We’re joining a long list of our fellow Pacific Northwest blogs in a month-long drive to raise funds for the Oregon Food Bank. As such, we’ll be flying the “Blog for Food” picture on the top left corner from February 15 until March 15. You can click on it any time to donate funds to this important organization. Click here to go to the Oregon Food Bank’s donation page. The Oregon Food Bank also has a great volunteer program which makes it snap to help their cause in other ways.
note: when donating, add the note “blog for food” in the “In Honor of” section on the Food Bank donation page, so that we can track our totals.
If you are a blogger and want to join the Blog for Food drive, contact Tami at the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project.
Just a very fast note about gluten-free product tours that New Seasons Markets do. This would probably be a good resource for people who are newly diagnosed and want to know how to find things at supermarkets. Their current schedule is available on their Health & Wellness Classes page. Here is a description of the tour from their website:
GLUTEN-FREE PRODUCTS STORE TOUR – CALL TO RESERVE YOUR SPACE!
Bring your walking shoes (and call the Wellness Department of the appropriate store to sign up) for this comprehensive store tour that illuminates the many products available at New Seasons Market that are gluten-free. We will provide menu ideas as well as our extensive gluten-free shopping list.
We were contacted last month by Jensen’s Bread and Bakeries, who are working on bringing a brand new gluten free product to market in Portland, Oregon. Both David Jensen and his daughter, Brenna, were diagnosed with Celiac disease a few years ago, and like most people quickly learned that they weren’t going to have anything resembling real bread without some action on their part. Most of our readers can certainly relate, I’m sure. After suffering through months of awful imitations, they started making their own bread.
David’s wife, Debbie, who has been a recreational baker for over 40 years, started working on recipes to make better gluten free bread and buns. She and David spent two and a half years coming up with a product that they think is good enough to sell. Then they took a course at the Portland Small Business Development Center to figure out the next steps. They are almost ready to start selling them, and we got a sneak peek.
The good news is that we have tried the buns and agree that they are awesome. The bad news is that you can’t buy them – yet. I met David last week and we talked about gluten-free bread, buns, and what the next step is for their company. David is very clearly serious about bread. They are in the process of getting a commercial kitchen set up and hope to get their products on shelves near you in the first quarter of this year.
Take a look at this. I brought one of these to work last week and a fellow co-worker who is also gluten-free saw it and couldn’t believe that it was a gluten-free bun. The buns are flexible and soft. They toast excellently and aren’t crumbly. They don’t need to be toasted and freeze well. The flavor is as close to a hamburger bun as I’ve had since I stopped eating the real thing. Sometimes buns and breads will end up having a beany flavor, or a corn aftertaste. These buns don’t suffer from that problem.
Given buns like these, we had to make some hamburgers immediately! These make awesome hamburgers. They are the best gluten-free buns we have tasted and are head and shoulders above the competition. The Jensens have other gluten-free products in the pipeline, including sesame seed buns, multi-grain buns, and bread. You can check in on their progress on their website, Gluten-Free Concepts. They can be found on Twitter, here and on also Facebook, here. We’re looking forward to hearing more from them!
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