Cinde’s Gluten Free Spotlight – Zeer Select: Online Consumer Gluten Free Grocery Information Resource

Flashback to 2007: My daughter has been newly diagnosed with Celiac Disease. My husband and I are clueless as to what foods are safe to buy. Children’s Hospital provides us with a humongous 3 ring binder full of ingredients and product listings. We drag this massive book with us every time we go to the grocery store, attempting to look up the status of each product we buy amidst hundreds of pages of information. Shopping now takes 3 hours! We grow to despise shopping.

Return to 2009: We no longer need the “big book” to shop! We have memorized the status of many ingredients and foods. Shopping only takes an hour (hooray!). Once in a while there is still a product that we are uncertain about. We do not buy it. If I remember the name of the product in question I do an internet search to attempt to find company contact information when I get home. I contact the company in regards to the gluten free status of the product. Many such e-mails have gone unanswered. Other companies reply but won’t directly answer my question (thanks a lot!). Sometimes I am lucky and get a straight forward reply within a few days. Phone calls to most companies leave me hanging on hold for ages. So much of my time has been wasted!

I wish Zeer Select (an online gluten free grocery information resource) was around in 2007 when our family first went gluten free! My husband and I could have ditched the “big book” and instantly found the gluten free status of over 30,000 products in Zeer Select’s ever growing database. How stress free our shopping trips would have been if we could have whipped out our blackberry, logged on to the Zeer Select website and in seconds found the answers we were seeking. Zeer Select even saves people time by automatically offering a list of safe gluten free alternatives to the products they are researching! Over 500 products are added or updated on the Zeer Select website every week so you are always receiving current information.

Zeer Select’s philosophy is smart and simple:

SAVE TIME + STAY SAFE + LEARN THE GLUTEN FREE DIET

SAVE TIME: Zeer Select saves you time by automatically offering a list of safe gluten free alternatives to the product you are researching.

STAY SAFE: Zeer Select assigns a safety status to every product in their database. You will never need to “guess” if a product is safe for you.

LEARN THE GLUTEN FREE DIET: Labels are read for you! All problem ingredients have detailed descriptions to help you to truly learn how to understand them.

Oh yes… I would have signed up for Zeer Select in a second when I was new to the gluten free diet, and I highly recommend that if you find shopping for gluten free food overwhelming or confusing that you join Zeer Select. The nominal monthly fee is worth the reassurance you will feel and the time you will save. I use Zeer Select when I am curious about a product that I don’t have in my home but am interested in purchasing. A quick visit to the Zeer Select site and my questions are instantly answered. My husband loves the convenience of using Zeer Select while grocery shopping (it saves him from having to call me at home with tons of ingredient questions)!

Zeer Select has generously offered my Gluten Free Taste of Home readers a one month FREE membership (offer expires August 31st 2009). This is a great way to check out the many benefits of Zeer Select for yourself. Click here to sign up for your FREE one month trial; you will need this case sensitive code when signing up: GFTaste.

Enjoy Zeer Select… I do!

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Sign the Petition to Bring the Gluten Free Valencia Orange Cake Back to Starbucks!

For unknown reasons Starbucks has discontinued selling the yummy new gluten free Valencia Orange Cake. What a shame! There was finally a place on nearly every corner of every town that a gluten free individual could stop and grab a baked treat. We need Starbucks to understand how important having that option is to us. Please click on the link provided below to sign the petition for Starbucks to reconsider it’s decision to discontinue the gluten free Valencia Orange Cake. We are hoping to get at least 5000 signatures, so be sure to forward this to as many gluten free people you know. If you have a blog or website please post the petition link on your site.

http://www.triumphdining.com/blog/petition-to-starbucks-bring-back-the-gluten-free-cake/

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Gluten Free News Flash!!

Betty Crocker (General Mills) is launching 4 GLUTEN FREE baking mixes in grocery stores by June 1st!!! Hooray!!!! Can it be true? Gluten free cake mix at the regular market for AFFORDABLE prices? Yes it IS true… I called General Mills today, and they confirmed it as fact. The customer service gal that I spoke with must have thought I was crazy because I couldn’t contain my glee, as my love for General Mills poured out of me like warm maple syrup on a short stack of GF pancakes. I guess my enthusiasm was contagious, because soon she was giddy too (much to her surprise). We all MUST thank General Mills so they keep the GF products coming! More importantly, we must spread the word to all of the GF people we know, and BUY their GF products. If their new GF products don’t sell well, they will be discontinued. We can’t let that happen! It is up to us to support their efforts through repeat purchases. Please take a moment to visit their website and send them an e-mail or give them a call (phone # is on contact us page on their web site) at http://www.generalmills.com/ to thank them. They have given us many HUGE GF gifts in the last few months. First GF Chex cereals (4 more new flavors to be released by 6/1, by the way) and now the gift of all gifts Betty Crocker Gluten Free Baking mixes!! I have daydreamed what it would be like to stock up on affordable cake mixes (like in my pre–GF days), so I could once again whip out quick desserts for any occasion. I mourned the loss of that when we had to go GF. Really, I did (with tears and everything). For some reason, cakes (both the making and the eating of them) bring me great pleasure. I just couldn’t justify $7.00 for a GF cake mix that (to add insult to injury) only made 1 layer cake for Pete’s sake! Get real! I have a few yummy GF cake recipes that I make from scratch, but quite frankly even though my intentions are good, I don’t always have to time (or the desire) to spend 3 hours of my day to make a cake. So the bottom line is, we have been eating a lot less cake than we used to pre–Celiac. NO more my friends, no more! I’ m back in the saddle again! This crazed cake lover will be cranking out cakes and cupcakes faster than you can say Betty Crocker. 🙂

The Betty Crocker Gluten Free mix selection will include:

—GF Devils Food Cake Mix
—GF Yellow Cake Mix
—GF Chocolate Chunk Brownie Mix
—GF Chocolate Chip Cookie mix

Happy GF baking!

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