gluten free familyA mum's blog about gluten-free living in Australia

[8/12/09]   We have been chomping our way through Bayview’s new gluten free range which we’ve just found on the shelves in Coles this week nestled right under the Patties GF pies and the Pastry Pantry GF pastry sheets in the freezer section.

Crumbed chicken nuggets, fish bites and fish fillets are all up for grabs in some Coles and IGA alongside a veggie pattie selection for vegetarians.

With the first three in our possession, they proved a very popular dish in our household over the weekend.

We started out with the crumbed fish portions on Saturday night which have adopted the traditional triangular shape used by some non-GF frozen and crumbed fish fillets. Hidden inside the coating are ‘wild-caught’ flounder fillets and these proved quite tasty (for Mum and bub) and happily seemed quite low in salt too.

Last night we tackled the chicken nuggets and fish bites (photographed) and yes I know that means I served up fried food two nights running but please bear in mind that this blog needed to be written sooner rather than later and so someone had to sacrifice themselves.

So anyway, what did we make of these perennial kid favourites? Well the chicken nuggets were forged from real breast meat which immediately boosted their ranking in my book and they also tasted tender and light (if they had also been free-range then I would have been on cloud nine). Unfortunately their wholesomeness made them slightly less popular among the toddlers of the house, but we figure that we may be able to persuade them over time not to chew the batter off the outside, but to also enjoy the goodness inside.

The fishbites proved quite tasty, although I wasnt sure from reading the pack exactly what was inside other than white fish. Perhaps I am best left in the dark on this because they got thumbs up with junior.

This brings us to the gluten free coating. The box says its free of gluten, wheat, preservatives and lactose – which we like very much – but among other things it does have a little soy flour (digestible for us in smallish doses). Bayview has come up with quite a tasty coating with a pleasant texture, and does not seem to rely heavily on salt for its flavour.

So there you have it. Convenience food for the fussy gluten-free kid brigade has just taken some giant strides forward, and its hard to imagine back even to a year ago when we had to do it all ourselves only to suffer the indignity of our children telling us where to stick our pale, crumbly, homemade nuggets.

LH

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