How To Go Gluten Free!

Gluten Free is Easier Than You Think!

Technorati Tags: celiac, gluten free, gluten intolerance, gluten substitutes, living without wheat

So, Someone Gluten Free is Coming Over for Dinner

I read a statistic that as many as 30% of the population may have a gluten-intolerance.  If that is true than over the next ten years gluten-free will become a household phrase.  Until that happens, I thought you might appreciate some pointers on how to look out for a gluten-free guest.  When I am going to dinner at someone’s home I try to give a brief education without stressing the person out.  Believe it or not you CAN cook gluten-free for people without a ton of education.

Here is what I like to tell people to help a gluten free guest have a good meal:

• Keep it simple.  Adding lots of sauces and spices complicates matters for someone living gluten-free.  Every ingredient potentially has gluten in it so the more ingredients, the greater the possibility of contamination.
• Leave sauces and salad dressings on the side.
• Avoid casseroles.  Again you have the “keep it simple” going on here.  A gluten-free person will be better off if instead of doing that chicken and broccoli casserole if you serve all the ingredients separately.  That way they can skip the ingredients that have gluten in them and eat the ones that don’t.
• Keep ALL ingredients handy for the gluten free person to reference.  We become expert at reading packaging ingredients.
• Watch out for pre-prepared foods.  Marinades, spices, and food starch are just a few places that gluten likes to hide in and that means less food for the gluten free.
• Thicken with cornstarch instead of flour.
• Put croutons on the side of the salad.  I find that people are so particular about their salads that ALL guests tend to prefer the option of putting ALL of their own toppings on.  It takes a few more bowls on the table but everyone is happy.
• Try to call the gluten free guest and run down the menu with them.  Some people are less sensitive (those with celiac can’t have any exposure to gluten) so allow the guest to let you know what will and won’t work for them.
• Keep the buns and meat separate.  If the hotdogs or hamburgers aren’t already put on buns, the gluten free person will have a much easier time eating.
• Keep dessert simple.  Most ice cream, especially the higher quality brands, is gluten free.  Do a container of vanilla (some of the additions can have gluten) and a container of a soy cream option (there are some really tasty ones out there) so people who are dairy free can indulge too.  Include some cut up fresh fruit and maybe other fun toppings so everyone can create their own dessert.  There are also some really good gluten free packaged foods available like brownie or cake mixes.  I have found these to be about as easy as other traditional mixes and quite tasty for both the gluten free and regular folks.
• Make sure you avoid cross-contamination.  Wash all pans, knives, measuring utensils, containers, or cutting boards that had something with gluten on them (like bread, soy sauce, flour, etc.) before using for something else.
• Don’t feel bad that you are serving a few things that contain gluten.  Most gluten free folks understand that the world enjoys gluten-containing products.  As long as there is enough to fill out bellies, we are happy.  If the meal is actually balanced where we can enjoy an appetizer, veggie, carb, protein, and dessert…it is our lucky day!
• Know that the gluten free person may have other food issues too so it is helpful to consult with them (and really with all guests) so you don’t inadvertently avoid gluten but put in something else that can be equally harmful or that they plain don’t like or don’t eat for religious reasons.  Many people have allergies to particular tree nuts, dairy, preservatives, artificial colorings, or tropical fruits.

Here are a few things to make sure you avoid, keep completely separate, or ask the gluten free guest if they have a gluten free version they can bring along for the meal.

• ALL wheat flour and products containing wheat flour (enriched, whole wheat, cracked wheat, white flour, all of it)
• soy sauce (this one surprises most people)
• multi-grain chips or packaged, pre-seasoned rice dishes
• pastas
• spelt, barley, rye, graham, kamut, semolina, durum, triticale grains or flours
• licorice (another surprise)
• oats (some gluten free folks can tolerate them)
• beer (there are gluten-free options, some taste horrible; I like “Red Bridge”)
• breadings/coatings
• cereals
• vegetarian meat substitutes
• self-basting poultry

Know that “wheat free” does not mean gluten free.  Here is a simple menu you can see as an example of what to serve:

Appetizer: Veggies and dip (keep the container handy), hummus with corn chips (keep the container handy), guacamole with corn chips

Beverages: Wine, sparkling water, and fruit juice

Main meal: Baked chicken with fresh herbs, salt, and olive oil; mashed potatoes and gravy (thickened with cornstarch); steamed broccoli with butter, salt and pepper; spinach salad with toppings and dressings on the side.

Main meal #2: Mexican feast with plain refried beans, non-seasoned chicken strips, and seasoned ground beef (keep the seasoning ingredients handy), corn tortillas, taco shells, and all your favorite toppings on the side so folks can build their own.

Dessert: Poached pears or baked apples.

Dessert #2: Fresh fruit with real whipped cream.

You likely already serve gluten-free meals and don’t even know it!  If you like to experiment, ask your guest for recipes or try converting some of your own.  Have fun and go easy on yourself.  Having guests for dinner is about enjoying time with you or guests, not stressing over the meal!

Technorati Tags: cooking gluten-free, gluten free guest

You are Gluten Free and Have a Dinner Invitation

When those of us who are gluten-free find ourselves in social situations that can be awkward.  For example, you are newly gluten-free and you are invited over to a friend’s home for dinner.  Or you have a company function to go to that involves food.  Or the holidays are coming and the highlight of the meal contains gluten.  It can get tricky to navigate while not starving or “gluten-ing” yourself.

When I was initially diagnosed as gluten-free I was told by my doctor to see how much gluten I could tolerate.  Initially I could tolerate small quantities of bread or soy sauce, but the longer I went without wheat in my diet, the more it affected me when I did have it.  So now I am almost 100% gluten-free.  The times I get gluten are purely accidental and I can tell by my body’s reaction within 24 hours.

Let me clarify that for those with Celiac they need to be 100% gluten-free (not “almost” as I said I am).  The places I am the most likely to get exposed to gluten are from cross-contamination (the restaurant uses the same prep space for a sandwich as for my lettuce wrap; a fellow guest puts the humus directly on their pita pieces and some bread crumbs end up back in the humus) or from small quantities of gluten in a dish that you wouldn’t think would have wheat in it (enchilada sauce frequently contains wheat; a little granola mixed in a yogurt parfait; nutritional yeast in vitamins or food).  For people with Celiac, they must be extremely careful l to not allow even the smallest amount of gluten into their diets so they need to be extra careful when eating at someone’s home.

When you have a dinner invitation to someone’s home, I suggest the following:

• Tell them right up front, “I have a serious food allergy, would you mind if we connected on the menu to make sure I know ahead of time what I will and won’t be able to eat?”  I have never had a host turn me down on this request, they always ask for more information.
• Try not to overwhelm them.  You are giving the “Cliff’s Notes” for ONE meal, not so they can cook gluten-free for the rest of their lives.  I never ask a person to have an entirely gluten-free meal (some friends choose to out of love, interest, and empathy, but I never ask).  I just try to make sure that there will be enough food there that I can eat without drawing attention to myself.
• Give simple suggestions and focus on the menu the host is planning on: Have all the ingredients for the salad separate so each person can put what they want on their serving and the croutons won’t contaminate the rest of the salad; Prepare my non-marinated chicken in the pan first (or on a separate dish) so it doesn’t get cross contaminated; Let me give you a bottle of some gluten-free soy sauce that you can use; Do you mind saving the packaging from prepared foods that I can look at before the dinner to check ingredients?; Could you put the cheese and crackers on separate plates?  On a side note, just because someone says, “I know all about gluten-free cooking because…”, still clarify your own gluten-free needs.  A friend once glutened me with spelt noodles because she thought gluten-free people can tolerate spelt.
• Offer to bring a dish, especially one that usually has gluten.  If you have a bread recipe you enjoy, offer to bring bread.  I often bring dessert too because so much dessert has gluten in it.
• Eat before the dinner party.  Even the most considerate hosts make mistakes and I find it better to arrive to a dinner party with a semi-full belly and eat less there than to be starving and get there to find croutons ON the salad and that all the meat got marinated in regular soy sauce.

It is important to be proactive and gracious.  We don’t want the host to go through a bunch of extra trouble for us but hosts want all of their guests to have a great time.  So speak up and help out the next time you are invited to someone’s home for dinner.

Technorati Tags: avoiding gluten, gluten free dinner invitation

Gluten-Free Lemon and White Chocolate Cookies

I found this recipe several weeks ago on a blog called  www.daringtothrive.blogspot.comby Laura Dennison and it looked really good.  What isn’t totally yummy about lemon and white chocolate?  I didn’t have a reason to bake them so I waited for an occasion and in the meantime bookmarked the page.  My opportunity to bake them came when I was invited to a tea and there was another gluten-free friend attending.  She also has a sensitivity to sugar so I knew I needed to modify the recipe.

I decided to use honey which changed the moisture content of the recipe so I adjusted the amount of flour.  Then, when I was mid-recipe, I realized my pantry was bare of coconut flour (oops!) so I substituted shredded coconut (after asking my food processor to do the impossible…make coconut flour out of shredded coconut).  So what you have here is a rather different version of Laura’s original “Lemon-Scented and White Chocolate Cookies” although still tasty and popular with the gluten-free and gluten-eating alike.

Combine together and set aside:

• 1 and 1/4 cup quinoa flour
• 1 cup tapioca flour
• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum

Mix together:

• 1 cup butter (softened)
• 1 cup honey (heated)

Add in to butter mixture and blend well:

• ½ tsp baking soda

Add to butter mixture:

• 2 eggs (warmed to room temperature)

Then combine butter mixture with:

• Zest of one lemon (zest the lemon first then juice it second, it’s easier and less messy)
• Juice of one lemon

Combine butter mixture with dry mixture (some folks prefer to do this in two or three parts, I am more of a “dumper” mixing it all in at once).

Then add:

• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 6-15 oz white chocolate chips or chunks

Use a tablespoon and knife to portion out the cookies.  Staggering rows of three my large stoneware cookie sheet held 15 cookies (5 rows).

Bake in a 350F oven for 18-20 minutes.  I remove them when the edges are beginning to brown then let them sit in the pan for another few minutes to finish cooking through before removing to the cooling rack.

The recipe made about a little over 4 dozen cookies.  The lemon and white chocolate cookies were so popular at the tea party I made them again for a recent holiday gathering and I took home an empty dish!

Technorati Tags: gluten-free cookies, quinoa flour cookies

Digestive Discomfort After Going Gluten Free

Initially my body felt better when I went gluten-free, and I wasn’t even 100% gluten free initially.  But going gluten-free doesn’t mean the end of digestive discomfort, sometimes it means that it is beginning a new phase in understanding our bodies and helping to repair the damage that has been done by all that gluten.

If someone is gluten-free or has Celiac and they are exposed to gluten, they will likely experience some discomfort, sometimes pretty severe discomfort.  That isn’t what I am talking about in this post.  Certainly if a person has gone gluten-free and they have discomfort, the first thing they should look for is if gluten slipped into their diet somehow.  After a thorough investigation, there remain several possibilities.  I will focus on three today:

Sugar.  Most people who have been diagnosed with a gluten-intolerance and all people who have Celiac have damage in their intestines.  Sugar seems to really cause problems with an already-sensitive digestive system.  I have noticed for myself that I can no longer tolerate eating sweets by themselves.  If they are part of a meal or have some more substantial food incorporated into them I am usually okay.

This varies from person to person with some people finding they are fine with honey and agave but not with regular sugar or corn syrup in any form.  Other people find that honey affects them as well.  I am not going to get into the science behind how sugar is produced and how it interacts in our bodies.  Just consider that if you are still having digestive discomfort that it may be related to sugar consumption.  Experiment, keep a food journal, and see if you see a link.

Besides, our bodies do not need the level of sugar consumption that is encouraged in these modern days.  You will likely be healthier overall if you reduce your sugar consumption, whether you are having digestive problems or not.

Artificial Sweeteners.  Even before I went gluten-free I noticed that if I had a diet pop (soda for you outside the midwest) I would get stomach cramping within an hour or two.  I didn’t drink diet pop very often and after I noticed the link I stopped drinking it completely. 

I am not comfortable with all the processing and chemical modification that takes place to create artificial sweeteners, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea for our bodies.  That being said, each person needs to make their own choice and I certainly have enough of my own quirks that I am not going to judge you for drinking aspartame or splenda.  Just consider that if you are having digestive problems and you are consuming artificial sweeteners they may be a cause.

Another Food Intolerance.  Some folks have challenges with lactose, corn, soy, or eggs, to name a few.  There is always the possibility that your body is reacting to another ingredient.  See your medical professional to determine if this might be the case.

There are many other causes of digestive discomfort including food poisoning, gallbladder issues, and viruses.  Always listen to your body, look for patterns, and seek medical attention, especially if the symptoms are severe or last for an extended period of time.  When you aren’t feeling well it is difficult to be at your best.  Take care of yourself so you can participate in life the way you would like to!

Technorati Tags: digestive discomfort, other causes of stomach pain