Fairs, Planes and Cupcakes - oh my!

What a busy weekend - happy Monday, everyone! So much to tell you about today, including a recap of the Nature's Market 8th Annual Gluten Free Fair!

The Fair, hosted by Nature's Market in Kent, is a two-day gluten free extravaganza! With more than two dozen vendors sampling their wares, almost every gluten free product was on sale. From soups and pastas to seasoning salts and salad dressings, ice creams and dairy alternatives to convenience foods -- like our burritos and granola! We spent the day at the Market, hanging out with Zing! Bars, Enjoy Life, Kettle Cuisine, Amy's, Sunny Valley Wheat Free and many others. All of the vendors are kind beyond words and their products speak for themselves!

Positioned between Zing Bars and Lulu's Granola, we spent the morning sampling our Chicken & Cheese and Vegetarian Bean & Cheese Burritos as well as each of the three flavors of our granola: Apple Almond, Raisin Almond and Cranberry Cashew. We connected with so many wonderful individuals and families, some seasoned gluten free consumers (some going on 20+ years) and others who have only recently been diagnosed as gluten-intolerant (three weeks ago!).

On a related note, we also had the opportunity to do some product sampling while we at the Market - most notably, of Julie's new ice cream sandwiches featuring lemon frozen yogurt sandwiched between two of Glutenfreeda's vanilla cookies! Amazing! Just sweet enough, perfectly tangy and absolutely refreshing, another fantastic dessert from Julie's!


On another note, over the weekend, one of the Glutenfreeda teams (car #60) in the Peking to Paris motor challenge is in Istanbul, Turkey! After another broken axle en route to Samarkand to rejoin the group, it became clear that the safest choice would be to fly the car to Istanbul for more lasting repairs and better road conditions. After a day-long layover in Moscow, Douglas and Anastasia are now safely in Istanbul, working on repairing the car. The rest of the groups passed through Turkmenistan over the weekend - covering more than 1,550km/963miles! After a rest-day in Samarkand, the teams left Uzbekistan on Saturday and drove over across Turkmenistan, arriving in Gorgan, Iran this evening. With only one more scheduled rest day, the race will soon move into Turkey and the Central Asian chapter will come to close. From that point, the teams will move from Turkey to Greece, into Italy and through France on the way to Paris -- all in the next 12 days!

Don't forget, October is Cupcake Month over atGlutenfreeda.com! With cupcake ideas for everyone, we are featuring several fantastic recipes: our Chocolate Mousse Grand Marnier and Carrot Spice, just to highlight a few!