Anyone in here living Gluten Free?

[Poetmom4]

Hello!

My son was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple of weeks ago and the family is now eating gluten free. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term it means eating nothing with wheat, rye, or barley in it and it's amazing how much stuff has some form of one of those in their ingredients.

Anyway, I thought I'd ask and see if there were any fellow Christians here that are dealing with this sort of thing and we could swap recipes or just be generally supportive.

[Cookies4me]

While we are not a gluten free family there are many on here who are. They should be posting soon. You can also do a search on this website and find a bunch of threads on it.

cookie

:hug

[jorjean]

I am not doing glutton free, but yeast free. That includes vinegar, catsup, mustard, salad dressings, mayonnaise, as well as all bread. Yes it is a challenge. I find my self eating a lot of fruit and vegetables.(when I am doing what I should, I cheat quite a bit and it hurts.) I can have a tortilla once in a while. I don't think your son could.
We are very blessed to live where we can find fresh produce all year round. I so don't know what I would do if I had to eat canned and frozen all the time.
I have found great solace in beans. Bean soup, chili, refried beans, and the whole Mexican menu is working for me.
I'm also trying to give up all sugars. This is not going as well. I could use all the support I can get.

How old is your son?

[Poetmom4]

Hi Jorjean,

That sounds harsh. My son will be 15 in July and he is still very small- only 4'6" and about 85 pounds. He has profound hypothyroidism as well as celiac. And no, he can't have flour tortillas but he can have corn ones so we eat a lot of those lately. My biggest challenge is finding a bread recipe that is economical as well as tastes good. The rice breads are awful and the breads made with bean flours have a nasty after taste so we're not real fond of those either.

Cookie, thanks for the suggestion. :)

[antsinmypants]

Yep, there are a few of us gluten freers. If you need recipes or blogs to check out for recipes, let me know. I've been fully GF 2 years, but partially since my sister was diagnosed at 16, five years ago.... and my dad and mom were also found to have CD. :)

[Mrsppmrxky]

This is the loaf of bread that I have come up with that I really like. I make this for other people and they have always said that they really enjoy this loaf.

MrsP's Favorite Sandwich Bread
3 c. Bean Substitute mix
1 T. guar gum
1 t. salt
2 1/4 tsps yeast
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 tsp baking powder (Hain)
3 Tbs brown sugar
1/4 c. oil
1 1/4 c. warm milk
In your mixing bowl, place the dry ingredients including the yeast. Blend very slowly to make sure that all ingredients are mixed well. Add all of the liquids into the mixing bowl and start the mixer slowly to incorporate all of the liquid. Turn off your mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl, the mixer paddle and make sure that all of the flour is off of the bottom of the bowl.
Now turn the mixer on higher and once the liquid is mixed in well enough not to spray out of the bowl, turn the mixer to high and mix on high for 4 full minutes.
Either have a greased or sprayed loaf pan prepared for the dough. Wet your hands and smooth the top of the dough to make sure that the dough has no air bubbles and is evenly distributed into the pan.
Cover the pan lightly with plastic wrap and allow rising in a draft free space. Depending on how warm your kitchen is, this may only take about 25-30 minutes for the dough to be even with the topsides of the pan. It is very important that you do not allow the dough to rise above the side of the pan. (If it is winter, you may want to warm your oven to 170F degrees when you are first measuring your ingredients. Only allow it to get warm and then turn it off well before you mix the dough.)
Turn the oven on to 375F degrees and place the pan in the middle of the rack. Bake for 30 minutes and then cover loosely with aluminum foil. Bake for an additional 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and turn out onto a cloth covered cooling rack. Cover the loaf with another towel until the bread is completely cooled. DO NOT CUT until the loaf is completely cooled or it will fall and be very small.

Four Bean Flour Substitute Mix
1 1/2 c. millet flour
1 1/2 c. sorghum flour
3 c arrowroot
3 c. tapioca flour

[Mitsy]

I have wheat intolerance but that means I pretty well have to go gluten free to make sure I don't get wheat. Praying for you dear it is so hard with little kids.

[Mrsppmrxky]

I have wheat intolerance but that means I pretty well have to go gluten free to make sure I don't get wheat. Praying for you dear it is so hard with little kids.

I think that the diet would be much easier when your kids are little. We fournd out about the problem when my youngest was 17. She had started having female issues when she was 16.

There are only a few things that I have not figured out yet how to replace the glutenn items that we enjoyed.

If you need something to be replaced for your young ones, let me know and I might have a recipe.

After accomplishing the gluten free diet, I had to add taking corn and many other things out of our diet at home because MrP has become allergic to most food items.

I have cookie. cake, chicken nuggets...........even some candy items.. Just let me know what you are looking for and I will see what I can do.

I have gotten where I can change many gluten recipes to become GF. I have some yeast rolls and even doughnuts (cake and yeast)

I really have gotten where the GF lifestyle isn't that bad. You can pretty much get any supplies online if you can't find it at a store.

amazon.com has a grocery section that has GF items and lots of times they are cheaper.

bulkfoods.com has GF grains that you can order

I always do a google search on the item I want to purchase and sometimes it is way cheaper to order elsewhere.

bobsredmill.com also has a large GF section.

[Poetmom4]

MrsP, thank you so much. I do buy a lot of Bob's Red Mill products because our local grocery carries them. We like his pancake mix and cornbread mix as well. I'll look at the amazon selection because I'm having a problem finding things in a large enough quantity to be cost effective. I'm paying, on average, about $6 for a loaf of bread here and that's the cost to make it myself.

The bread recipe- we've found that we don't care for the bean flours. They seem to leave a funky aftertaste. Where can I find a bread recipe that doesn't use bean flours or is it even possible? We've tried the rice breads and my kids hate those- they're so dry and heavy. I guess we've been spoiled all these years and it's so hard to make them like bread when they're so used to soft, mild flavored bread.

I think bread is probably my biggest hurdle. We really like the corn pasta and I've replaced their after school snack of crackers and cheese with fruit and rice cakes. They seem to like those pretty well so I'm keeping a good stock of them on hand.

I know that once we get the hang of it and get into a steady routine of buying and preparing the foods, it'll get easier and we will forget how other things tasted but we're still so new at it and right now it's hard.

Thank you, Mitsy, for the prayers. :)

[Mrsppmrxky]

Mitsy, the above recipe that I posted has no beans in it. My husband can no longer have any beans and most vegetables due to allergies.

I buy ArrowHead Mills Millet (or from bulkfoods.com and I grind it myself with my whisper mill). I buy Bob's Red Mill Sorghum. The Tapioca starch, I purchase at our local Asian store for .69 for 14 oz. I puchase the Arrowroot from bulkfoods.com because my husband can't have cornstarch. (if you want to save money, then sub the cornstarch for the arrowroot.)

I have found by googling xanthan gum or guar gum, I can pick it up pretty cheaply. I purchased the last guar gum from amazon.com because of the price. (we don't do xanthan anymore because it costs 2x as much as guar and MRP can't have it because it is usually grown on corn.)

As to pre made mixes, I usually do not like them at all because they already add the xanthan gum and to me when they do that it leaves a metallic taste in my mouth. (at least that is my experience.) I like to mix all of my own things.

I bought the whisper mill because I even grind my own rice. I purchase it from the Asian store also and it is much cheaper. I bake for a lot of people in our celiac support group, so I try to keep expenses down to a minimum. The last time that I figure out the cost of my loaves they were about $4 each.