At the recent gluten free expo I attended in Sydney, I had the pleasure of sampling some lovely, convenient, gluten, Kosher and preservative free food.
Prior to the Expo I had arranged with the lovely people from Tasty Bite to do a bit of an exchange, they would put some of my lovely blog cards at they stand and in turn for the favour I would write a blog post about their product, a bit of old fashioned trading!
Tasty Bite stand was the first exhibit we saw when we walked in, I went straight up, chatted to the lovely ladies and tried some of their wonderful meals on some small pieces of pappadums (yes we coeliacs can eat pappadums!!, rather exciting)! Both my mum and I really enjoyed the food that we did try, it is an Indian based cuisine, so perhaps not entirely appropriate for children, if they aren't used to Indian food with a bit of spice!
To be totally honest, prior to the expo I really didn't know what products Tasty Bites provided! As soon as I saw the exhibit I realised that I had walked past their products (they are generally in the Asian/Indian section of Australian supermarkets), each time I went to the supermarket. Not knowing what they were, I hadn't tried them.
I decided after the expo that I couldn't write a post that gave a correct view of the product from the small samples, so I brought some boxes myself. Twice I have tried the Tasty Bite product, the Bombay Potatoes and the Jaipur Vegetables, both times I have served them with rice and pappamdums. These delicious dishes only take 90 seconds to cook in the microwave, you can also cook on the stove top, but I choose the easier option, both nights that I ate these meals, was easy dinner night, my husband had his own individual frozen lasagna, and I had my delicious meals.
One of the most convenient things about these products is they are not stored in the fridge, you simply store them in the cupboard and with a shelf life of 18 months, it is well worth having a couple in your cupboard for those nights where no one can be bothered doing too much cooking!
I only recently discovered that Tasty Bite have a fantastic website which I will provide you with the link to, you can buy their products online, there is also a variety of other things including recipes a blog, testimonials etc. The link that I have provided is a direct link to the gluten free food that they have It's best to check out the website http://www.tastybite.com.au/ or at the least when you are shopping and before you place one of the delicious Tasty Bite boxes in your trolley, make sure that you are selecting one of their gluten free dishes, as they have a variety of dishes available. But we coeliacs or gluten intolerant people are very used to reading labels of products before eating them! But the best think about this product, is there is table on the back which lists a possible 8 ingredients and things you have to do to store etc, and all you have to look for is to make sure the no gluten box is ticked (much easier then reading the generally long list of ingredients in some products!)
Make sure next shopping trip, or online order, try one of these dishes and if you like Indian food you will be pleasantly surprised, and at a little under $4.00 a box (at one of the leading supermarkets), its a very cheap dinner! Its also something that if your the outdoor type and like a bit of camping you could put this dish over the campfire stove and have it without rice, or if you have an additional saucepan you could also put on some rice too!
Readers please remember, everything I have written is my honest opinion, this was a trade off for the lovely people at Tasty Bite, displaying my blog cards, to hopefully get my blog out there to a wider audience and help more people with coeliac disease.
My only small downfall with this product is when heating the food in the microwave, because of the curries and spices, it will stain your dish, particularly if using plastic. I used an old plastic bowl to heat the food and covered it with cling wrap (to avoid splattering over the microwave), but as the dish is white, I have a stain on the bottom of my bowl. To me, that's ok, I will make sure that's the bowl I use whenever I eat one of the Tasty Bite meals! If you are into Tupperware and have any of the more recent red dishes range, this would be perfect to heat up the food, as you can't tell that there is a slight stain. I haven't tried heating it up in a non plastic dish, but I'm sure the stain would be much easier to remove if you used crockery and not plastic to heat it, but just be aware that a crockery or porcelain dish may be rather hot, straight out of the microwave!
So make sure you try one of these meals, very easy and to be totally honest, a whole lot nicer than I originally thought. I just checked the packet and the serving size recommends two, but I ate it to myself! (whoops what a piggy I am!). My advice if you and your partner or another person are going to try this you could share but I would use alot of rice and have a few pappadums ready, but if two of you are going to eat this meal, why not heat up two different dishes and have a little feast, a bit of this, and a bit of that, mixed with with rice and the almost compulsory pappadums!
Enjoy and let me know what you think of these very convenient easy meals!
xxxxxx
p.s I have just changed the website, I had the American website up before, this is the Australian website, my fault, sorry if anyone was confused.
