Gluten-free Beginnings

Everyone here is a bit depressed about the World Cup today, except for the Germans who are quite happy. I stayed up late uploading some wedding photos to the internet and checking the score until I heard fireworks going off around the complex. But instead of the Cup or the depressing rainy summer, let’s think about food since it is always on my mind these days.

Kay and I normally cook 2-3 things on the weekend that last all week, but ever since I threw out all the glutened tupperware and started using new recipes, I haven’t quite replaced enough tupperware for lots of leftovers and many of our new gluten-free recipes don’t result in as much quantity as my normal recipes did. As a result, I’m feeling oddly panicky about our small food reserves this week.

So what do Kay and I make now that I’m eating gluten free? Well, we’ve started using our steamer a bit more for some easy potato and vegetable mashups. This meal was very easy and thankfully did provide a lot of leftovers!

We ate the steamed mix with a quinoa salad. I buy lots of quinoa these days because I prefer it to rice and it is great sweet or on salads. I added mango to the mix below.

Below was my typical breakfast for the first month gluten-free. Deviled eggs, fruit and espresso. I’ve tried to cut down to one espresso a day and since then I’ve transitioned to eating Kay’s gluten-free muesli mix most days, but I did really like eating fruit in the morning!

Following a friend’s advice, I broke down and bought some gluten-free spaghetti after a few weeks. I spent the longest time refusing to do this, but it’s actually just fine. We don’t eat spaghetti or pasta that often, but it’s nice to know that we can still do it. Here I made slow-cooker meatballs, but the recipe was kind of bland.

We also eat a lot of caprese salad because I lurve it, although I started having to buy lactose-free mozzarella because I was having some issues with normal dairy products.

And I’m using the new diet as an excuse to try new recipes like borscht that I have never attempted before. Delicious!

After our long trip in the states where I had half of a gluten-free pizza in Miami that made me sick because it was baked in a normal oven, I was really hankering more pizza… so I finally got to making some! First I tried the first hit in Google for a nutty crust, and below I tried out cauliflower crust. The cauliflower crust was delicious, but it made me really sick the next day. I’m kind of afraid to make it again. :S

Even Kay is starting to cook gluten free! He was a bit hesitant of what to do at first, but he’s started getting back to cooking more and I’m really thankful because coming up with all the meals on my own was exhausting! Below he smoked salmon on the grill using a wooden plank. The noodles were something with horseradish, but they turned out a bit soupy and the gluten-free noodles seemed like they didn’t like what was done to them. They sort of fell apart. Oh well… we are trying out lots of new things these days.

Not all of the recipes we make are keepers, but we definitely have had some tasty food!

What have you been cooking lately?

6 thoughts on “Gluten-free Beginnings”

  1. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be trying to figure out new things that you can make that won’t make you sick! Unfortunately I know little to nothing about what contains gluten, so I am hesitant to share recipes…

    1. Yeah, don’t worry. It definitely becomes easier as we go. For the most part I am looking for new recipes that are either specifically gluten free or easy to de-gluten, like using GF corn tortillas instead of normal ones, for example.

    1. Mmm, pinned! Thanks! I was just talking with Kay at the weekend about how I wanted to make lasagna, but they don’t sell GF lasagna noodles in our normal grocery. This would be a great solution! šŸ™‚

  2. I’ve found that gf pasta really should be cooked just barely al dente or it will turn to mush and the more corn in the pasta blend (compared to quinoa or rice) the more likely it is not to hold very well for leftover (becomes a bit dry and brittle). Tinkyada brown rice pasta is my favorite of all the ones we’ve tried, though I’m not sure if it’s available in your neck of the woods.

    Keep up the experimentation!

    1. Yeah, it was a box of American GF noodle from my mother. Kay cooked them, so I left it up to him… but I think he said our elbow noodles available here cook up better. šŸ™‚

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