Butterscotch Chips Have Barley?

id="recipetitle"class="fn">Butterscotch Chips Have Barley?

One of my go-to holiday recipes is peanut butterscotch haystacks.  I melt Nestle butterscotch morsels in the microwave, add peanut butter and gluten-free pretzels (in lieu of chow mein noodles), then drop them into little piles (haystacks) and refrigerate.  Yesterday, we had a White Elephant gift party for my friends, and my husband happened to read the ingredients to see if they were vegan (my brother-in-law is a proto-vegan), and he point to the words "barley protein" in the ingredients.

He looked it up, and yes, they're not gluten-free.  Pretty sure barley protein IS gluten.

Joy to the gut, I've been poisoning myself for the last four Christmases.

I'm of the celiac variety that I don't get physically sick from eating gluten.  At least that I can detect.  So no vomiting, no diarrhea.  However, I have no way of knowing if I'm ingesting gluten accidentally (I'm looking at you, Starbucks frappuchino!).  I get my antibody levels tested about once a year, and they've been normal so far.  I don't want to have another colonoscopy to check my villi, but that's probably the only way I'll know if there's damage from these little gluten accidents.

My new plan is to make some kind of tiger bark pretzel thing, with GF white chocolate and peanut butter.  I'll let you know.