Archives for August 2011

Enjoy Life Foods: Crunchy Cookies

Enjoy Life Foods is still one of my most favorite brands. Their products are so good, you would never know you were eating something completely gluten and allergen free. I also love that they keep coming out with new items to try. I once thought my days of enjoying delicious treats was over… now it’s hard to decide between all the yummy choices that Enjoy Life Foods offers.

I was overjoyed when Enjoy Life Foods contacted me again to try out some more of their brand new products… crunchy cookies! I had seen them talking about their new cookies on their Facebook page and seen them on their website, but they hadn’t shown up in my local nutrition store yet. They sent me all four of the fantastic new flavors: sugar crisp, vanilla honey graham, chocolate chip, and double chocolate!

Cookies

Before trying them for the first time, I examined the ingredients label carefully (as I always do now) and found a few ingredients and flavorings that I was unsure about because I hadn’t tried them before. One flavoring I was initially concerned about was the vanilla since it’s difficult to find it without added corn syrup. However, I found a very helpful ingredients page on the Enjoy Life Foods website that confirmed that their vanilla and other flavorings were corn free and safe for me.

As you can imagine, I had a rather difficult time picking which box to open first. I finally landed on the sugar crisp first, mostly because many of the products I usually choose are chocolate-y and I wanted something different. I brought them to game night at my parents’ house to test them out on my family. We all thought they were great! They have the perfect sugary-sweet taste without being too much.

Sugar crisp cookies

Next I tried the chocolate chip. Who doesn’t love a chocolate chip cookie? These did not disappoint! I could have eaten the entire box if I wanted to.

Chocolate chip cookies

Then I went for the vanilla honey graham. What can I say? Also great! They really reminded me of graham crackers. As kids we would use leftover frosting between two graham crackers to make frosting sandwiches. I decided I’d try the same thing here. It was so yummy, I couldn’t resist making myself a second one. You have to try these this way.

Vanilla honey grahamFrosting sandwich

Last, but certainly not least, I dove into the double chocolate. When the entire cookie is chocolate with more chocolate in inside, it’s hard not to love it. I really expected these to be my favorite, but I have to say I’m not sure I can choose a favorite. They were all so good!

Double chocolate cookiesMe eating cookies

These cookies are so similar to cookies I would have eaten before food allergies. I really like the soft baked cookies that Enjoy Life Foods makes, but honestly these even more yummy. Just writing this post makes me think I should go give some of these cookies another taste. I will definitely buy these again in the future. Many thanks to Enjoy Life Foods for all of their fabulous products for people with food allergies… especially the great, new crunchy cookies!!

Namaste Foods: Chocolate Cake and Frosting

Before last night, the last time I had cake was in October. I remember because I had just finished my month of food challenge testing after my allergy testing revealed several food allergies. Someone had brought some leftover cake into work and I took a piece. I took all of about five minutes for me to feel terrible. I remember that I was so upset that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to my normal diet again. It just wasn’t worth it to feel so bad for so long just for a couple mouthfuls of yummy-ness.

I’ve had my eye on the Namaste chocolate cake and chocolate fudge frosting for quite a while now. I had seen it on their website, but never in any stores and I couldn’t bring myself to pay more for shipping than the cost of the product. Then last week it was on the shelf at my Nutrition S’Mart!

Namaste mixes

I was more than pleased with the cake mix. It tasted very chocolate-y and came out very moist. I even cut out one of the three eggs the recipe on the package suggested (since too much egg bothers my stomach) and it still turned out fluffy enough. The cake was great!

The frosting… not so much. I’m sad to say there is now a Namaste product that I am not head over heels about. It was very difficult to make. It just would not mix! I found myself beating it with my electric mixer forever and it kept getting stuck as a big clump in the beaters. By the end I had added way more water than the package called for to make it come out at all, I almost gave up on it. Since I’ve loved every other Namaste product I’ve bought, I didn’t think to check any reviews on it. After having problems with it I went online and found that I was not the only one. I didn’t really care for the taste too much either… can you believe I didn’t even lick the beaters clean?! It was really hard to spread it on the cake too because it was drying out faster than I could use it. Such a shame since this is the ONLY frosting I’ve seen that is corn free.

Leftover frosting

My cake still did turn out great though. I added some Enjoy Life chocolate chips to disguise my bad frosting job. Luckily, it didn’t scare anyone away from trying it.

Finished cake

Oh… the cake was great! The frosting tasted much better on the cake than it did plain. My chocolate-loving family even approved. I like to get others’ opinions because sometimes I think I can’t have as honest of a review anymore now that I really don’t have many options to compare it with. They agreed that it was as yummy as I thought it was. I can’t wait to finish off the rest of the cake!

Cake!

In the end, I guess I would still buy it again when I really “need” cake again. However, the Namaste brownies are just as good and a LOT easier to make.

Jesse Is Published

We are so excited that we finally got to see Jesse’s expert opinion quote published in the new book Mom Blogging for Dummies, by Wendy Piersall. Jesse met blogger Wendy at a conference several years ago. We knew that she was going to publish the quote, but we weren’t paying very close attention to when the book was coming out. The other night, we all of a sudden realized the book was out in stores. We decided to head down the street to the bookstore right away.

It took us a while to find the book because we were looking in the computer and blogging sections. Jesse finally went to look up the book in the kiosk to see if it could tell him more specifically where it was. As he did, I wandered into the next isle where we found it under business. I grabbed a copy and we headed to the comfy chairs to check it out.

BookshelfMom Blogging for Dummies

I flipped straight to the index where we found his name and page number printed. Both names are even spelled correctly too!

Index

We went to page 22 where we found the quote from “WordPress Champion Jesse Petersen!” It also has our company name and website listed. Jesse’s quote debated the importance of using WordPress as a blogging platform while the opposite viewpoint argues for Blogger. Wendy says she chose the two most extreme opposing viewpoints to print. It’s really no surprise that Jesse has the most extreme quote in favor of WordPress. It’s just too bad we don’t get some kind of royalties or something for how much he promotes it all the time.

Page 22

We spent quite a bit of time reading and re-reading his quote and taking pictures with the book. We are ordering a copy from Amazon, but we needed pictures until it gets here. Anyone watching us may have thought we wrote the book by how enthusiastic we were about it. It was just even more cool than we anticipated getting to see Jesse’s name printed in a book for forever!

Jesse readingJesse on page 22

Be sure to check out the book the next time you’re at the bookstore. You could even read more than just page 22, if you want to. Awesome!!