If you have been reading Penny Pinching Parent for a while you will probably recall me sharing earlier in the summer that we are a food allergy family.
My daughter, who's 3, has a long list of food allergies, one of which is barley. Since barley is pretty much in anything store bought, we have to opt for "gluten free" items when we buy baked goods cereals and that store of thing. This is okay with us since we suspect that our little one is probably gluten
intolerant and not just allergic to barley.
Thankfully more and more companies like General Mills are offering "gluten free" options. General Mills has 5 varieties of
Chex® that are "gluten free" (Rice
Chex, Corn
Chex, Honey Nut
Chex, Chocolate
Chex, and Cinnamon
Chex). Not only are all these "gluten free" formulas wholesome and tasty as wholesome and tasty as you would expect
Chex to be, but they offer us allergy families some options for items we can't normally buy at the store (i.e. sweet treats & snack mixes).
You can check out the
Chex website at
http://www.chex.com/Recipes/GlutenFree.aspx for great gluten-free recipes including
Chex Muddy Buddies® and
Favorite Chicken Nuggets and if you are looking for even more "gluten free" tips... you have to check out
LiveGlutenFreely.com. This is a site that I signed-up for e-mail updates as soon as we were diagnosed with food allergies. This site has a handy list you can print out of all the General Mills products that are "gluten free"... there are over 300!!
As a member of
MyBlogSpark, I was sent a coupon for a free box of
Chex and some other goodies including a microwavable bowl, measuring cup & spoons, as well as a recipe booklet, so that our family could try out some
Chex Gluten Free Recipes.
We actually decided to try out something that wasn't even the recipe booklet... we came-up with a variation of a rice cereal treat. My little one can't have the traditional one's because of the barley, so I was excited to make her a sweet treat. Poor food allergy kiddo seems to hear a lot of "no you can't have that, but you can have this" when it comes to sweets. Most parents are tyring to limit their child's sweet intake... I am constantly on the search for something my little one can actually have... gluten free and egg free make it tough!
You pretty much make these like you would a traditional rice treat bar, but you substitute Rice Chex instead... we used about 6 1/2 cups cereal, a stick of butter and a bag of mini marshmallows. All I can say is yum, yum, yum! The little one is not the only one who misses sweets in our house... I swear I felt like I could have eaten half the pan of these at once!
Now that was have adjusted to life as a mostly "gluten free" family things are getting easier. I am finding more ways to substitute items and more ways to incorporate store bought items into the mix instead of having to make everything from scratch and it's in part to products like these Gluten Free Chex!
Have I made you hungry yet? Want to try out a Chex Gluten Free cereal for yourself? Well, thanks to MyBlogSpark and Chex, I have a Chex Gluten Free Gift pack to give away to a lucky PPP reader!
How to Enter:
All you have to do to enter is visit the Chex site and check out their selection of "gluten free" recipes. Come back here and leave a comment letting me know what recipe you think looks the best or what one you would like to try.
That's it... super simple entry!
Giveaway Fine Print:
This giveaway runs from today until September 1, 2010. You can enter once and entries are open to U.S. residents only please.
Entries require an e-mail address, so be sure to leave yours. Please be sure to use the "yourname (at) gmail (dot) com" format or use a service like http://scr.im/ to avoid spam.
Disclosure: PennyPinchingParent.com did receive a complimentary prize pack from MyBlogSpark and a lucky PPP will too.
