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A couple of months ago I blogged about a pasta I bought made from buckwheat and rice flour. It was made by Hale & Hearty and it was really good pasta. Now the lovely people at Hale & Hearty have sent me some more products to blog about.

Hale & Hearty was started by Ana-Catarina and Christian Konig, a celiac himself, who had a wheat intolerant daughter. They wanted there to be a better range of products on the market so their family could enjoy more things to eat; they found the answer by starting their own company making products themselves. All the products they make are gluten and wheat free.

I do not have a wheat intolerance but I do like to vary my diet and often look for alternatives to wheat. I found that sometimes I was having toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and then pasta for dinner and too much of any one ingredient, in this case wheat, isn’t good. I’ve tried wheat free pasta before, normally made from rice flour, and it hasn’t been great, but that’s why I blogged about Hale & Hearty: their pasta really is better than other makes!

Last weekend we enjoyed trying the pancake mix from our Hale & Hearty sample which is made from rice flour, tapioca flour, quinoa flour, buckwheat flour as well as other healthy ingredients. The ingredient quinoa itself contains 50% more protein than wheat. When we ate the pancakes for breakfast we could taste all the goodness that had gone into making them. The blend of different flours gave a slightly nutty flavour and was better than an average pancake mix. Hale & Hearty’s use of fantastic nutritious ingredients meant that the pancakes were surprisingly filling and really mouth-watering! They were packed full of goodness and really did make a ‘Hearty’ breakfast.

Hale & Hearty may originally be designed for those with a food intolerance, but they are so healthy and delicious they must become mainstream products. They really are for everybody to enjoy and with cake mixes, pasta, bread sticks, cereal and bread mixes there is something for every occasion. I say if you want to eat healthily, eat Hale & Hearty.

How much wheat do you eat in a day? Maybe somedays toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, pasta for dinner? I really like to find alternatives to wheat and so we often have pasta made from other types of flour.

Today I made a yummy tomato, ham and cheese pasta for dinner using a new brand of pasta I found called ‘Hale & Hearty’. The pasta was made from buckwheat, corn and rice, something I had never seen before. I’ve often found pasta made from rice flour in the supermarkets but when I’ve cooked with it I end up with a soft mush. Then I’ve tried pasta made from corn and this seems to have a better texture than rice pasta, but I’d recommend ‘Hale & Hearty’ which is a real find, it kept it’s shape and was more tasty than wheat pasta. It shouldn’t be important but I thought the packaging was really cute too.

My little George was happy to sit in his high chair and tried to spoon pasta into his mouth. He seems to like the shape of fusilli pasta and wanted more, which makes a refreshing change from everything, including his bowl, being thrown on the floor!

Can anybody recommend any other types of wheat free pasta? I checked out Hale & Hearty’s website and found they do loads of other goodies – http://halenhearty.co.uk