Food and wine companies to trust…

In my previous post, I gave a list of beauty companies I trust. This post is about two favorite brands of mine for safe food and wine.

I hope it helps.

Urtekram

Urtekram International A/S is Scandinavia’s largest organic wholesaler, that started it’s work in 1972. They sell products under their own two brands, Urtekram and Nutana. They also distribute products from a number of well-known brands, such as: Hari tea, Biotta, Provamel, RiceDream, Dr. Schär, Rigoni di Asiago and Mádara. Their products are sold in more than 36 countries in Scandinavia, all of EU and Russia, the Middle East, Asia and North America.

A dictionary of the Danish language tells that an “urtekræmmer” is an old-fashioned term for a so-called spice/herb merchant or travelling salesman selling spices, medical herbs, drugs etc. The founders of Urtekram, Lisbeth Daamsgaard and Ronnie McGrail, actually started out almost like the old herb merchants with a shop in urban Copenhagen. That’s where the name came from.

The reason I absolutely love this company and trust my daily food choices on them is their “Nothing Else” motto. The company always strived for best, cleanest quality products and were very well aware of people with allergies. Therefore they always wrote full list of ingredients on each package with “nothing else” at the end to make sure, there is no hidden threats, no hidden traces. As I learned my lesson hundreds of times, gluten free on the label or gluten free ingredients list doesn’t mean the products are safe, I got sick too many times from what seemed safe choices, to stick now only to what’s already tried out.

I have never had any problems with Urtekram, it’s always my first and mostly only choice of products, and I love their coconut oil, mostly because of the jar, that I use afterwards for keeping food or eating/drinking from them.

What is more – they have fantastic website, with full list of all their products and all the info accompanying them. If you are still not sure about one or another product, just go in quickly into their site (from phone in the store for example) and check it. It will all be clearly there. For someone like me, who has to be extremely aware, that helps so much, I could not be more appreciative!

Be aware, their skin care products are NOT gluten free, even though it’s not written there. Only very few skin products, like aloe vera lotion are safe, the rest are not, so far I’ve experienced, sadly. And they do sell gluten containing food products, but if the gluten is there, at least with food, you’ll always see it either on package or online.

So go on, check them out and enjoy their wide variety of fabulous, mouthwatering choices!

Website, Twitter.

[Yellow Tail ]

I have read somewhere, as a celiac, if you find a wine that suits you, stash up boxes and never drink anything else.

Wine seems to have to be safe choice, but sadly it’s not. Very often there’s hidden gluten in wine, even more often, you can find milk, eggs, fish and other most surprising ingredients labeled on the package. Now I do understand where it might come from, as I studied well the process of wine making, just out of curiosity, but wine is a dangerous territory.

I love wine, I use to drink it very often. Nothing helps to sleep bette or warm up your heart, than a glass of red wine. This joy was taken away from me by my diagnosis, and while others might not have problems with alcohol when having celiac disease, my stomach now rejects almost everything.

I browsed many stores and searched for wines with low alcohol volume and with no bad for me ingredients. I am beyond happy to have come across this wine (in Netto in Denmark).

Casella Wines founders Filippoand Maria Casella migrate from Sicily and purchase Farm 1471, the future home of [yellow tail] wines. Their story starts this far back and it’s truly amazing! Make sure to check it all out on their site.

Now, [yellow tail] celebrates its 10th birthday and is available in over 50 countries around the world. From Humble beginnings [yellow tail] has become Australia’s greatest wine exporter.

ALL of their wines are gluten free. Their white wines do use milk, eggs and fish while processing, but all is removed before bottling and so the wine is free of those ingredients.

So far I haven’t had any bad reaction to any of their wines, off course I consume it in very moderate amounts, but still, with my sensitivity I would have felt if something would have been wrong. I love their white and rose wines, easy drink at any time, perfect with meal if you want it to make more special. Sadly the only choices I found in Denmark is Rose, White and Shiraz, but all of them are brilliant and I take what I can.

Great quality from a company with beautiful history, and beautiful package design.

Highly recommending and hoping you’ll enjoy it no less or more than I do!

Website, shop locator, Twitter.