Natural Family Recipes Blog

I was very happy to see these sausages in the frozen food section of my local, large chain grocery store.  I find that I have to eat some protein in the morning in order to feel good and not have issues with low blood sugar, and these are a perfect accompaniment to eggs, oatmeal or other hot breakfast fare.

The sausages are all natural and nitrite free. They contain no artificial ingredients. They simply contain pork, water, maple sugar, salt and natural flavorings. While they aren’t organic, they’re far superior than other conventional pork products.

This company also makes a pork sausage product that is stuffed with half rice, half pork, which results in a much lighter product that contains a lot less fat. They’re equally delicious and in fact I prefer their flavor because they’re not as greasy and cook with a slightly crispy skin.

Jones Little sausages are available in links and in patties. They’re a little pricier than other brands, but it’s worth it to get a product that isn’t full of preservatives and ingredients you can’t pronounce, much less want to eat.

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Pamela’s products are a brand of flours and mixes that are gluten free. These are of course required by people who have Celiac’s disease and are also nice for those who have wheat sensitivities. Baking without wheat can be pretty tricky for the uninitiated, so I decided to try out the Ultimate Chocolate Brownie Mix when I saw it at my local grocery store.

The mix is made from brown and white rice flours and also contain no dairy, although the product isn’t guaranteed to be dairy free. They do contain soy and corn ingredients. I made these with pecans and they were excellent. Of course, with gluten or wheat free products you are going to notice a different texture, but overall these satisfy a brownie craving quite nicely. They also contain quite a lot of organic ingredients which is a plus.

My only gripe with Pamela’s products is that they are more expensive than some of the other brands. They do have coupons occasionally available in magazines and on the website so that helps somewhat.

I also noticed that these brownies didn’t taste as sweet as regular brownie mixes, but that was ok with me since I’m not accustomed to eating a lot of sugar. I’ve noticed this same thing with other GF products so it may be that I’m tasting the different grains, but the overall sugar content was only 10 grams per serving, which, if memory serves, is less than other conventional brownie mixes.

Another plus about these are the other recipes on the side of the bag. You can make cookies, cake and other types of brownies (such as egg free brownies) with this same mix, which is convenient.

Keeping a couple of bags of these on hand if you have an allergic child is a great idea, especially if you don’t know how to cook GF yet and are going to be in a situation where you would be tempted to eat wheat, such as at a party or similar event.

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If you or someone in your family has a wheat allergy or intolerance, you know how challenging it can be having to learn how to bake from scratch without wheat. Wheat free and gluten free mixes like this one from Bob’s Red Mill can be very convenient, especially when you’re just learning how to replace wheat with other grains.

Bob’s Red Mill products are more reasonably priced than some other gluten/wheat free mixes, which gives them a real thumbs up in my book. When I saw this mix in my local grocery store (it was a large chain not a small health food store), I cooked up a batch of cornbread to go along with my beans. I was very pleased with the flavor.

The finished product was a little “wetter” than the cornbread I’m accustomed to, but I’ll have to experiment to see if perhaps using a wider or a different pan yields different results. Also, the cornbread is a little sweet which is fine if that’s how you’re used to eating cornbread. I’m from the South and we don’t eat our cornbread sweet, but I still liked the taste.

The next day I made the leftovers into cornbread dressing, which was also very tasty although again a little on the moist side. Overall it’s a very good product for the price, and very convenient to use too. The Bob’s Red Mill website is a nice source of wheat and gluten free recipes so you can expand your repertoire of wheat/gluten free
baking.

Bob’s Red Mill flours and baking mixes are available at amazon.com

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This baking mix is an easy, super convenient way to whip up a batch of gluten/wheat free chocolate chip cookies. Instead of wheat, it uses garbanzo bean flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, whole grain white sorghum flour, and fava bean flour.

I decided to bake up a batch of these and found they were excellent. The texture was chewy and the flavor delicious. They won’t taste like the cookies made with wheat you may be used to, but they’re good nonetheless.

Just a note: Skip letting the kids lick the bowl on this one. The bean flours give the batter a very “beany” flavor, although you don’t notice it when the cookies are baked.

Bob’s gluten free products are some of the more reasonably priced mixes and I highly recommend them, especially if you or your child is sensitive to wheat and you don’t want to waste a lot of time and money experimenting with gluten free baking, which can be really tricky to master.

You can get these baking mixes at a small discount by buying them in bulk from the Bob’s Red Mill website.

Available at amazon.com

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I came across this baking mix at my local grocery store. I’ve been pleased with the quality of other Bob’s Red Mill products and decided to give this mix a try. Instead of wheat, it uses potato starch, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, and corn flour.

I made the “cream cheese brownie” recipe on the package and was very happy with the flavor and texture of these brownies. The mix is a good value too because it makes a lot of brownies and is more reasonably priced than other gluten free baking mixes.

I noticed that these brownies were tastier the second day, and they also held up beautifully when I froze part of the batch to eat later. These have a permanent place on my counter, they’re officially my favorite wheat/gluten free brownie mix.

This brownie mix is available at amazon.com

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