I'm pretty excited that I will be attending EAT! Vancouver this upcoming weekend, not only because it's a great event and I love food but one additional push and focus of this years EAT! event is gluten free. And you know how I feel about that. YAY!
In anticipation of trying some new brands of gluten free goodies this weekend I thought I would give you a little sneak peak at what you are in for if you are attending with an empty gluten free belly!
Please welcome Catherine of Trugs Gourmet.
"Trugs Gourmet Foods Ltd. started out in 2007 in a small kitchen in Halfmoon Bay, on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. Our founders were driven by a desire to create unique, natural foods that would add a special touch to every day meals. Today, the business has moved to beautiful Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia, and our products are sold in retail locations and online across British Columbia. Despite our growth however, we continue to make our products by hand in small batches, using the highest quality ingredients that we can find."
EC - What is the inspiration behind the products that are Trugs Gourmet?
TG - Our new gluten free brand, Hidden Garden Foods, was inspired by my own challenges as a mom trying to get my daughters to eat vegetables. I went to great lengths to convince them vegetables were delicious, dress the vegetables up with sauces, arrange them in playful positions on the plate, and eventually I often just tried to hide them so that at the very least some vegetables might slip by unnoticed. The whole endeavour was time consuming and demanded more creativity than I could muster at each meal. I noticed that there wasn't really anything on the market that hid vegetables in food and that tasted really good, so I set out to try and come up with something myself. The end result is our new line of gluten free cookies that that have hidden vegetables in them but that actually taste like real cookies.
EC - What is one of the most difficult aspects of developing recipes?
TG - Hiding the vegetables!! We managed to get a half serving of vegetables in each serving of cookies, which was not an easy task. That's a lot of vegetables, and their taste is hard to overcome. The gluten free aspect actually ended up being pretty easy because our recipes replace flour with dehydrated and powdered vegetables. Once we got the vegetables right we were already gluten free too.
EC - Are you gluten free?
TG - I try to be as much as I can, though I'm not 100% gluten free yet.
EC - Do you think gluten free is a fad/trend or is the future for food preparation?
TG - I don't think interest in gluten free foods is going away anytime soon. There are too many people who genuinely feel better when they reduce the amount of gluten in their diets. That's hard to ignore and now that there are tastier gluten free products making their way to store shelves it's a lot easier to make gluten free choices.
EC - What are you favourite products and what can we expect to be sampling at EAT!?
TG - So far we have two cookie varieties: our Red Velvet Bites which have hidden beets and our Ginger Snaps, which have hidden butternut squash. It's too hard to choose between them. The Red Velvets are crispy and have a clean cocoa flavour, while the Ginger Snaps are soft and chewy and taste "just like grandma used to make". Both are tasty in different ways. We'll also be sampling products from our Trugs Gourmet line, which includes a variety of specialty condiments. You'll just have to come and try them all!
Catherine, you can bet that I will try them all! I cannot wait to check out the Trugs Gourmet table and samples this upcoming weekend. I am especially excited about cookies that incorporate gluten free and vegetables, and they're cookies, YUM!
Thanks so much Catherine and Trugs Gourmet for sharing your experience and your products here today.
For more information on Trugs Gourmet visit their website here. For more information on vendors, demos and ticket sales for EAT! Vancouver go to the EAT! Vancouver website here.






