Corn Free July 2014: Stock Those Shelves

Corn Free July will be here again before we know it, and I want you to participate for one week. That's right. Just one week. You can wait until after July 4th if you want, since that's a big food holiday. There won't be an official start date. But I will be rolling out a one-week menu over the next several posts to make your Corn Free week as easy as possible.

First things first: It's not too soon to start phasing your pantry into Corn Free ready mode. The next time you're low on any of the following items, make the switch:

Cooking Oil: If you normally use regular old vegetable oil, odds are it's made from corn. Andrew Wilder at the blog Eating Rules has devised a great cooking oil comparison chart which lets you know everything from nutritional content to smoke points of various oils.

Baking Powder: This surprisingly has a bit of corn starch in it, but it's easily replaceable in most recipes with a 2:1 ratio of cream of tartar to baking soda.

Confectioners' Sugar: Corn starch is what gives confectioners' sugar its texture. Luckily, there are plenty of starch substitutes out there, such as potato and tapioca, which will easily stand in as a thickener in a recipe that calls for corn starch. Making confectioners' sugar is a little bit trickier. I've found information recommending a mixture of potato starch and regular sugar, but the texture doesn't quite come together the way I wish it would. Let me know if you have any luck with this.

Soy Sauce: I happen to have a bottle of La Choy brand soy sauce in my fridge right now, which sadly contains both corn syrup and caramel color, so I'll need to get a new bottle in the next few weeks. Luckily, Tamari brand is corn free, and only costs about 50 cents more. (Although, whether we should be eating any big name brand of soy sauce is a whole nother conversation.)

Hot Sauce: I'm not a hot sauce fan, because I don't enjoy being in pain, but for all you sick freaks out there, I'm sorry to say you will not be able to bring your beloved Sriracha with you on your corn-free journey. However, Tabasco is just fine, and Frank's red hot sauce? Feel free to put that shit on everything.

Please help make Corn Free July 2014 a success by liking the Facebook page, and by joining the conversation with #CornFreeJuly on Twitter!