Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Cold Comfort

It must be the beginning of December because my throat is scratchy, my body aches and my head feels fuzzy. Every year during the interim between Thanksgiving and Finals Week I catch a cold. And what I could really use right now to fight it off is some chicken noodle soup, something I didn't even bother to look into when I caught a cold last year, my first year of being gluten-free. This year I'm feeling a little more creative.

I could always make my own soup, but who wants to take on that undertaking when they're sick? Gluten-free Girl has all sorts of cold/flu remedies like tea with lemon and plain chicken stock, but that's not good enough. Ooh, a brand called Kettle Cuisine makes a GF chicken noodle soup with rice noodles, but it's not something I can get my hands on quickly. I'll have to remember to stock up on that for when I'm sick again next December. Let's keep looking...

A-ha! I think I found my remedy: a big bowl of chicken pho. Chicken? Check. Noodle? Check. A little spice to clear the sinuses? Check! It might not be as familiar and homey as Campbell's in a can, but then again, it might be better.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

From one Hungry Girl to Another

Another Saturday and I'm up way too early again. I was just watching the Today Show as I thought it would help me go back to sleep (what?? Matt and Meredith aren't even there on Saturdays), when I saw a familiar face.

A couple years ago, before my great food shift into the gluten-free world, I was an avid reader of Hungry-Girl.com. A co-worker who always seems to be on a diet had showed it to me, and I found the site's witty take on unhealthy foods and recipes for really lo-cal alternatives to be pretty motivating. Now it seems Lisa Lillian has published a few successful Hungry-Girl books and appears regularly on Today. Good for her!

I didn't always try the recipes on the site, as many of them required a pantry full of base items that I didn't always keep around, like tofu shirataki noodles and ground up Fiber One cereal to use as breadcrumbs. What I really enjoyed was the News section, which always had up-to-date info on lo-cal foods in restaurants and new healthy foods hitting the market.

She also compares items with their competitors to see which one was the healthiest and the tastiest. Reddi-Wip vs. Cool Whip in a can? Reddi-wip all the way.

Even with all the success, the site remains virtually the same in format and content. She's even thrown in a couple of gluten-free news bits. Yep, I'm adding her to my Google Reader.F