How to Eat Gluten Free...without the Stress!

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Being confronted with the need to change your diet in a radical way is challenging at best.  Daunting is perhaps a better way to describe it.  Overwhelming comes to mind as well.  Our entire ‘Standard Australian Diet’ is centred wheat.  It is in everything.  Until you have the need to investigate the ingredients in everything you buy you could be forgiven for being quite unaware of wheat’s pervasive presence in your diet.

When Miss Sunshine was about 10 or 11 years old I was advised to put her on a wheat- and dairy-free diet after her eczema and snot became intolerable.  This advice was given right before a long weekend and we were away for four days.  I did not know what to feed my daughter!  She couldn’t eat much of anything she normally consumed before dinner time.  I was a terribly stressful adjustment.  Both my niece and a colleague have recently been faced with the same overwhelming dilemma and my brother and his wife, particularly, are struggling to figure out what a wheat-free life might look like.  I have mentioned many times, here, that I eat a mostly wheat-free diet.  I can tolerate small amounts because I do not have coeliac disease.  My symptoms include a foggy brain, heartburn and/or reflux and insomnia.  I experience these same symptoms, only magnified, when I consume too much sugar.

So what does one eat, when wheat is off the menu?  Grab a cuppa and settle in.  This is gonna be a long one, but I hope I can alleviate of the stress of such a diet change for someone out there.

Bread:  there are a number of different brands of gluten free bread available now.  My favourite remains ‘Country Life’.  They recently changed their recipe and the bread is now more moist and soft.  Not at all the unpleasant, dry version available previously.  I had a brand from IGA the other day.  Yuck, yuck, yuck.  It was given to me – I threw the whole loaf out.  Likewise, gluten free wraps are less than exciting.  I wouldn’t bother with them at all.  You will find gluten free breads with all the other packaged loaves.  Sometimes they’re tough to get a hold of if the store doesn’t carry much stock.  Ask them what days the gluten free bread is delivered so you know when you're likely to get it. 

Pasta and Noodles:  There are a number of gluten-free options for pasta available now.  My favourite ones contain rice flour.  Corn pasta is just weird and I don’t enjoy it.  Look for brands like Orgran and BuonTempo.  Also have a look in the Asian section of your supermarket.  You will find vermicelli and rice stick noodles as well as bean thread noodles there.

Pizza:  I recently tried a polenta crust.  It was delicious and I will happily make that again if we’re doing homemade pizza.  Lots of pizza shops offer gluten free options now.  They’ll be more expensive but they’re pretty darn good.  Gluten free pizza bases from the supermarket are not so wonderful.  I wouldn’t bother with them.

­Cakes and Biscuits: If you’re baking for yourself it is quite simple to replace regular flours with gluten free flour and so far I can’t tell much of a difference.  Maybe I'm just used to it though?  They only things I’ve not succeeded with are pastry and scones, but scones elude me at the best of times so that’s not so surprising!  You might find baked products dry out a little quicker than you’re used to, but if you freeze things as soon as they’ve cooled you will have that just-baked moistness throughout the whole batch.  If you want to buy these already made there are both cake mixes and bought biscuits available in the health food aisle in the supermarket.

Snacks:  This was particularly challenging with Miss Sunshine.  It’s not such an issue for me anymore because I am not snacking between meals.  If you’re into what I call ‘snackety packety’ food items for lunch boxes my first piece of advice would be bake at home.  If that’s not your thing for whatever reason then have a look down your health food aisle.  You will find all manner of gluten-free chips and similar snack foods.  I have a bit of a ‘thing’ for Vegie Chips.  Nuts are good.  There are lots of brands rice crackers available now in the biscuit aisle.  My favourite are the Sakata multigrain ones.  Vita-weat also do a brown rice cracker.  I know, I know, it says ‘weat’ but they’re really good rice crackers!!!  Also have a look at cruskits for their corn or rye versions and corn thins or rice thins.  They’re pretty yummy.  Of course there are potato chips, corn chips and you might find things like twisties or cheezels have little or no wheat.  Spend some time reading the ingredients lists.  You'll be surprised what you discover.  And then there’s good old-fashioned fruit.  Always there, never with wheat!

The final challenge is how to do a wheat-free diet when it might only be one person in the family.  It is tempting to just have everyone eating the same foods but you will find gluten-free foods can be terribly expensive.  A small loaf of bread is $6.50 and flour is $3.50 for half a kilo.  It’s not cheap!!!  What has worked for me is a little of cooking separately and a little of everyone eats the same.  At dinner time if I’m making a dessert or something where flour is required I just use the gluten free.  There are some things you just can’t do separately.  Everything else is pretty much separate.  For example, if I’m doing something like pasta I put a bit pot on for regular pasta and a little pot of gluten free pasta just for me.  It’s one extra pot….that’s really not a big deal.

These days I am eating a lot more protein instead of carbohydrate so being gluten free is much easier.  Rather than my favourite toast for breaky I’m having two eggs made into a sweet frittata.  I have leftovers for lunch and dinner usually consists of meat and vegetables.  Rather than eating sugary foods I go for honey, maple syrup and fresh fruit.

Hopefully facing a life of no wheat isn't quite so daunting now.  Try and think of it as an adventure to see what you can find.  Pick up different brands and compare ingredients.  I found some tins of tomato soup had wheat and some had tapioca flour.  There will always be things you will miss because there hasn't been a gluten free alternative created yet (think hot jam doughnuts!).  But there are lots of things available now.  Aussies are magnificent at ensuring special diets are catered for.

Recipe: Banana & Choc Chip Muffins (gluten and cane sugar free)

I have been doing a small amount of kitchen investigation.  You might remember that I mentioned banana and choc chip muffins that were far too sweet.  As it happens I'd not put in half the flour, as the white and wholemeal flours were listed separately.  I did think it was a runny mixture at the time!

Yesterday I wanted something quick for an impromptu picnic lunch, so I tried removing all the brown sugar and golden syrup completely and instead used two large soup spoons of honey instead.  They turned out beautifully, even with the use of gluten free flour.  A perfect end to a lovely picnic on the banks of the Yarra River in Warburton on such a beautiful warm, sunny day.  The recipe below is as I made it yesterday with a note with the original alternative.

Banana & Choc Chip Muffins

2 cups self raising flour*

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

60g butter, melted

2 spoonfuls honey**

1 cup bananas, mashed

1 cup milk

1 egg

125g (1/2 cup) choc chips

1. Combine the flour and bicarb soda in a large bowl.
2. Melt the honey and butter together, in a pot on low heat, or in the microwave.
3. Add the honey & better, bananas, milk and eggs and mix well.
4. Fold the choc chips through the mixture.
5. Spoon mixture into lined muffin pans.
6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes at 180C (160C fan-forced).
7. Remove from the oven and cool on a cake rack.

*  Alternatively use 1 cup white flour and 1 cup wholemeal flour (both self raising) if desired.
**  Alternatively use 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1 tablespoon golden syrup, melted with butter on low heat.

What I love about these muffins is that with gluten free flour they have no cane sugar products in them at all.  The sweetness comes from the bananas and honey.  Although I use honey and maple syrup with reluctance they do not appear to give me the same symptoms as sugar.  I've popped these little beauties into the freezer for me to have one every now and then if I am craving something cakey and sweet.  It is a bleak future to consider that cake might be out of the question forever and ever!

Special Diets: Sugar Free?

Have you ever had to try and give up something you really enjoy?  You know what?  It's not so easy.  And not so fun.

My journey with sugar began many years ago when I discovered I can't have aspartame.  It makes me very unwell almost immediately and that lasts for about 3 hours.  For about 3 years I couldn't touch it, nor any kind of soft drink because of the severe response I had to it.  Now I can gamble with small amounts, but generally I avoid it like the plague.  The suffering simply isn't worth it...and it's pretty scary stuff.  Over this course of this year I've also discovered that regular sugar is no friend of mine.  If you've been reading here a while you'll know that I have discovered that sugar is evil...and I've talked a little about why.

But it's really hard to avoid it.  And it's even harder to choose not to have it.  Even when you know it won't be a good thing.  This is really something that I need to address and I think the key may lie in finding alternative foods that I really enjoy.  I found some sugar-free chocolate.  It's OK, but it doesn't thrill me. 

This is something that I really need to get a handle on.  If you have any stories to share leave a comment - I'd love to hear from you.

Monday Menus and Mayhem

I was just scrolling through my 'from this blog' images.  Those photos are filled with so much stitching has been and gone and I've little time to continue with it these days.  In the last two weeks two different people have asked if I am still stitching and I've said "not at the moment".  Perhaps a little poke to get me stitching again?  Now, while the semester is quiet with only two subjects actually active?  Yes, maybe ....

The upside of no stitching is that I devote my time to weekly tasks and essay writing for Uni and there is beautiful fruit for those labours.  My Dance & Drama assignments came back with a credit and a distinction and my PE assignment was returned to me with a coveted high distinction attached...and glowing praise.  This is the 'work' God has given me to do in this season and while stitching is one of my first loves, it can be set aside for a while.  And while I'm content with my 'work', the stitching does occasionally sing to me longingly!

I need to phone about my oven getting together with a lovely Fix-It Man - the poor things needs the kind of love we just can't give it :(  In the meantime there is a limit to what can be cooked in there.  The lowest temperature is 180C if the oven stays on.  The 180C mark is now just as the oven turns on so it flicks on and off constantly.

Here is the nearly oven-free menu for the week:

Monday:  Crumbed beef schnitzel, vegies
Tuesday:  Tomato & bacon pasta
Wednesday:  Ricotta fritters, vegies
Thursday: Chinese pork spare ribs, rice, vegies
Friday: Vegetable frittata, vegies
Saturday:  Mr Busy's choice
Sunday:  Not sure

I'll crumb my schnitzel with polenta (cornmeal) and use cannellini beans for Tuesday's night's pasta in order to accommodate my growing issues with wheat.  Avoiding starchy carbohydrates like rice and pasta (gluten free, of course) seems to be working well.  I use sweet potato instead of regular and have extra vegies instead of rice.

Enough from me - a phone call to make and a couple of lectures to listen to amid dinner preparation is ahead of me yet.  What's going on in your week?  If you post about your weekly menu let me know where!  I'd love a peek into your plans.