When you first find out you have serious food allergies, it’s really easy to immediately start looking for substitutes for the now-forbidden foods. We rush to the store and ask, “Where’s the gluten free baking aisle? Where are the cookies? Is a gluten free doughnut possible?” We buy everything that might allow us to keep eating the old familiar foods. Then we are often disappointed by sawdust-like texture, strange flavors, and exorbitant prices.
My friends, there is a better way.
Please don’t misunderstand me; I love to replicate my old favorites! But one of the unexpected blessings of a required change of diet is the opportunity to try out new foods. Take the soup in the above photo, for example. It is gluten free, dairy free and delicious! And it was thrown together out of random stuff in the cupboards. (recipe to follow!)
Take a food adventure this week. Try something new! Branch out beyond pizza, burgers and fries. 🙂
Here’s a few suggestions:
-Homemade Chili (recipe in next time’s post!)
-Quinoa (cooked like rice, in water or chicken broth, or eaten like oatmeal, with milk and some sugar)
-Amaranth (can be cooked like rice, pounded into flaked cereal, or popped like popcorn!)
-Chicken curry (or any meat!)
-Rice of many kinds (try long grain brown basmati for fried rice, shorter grains for rice pudding or risotto)
When the blindfold of “I CAN’T HAVE GLUTEN EVER AGAIN” falls over our culinary vision, it is easy to overlook the many things in our pantry that are naturally gluten free and delicious. Don’t panic! I know it is easy to do, but take a deep breath and reintroduce yourself to some of these lovely foods…..
-Eggs (a plethora of cooking options exist!)
-Nut butters (you can even grind your own!)
-Canned fish (I prefer salmon, in eggs or mixed with mayo or cream cheese)
-Salad (topped with boiled eggs, meat, cheese and a veggie rainbow–an excellent meal!)
-Chicken, Beef or Vegetable broth (I prefer organic varieties as the base to dozens of different meals)
-Fresh fruit, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese (together or separate, these all make excellent desserts)
Welcome back to enjoying food!
Quick Asian-Inspired Soup
Ingredients:
8 cups chicken broth
1 box MaiFun rice noodles (or your favorite thin rice noodle)
fresh ginger, sliced into 1/4″ slices
fish sauce (make sure it is gluten free)
garlic vinegar (rice vinegar would be good, too)
garlic (powdered or fresh, minced)
salt
cayenne pepper
sausages (optional)
Method:
Heat chicken broth in a large stock pot. Pour in some fish sauce and vinegar. Sorry that’s not very specific, but it depends a lot on your personal taste. I used about 1/2 a cup of vinegar, but I LOVE “hot and sour” soup in Chinese restaurants, so I made our soup pretty vinegary. You might want less. Or maybe more! I used about a 1/4 cup of the fish sauce, or maybe a little less. Toss in your ginger slices. If you want to leave the ginger in the final soup, you should peel and dice or julienne it before adding. Otherwise, just slice off a few pieces and toss them in. (We keep our ginger in the freezer–it stays good a long time that way, and the fresh stuff tastes much better than powder in this kind of food!) Sprinkle on a little garlic powder, or stir in a couple cloves of minced garlic. Then add a dash of cayenne (or a bit more if you are so inclined) and salt to taste. Let it all heat and steep for a little while (5-10 minutes). Now, taste! Adjust flavors as needed.
When the broth tastes perfect, you are ready for the noodles! Before you put them in, remove any unpeeled ginger and bring the broth to a boil. Add the noodles to the boiling broth and continue to cook for a few minutes. (Read the directions on your noodles, and treat the broth as the water in those directions.) When the noodles are soft, serve!
We sliced up a few sausages (chicken and apple for the dairy free folks, artichoke and cheese for us dairy-eaters) and cooked them in skillets while the broth was steeping, then added them to the soup just before serving.
You could also add…
-shrimp
-waterchestnuts
-mushrooms
-green onions
-julienned carrots
-tofu
-eggs (beat, then slowly pour into broth–before adding noodles–while stirring with a chopstick or spoon handle)
-pork
-chicken
-anything else you like….the sky’s the limit!
What are some of your favorite foods?
notjustwaiting 