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.