I hardly ever cook meat and I’m possibly the world’s least germ-averse cook (if the idea that I might have stuck my finger in to taste something bothers you, um, don’t come to dinner at my house). So thinking of food as a contaminant is totally foreign to me. I need reminders like that.

The Harvest has almost all of the special flours and gums. Many of them are available in the bulk bins (which are cheaper, but if you are cooking for someone who is actually celiac or have more sensitive issue than mine you probably want to avoid the bulk bins, because there’s a lot of cross-contamination over there). The rest are available down past the baked goods, where there is some Bob’s stuff and the Ener-G egg replacer and potato starch and such.

A few of the more expensive items are often not available at the Harvest, but I have found them at Pemberton (almond flour, coconut flour, for example). Annoyingly, at Pemberton, they appear to be way past their sell by dates, but I bought them anyway and they seem to work fine. I’m not dead, anyway. Again, those are in the rack of Bob’s stuff. Pemberton doesn’t seem to have anything that’s not Bob’s.

I am finally learning the difference between potato starch and potato flour. As far as I can tell, a lot of places sell potato starch as potato flour and vice versa, but they are different. What I did this time it I went to the Bob’s rack at Pemberton, because Bob’s sells both, and I bought one of each. That way I figure I know they are correctly labeled, and next time I will be able to recognize which one I am buying if I buy it from a different brand. Because a lot of gluten-free recipes call for one or the other.