tradition crust. I ate the entire thing. Happily! I was so happy that my first find for a gluten free pizza was actually good. Just imagine if it was awful?

It’s good to the point where I even bought two of them today so Lisi and I could both have one. She got full after half, so I ended up eating half of hers, and all of mine. Not that I’m complaining, because it’s delicious!

Glutino’s also sells other great looking Gluten free products. Ones that I absolutely feel like I must try, and review. How else are people supposed to hear good things about products if someone doesn’t gab away about them hmm? 😉

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Now then. On to the soda! I figured since I was at this all natural, funky smelling (really, there was this mash of smells in the market that I wasn’t sure how to interpret. It was… odd, but I eventually got used to it, and I got intensely hungry. Insanely hungry. “Feed me now” hungry. Then I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch. Opps!), market, that I may as well see if there is gluten free soda’s that are all natural too.

Which lead me to a bottle of Virgil’s Rootbeer. A Micro Brewed, all natural, gluten-free rootbeer. So I didn’t feel all that guilty. Plus there is obviously no HFCS. Score!

As you can see, I couldn’t even wait for my pizza to finish cooking before this was half way gone!

I actually hadn’t even left the store parking lot before I had to open this, smell it to see if it was even something that smelled decent to drink… and then fell in love. Sure the after taste was a little strange at first. This isn’t like most root-beers I’ve tasted, there’s no caffeine, so this lacks the ‘bite’ of barq’s rootbeer. The one that I am most familiar with really, but it was good enough that I couldn’t help but drink it all gone.

Plus want more. If I didn’t try to not drink a lot of my calories, I would likely drink this more often. Still, when I do want to treat myself with a soda this isn’t a bad choice at all. Plus, they even have a “Dr. Soda” type soda, or it’s new anyway. Which I do intend to try. Oh please let it be good?

I think next I am going to review Bisquick’s Gluten Free mix (yay I can make pancakes!), Betty Crocker’s gluten free cake mix, brownie mix, and chocolate chip cookie mix. Why? Because I just ordered each of those (minus the cake mix, which I bought at Safeway) off of Amazon. So, why not?

I may also give away a package with one of each (cake, brownie, cookie, and bisquick) because.. Well why not again? 😛 This stuff can be costly in the store and, sometimes it’s better to get to try something before you buy it eh?

Mata ato de! (Until next time!)