Gluten-Free: MassBytes at the GF Expo This Sunday!

Counting down the days.

I'm so excited to be going as media with my trusty assistant Bill -- as well as Liberty, my mother and my mother's friend as regular attendees -- to the Gluten Free Expo being held by the Healthy Villi  this Sunday, October 21, 2012 from 10am to 4pm at The Four Points by Sheraton in Norwood.  Despite having to get up before 8am on a weekend to make it there in time, I've been looking forward to this for months!  It's the very first gluten free expo to be held in Massachusetts and is intended to become an annual thing on the gluten-free calendar.

This day-long event will include six workshops running three times each at 10:30am, noon and 2pm on a first-come, first-served basis.  They differ from the Healthy Villi's quarterly meetings that have more specific workshops like cooking for [insert seasonally-appropriate Judeo-Christian holidays here].  These will be about more general topics consisting of a traveling & eating out panel, a newly diagnosed workshop, gluten-free children and parenting panel, nutrition workshop and two cooking demonstrations with a variety of medical professionals and fellow celiacs.  I'm personally thinking about attending the traveling and children's panels as well as the cooking demonstration that mentions pumpkin muffins.  Mmm... pumpkin muffins.

Will there be the Healthy Villi's traditional gluten-free buffet its members are used to at the quarterly meetings?  I haven't found an answer to this, but it might not matter after a (long, slow) walk through the vendor's area.  There will be shopping & sampling from more than eighty-five purveyors of gluten-free food, celiac healthcare, cosmetics, gluten-free magazines and more.  This includes many national and local companies I've written about in my column here on MassBytes including Pierce's Pantry, Nantucket Pasta Goddess and Against the Grain; businesses I've had on my list to write about in forthcoming blog posts not limited to Something Sweet Without Wheat, Rudi's Bakery and Taza Chocolate; big names like Glutino, KIND, Schar and Bakery on Main; Hannaford and Wegman's supermarket chains; local restaurants such as the Chateau and Burton's Grill; and a treasure trove of small suppliers I'll be pleased to avail myself of for the first time.

Entrance to the expo is $20 for Healthy Villi members, $30 for non-members and $5 for children under 12.  Online registration here or call (617) 262-5422.  If you see me, please come up and say hello, mentioning MassBytes!  Of course, stay tuned for many future posts about the Gluten Free Expo and many of its vendors!  Seriously, SO EXCITED.