Gluten free??

[jilly_beans]

Is anyone here gluten free? We believe our son has CVeliac's Disease and will be tested next week.
How do you go about being gluten free on a budget? Any tips or recipes would be so helpful!

TIA!

[Grainlady]

My mother was gluten-intolerant and I've worked with a sorghum mill just outside of town to develop GF recipes for them, so I've been making GF baked goods for over 30-years.

My first suggestion is to go to the library and check out books on the subject, as well as Gluten-Free cookbooks.

Some of my favorites:

The Gluten-Free Gourmet and More from the Gluten-Free Gourmet - by Bette Hagman

Gluten-Free 101 - by Carol Fenster, Ph.D.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck (from" The View") has a new book out on the subject.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=7492673&page=1

There are SOOOOOO many good GF foods and ingredients available out there now, that keeping GF is much easier than it once was. I noticed a whole area of our Wal-Mart store was GF. Even our dinky little health food store has a great variety.

Check these links for their wonderful GF mixes and ingredients.
King Arthur Flour - www.kingarthurflour.com
Bob's Red Mill - www.bobsredmill.com

If you ever use Bisquick, Bob's Red Mill has a great GF baking mix that works in any recipe you would use Bisquick. You can also make your own mixes and most GF cookbooks include a lot of mixes.

For the most part, I mill my own gluten-free ingredients, but Bob's Red Mill is a good source. Just don't cross-contaminate grains containing gluten with gluten-free. If you decide to mill your own flours (you'll save a LOT of money in the long run), you will have to keep a mill JUST for gluten-free milling.

Helpful Hint: You can make your own rice flour in a coffee/spice mill MUCH cheaper than buying rice flour. FRESH is BEST when it comes to GF flours, in my opinion. There is a significant performance difference between rice types. Flour made from any long-grain rice is best used for breading, sauces, and used as a thickener - it's not good for baking since it yields a wet, soggy product with a large crumb.

BOTH medium- and short-grain rice are are multi-purpose and can be used as a thickener AND in baked goods. You'll notice it gives a sandy, dry crumb.

The problem with commercial rice flour, you never know if it's long-grain or WHAT!

For 1-cup rice flour, grind a scant 3/4 c. (3/4 c. minus 1 T.) short-grain rice or 3/4 c. long-grain rice.

Your best bet is to stick to whole foods (fresh/frozen meat, vegetables and fruit) for awhile, and stay away from most things that are commercially prepared - UNLESS it specifically states it's GLUTEN-FREE - because there are all kinds of "hiden" ingredients that contain gluten. Some don't have to be listed on the ingredients because it's an ingredient OF an ingredient.

Good luck in your new changes. There's not enough space on a message board to give all the information I'd like to give.... Just keep in mind all the foods your son CAN have. Avoid a potential pity-party because there is a substiute for nearly everything you need to avoid - even GF chocolate chips.

[jilly_beans]

Thank you so much for all the tips and resources!

[2ndGenGranola]

You may want to avoid the subs. Many of them are worse health wise than their white flour counterpart.

We kept basic meal plans and tried to stick to whole foods as closely as possible. Until the insides have healed he may have trouble with the subs/processed anyway. We tried to plan a meat, a green veggie/salad, a colored veggie/fruit and a carb (corn, potato, rice..) for each meal. It helped especially at first when we were learning.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I'd check out the internet's bountiful selection of GF foods. You can get away with making a lot of stuff at home. The grocery store near our house is stocking their gluten free foods but they're super expensive.

[pollypurebred39]

My son is wheat free but we use GF flours. Cakes are really hard to get right without a mix, however since he must avoid sugar also a GF cake mix is not often. Instead I make a meringue cake and frost with a SF cream cheese frosting. I also make grain free peanut butter cookies and a meringue disc that I cover with pudding, lemon curd or raspberry sauce and then cover with homemade whipped cream. That same meringue disc I fill with homemade ice cream and cover with a fluffy meringue and freeze until ready to bake~baked Alaska. If you'd like any of these recipes let me know.

Grocery stores often have gf products on clearance racks. Recently I purchased IANS gf pizza kit & pasta kit on clearance. He made the pizza one tonight and added cheese and chicken breast meat. It was really good, and it's great having a big treat like pizza or pasta. I also purchased a box of GF pancake mix on clearance and he's been enjoying pancakes once a week.

We mostly stick with a protein, non starchy vegetable and 1/2 cup carb or starchy vegetable. On a daily basis this works best for us.

[sunshine]

We're gluten free due to dd's issues.

Remember peanut butter cookies are gluten free! 1 cup sugar, 1 cup peanut butter, 1 egg. . . mix, drop onto cookie sheet and bake!

If your entire household isn't going gluten free, then he'll need a seperate toaster, seperate jar of peanut butter, etc. Otherwise, he'll get miniscule particles of gluten from bread crumbs, and so forth.

Macaroons and meringue cookies are good too

We avoid the substitutes as well. . . too expensive and they just don't taste like wheat products, so were disappointing. We do use vegetable spaghetti with good results, but we did that even before she developed problems with gluten.

[Michelle]

Scroll to the bottom of this thread where you will find 5 similar threads. HTH

[mom2three]

Our family eats gluten free and it has helped us all. Basically it has helped us eat less processed food and stop eating out (which helped the budget). I make my own nuggets using rice flour, tapioca starch, salt, baking soda and vinegar, my own tortillas, pizza, and many, many other things as well. We are finally at the point where we are planning on buying a mill. We use alternate grains or substitutes such as millet, quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat as well as rice. We have some other intolerances as well. A couple of sites that are good are a Carol Fenster site www.savorypalate.com and http://www.celiac.com/. I also belong to two Yahoo groups that may be off interest (at least for recipes). The are the SillyYaks group and the Vegan and Gluten Free Group (we also have dairy and egg intolerances as well).

What types of food would you normally serve? This would give a start to some "normal tasting recipes". It is actually pretty easy to make things like GF cornbread and GF pancakes. BTW, the peanut butter cookie recipe everone quotes can actually be made with only 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 cup pb, and 1 egg. Mix, bake 325 ~13-15 minutes I think.

I second the books by Bette Hagman and Carol Fenster. I also liked
Incredible Edible Gluten-Free Food for Kids: 150 Family-Tested Recipes by Sheri L. Sanderson especially if you have no other GF cookbooks.

I have also learned to have a positive attitude. We had a lot more illness prior to diet changes (and we ate pretty healthy whole grain, lots of veggies before). When people comment on how busy I am because I bake all of our bread and goodies, etc. I respond with "I can invest time now and keep us healthy or I can invest it later when they are sick and miserable.

Another thing to note - if you buy preground flours, you need storage space. At the very least flours should be in an airtight container and some are suggested to be refrigerated. I have actually had more success with the airtight container, but they do have a shelf life. Basically white GF "flours" such as cornstarch, white rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, etc. are fine at room temp, others should be kept cool.