Battle of the Breads and PB&J

During the Gluten Intolerance Group meeting on Thursday (first Thursday of the month at the South Loop Whole Foods at 7pm), we did a battle of the breads! This was a fantastic event for gluten-free newbies like myself (I'm almost seven months off gluten) to try a bunch of breads...for FREE! We tried Rudi's, Udi's, and Katz's packaged breads. As a special treat, Rose from Rose's Wheat Free Bakery (where Eliot and I went in the fall) brought three of her breads...and made additional loaves for us on site! The owner of Cassava, a new cafe in Lakeview, made some fresh cheese and chocolate rolls on site as well! (Their rolls contain dairy, but they do have some dairy and gluten free options at their cafe. Eliot loves the cassava rolls - trust him and try them if you can!) I love bread - pita pockets, crunchy French bread, and herbed dinner rolls easily make my most missed gluten foods list. It was SO great to have so much bread again. I sampled bites of all the different slices. And when Rose's sandwich bread came out of the oven and I had a slice, I was in heaven. NOTHING beats good, warm, fresh bread. There was some Earth Balance (vegan "butter") so I tried that on my bread for the first time. When we were leaving with our bags of leftover bread (it was honestly a lot of bread), Rose offered us the extra bread to take home. You don't need to ask me twice.

When I got home, I realized that I needed to make a sandwich with that bread that will do its deliciousness justice. And the sandwich I wanted was pb&j. I haven't had a pb&j in years. In college, I had a meal plan so rarely made myself food outside of Ramen in my hot pot on the floor. After college, buying bread was often a waste since I could never finish the whole loaf by myself and I thought freezing bread was weird (I have since learned the errors of my ways and almost all of my gf breads have been frozen and defrosted with great results.) I updated my facebook status and mentioned I had so much gf bread and I was kind of wishing I could make a pb&j but was lacking the j. Last night, one of my friends came to the rescue with a Christmas present! She made her own jelly and marmalade this year and gave me and Eliot four different kinds. (She is awesome - she was double checking the ingredients with me earlier in the winter to make sure they were gluten free!!!) I was so grateful and made a pb&j with thick slices of Rose's bread, generous slabs of peanut butter, and wonderful homemade jelly. It was an amazing sandwich - better than any pb&j I had as a kid!