Wild Pear (Salem, Oregon)

The place where ladies lunch (for ladies who lunch)

For those of you who have not been to the Wild Pear restaurant in downtown Salem - you are missing out!  It has a fun atmosphere and healthy delicious food.  Wild Pear has been a treat-spot for me for some time, a place I go when I want good food and a good visit with a friend (or my Mom!).

Their menu mentions what is gluten free, and our waitress was very helpful about what was possible.  For example, she volunteered that all though the sweet potato fries were themselves gluten-free, they were fried in the same fryer as other things (too bad, they looked really yummy!)

I didn't have a lot of time for lunch before my next work meeting, so I opted for the ginger-carrot soup and salad (the one soup one salad on the menu).  I have to admit, this Wild Pear soup is a favorite soup for me, a soup for all seasons, and it was perfect yet again - and gluten free too!!.  Next time I'll have to try their gluten free pizza.....

GF Birthday Cake

My youngest turned 4 this week.  Being that her birthday is in the summer, planning for what to do is generally centered around the phrase "goodness it is hot!".  For my eldest who can eat anything, I usually either make something or if a party do the cheap option of a Costco cake, but my little one is gluten free and I just couldn't justify a cake that she couldn't eat and it was too hot to bake.  So was is a busy GF mama to do?

Baskin Robins!  The Baskin Robins in West Salem is WONDERFUL.  This is not to say that others are not, but this one has treats in the case labeled as GF and of course like all stores in the chain. the ice cream has these cute little tags that include the allergens while you are picking a scoop (e.g. soy, milk, peanuts, wheat etc).

We custom ordered an ice cream cake.  We spoke to the Manager (perhaps also the owner?) and he was very helpful about our options.  If you are thinking of ordering a cake, I would highly recommend speaking to the manager as he was more knowledgeable about how they do the gluten free cakes and how to order it than the super nice teenager behind the counter.

A regular ice cream cake has ice cream on the bottom, then cake in the middle then ice cream then icing.  A GF cake from there is just ice cream and icing (the birthday girl thought this was the best thing she had ever seen).  We got to pick 4 flavors - so most slices would just have 2 flavors, an upper and lower, but there were 2 hemispheres of the cake - hard to explain, but very tasty.

You will see from my picture that I had a chocolate and strawberry on one side, and blackberry and lemon custard on the other.  They ran out of lemon so the one side just had more blackberry - it was still delicious.

Other things I enjoyed about the experience:

1. we ordered after 5pm and it was ready the next morning at 11
2. we could pick almost any shape and design and then recolor it (birthday girl loves rainbows so we picked the leprechaun cake then switched to hearts and pink instead of shamrocks and green)
3. we picked out the flavors to go in the middle - and of course needed LOTS of samples to get the right combination 
4. manager was very nice and helpful and knowledgeable about gluten free needs
5. one very happy GF birthday girl

What places in the Valley do you like to get your birthday cakes from?