Sugar Heaven Ice Cream Factory

The weather in Boston was great this week, several days it was it hit 60 degrees. Not bad for late February.

If you're enjoying a beautiful spring day in Boston and happen to be walking down Boylston Street hungry for ice cream, you should consider stopping in at Sugar Heaven for some devious ice cream.

Sugar Heaven is a fun candy store. On the walls of the store, they have a huge selection of bulk candy. In the middle of the store, they have a selection of hard to find candy.

In the basement of Sugar Heaven is a small ice cream parlor.

Eating Gluten Free at Sugar Heaven Ice Cream Section

Much of their ice cream is gluten free, obviously the Cookie and Cream isn???t one of them. They do have a great choice of toppings and they are stored in individual containers.

When ordering the hard ice cream, ask them to clean the scoop.

They do have soft serve ice cream, but the machine isn???t always working. If your looking for soft ser

The store has a $10 minimum for credit cards. This isn???t hard to exceed if your buying bulk candy. If you're just getting a couple of ice cream dishes it will be less than $10. Your best bet is to stop at an ATM on the way to the store. There is a Citizen???s Bank at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Street.

Sugar Heaven Ice Cream Factory

Sugar Heaven is located at 669 Boylston St in Boston's Back Bay.

Gluten Free Pasta at the Boston's Eataly

Eataly Boston is a vibrant Italian marketplace that features an array of cafes, counters, restaurants, and a cooking school. Eat, shop, and learn.

The marketplace opened in December 2016 and has been doing very well with the lunch and dinner crowds. At lunch time, I have seen lots of people buying things for dinner - wine, cheese, and various other things.

Eataly Has Gluten Free Pasta!

Did you know that Eataly has a good size Gluten Free pasta selection? Near the center, court restaurant are several shelves of quality gluten free pasta:

• Garofalo Spaghetti
• Garofalo Quinoa
• Schar Yellow Lentil
• Schar Red Lentil
• Aurora Natural Pasta
• Banza Shells
• Banza Pene
• Banza Rotini
• Banza Elbows

Also located on one of the shelves are some gluten free flour used for baking or making pancakes.

Eataly doesn't have any ???fresh??? gluten free pasta, but just as well, since there could be cross contamination issues. They do carry gluten free pasta sauce!

Try the Gluten Free Mario Batalo Alfredo with Banza Elbows and fresh Parmesan Cravero grated cheese. Makes for a delicious dinner!

Eataly Marketplace

You can find the gluten free near the Il Pesce restaurant.

Goofy Candy Company in Disney Springs

In Disney Spring, is the Goofy Candy Store. A fun place to get all sorts of delicious goodies.

If you're eating Gluten Free you should be aware that not all of the Goofy Glaciers are gluten free. These slurpy like drinks are delicious but you should know that some of them may contain gluten.

There are eight regular flavors:

• Coca-Cola Cooler
• Razzle Dazzle Pink
• Orange You Happy Orange
• Goofy's Glacier Apple
• Brrr-Banana
• Gawrshly Berry Blue
• Rootin'-Tootin' Red
• Pucker Purple.

We were told that the Gawrshly Berry Blue was Gluten Free. Before you try a sample, simply let them know that you want the gluten free Goofy Glacier.

Refresh Your Knowledge

It's helpful to re-learn more about eating gluten-free. There are plenty of resources online. If you want more information on the Celiac Disease, check out the blog post over on jenreviews.com.

Jen posted some useful information about What foods to Stay Away from and she has some Delicious Celiac Disease Diet Recipes.

Logan Airport - Terminal C

Practical Gluten Free Breakfast Options at Logan International Airport.

If you're taking an early morning flight, there are some options for those that need to eat Gluten Free. However, your best safe bet is to bring along a morning snack. The last thing you want is to encounter cross contamination on a long flight.

One thing to keep in mind that if you're taking the first flights out in the morning, not all dining places will have all menu items. We have found that people will wait in line for Wolfgang Puck and PotBelly.

Gluten Free breakfast options at Terminal C

All restaurants are open at 5am and close 30 minutes before last flight.

• Green Express - Fruit Cups and Yogurt [Post-security, gate C36]
• GoGo Stop - Lots of Gluten Free Options, focus on healthy foods [Post-security, gate C33]
• Currito - None of the breakfast burritos are gluten free [Pre-security, departures]
• Au Bon Pain - No breakfast items [Post-security, gate C12]
• Wolfgang Puck Gourmet Express - See restaurant for current offerings [Post-security, gate C28]
• PotBelly - Hard Boiled Eggs, Seasonal Fruit, Yogurt. (No Gluten Free Bread) [Post-security, gate C11]

Play it Safe and Keep it Simple

We have learned that it???s best to bring our own snack, and just get a fresh cup of coffee at Dunkin or Starbucks. The lines are both coffee shops will be long, but they do move pretty fast compared to a typical coffee shop.

Our daughter enjoys getting a fresh fruit snack in the morning and Green Express and GoGo Stop at the Jet Blue Terminal is a good place to go as we wait for boarding.

Above the Grain Pizza Crust

We enjoy making our homemade pizza from home and using the Above the Grain pizza crust makes it easy.

You can find the crust for about $8 at most stores in New England including Whole Foods and Stop & Shop.

We usually make a spinach pizza and a pepperoni pizza. Instead of using a typical pizza sauce, we like using the Francesco Rinaldi Hearty Sweet & Tasty Tomato Pasta Sauce. A 24oz single jar is perfect for two pizzas.

The crust is really good and guests that have tried it can't tell that it's gluten-free. In fact, some have suggested the crust is better than anything that they have tried. Certainly doesn't taste like frozen pizza.

Cooking Tips

• Oven Temp: 400 degrees - This is 15 degrees more than what the packaging suggest. The higher temp will produce a crispy crust.
• Cheese: 3.5 Cups of Mozzarella Cheese
• Cooking Time: 20 mins

Since we cook a lot of pizza at home, we find having a couple of perforated pizza pans is worth the investment. The pizza comes out nice and crispy and the pans are very easy to clean.

Champagne

Wine is gluten-free because wine is made from grapes. The Celiac Disease Foundation says all fruits are gluten-free and safe for people with celiac disease to consume. Champagne and sparkling wines are also made from grapes and gluten-free.

This new year???s eve your safe to enjoy your glass of Dom Perignon, and not be concern about gluten.

My soon to be six-year-old daughter will have to wait for another 15 years (2031) to enjoy her first champagne.

Massachusetts, Gluten and Alcoholic Beverages

In Massachusetts, bars are excused from highlighting alcoholic beverages that contain gluten ingredients. Many of the ???higher end??? type of bars will have a category to highlight which items are gluten free, This is from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Frequently Asked Questions:

Betty Crocker Gluten free Cookies

We just notice something on Betty Crocker Gluten free packaging. On the 2017 packaging, they no longer have box tops.

We noticed this as we recently purchased multiple boxes and noticed one of them didn't have a box top on it anymore. The box that didn't have a box top was a newer one.

What are Box Tops for Education?

Box Tops are a way for schools to earn rewards for school supplies. Simply purchase a product with a box top, clip the top and give it to your school. For every Box Top you clip, your child's school will receive 10 cents.

Box Top 20th Anniversary

This past September marked the 20th anniversary of the Box Top program by General Mills. They celebrated by coming out with a new mobile app that makes it easy to find products that have Box Tops.

The App allows you to find all the bonus Box Tops - so that you can maximize your box top contribution. This is perfect if you child is in some type of contest at school.

The app features bonus Box Tops offers from participating brands and retailers. Users can select offers, purchase the products and scan their receipt to get electronic credit for their schools.

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cookies

The Better Crocker Gluten Free Cookies are great for school. We made them for a Polar Express reading that they were doing at my daughter's school. The kids love the cookies and nobody could tell they were gluten free.

Several teachers really enjoyed them and they also couldn't tell that they were gluten-free.

The trick to cooking them is to use parchment paper. They don't burn on the bottom when you have parchment paper on the cookie sheet.

Uno's Better Tasting Gluten Free Pizza

We enjoy our traditional Friday pizza. Usually, we eat at home, but every once in a while we'll go out and enjoy a pizza with friends. UNOs is a fun place to meet up with friends. They have a lot of different gluten free options and the food is pretty good.

UNOs has had a gluten free pizza for a long time and it was so-so. It wouldn't be the first place we would go for pizza.

Things has changed as they suddenly got serious with the gluten free crust and the pizza is amazing. It's so good that you forget that it's a gluten-free crust.

This is from UNO's press release from a couple of weeks ago:

The Framingham UNOs has had the gluten free pizza for a while as we noticed the change in September. Here's a picture of the pizza from our last visit:

Cheesecake Factory at the Prudential Mall

This past weekend we had a very interesting experience at the Cheesecake Factory at the Prudential Center Mall in Boston, Massachusetts.

We had a rather large party -13 people. We stopped by for lunch before heading to the Holiday Pops at Symphony Hall. (We made reservations ahead of time and indicated that there were 2 people in the party that had gluten free allergy.)

When we placed our order we told the server, multiple times, that our daughter has celiac and that her food needed to be gluten free. In addition, my wife also placed a gluten free order. My daughter orders a pasta with four cheese.

Meal Arrives

When the meals came to the table, we asked the server if both dishes were gluten free. He indicated that they were.

My daughter lunch looked a little strange as the sauce appeared to be thicker than normal. Typically gluten-free pasta sauce is a bit watery because you can't add flour to thicken it up.

My wife started eating hers for a bit and then noticed that a macaroni was in her dish. We know from experience that the Cheesecake factory only has one style of gluten free pasta. It was at that point we realized that they cooked the pasta in the same water as regular pasta. This would result in serious cross contamination.

You can see the Macaroni that was mix in with the Rotini. We have learned from past experiences that Rotini is the only gluten free pasta that the Cheesecake factory has. So as soon as we saw the Macaroni we knew something wasn't right.

We immediately asked for the manager.

Manager Assistance

When the manager arrived we informed him of what we found. He was very apologetic. He informed us that there was nothing on the food order that it was an allergy. (Turns out we had a new server, which explained other problems we had with other dishes.) The manager offered to re-cook the pasta and make sure that they used new water. We told him that only our daughter dish needed to be fixed.

About 10 minutes later, the same server came by with a new plate. This was a bit surprising since I would have expected that the floor manager to bring the dish to the table, as a sign of taking ownership and responsibility. The sauce looked a bit watery than before which is what we would expect.

I thought that the pasta was cooked pretty quickly. ( I can't even boil water and cook pasta at home in less than 10 minutes) My daughter said the food tasted good and looked better than before.

The Cheesecake factory did make some adjustments on the bill, we don't know exactly since we didn't pay for the meal.

Aftermath

We sent an email to the Cheesecake Factory corporate offices and a couple of days later we received a call from the Cheesecake Factory. We explained the situation and the concerns. They said that they would look into the issue and would send us a gift card for our troubles.

Not exactly sure that we would go back to the Cheesecake factory.

Van’s Foods Cinnamon French Toast Sticks

Yesterday was National French Toast Day.

If you're eating Gluten free, you do have some options for French Toast:

• Vans Foods French Toast Sticks
• Ians Natural Gluten Free French Toast Sticks
• Schar French Toast Sticks

Van???s Foods Cinnamon French Toast Sticks

My five-year-old daughter really loves Van???s Foods Cinnamon French Toast Sticks. We have a couple of boxes in the freezer in our basement, always making sure that they are always available.

We find that they are better served with a nice dab of Nutella on the side. She actually prefers that way.

We have tried Hershey spreadable chocolate, but they don't taste the same. Hershey Spreadable chocolate is perfect for other things, just doesn't do well with Cinnamon French Toast sticks.

The French toast are perfect for dipping.

You put the pre-slice bread in the toaster for about a minute, and then take them out and separate around the chocolate. I find they taste better when you click the frozen button on the toaster.

If your kindergarten has celiac is looking for a good breakfast treat, stock up on Van???s Foods Cinnamon French Toast Sticks.

The Cinnamon French Toast Sticks are expensive (~$5 for 12 slices) to have every day for breakfast. They are a great treat when you're looking for something different than the usual cold cereal.

They are also nice snack on a really cold day.