A Very Hypoallergenic Afternoon :)

Recently, my husband and I received the gift of an afternoon out together, just the two of us. And how did we choose to spend it? We were out of town, and took the opportunity to visit some places we don't have at home: first, a stop at a gluten-free, vegan bakery for coffee and a treat, and then: wandering the aisles of Whole Foods for several hours, filling our cart with beautiful and hard to find where we live whole foods. (No pun intended!) Can you tell by our choice of date locales, that we love food AND eating this way?

The afternoon was so ... wonderful!

At the bakery, it took me a good ten minutes to decide what to get, as I told the clerk "I'm so overwhelmed that I can eat all of these things; I can't decide!" That was a wonderful problem to have :)
I finally decided upon a Linzer cookie, because it had more hazelnut meal flour than anything else - the closest to grain-free that I could get. I ordered a gingerbread hemp milk latte to go along with my cookie. Hubs ordered an almond milk latte and a berry scone. We sat at the bar in the window and thoroughly enjoyed our desserts and coffee. Oh, was the Linzer cookie a delight. Crispy crunchy sugary melt-in-your-mouth bites, and sweet sticky raspberry jam. Recreating that cookie is now on my ever-growing list of food to-do's!

I am so grateful for people who get inspired - either by personal necessity or for the people they love - and start businesses catering to us Celiacs and allergic. They possibly don't know how much it means to be able to enjoy an afternoon in a coffee shop or bakery with no worries of having a reaction to the experience. That's something I took for granted until I couldn't do it anymore!

My favorite picks from Whole Foods are:

• two jars of ghee (casein- and lactose-free clarified butter, made from organic cow's milk). I've heard that many dairy-allergics like me can safely have ghee. I have high hopes I'll be in that category too!
• two types of bulk dried coconut - organic medium shred, and conventional unsulphured wide chip. I love sprinkling these on my sweet potatoes and orange winter squashes
• organic chicken livers - Hubs gave me the O.K. to grind these up and add to a meatloaf, so he won't know they are in it but will get the nutritional benefits. Can't wait to try that!

What a fun and totally hypoallergenic afternoon it was. One for the happy-memories bank in my head :)