Review of Mikey's Pizzeria (McMinnville, OR)

I am so excited to have found a pizzeria who serves good gluten free pizza in McMinnville!  I have been to Mikey's Pizzeria a couple of times, and the pizza has been wonderful everytime!  I even brought my father there, who is also gluten free.

Mikey's Pizzeria is a locally owned and family operated pizzeria.  It offers seating, 2 flat screen televisions, arcade games, and a lottery room.  They even offer reservations for birthdays, large parties, and catering.  You can also order pizza for pick-up.  The staff is friendly, but they always seem to be busy when we go.  However, I do not feel that we had to wait an inordinate amount of time for our food.  We sometimes have to wait to get a table, which I sometimes find to be difficult with hungry, young children.  

The gluten free pizza is only available in one size, about 10 inches.  It has a thin crust, but there are a lot of toppings on it.  I ordered the Gardner pizza.  It had peppers, olives, mushrooms, and tomatoes.  I have split this pizza with my father, and it was the perfect amount.  This pizza is also good the next day cold.  They have a soda fountain for drinks, and they now serve Omission beer by the bottle.  

Next time you are in McMinnville, please give Mikey's Pizzeria a try.

Review of Ruby Cakes (McMinnville, Oregon)

Ruby Cakes is a gluten-free, vegan, and nut free bakery in McMinnville, Oregon.  It is owned by Dominique Bjorlin and Amy Israel.  They make the most amazing baked goods!  They have cupcakes, brownies, pies, donuts, breads, biscuits, cookies, and muffins.  They also make bagels on Fridays and cinnamon rolls on Saturday.  They also do special orders for birthday cakes, cupcakes, and wedding cakes.  They also have a nice selection of coffee and tea.

I absolutely love going into Ruby Cakes.  There are so many options that I can eat, and I can always find something that my children would like.  My son's favorite item on the menu is the chocolate salted caramel cupcake.  My daughter likes the chocolate chip cookies.  My husband's favorite treat is the orange creamsicle cupcake.  I have sampled many of the baked goods, and I really cannot decide what I like the best.  It depends on my mood.  I will say that I traditionally have a cupcake, because I can order a mini-cupcake.  It gives me the ability to have a little bit of something sweet.  Here is a link to Ruby Cakes' menu, so you can see what wonderful options they have.         

The bakery has a good amount of seating and free wifi.  It is a great place to chat with your friends or even conduct a business meeting over coffee and a nosh.  They even have a kids' corner, where my kids love to play.  Ruby Cakes has created such a welcoming atmosphere, and I am so lucky to have it in our area.

  

I hope that you will stop by Ruby Cakes and enjoy a special treat!  It will be worth the trip.

"Emergency" Dining

A few weeks ago, I picked up a friend from the airport.  We had some shopping to do on our way back to Salem (ahem Ikea) and by the time we were part way home we had 2 4-year olds melting down and "starving".  I had a nice GF planned supper at home, but we just weren't going to make it.  As my passenger scoured online menues, we found that Romono's Macaroni Grill had a gluten free menu and they had a location in Bridgeport Village so we quickly stopped.

Allergen Menu

They were nice and knowledgeable about gluten free options and their menu made it easy to pick the correct items.

My little one was ecstatic because she got noodles and white sauce just like her gluten-eating little friend.  (gf penne pasta and gf alfredo sauce).

My meal was fantastic - gf penne pasta with pomero sauce (some red sauce) and grilled chicken with arugula.  YUM and YUM

While I normally don't go to chain restaurants, this one was perfect for "emergency" stops.

Great lunch for everyone

A few weeks ago I caught up with a friend and decided to eat at Willamette's Goudy Commons.  It was SO GOOD.  Anyone can go there, you don't have to be a student.  In addition to wearing a backpack and pretending I was much younger and more hip - the food was great and I can't wait to go back.

But Goudy isn't your alma-mater's cafeteria (ok maybe is it if you went to Willamette University).  I felt more like I was at a high end resturant with self-service.  All of the items are labeled to help you make food choices that work for you like "no gluten ingredients" or "vegetarian" or "vegan" or "farm to fork".  On any given day there is a station with tacos etc (and OMG are they good), a grill station, sandwich station, pb&j station, soup, salad bar, and the list goes on.  They even have a dessert station that typically has GF items.

This day we made a bad call on when to arrive and the place was packed with students (had we waited 15 minutes it would have cleared out).  So I opted for the salad bar with GF pear vinaigrette and GF tomato-basil soup all for around $6.50.  They accept a school account, cash, and credit.

My one recommendation would be to check when school is in session, as I did make the disappointing discovery one day over the summer when I arrived only to find it closed.

What is your favorite thing to get at Goudy?

Birthday Party treats

Typically I will primarily include yummy places to eat in the Willamette Valley, but occasionally I will also include some of my favorite tips to living a gluten free life.

One of the hardest things about having a kid who is gluten-free is birthday parties.  Either in attending or especially at school when other kids bring in gluten-infested treats.  Today I made a new recipe I found from the blog "Gluten free on a Shoestring".  The recipe is perfect for fall is makes pumpkin-carrot cupcakes.

Of course my cupcakes aren't as cute as hers, but my are they tasty.  It was quick to throw together (so quick I didn't get in "in-process" pictures).  I did take this picture mid way through frosting them - you could frost them all, but they are also tasty without.  This recipe could also easily be made egg free and dairy free.  Since we are ok with eggs and a little dairy, these have a cream cheese frosting.  If I was making them dairy free, I would have made a coconut frosting (google some recipes, but basically coconut oil + coconut extract + coconut milk + powdered sugar).  This recipe recommends Better Batter GF all purpose flour.  I used Bob's Red Mill GF all purpose flour.  Next time I will try GF coconut flour.

My tip is to always make cupcakes as mini-cupcakes for multiple reasons

1. less guilt when I sample 2
2. my kids only really need one (says this sugar-avoiding mama)
3. less waste if they don't eat it all
4. takes up less room in the freezer

So I make the mini-cupcakes, then frost, then pop in the freezer on a cookie sheet so they freeze completely (frosted) then scoop them up into a gallon sized freezer bag and put back into the freezer.  When we go to a birthday party, I just grab one out of the freezer and it is melted by the time cake is served and my child has a special treat.  Many other Mom's have offered to make something special for us, but honestly if you aren't used to cooking gluten free, please don't - I'm happy to bring something I know is safe.  I also take a bag of several cupcakes to school and leave in the freezer so when someone brings in treats my child gets something special too. (shhhhh don't tell her this one is packed with carrots)

What are your birthday party tips?

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?