Living Gluten Free

You already know we like the Black Farmer products; I’ve talked about them before. They’ve developed some new products, and sent some for us to review.

I assembled my expert team of five teenage meat-eaters (actually, it was a study evening at our house) and tried out the new products on them.

I didn’t describe or name the products at all—I knew that the mention of apple would put at least one of them off—I just asked for comments:

• Black Farmer Beef Burgers

  “no gross strangly bits or wet stuff”

  You can tell this was a group of teenage testers, can’t you? Normally I buy supermarket brand 100% beef burgers, and hadn’t realised they were a bit gristly, because I don’t eat meat myself. I’m obviously going to have to switch, as these cooked nicely without producing any water or fatty bits…

• Black Farmer’s Daughter Pork Meatballs; Black Farmer’s Daughter Beef Meatballs

  “it’s all good”

  The beef were slightly preferred (3:2), as the pork ones were apparently a little ‘sausagey’ for some, and the beef ones were slightly chewier and spicier (though not at all hot). One teenager commented on the “gritty bits”… which turned out to be herb stalks! Honestly, teenagers…

• Black Farmer Pork and Apple Burgers

  “they were great, can we get them again?”

  What can I add to that? I love positive feedback on a meal, almost as much as I like help with the washing-up afterwards.

So will I source these myself, given the responses?

I think it will be worth the effort, and it will be extra trouble, because they are only currently available at Ocado. However, they are on promotion at the moment […]

Back in November, I was invited up to Newcastle by Warburtons to visit their gluten free bakery. We were also given the opportunity to taste their newest products: muffins.

These were still secret at that time, so I couldn’t tell you about them, but we were delighted by them at the tasting; they have now been launched onto what should be a grateful gluten-free market.

I couldn’t go to the launch event at the end of January, but they kindly sent me a sample of the blueberry and cranberry muffins as a reminder. They’re just as good now as they were then. I especially love the lemon and poppy seed ones, but they are quite grown-up and lemony, so your gluten free child might prefer the blueberry ones. There’s also a fruit loaf, which is good hot and buttery, but I’m a big fan of the muffins.

These are little loaf-shaped cakes. I usually think that muffins are too large and dry, but these are fab: moist, with a good quantity of ‘bits’ to cake. Not too large, and delicious.

I know there are plenty of gluten free cake offerings on the market, but these are special, and I’d love them to ‘take’, and be a success. They could be offered to non-GF eaters, and they wouldn’t know… However, I haven’t spotted them anywhere in the wild yet, and I have looked.

Round here, there are a range of supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons, Co-Op and Aldi. Yet I haven’t seen these fab new products anywhere. I’ve looked on the Warburtons stockist locator, and despite there being plenty of places apparently stocking the bread products—including the community shop […]