GF Indy Fall Event

The GF Indy group hosted a meeting at the Clarian North complex (in Carmel) on Sunday. There was a large turnout and the entire event was a success. Pam (as in The Measuring Cup Pam) brough some gluten free treats and Tina brought her delicious pasta salad for everyone to try. The event focused on many aspects:

• Celiac disease overview
• Treatment
• how to avoid gluten in your diet
• how to determine if a product is gluten free
• the nutritional quality of the GF diet
• sources of fiber in the GF diet

Another bit of information we learned on Sunday, was how to determine the amount of sugar in fat in a serving of food...to help get perspective on sugar in foods while reading labels, divide the total amount of sugar listed by 4 and the answer will be the number of teaspoons of sugar in the product. ie. most sodas contain around 40-45 grams of sugar. Divide it and you get 10 to 11 teaspoons of sugar in one soda.

Below is Tina's recipe for her pasta salad and I will be uploading the 'gluten free diet' handout from the event:

Mexican Pasta Salad
Yield: 4 (generous servings)

1 medium tomato, coarsely chopped 1 TBS chopped jalapeno
1 medium avocado, diced Juice of 1 lime
1 can (19 oz.) black beans, rinsed and drained 1 tsp ground cumin
½ cup frozen corn, defrosted 4 – 5 drops tobasco sauce
2 TBS chopped cilantro 12 oz. gluten free pasta

· In a large bowl, combine tomatoes, avocados, beans, corn, cilantro, and peppers. Stir in lime juice, cumin, and tobasco sauce; set aside at room temperature for a least 1 hour.
· In a large pot of boiling water, cook the pasta until tender. Drain.
· Place pasta in large serving bowl. Add the salsa mixture; toss to mix well.

Nutrition Information: 492 calories; 9.7g fat(17% of calories); 9.6g fiber; 0mg cholesterol; 356mg sodium