Passover Products for Glutenfree Diets
Many think of Passover as a holiday when you are asked to give up many of your favorite foods. However, now that we are using a gluten free and soy free diets, we see that during this time we can obtain many prepared foods that our kids enjoy and are not available during other times during the year. Observing Passover has become popular with the glutenfree community since there is a tremendous variety of almost any kind of food that you could want and many of the big grocery chains carry a large selection, which means these foods are easily available.
A few years ago Nadine Gilder from New Jersey became active in getting information out to parents so they can take advantage of this time of year. Items are on shelves and freezers ecause no grains ae allowed during the Passover season except for matzo and its derivatives uch matzo meal, arfel, matzo cake flour. In 2007, Passover starts on the evening of April 2. But many stores already have their Passover products out—so it’s a great time to stock up.
When you check the ingredients on a Passover approved food, you know that any product that does not any of these specific items (matzo meal, arfel, matzo cake flout) is most likely to be gluten free. There are chicken nuggets, stuffed cabbage, meat balls in tomato sauce as well as full meals such as pot roast, baked chicken, or even brisket. It can make mealtime much less stressful when you buy a whole meal ala ready for the oven. There are also many other sensitive ingredients that have been eliminated from products that are only available this time of year.
During Passover no legumes or other grains are allowed other than the ones I have already mentioned. Normally desserts such as ice cream can be made with soy or milk but this is not the case during Passover. There are also cake mixes ,margarines, milk and cream substitutes that really can be used in so many different ways. In my next posting I will give some examples of how these recipes and products can add to meal variety.
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1 comment:
Hi, Great to be Gluten Free. This looks like a great beginning to a great blog.
I wanted to offer you one tiny correction regarding Passover-deserts, and also a comment, which I hope you and your readers will find helpful.
Jews who keep kosher do not ever mix dairy products with meat products - not during Passover, but not during the rest of the year either; "mixing" includes during the same meal, and possibly up to 6 hours later. Therefore, if a person consumes poultry or meat during the course of a meal, they cannot have a dairy-containing dessert (note: eggs, produce, fish, and other ingredients are both considered parve, which means not-dairy and not-meat. It is perfectly acceptable to have a dairy dessert on passover (provided all the other ingredients are kosher for passover), but only if meat has not been eaten beforehand (the waiting time in between varies with custom). You are correct that soy, a legume, is not allowed for Passover (at least not by Ashkenazim, which are Jews of Germanic descent - most of the Jews in the US are Ashkenazim).
Now, for the helpful part :P
Any kosher-for-passover manufactured product that says "non-gebrokts" is gluten-free (free of matzo, matzo meal, matzo cake meal, farfel, etc.) Here is a link with more information, by Gluten-Free by the Bay:
Why Passover is the Gluten-Free Goldmine
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