Transitioning to Gluten-Free Eating

Very tasty and sweet carrot muffins, from the Gluten Free Baking Book

There are countless blogs and websites dedicated to living gluten-free, so I won’t presume to re-invent the wheel here. But I know how daunting the idea can be, and thought I’d give it a try for those of you who may be considering it. I will say this, DO NOT try to do this halfway – if one person needs the diet, then everybody can do it, too. Yes, someone will balk, but it is an act of love for fathers and siblings to join in the effort. It won’t kill them, and they are learning an important lesson in family life. It will also make your life a lot simpler if you don’t have to juggle two food families!

So … first … clean out your cupboards. And I mean, be ruthless. It will be easy to stop the first time you have to toss a brand new bag of flour or entire box of cereal into the garbage, but you have to do it.  Think of it as a great way to help out  your local food pantry.

Second … get thee to a library and check-out two or three gluten-free cookbooks.  I recommend the newer ones over the older ones because the recipes are more realistic for parents today.  Do this BEFORE going to the grocery store!  When you peruse these books, you’ll have a better idea of what ingredients you will need for basic meals and baking, and get a much-needed vocabulary lesson (quinoa, anyone?)

Third … make a list of your 7-10 most common breakfasts, lunches and dinners, then list the GF/CF substitions you can easily make. Breakfast and lunch sandwiches will probably be the most difficult.  Here are some quick changes that won’t affect your family too much:

• Pasta – replace the regular varieties with Ancient Harvest quinoa (in a turqoise box) or rice pasta. We have both of these in the natural foods aisle of the affordable, large grocery store in town. They are pretty close to the “real” thing, but do read the cooking instructions carefully since both take much less time to boil.
• Cereal – almost ALL major brand breakfast cereals have wheat or wheat gluten in them, so just walk right by … oatmeal is a good option if the kids will eat it. If you are dealing with celiac, make sure to buy a brand that is certified that it’s not cross-contaminated. Full Circle brand toasted oats do not have wheat listed as an ingredient, so if you are non-celiac you may be able to eat these.  Full Circle is reasonably priced, though I do stock up when there is a sale. The Tightwad Gazette advice on breakfast is actually the best I can give for GF lifestyles: make yours from scratch. The Gluten-Free Baking Book has lots of great pancake and muffin recipes. We’ve made up the dry ingredients in zip bags ahead of time so it’s easier to whip them up quick in the morning or when you have breakfast for supper. If you buy the boxed mixes from the store for more than a week, you will go broke.
• Breads – here’s the bad news: there are almost no good substitutions for regular, “store-bought” white or wheat bread, so we basically quit eating sandwiches. (Yes, it was tough, but we got over it.) For toast we made the white bread from the Gluten Free Baking Book, which is also good for French toast if you slice it thick enough. The one GF bread product that I considered as good as “regular” would be Food for Life’s rice English muffins. They are in the freezer section at the store. They are also expensive, so again I stocked up when they were on sale. Our daughter loves putting them in the toaster oven with cheese and meat, and this became a sack lunch staple since they taste decent cold, too. (We don’t really like toaster ovens, but rice bread seems to do better with them because slices tend to bend over in a regular toaster and get stuck, sometimes making fire.)
• Fruit – add more. Most of us are so used to filling our meals with carbs, we forget that fruit is better for us, and filling, too. This has nothing to do with GF, but get the kind with real fruit juice and skip the syrup.

So, that’s all for now.  The single biggest factor in making a successful transition to GF is  COMMITMENT. And if I can do it, trust me, you can, too. Like I said, if your child responds well, it will be more than worth it!

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