Quarter-life changes.

Let me be the first to welcome my readers to the 2nd quarter-century of my life!  With this impressive milestone comes a new direction in this blog: from now on, I'll be writing in a more personal style.  Think first person, saracasm, biased reactions, and the occaisional interjection of non-gf related tidbits.  Great.

Anyway, this being my birthday week, I've certainly had my share of gluten free goodies.  Some of the items include:

•  Chocolate chip cake (a la Sweet Freedom bakery): gf, dairy-free, sugar-free; basically free of anything that might seem tasty.  Except it was tasty.  My friends loved it, my family loved it; I thought it was pretty good but not as good as...

• Vanilla cake made [not by me] using the Betty Crocker mix:  I was ready to swear off Betty's gf stuff forever, re: the brownie fiasco, but I'm a changed woman.  The deliciousness of this cake even lasted til the next morning, when I ate it for breakfast.  Sorry, Sweet Freedom, but the lessened learned here is that dairy and sugar will always trump non-dairy and non-sugar.

• Cupcakes, from Sweet Sin 
• Chocolate peanut-butter
• Chocolate cheesecake
• Red Velvet --> Note: I only had a bite of this. And MAN am I glad I did...opens up a whole new world of cake-flavor options.  Frankly, I don't like my desserts to be red. It makes me think there's fruit in it, and fruit has no place in [most of] my dessert.  Turns out the coloring is just from totally unnatural food dye--such a relief.

German Chocolate cupcake from Sweet Sin (Eaten by friends.)

The bite of the Red Velvet cupcake was from my most recent trip to Sweet Sin Bakery & Cafe.  A group of us went after the health fair and grueling 3K in Druid Hill Park.  Right after ordering, I changed my mind and decided to veer from my usual--veggie tacos or pizza--and order a 'real entree'.  You see, I've been hesitant to do this, because once you rule out the dishes that taste like coconut (which I don't like), you're left with mains such as mango chicken, lemon sesame chicken, and the day's 'special' (let's call a spade a spade--it's always the special) orange chicken.

I do not want fruit flavors mixed in with my proteins.

Anyway, I decided to suck it up and get the orange chicken because it just looked so darn good.  I chose the cabbage mix and sweet potatoes for my 2 sides.  All I can say is, yummy yummy yum yum yum.  Fret not, friends, the orange flavor was very subtle!  Having no idea what the cabbage would be like, I was quite pleased when it turned out to be warm and yellow and spicy.  Overall, the meal was great, and just the right size [for someone with a big appetite, which I have].

On Monday, I'm off to the gluten-free mecca of NYC!  I am super excited and will be sure to report back on the experience.  For real-time info about where I'm eating, be sure to check out bMoreGlutenFree's twitter!