{"id":688,"date":"2009-09-16T14:14:54","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T13:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/?p=688"},"modified":"2017-05-20T12:07:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T11:07:27","slug":"love-those-gluten-free-gingerbread-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/love-those-gluten-free-gingerbread-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Love those Gluten Free Gingerbread Men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-content\/lovemore-gingerbread-sm.jpg\" alt=\"lovemore gingerbread men\" title=\"lovemore gingerbread men\" width=\"340\" height=\"263\" align=\"right\"\/>Is it just me?<\/p>\n<p>Am I the only one ever reduced to tears in the free from section in the supermarket?<\/p>\n<p>It happened again, just last week, when I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lovemore-freefromfoods.com\">Lovemore Gingerbread Men<\/a> in Sainsbury&#8217;s. As you can see from the image, it&#8217;s a box containing four charming gingerbread men, some dairy-free chocolate beans (looking very like Whizzers &#8211; less colourful than Smarties, which as you know are not gluten free) and a couple of tubes of writing icing. Not really the kind of thing to make a grown woman cry, is it?<\/p>\n<p>Those poor supermarket staff. Perhaps they should hand round a box of tissues on the shelves in the free from sections, as they used to in the cinema during romantic films when I was a teenager&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I bought them. You know I always buy these things, partly because we like to try them, and partly to encourage the supermarkets and the manufacturers by demonstrating that <strong><em>Yes there IS a demand for these things<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>And there is a demand. <\/p>\n<p>Oh yes.  Even though my coeliac daughter is now approaching 14, she was thrilled. She carefully decorated each gingerbread man in turn, and ate them all, except for a gingerbread leg she gave me to taste. Like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/?p=673\">chocolate fingers<\/a> we found in the summer, this is exactly the kind of thing I wish we&#8217;d had 10 years ago.  <\/p>\n<p>They are expensive, of course, but I&#8217;d buy them again for a party or for a special treat. The gingerbread itself is tasty; not as gingery as I like it, but then, I&#8217;m not the target market, am I? Well, I am, of course, being the mother of a coeliac, but the product isn&#8217;t necessarily intended for me.<\/p>\n<p>I contacted Lovemore, who kindly sent me a brochure (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/library\/lovemore brochure april 08.pdf\">available here as a PDF to download.<\/a>) and told me that they launched this line in Sainsbury&#8217;s three weeks ago. Hurrah!<\/p>\n<p>So why does this simple product render me tearful? <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Perhaps because it reminds me of all the times I sent my daughter off to children&#8217;s parties with her own party tea, all homemade, because there weren&#8217;t any products aimed at children back then; all those parties where she ate food that was different. <\/li>\n<li>Perhaps because I&#8217;m so thrilled that manufacturers are, at last, realising that there is a market out there: children who want special-diet products aimed at them, so that they can look the same, be the same, eat the same as their peers. <\/li>\n<li>Perhaps because every product like this makes it easier for children like my daughter to visit a friend&#8217;s house &#8211; and for friend&#8217;s parents to feel able to cater for them.  <\/li>\n<li>Perhaps because these products are getting ever closer to &#8216;normal&#8217; food; and that is what children want, after all, at a party tea: cakes and biscuits that they can share with their friends without those friends saying &#8216;yuck&#8217;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lovemore, I love you. I wish you&#8217;d been there a decade ago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me? Am I the only one ever reduced to tears in the free from section in the supermarket? It happened again, just last week, when I found Lovemore Gingerbread Men in Sainsbury&#8217;s. As you can see from the image, it&#8217;s a box containing four charming gingerbread men, some dairy-free chocolate beans (looking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1,27],"tags":[5,43,4,42,6,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-gluten-free-finds","7":"category-living-gluten-free","8":"category-gluten-free-shopping","9":"tag-celiac","10":"tag-children","11":"tag-coeliac","12":"tag-gingerbread-men","13":"tag-gluten-free","14":"tag-parties","15":"entry","16":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.free-from.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}