Month: January 2013

Right about now a lot of people are giving up on their New Year resolutions to eat healthier and maybe to eat gluten-free. Starting to eat healthy and gluten-free and dairy-free can seem really overwhelming at first. Eventually you realize that most of the actual true food in the grocery store is, indeed, gluten-free, but at first, it is a bit scary. I hope that this post makes it a bit less intimidating. The rule of thumb that nutritionists give you is that in general you can eat almost anything in the produce department. You can eat any unmarinated, and unprocessed fish and meat. Some celiacs (a bit less than half) can even have dairy and corn. We cannot, however, so I am going to assume you cannot either. So if you want to get back on track what CAN you eat. Here is what we eat every day. Breakfast Coconut Milk Yogurt (available at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s) which is more expensive than dairy yogurt but cheaper than breakfast at McDonalds. Hard Boiled Eggs Fruit Smoothies made with Vegan Protein Powder Gluten Free cereal with Flax Milk (flax milk has lots of Omega 3s) Gluten Free toast with coconut butter or jam Hot coffee or tea either black or with coconut milk creamer (or organic soy creamer if you can tolerate it) Starbucks Via! Lunch Turkey or...

When I first decided to go gluten-free I found one of the hardest things to deal with was the reaction of other people. When you say that you can’t eat pizza because gluten and dairy make you extremely ill, a lot of people look at you like maybe that is just something the voices in your head told you once they got past your tinfoil hat. Someday they may have a new version of the game Clue where Mrs Peacock was killed in the kitchen with a pizza but for now, people do stare and wonder if you are making it up. Eventually, however, you get past dealing with the stares and you start finding all the kindred spirits who also live gluten-free and it starts to become hilarious. You go to the park, you meet someone who also cannot eat gluten. You bring gluten-free cookies to church and learn that a parishoners adult son is also gluten-free. Or, as happened to me tonight, you go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner and find out that your waitress is friends with a gluten-free blogger who goes by Gluten Free Gidget. So of course I had to check Gidget out. Gluten-Free Gidget is a far better photographer than I am. Her pictures of food look appetizing, and she has a lot of them. She is way more Martha Stewart than I...

I may have three pancake recipes on this site but I really do not like to make pancakes. I refuse to use those electric griddles that have nonstick coatings on them (the fumes kill pet birds, which freaks me out even though we don’t have a pet bird) so they take forever since I can only make two at a time and they take about 4 minutes per batch to cook. French toast however is faster, easier, freezes well and keeps for a few days in the refrigerator. You can reheat it in the toaster oven although due to the fat content I would use a tray to hold the oil drips. Its portable and if you have no syrup it really isn’t a big issue because it is yummy without any syrup. Also it requires none of the motor skills required to ladle out same sized pancakes which is important if, like me, you do a lot of cooking at 1am. My motor skills aren’t the best at 9am. At 1am they are pitiful. This is also a fun recipe to make with your kids. Ingredients 8 eggs 15 to 20 slices bread preferably stale and preferably not heavy rice bread. Toast the bread if you need to but do NOT use frozen bread. 2 cups coconut milk beverage 4 tsp cinnamon Coconut oil or palm oil shortening...