One of my favorite products.....

When I figured out that we had to cut corn out of the kids diets I had a personal boohoo moment, actually I got depressed and I may or may not have shed a tear or two. We live in the southwestern United States and Mexican food is a very big part of our lives. At every party and a couple of times a week we have something that includes a major staple in that type of food, corn tortillas. We eat corn tortilla chips dipped in ranch, dipped in salsa, eat them with TexMex dip, etc, etc, you get the idea. We always kept a bag of them, especially a HUGE bag of them from Costco, in the pantry. You're going to have a party??? I'll bring the corn chips! Well no more! I wanted to cry, I may or may not have. Not only did I discover that corn is in practically EVERYTHING, take a look at most ingredients labels and you'd be shocked what it shows up in (just ask my mom who was letting the littlest one drink pancake syrup out of a little cup when she was babysitting the kids for the weekend causing his latest major reaction because the pancake syrups number one ingredient was corn syrup, and she never suspected that today's pancake syrup was any different from the Maple syrup she grew up eating on pancakes. In her defence it took me a while to figure that one out as well and she gave him a little cup for dipping his pancakes in but he thought it was much better to skip the whole dipping part and just drink it instead), but I also loved serving corn on the cob whenever we'd BBQ during the summer, and it was a cheap easy veggie that the kids would eat.

Potato chips just didn't cut it in all situations where we'd need chips. We were all so used to corn tortilla chips. I figured we'd have to live without a lot of the things we loved because you just can't eat them without tortilla chips, but living without is just not me, I needed a substitute. I just happened to be in Target one day because they sell the Enjoy Life Plentils, another great chip that are allergen free, (check them out: http://plentils.com/ )
and no other store in my repertoire of stores carries them, and to my surprise on the next shelf up was these things called Beanitos: http://beanitos.com/

They are chips made from beans. Caught my interest because they looked like some of the fancy corn tortilla chips from my time in New Mexico, blue corn, etc. I picked up the bag to reminisce (yes, I reminisce about food now that so much of it is off limits, don't judge my pathetic life!) and I started to read the package. Very top of the bag said: Always CORN FREE. I was intrigued, so I kept reading, Black Bean Chips, they are Certified Low Gylcemic, Corn Free, Gluten Free, High Fiber, 4g of Complete Protein, and Non GMO Project Certified. YES! I was already in love but I had yet to turn the bag over and read the ingredients, I've been fooled by the advertising on the front of packages before. Once I did I grabbed a bag and took them home to try out with the kids. I bought two different flavors, Black Bean and Pinto and Flax. Gotta say the pinto and flax are not my fav, theres sort of a weird taste to them which I attribute to the flax. But the black bean ones are good, you could almost close your eyes and imagine they are corn chips!

Now I've just realized that they do use guar gum in them so I will be forgoing them since I'm suspecting that in my most recent allergic reaction, but the kids have all done fine with it. I suspect that the guar I bought was contaminated with another substance, I've read that guar and soy are very similar and/or they are often cross contaminated, not 100% sure what the deal was, but I will be avoiding it.

So tonight we are having make your own nachos night for dinner. I planned my weekly menu around using the leftovers for a nachos night. Earlier this week we had chili, tri tip roasted in the crock pot, and oven roasted chicken all of which I will reheat and use in the making of our nachos. The kids can choose a meat to go with the beans and Daiya cheese and chopped tomato and black olives for topping their Beanitos with and Voila! Nachos!