Organic Rice Puffs Cereal – Bread Crumb Substitute for the Candida Diet

When I am looking for new recipes to adapt for the candida diet I have to put on my creativity hat.  Sometimes it is difficult finding appropriate substitutions for ingredients in standard recipes.  Some recipes are too far gone to even attempt candida diet adaptation.  I wanted to make baked chicken nuggets from a recipe that I had stumbled across on the Internet.  I thought this would be great for the kids and if I could make chicken nuggets at home I would not feel obligated to let them indulge in the greasy, chemically altered but always tasty ones at McDonald’s.   

In my first attempt at making these chicken nuggets I used brown rice crackers as a substitute for the bread crumbs.  I put a bunch of them in the blender and ground them up as small as I could.   Even after grinding them for a few minutes the texture was not bread crumb like and I was reluctant to keep going.  Against my better judgement I pressed on.  Needless to say that I pretty much was forced to consume the whole plate of chicken nuggets by myself.  My kids were disgusted by the texture and would not touch them and I don’t blame them.  If I was not so against waisting food I would have chucked them.  I started to think about other things products that I could try to create that crispy chicken nugget texture.  I read somewhere that rice krispies may work as a bread crumb substitute.   Although rice krispies are not a candida diet friendly food, it did make me think about the puff rice cereal that I often purchase from Whole Foods.  I usually use this as a quick breakfast with unsweetened soy milk.  So I ran out an got 1 bag of Nature’s Path Organic Rice Puffs Cereal.  The sole ingredient is organic brown rice, Yeah!  So how did I do?  The chicken nuggets were spectacular the second time around.  The kids enjoyed them and I was happy to have found a solid bread crumbs substitute.   After this triumph it dawned on me that every time I find a good substitution I can begin to adapt a whole new world of recipes for the candida diet.  Although these Rice Puffs are made from 100% organic brown rice they may not be gluten free.  I called Nature’s Path and they informed me that there may be some cross contamination with wheat products and therefore they are not gluten free.  I just wanted to worn anyone out there that may suffer from celiacs or have a wheat sensitivity/allergy.