Snacks (the First)

So you're diagnosed with Celiac or with some sort of terrible sensitivity or just some nagging ache or ailment and the doc says "Hey, let's have you give the gluten-free lifestyle a try." You're suddenly awash in a world without staples. Look, family was having pasta last night. They were having penne. I was having gf penne (made from corn, not so great) and I see my kid eating a piece of bread with butter with his pasta and I wanted it. A lot. It's the simplest food in the world, just a piece of $1.17 a loaf whitebread. It probably wasn't even butter. It was probably Crock or something.

The point is this. I'm not a huge guy by any means but I am a guy who cares about food. Sometimes that means I eat when I am bummed. Snack options are key. My go to snack, if I had a choice of anything? Those Snyder's Honey Mustard and Onion pretzel pieces. I'm not posting a picture. It's too sad. We definitely can't have those anymore. Also, no SunChips, no on most prepackaged Chex Mix, no PRINGLES, because, you know, potato chips totally need gluten, right?

There are choices though. First and foremost? Popcorn. Popcorn is great and you can do a lot of things with it. Personally, I like drenching with butter and salt and taking a year off my life, but there's also Parmesan cheese or making your own caramel corn or whatever. It's totally gluten free, can be as healthy or not healthy as you want and air poppers really aren't that expensive.  It takes maybe two minutes to pop popcorn. I'm lazy but I'm not so lazy that I'll take the hit in quality for the microwave stuff. There are lines and there are limits. Still, let's say you want something interesting that's even easier:

I give you PopCrunch. This stuff is fairly new; it's been out for six months or so. You can quite often find it on sale for a reasonable price. It's not all that bad for you relatively, and it's totally addictive. Oh yeah, Gluten-Free too. I've only had the Brown Sugar Cinnamon which is pretty much what it sounds like and the White and Sharp Cheddar Mix which is sort of like Kettle Corn covered with ridiculous cheese powder. Totally the way to go.

Guess what? We can have Dortios! Sort of. We can definitely have the Nacho Cheese sort. Sort of. Some of the Frito-Lays Products are totally Gluten Free (Here's a list). Some are just made without Gluten ingredients but could still be on the same lines as Sun Chips or what not. Eat at your own risk, but I certainly have never had a problem. I know there are some brands which have Gluten. Google before eating if you want to get fancy with it.

What else? I have to save some things for another one of these, you know. Okay how about:

There are a lot of sweet potato chips out there that we can eat and a lot of them are pretty good and again, relatively healthy for you (especially compared to, let's say, Doritos). The Green Giant ones came out earlier this year. There's a Zesty Cheddar Veggie Chip variety that we CAN'T eat but the Sea Salt Sweet Potato ones are pretty addictive and pretty safe too. I see them on sale all the time. Usually either they or the PopCrunch are on sale so I alternate accordingly.

There are other things and we'll get to them. It's quite possible that you can't have your very favorite snack anymore but you can still munch away your sorrows with a lot of other great options, I promise.