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>     I personally really like to use arrowroot flour, but it quite
> expensive most places.  However, oriental food stores in my area
> (Lafayette, IN) carry it for about $1 something/lb.  Many other
> gluten-free flours/starches are much less expensive in these stores
> as well.  For example, potato starch, tapioca starch, white rice flour,
> moth flour (no - it's made from moth _beans_!), and gram flour
> (made from garbonzo beans; not graham flour, which is made from
> wheat) are all readily available and fairly inexpensive.  Though
> I want to support the local organic health food store, this stuff
> costs 1/4 - 1/3 of what the health food store charges.
>
>     If you haven't checked in oriental markets in your area, you
> may want to do that before deciding some items are too expensive.

Been there.  done that.  I get my rice flour ($.50/lb) from the local
Korean market, along with potato starch flour ($1/lb.).  Rice flour is
marginally cheaper at the Indian market, but I've had contamination
problems with their flour, so stopped buying it there.  Get my tapioca
starch flour at the local Chinese market ($.39-$.49/lb)... The Indian
store doesn't seem to be as careful about grain purity, so I've stopped
buying flours there (they grind a lot of their own)... There are only one
or two places around that I've been able to find arrowroot by the pound,
and it runs $2-$3.

My biggest beef with the arrowroot recipes is still the strange texture
it yields (note that I *do* thicken sauces with it - e.g. white sauce and
my curry sauces).  I much prefer Bette Hagman's blend of
rice/potato/tapioca flours - I use this in a *lot* of "standard" recipes,
and no one can tell that they're eating "special" food - since I was in
my early 30's when I was taken off gluten grains, I remember what stuff
tastes like, and while it's not worth getting sick, I know that it's
dangerous for me to feel deprived, so I try to keep good-tasting baked
goods on hand, especially now that I'm eating "for two" - it's *really*
dangerous to break your diet when you're pregnant!

FWIW, I've used the GF Flour mix in banana bread, peanut butter bread,
applesauce cake, chocolate zucchini cake (low-fat) and "wacky cake" with
excellent results.  All of the above had been fed to unsuspecting family
members and passed "inspection"... the stuff baked with arrowroot
generally *does not*...

karen

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Karen Davis of Davis and Associates (818)892-8555
           "Pain is Mother Nature's way of telling us to slow down;
                       Death is her way of INSISTING!"