The Gluten-Free Minnesota State Fair Experience

Ah how I wish I was made of money!  Because that is what it would have taken to try all of the gluten-free goodies at the Minnesota State Fair this year.  So many yummy choices!

We had a productive day at the State Fair this year, for those of you not from Minnesota, this is a big deal.  The fair brings in nearly 2 million people over 12 days.  It is filled with agriculture, creative contests, rides and most importantly FOOD! Each year new foods “on a stick” are added to vendors’ menus.  As a result, going to the Minnesota State Fair had been frustrating and disappointing in the past when we didn’t know what Emma could have (it ain’t easy pinning down a vendor on their ingredients in the middle of the fair).

But that all changed when the Northland Celiac Support Group started surveying the vendors to ask what their gluten-free products would be.  Over the last few years they have organized the gluten-free vendor list which allows us to easily order food that Emma can eat.

Northland Celiac Support Group Fair Booth

Emma and Grace helping at the MN State Fair Celiac Booth

This year for the first time NCSG had it’s own booth in the HealthFair11 building (they used to share with an allergy organization).  And this was also the year that my celiac daughter Emma, our other daughter Grace and I went and volunteered.  What’s cool about it is you get in free and the girls love getting a free t-shirt too!  It made the whole experience a little more affordable.

For three hours I helped answer questions from a steady stream of interested folks.  I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people stopped by.  I think I talked with about 20 people and likely an additional 20 people came through seeking information for their sister, mother, father, uncle, roommate, co-worker….the list goes on and on. I heard stories of people being misdiagnosed for years, but also lighter stories about how gluten-free management is going well.

Either way they were all interested in getting additional information about gluten-free food as well as picking up our vendor list for gluten-free foods at the fair.  Emma and Grace manned the “Spin the Wheel” area where people could test their celiac knowledge and win a prize!  Emma has already asked if we can go back and do it again!  For sure next year!

Exploring the Gluten-Free Food

Gluten-Free Chicken Dish

After volunteering at the fair, we were starving. We headed over to Patinella’s Chicken Grill which is under the walkway to the Grandstand.  I walked up and asked for the plainest thing, which was basically chicken and rice ($7.00).  That’s what Emma got and she loved it — especially the rice.  This company had a gluten-free sign in their window as well, which is great for us.  But I always quietly wonder if those signs deter non-gf folks people from eating there or not.

There were options that could have been included like tomatoes and salsa, but that’s not exactly up Emma’s alley, so we left it and she “wolfed it down”.  Then we were off to find a dessert.  We wanted French Meadow brownies, but when the girls saw the Dippin’ Dots area they went for that ($3-4 each for small).  Dippin’ Dots are a funky kind of “beady looking” ice cream.  Vanilla and Chocolate are fine.

Chicken and Rice Dish

I ended up having a super yummy treat, that I think could be gluten-free but I didn’t have time to nail it down — Chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick!  SUPER YUMMY.  The reason why I think it could be GF is because there was no crust on it.  And Cheesecake without crust is easy to make gluten-free.  The big question would be about the chocolate on the outside. I have put an email into the foodies at the State Fair to see if they can offer any assistance.  Again this isn’t confirmed, but rather a hunch.

Have you been to the fair yet?  If so, if you tried some gluten-free foods that aren’t listed here, please comment below and tell us what you had, the price and how it tasted!  If not, the fair goes through Labor Day.  Download the food list and come on out!

You may not be enjoying the gluten-free food to it’s fullest at Target Field.  The brand new home for the Minnesota Twins is complete with a gluten-free concession menu, but I’ve tracked down additional, more kid-friendly items that are gluten-free and — so far — aren’t on the list.

This list posted on my website has been about 5 months in the making.  I actually started drafting this post with a different title and all back before the first pitch of the season, but when I saw the special concessions list on the Twins website, I had so many questions that it has taken this long to get most of my questions answered.

If you go to the Twins website, you’ll find this page with gluten-free and vegetarian food items listed.  It is a very healthy list –with everything from fresh fruit to shrimp skewers and turkey legs.  Great!  It’s fantastic I am so glad there is something like this out there.  But I had some questions.  What about the junk?  What about the fun?  What about kid food?  I sent an email off to Pia McDonough, Operations Manager of Delaware North Companies, the company that runs the concessions.  I wrote in my email, that I was inquiring about

“kid-friendlier items — which are pretty important to parents trying to feed their kid gluten-free food — Mom and Dad probably like Shrimp Skewers but my 11-year-old celiac child would skip it.”

Here are my questions– with the answers:

Additional Gluten-Free Foods at Target Field

• Are the nacho chips and cheese sauce gluten-free? Yes.  The chips are Old Dutch and the cheese sauce is gluten free as well. It is made by Gehls.
• Cracker Jacks are gluten-free.  They should be on your list. And I gave her the FritoLay web address.
• Would it be possible to find one stand that can serve gluten-free french fries?  A stand that doesn’t deep fry anything except for plain old fries? The answer on that one — NO.  So the fries are NOT GLUTEN FREE.  Hey — I gave it a shot!!
• What about your ice cream novelties, have those been investigated for their gluten-free status?  A lot of ice cream is gluten-free if it doesn’t have cookies, malt or a cone. Confirmed the Push Up Fruit Bars and Premium Bars (vanilla ice cream on the inside, chocolate on the outside) are indeed gluten free.  — DO NOT get any novelties on a cone or cookie sandwich.
• Kettle chips? Yes — they are gluten-free.  Brand is Rachel’s
• North Shore Creamery, is that a company I should go through separately to ask about ice cream? Answer from McDonough:  “The North shore creamery is a branded name for our ice cream stands. They sell Land O Lakes soft serve which is gluten free.”
• What about regular popcorn and cotton candy? (My popcorn-eater wouldn’t want Angie’s Kettle Corn). These two things she is still getting back to me on.

McDonough also confirmed the hot dogs are gluten-free without the bun, but THE HAMBURGER PATTIES ARE NOT GLUTEN FREE! I write that in caps because I often think that is so basic it should be gluten free, but McDonough says the ingredient label says “less than 2% wheat flour”.

As soon as I hear more about the popcorn and cotton candy I will update this post.  I really hope I hear soon.

The Gluten-Free Baseball Trend

The Gluten-Free food accommodations at ballparks is growing.  This spring the Sports Business Journal talked about the need to accommodate gluten-free diets at the Nation’s ballparks.  The high-profile gluten-free menus at Coors Field in Denver, Citi Field (home of the NY Mets), are done by the Aramark food service company.  You can see more about this company’s effort to make gluten free accommodations here.  Aramark even includes gluten-free buns with their gf hot dogs!  Now that’s nice.

Delaware North Companies doesn’t appear to tout its gluten-free concessions as much.  I’ve had to go to each team’s individual website to learn more.  And there wasn’t much out there.  While I didn’t ask McDonough about anything other than Target Field, I did do a separate email to Delaware North back in the spring and never heard back about the company’s gluten-free reach in other ballparks.

The gluten-free trend at ballparks and other major event venues is fantastic.  My only suggestion– When you’re researching and publishing your list, look more closely at things like popcorn, Cracker Jacks and other treats.  They may be easier than you think to confirm as gluten-free.

*Keep in mind these gluten-free food items in the above list could change.  If in doubt contact to the Twins or Delaware North. Be sure you allow enough time for a response.

You may not be interested in hearing about wheat prices — especially if you can’t have wheat and you don’t buy products with it.  But listen up — the extra cost in wheat could still trickle down to you.

Wheat price increases may still affect Gluten-Free

According to MarketWatch.com, “[Wheat] prices have surged 69% since hitting a three-year low June 9.”  This is because of a severe drought in Russia, which is expected bring the wheat crop down by an estimated 50%*.  Now this shortage is about to impact the consumer.

Sara Lee announced late last week it will  lift the prices “across a number of its meat categories.” So why does it affect you? Well it could if you eat Hillshire Farms Deli meat,  Jimmy Dean’s sausage or Ballpark Franks — all of which are owned by Sara Lee and have some gluten-free products.    The article on Marketwatch.com doesn’t go into detail about which meats they’ll increase the price on.

What’s more is that there’s a trickle-down effect that affects other foods, so says dailyfinance.com:

“One side effect of the wheat price rise is the possibility it will cause the price of other commodities like corn and soybeans, to climb too. If that happens, prices for beef, pork and chicken will also probably go up because corn and soybeans are widely used in animal feed.”

“If wheat supplies are down, then demand for the other commodities is going to go up,” says Christopher Shanahan, food industry analyst for San Antonio, Texas-based research firm Frost & Sullivan. “Prices of all commodities are impacted by wheat.”

The Telegraph out of the UK reported on this as well, quoting CommerzBank out of Germany,

“Meat prices have already risen this year, even before agricultural products, such as wheat or soya beans, increased in price. Another increase of meat prices might be imminent, if agriculturals ‘infect’ one another, similar to the years 2006 to 2008, and the strong price increases of wheat lead to rising prices of soya beans and corn, both of which are primarily used for the production of animal feed.”

So we gluten-free folks have not “dodged a bullet” with this latest consumer crisis.  One would think an upside to having celiac disease and not eating wheat would mean you could avoid these price increases.  Instead it appears the increase in wheat prices will trickle down to us all — one way or another — whether we eat it or not.

It will be interesting to watch this week to see if more companies announce price increases due to the wheat shortage.

*Source:  DailyFinance.com

New research just published this week looked at the association between celiac disease and women’s reproductive troubles.  It is estimated more than 36,000 American women are infertile because they have undiagnosed celiac disease*.  The details in this new study are truly interesting.

The Research:

According to the study’s abstract published in BMC Gastroenterology Friday, researchers looked at  62 women with celiac who were also of childbearing age, plus a control group of 186 other women.  Researchers found celiac women had a higher percentage of trouble with their menstrual cycles:  “19.4% frequency of amenorrhea [not getting your period] was reported among celiac women versus 2.2% among the healthy controls.”

Plus “the likelihood of having at least one complication during pregnancy has been estimated to be at least four times higher in celiac women than in healthy women”, the report said.

“A significant correlation has emerged for  celiac disease and threatened abortion, gestational hypertension [high blood pressure during pregnancy], placenta abruption [peeling away of the placenta from the inner wall of the uterus], severe anaemia [very low iron], uterine hyperkinesia [abnormal increased muscle activity], intrauterine growth restriction [poor growth of baby in the womb]“, the report said.

Plus a shorter average gestation was also observed in celiac moms along with lower birthweight of their babies.

Researchers’ Conclusion:

The conclusion of this study:

“The occurrence of significant correlation between celiac disease and reproductive disorders could suggest to consider celiac disease diagnostic procedures (serological screening) [blood test] in women affected by these disorders.”

So my initial question based on the information was:  “Were these reproductive symptoms before, during or after diagnosis of celiac?”  The full report clarifies whether these women were pre-diagnosis or post-diagnosis in their celiac disease journey.  I would detail them here, but the numbers of women are very different for each issue (periods, pregnancies, complications) that was studied.  From my perspective:  It looks like many of them had the above issues because they were either not diagnosed with celiac just yet, or they didn’t follow the gluten-free diet as instructed.  To see the specific findings on the celiac-diagnosis status on all of the above information I encourage you to to read pages 8 and 9 in this report.

*Source:  The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center:  CDC Fact Sheet

So you already know about how frustrated it could get trying to pick out the exact restaurants that were right for us (not to “shi shi”, eclectic, or expensive) during a recent trip to Washington DC. One easy solution was breakfast every day at our hotel restaurant. It was worth the extra dollars we paid for each meal.

Robert’s Restaurant at the Omni Shoreham Hotel (about four blocks from the National Zoo) was a delight. The first day we got there we made a reservation for the next morning, which was the restaurant’s request. They wanted to be prepared when we were arriving.

Emma ate Gluten-Free Pancakes Every Morning at the Hotel

At breakfast, the server was extremely helpful. She was aware of our needs and after checking with the chef, she found out they could make Emma pancakes and Canadian bacon or eggs with gluten-free toast. Emma went with the pancakes — ALL 5 MORNINGS!

She just loved them! I don’t know how else to explain it. Sometimes she complains that something doesn’t taste “just right” and then she picks at it for a while…not this time. She wolfed down the 4-5 dollar-sized pancakes every day.  Some days if we were late in making our reservation (oh say calling ahead by about 15-25 minutes) it might take them a little longer to make her food, but that was fine. Each day the chef made them from scratch.

I am sure we would have had just as nice of a dinner or lunch, but frankly we were in DC around dinner time each day so I am sorry to report that I can’t tell you much about the other kinds of meals they serve there.

How’d it work so well?

First of all it always helps to be at a more up-scale restaurant where they are making foods from scratch. But I also emailed them about 2 weeks-10 days in advance asking about any gluten-free accommodations. The restaurant responded that they “have gluten free breads available and can create most any entree item in a gluten free format, with the exception of desserts and pasta. We have rice pastas available and can offer sorbets, ice creams, mousses and fresh fruits for desserts.”

I did ask them about their more casual “grill” fare by the pool, but didn’t get a response. However we didn’t risk it. It didn’t look safe. There is also a “grab and go” deli-style spot if you’re staying there. They had fresh fruit available and some yogurt. They also had a freezer for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, but I didn’t see what kinds were being housed in there.

For families, the pool was a great spot for us. The hotel was convenient, only about two blocks off the Metro train. I would recommend this hotel and restaurant to any gluten-free family.