Basic Menu Planning, GF Style

So at the time we had to implement the gluten-free diet, the Atkins diet was on its downward swing from its peak. I have to say, even though I don't think its a great diet plan for everyone--it made gluten-free meal-planning with the aid of the internet quite easy! I mean, that diet eliminated pretty much all starches, and only allowed for whole grain starches on occasion, which is perfect for celiacs because they were using brown rice, roasted potatoes, etc.

Anyway, I went through each "main dish" food we had left in the house after the purge and built meals around them. I was big on couponing and meal-planning before I had to do this diet--spending as little as $60/week for the family of 5 (formula was not included in that number, but baby food was). I am currently on a strictly limited budget of $575/mo for groceries, but never spend in excess of $350 for the 4 of us now. That is with me buying the expensive flours, pastas and GF replacement pretzels and crackers, etc. This diet can be done on a limited budget, after all, rice and potatoes are some of the cheapest foods available.

My initial meal list was as follows.

Beef Dishes
Cheeseburger Steaks, Tomato slices, Oven-Roasted potatoes
Steaks, Salad, Mashed Potatoes with Herb-Mushroom Gravy (thickened with cornstarch)
Beef Tacos, Salad, Refried Beans, Spanish Rice
Beef Enchiladas (make own enchilada sauce), corn
Beef Stew (potatoes, carrots, celery, peas, onion)
Beef/Deer Chili with cornbread.

Poultry Dishes
Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu, Creamed Peas and onions, Mushroom rice
Sweet and Sour Chicken, White Veggie Rice
Turkey Tenderloin, Rosemary Roasted Potatoes, Green Beans
Chicken and Rice soup
Chicken Fried Rice--Find wheat-free Soy Sauce
LINK: Skillet Chicken with Peas and Potatoes (sub: cornstarch for flour)


Pork Recipes
BBQ Pork, tomatoes, cornbread
Ham and Scalloped potatoes casserole, peas
Cornbread and Bacon stuffed Pork Chops, salad

Chef Salad with lettuces, peas, carrots, ham, turkey, green onions, and cheese.

Do not forget about how many different soups there are to make that are naturally gluten-free--although the majority of the pre-canned soup does have gluten in it. Soup is so quick and easy to make though, and canned soup is full of sodium anyway.

There are a lot of gluten-free cornbread recipes out there. I have one that I created that I will share with you. It is a fast bread to mix up, very nutritious and takes very little "trick" or skill to create, even if you are not much of a baker. It goes a long way in the celiac's diet.

Gluten-Free Cornbread

1 c. Milk

¼ c. margarine or butter

2 eggs

1 ¼ c. Cornmeal

½ c. Oat Flour

½ c. Potato Starch

1/3 c. Tapioca Flour

3 T. white sugar

1 t. xanthan gum

4 t. baking powder

½ t. salt

Melt the butter/margarine in the milk, then whisk the eggs into the mixture.

Combine all dry ingredients in a medium bowl, add wet ingredients all at once. Pour into a well-greased 9-inch round pan.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Check doneness with a toothpick.

As the weeks go by, I will show you how to expand on this list. We will be adding biscuits, muffins, a basic sandwich bread, a basic pizza dough, cookies and brownies to complement these meals.

Gluten Free Diet, Step One.

The first thing I did to get ourselves on the gluten-free diet was to go through every single bit of food in my house and remove anything that had gluten in it. I found a wonderful list on www.celiac.com that can be found by clicking the link below. There is also a list of "safe" foods that have sometimes odd names. I have included a link to it below also.

Unsafe Foods
Safe Foods

Don't feel bad about getting rid of the food. Find a poor college kid to give it to or donate to a food kitchen.

Then survey what you have left with new eyes. Look what starches and grains you have sitting in front of you. Rice. Cornmeal. Potatoes. Corn tortillas and tortilla chips. Beans. Oats (we kept them, you may not want to).

I suggest mostly eliminating any type of processed "convenience" foods from your diet. You'll find the majority of them have gluten in them anyway. Go fro pure meats, pure vegetables, pure fruits, pure grains.

See what type of meals you can plan using the leftover ingredients. I will post a menu planning list I created shortly after removing all the gluten food from my kitchen tomorrow (it's on a different comp).

Off Hiatus.

I must apologize for leaving without any note, but I wasn't really sure what to post... The last year or so has been full of drastic life changes, so I put this blog project to the side while I got everything else under control.

One thing that went out of control? I went off the diet in the last couple of months, and now the DH is back. I need to get back to it, and not give in to the temptation of stopping by the drive-thru for a quick bite any more. My body is suffering and I'm finding it impossible to lose these 15 pounds that have creeped back on me. Blah.

So I will now be posting weekly recipes that I have developed in my kitchen. Currently, I have a catalog that includes cornbread, rice patties, biscuits, a white sandwich bread, a GF oat bread, many different cookies and cakes, dips, main dish ideas, soups, sides, brownies... What would you like to eat first?

White Birthday Cake, Gluten Free Style

This is a repost of a recipe I created nearly a year ago, that was previously published on LiveJournal. I have received many wonderful comments on this recipe on the other blog, so I want to share it here too. I am going to repost the entry in its entirety along with the comments I have received on it to date.


May. 8th, 2008 at 9:00 AM (original post date)

I have finally gotten a lot more comfortable in the kitchen again. I have a stack of handwritten recipes and other printouts with scribbles edits on them-about 70 so far. I have hundreds that are just not printed/written out yet, still stuck in the electronic stage. My standard Betty Crocker cookbook has post-its stuck to the pages of it with the proper GF edits throughout the book.

So today, Samuel is 7 years old. It is his birthday, and he can have whatever he wants as his cake. He wants a Lego-cake. Le sigh. A white cake with white frosting and sprinkles Lego cake. As of 10 o'clock last night, I still hadn't figured out a *good* GF white cake. I have made a really dense, pound-cake type Chocolate chip cake, and figured out a deep chocolate cake (also very dense), but not the light, airy white birthday cake that Sam wanted. It's a good thing I perform well under pressure.

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So, without further ado, my Gluten-free White Birthday cake recipe.

1/2 c. White Rice Flour
1/2 c. Sorghum Flour
2/3 c. Tapioca Flour
1/3 c. Potato Starch
1 c. White Cane Sugar
2 teas. Baking Powder
1/2 t. salt
1 t. xanthan gum
3/4 c. (1 1/2 sticks) softened butter or margarine
3 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1/2 c. milk-any type

Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease pans-this recipe makes 16-18 cupcakes, 2 6-inch round layers, 9-inch square, or a 10-inch round.

Throughly combine the first 8 dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

Place softened butter in mixer bowl and beat until fluffy. Add flour mix to butter, blending on lowest setting until combined, then changing to setting "2" on the mixer until mixture is crumbly, about 1 minute.

In small bowl, lightly whisk eggs and vanilla together. Add eggs to mixer and mix until smooth and thick, about 1 minute. Add milk and mix for 1 more minute.

Pour into prepared pan and bake until toothpick is clean. Time will depend on the shape of your pan, but should be about 24 minutes for cupcakes, 45 minutes for a loaf pan.

Allow to cool in pans for about 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. Frost when cool. I am using Pillsbury French Vanilla Frosting, which is now GF.

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Comments I have received on the other blog post...

Jan. 4th, 2009 09:12 pm (local)
I made these tonight. They're awesome. Found you via google. :)http://www.flickr.com/photos/jocelyndale/3169415558/

Jan. 10th, 2009 11:29 am (local)
Thank you!
I'm going to test this recipe out today for my oldest's 6-yr party in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know how it turns out. Hubby was dxed celiac in Sept. and both dd's have tested gluten sensitive so we are completely gf now and I am a baker and love to cook. Cooking not so hard but baking is a challenge. I've been researching cake recipes for hours now, lol! So far only about half of my own baked goods recipes have been succesfully modified and I just don't have the time to try to keep testing recipes for a cake at the moment. Thank you!

Feb. 8th, 2009 02:30 pm (local)
Thank you!!
It's not without some trepidation that I try a new GF recipe from the 'web. There have been disasters aplenty, and I do not have the saintly patience of Amanda! But this cake is GREAT - even the batter was edible (no small feat for a GF product, though I didn't eat much, of course). Beautiful recipe - thanks for all the hours of hard work getting it right - you totally DID! love and peace and good digestion to you and your family!!

Feb. 28th, 2009 07:19 am (local)
Thanks!
I'm going to practice this cake today. My son's 2yr. party is next weekend and my husband, his mom, and half of her 7 siblings are GF. Whew, this has been quite an educational experience.

Mar. 1st, 2009 03:41 pm (local)
Re: Thanks!
This cake is perfectly fantastic!!!!! Our test run went beautifully and I could even make it look like a train. No more cross-contamination or "I can't have that" worries! Thanks!

Apr. 23rd, 2009 12:44 pm (local)
Thanks AGAIN
If I haven't left this comment before, I have been remiss. This is a GREAT recipe, and I am making it right now for about the fourth or fifth time. EVERYONE loves it, even the wheat- and Costco cake-eaters. I've been using a buttercream icing, but am considering going with a Boiled Icing tonight to avoid the butter (though I will be crashing into the sugar...). I've told your beautiful story about staying up all night perfecting this recipe for your little boy, and it only makes the cake MORE delicious in the telling. Blessings to you and your family! Vita
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Please leave me a comment and let me know how it turned out for your family, or with any variations that you may have made to the recipe. I love hearing other people's stories!

I've moved to Blogger!

Well, hello! My name is Amanda, and I have been keeping a (spotty) blog on LiveJournal for a couple of years now. I decided to move it to Blogger so that I could track it a bit better overall.

I have been dx'd with Dermetitis Herpetformis, which is caused by a gluten intolerance and/or celiac disease. My 5yo daughter has been dx'd with celiac disease, and my youngest daughter (3yo) has a severe allergy to wheat and rye pollen, so we have completely eliminated gluten from our house and diets as a family. I also have a son, who is 7, but he seems to be spared from celiac.

An important dietary note: we do eat oats and most oat products, which some celiacs avoid. I have studied the science behind it, and have done personal diet studies in our house. It appears that we do not have any issue with oats, so I have kept them as an important part of our diet.

We have been living gluten-free since late July 2007. We live in rural Kansas, far from any health food store, and our local groceries have only a limited supply of the specialty foods celiacs use in their cooking experiments. The closest Whole Foods type market is 120 miles away, one-way. So I have learned to adapt, as Darwin would expect. We do not use pre-made bread products or mixes, and we do not typically use any of the other GF mixes available on the market. They are expensive and pretty hard for us to find. Also, I try to feed my family of 5 for $500-600 a month. No, that is not a typo, I promise. I know that most celiacs spend an outrageous amount of money on their food budget (I have seen some numbers going as high as $1200/month for a family of 4), but we simply do not have that type of budget available to us.

Quite simply put, I bulk our supplies in bulk-bulk flours that I store in a deep freeze; I order some of the various GF replacements off of Amazon Grocery or whoever has the best sale at the time I order; I have found a local farmer that is working toward organic certification, so I bought *almost* organic beef for $3.50/lb; I take advantage of every GF coupon deal I can work in town.

I develop new gluten-free recipes each week, and I bake from scratch at least three times a week. I create a meal plan every week to try to stay on budget and plan my time by pre-prepping the foods we are going to need (when to bake the bread, when to pre-cook that chicken for enchiladas, when to thaw the meat, etc).

On this blog, I will show you how you can live gluten-free on a budget. I will share my recipes and meal plans with you.

I will start by transferring the recipes that were found on my older blog, and then be adding some newer recipes each week.