3 Pack Day - Person, Place and Thing

Today I wanted to go through three things at once.  There is a person that means a lot to me when it comes to my realization that going GF would benefit me and improve my life, a website that has some awesome items for people that like to cook, and another food product to review.

First, let me talk about this wonderful person.  Her name is Dawn Hunt.  My wife and I met her about 2 years ago at the 2009 Central NJ Pagan Pride Day.  This particular day was also nicknamed by me, "Pagan Pride Slip N' Slide" as we had gotten some torrential rains that day.  Dawn, when we met her, had a tent at the festival selling infused and blessed oils for cooking as well as mixes in onion and garlic flavors for making dips and spreads.  She was there with her husband Justin.  We all hit it off rather quickly and we eventually got to talking about allergies that she had.  I wish we had talked to her more that day but the event ended early on account of a most violent thunderstorm that moved into the area.  We helped them pack up so they could return home.

We saw them again at the NYC PPD and talked some more.  There we met some more new and truly wonderful friends.

Now just this last year we were once again at the NYC PPD, knowing full well that Dawn and Justin would be there again.  We started to talk to her about some problems I was having and she had suggested to us that maybe cutting gluten out of my diet would help me.  No one had ever suggested that to me before, so I figured that it couldn't hurt.  Worst case scenario, it would do nothing and I would just go back to eating how I originally was.

And now here I am, just over 6 months gluten free, and I have never felt better in my entire life!  I thought that I wouldn't like the foods that are GF and, at first, I didn't at all.  That was just because of the ones I chose to taste first.  Now I can't even imagine eating the way I did in the past.

Thank you Dawn!

Now the place will be simple.  It is the website for Dawn's business, Cucina Aurora, that offers some wonderful products.  She has some wonderful infused cooking oils, dip mixes and so much more.  You should all definitely check her site out.

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Finally let me discuss the thing, as in, the food product.  There are so many products that this one company makes, I may have to designate an entire week just to them.

I just tried today Schar's Anellini, so it gets to be the food product that I review today.  It is a tiny pasta perfect for homemade soups or even homemade Spaghetti-O's that is "O" shaped.  I have eaten a couple of different brands of GF pasta, so I figured I should give this one a try as well.

Prep Time - Takes about 4 minutes to cook, whether you are boiling it in water for something you are making or for soup.  If you are making soup with it, it says to put it in the soup directly and cook it there.  I am not an experienced cook, so I honestly don't know if this is what you would do when making soup with any type of pasta.

Look - Looks just like pasta.  A little bit more yellow than traditional types, but it looks like dried pasta.

Texture - It feels like uncooked pasta.  When cooked, it is about the same as traditional pasta that you would use to make soup for children like Ronzoni's Pastina.  This is impressive as I have had some GF pastas that are very soft and others that feel like you barely cooked it at all, even though it was in the pot boiling for 20 minutes.

Taste - I didn't get to taste it without the chicken broth getting in the way of its flavor, but from what I could tell it didn't taste any different from traditional pastas used in soup.  There was no off taste at all.  If this was served to someone without telling them it was GF, they most likely would never figure it out for themselves.

Smell - Now taste and smell do go hand in hand, but they are also separate.  The pasta did give the broth a slightly different smell after the soup sat in the pot for a while, about 30 minutes, but it didn't affect the taste of the broth or the pasta itself.  I have noticed that some GF products do have a different scent coming from them that can make it easily distinguishable from traditional products, but this scent usually doesn't interfere with the taste.

Overall, I am really impressed by this pasta.  I have some other packages of their products to try, including a few more pasta types, so they will be tried out soon enough.  Big thumbs up for this one!