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Gluten Free Cookbook? (GF Guide for Dummies?)
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I know, I know…another post on gluten free? I had read them a while back, and had stopped reading them because I thought they didn’t apply to me and I had nothing to add since I was a gluten free illiterate
…but I just started reading them again…and I think a few of us in our family may have an issue. I’ve just spent some time researching symptoms that rang true to me from another GF post…although I think maybe we have more of a wheat “allergy”. I think we could benefit from going gluten free anyway since I really don’t see any great nutritional contribution that the gluten adds to the diet.My son goes crazy after eating anything containing wheat and then has irritability then tiredness, my youngest dd gets the nose bleeds and has the tiredness and itchy legs, and my oldest has a weird mild itchy rash I’ve recently discovered on her back. They all have dark circles under their eyes. And I have this weird swollen throat feeling, irritability and severe lethargy after eating wheat. I’ve just put all of this together and I’m rather embarassed I didn’t do it before! We can’t afford testing right now, even if we could dh probably would not believe in the purpose of it so…is there a good guide book that would help me understand and help me avoid and help me bake gluten free?…one good comprehensive book?
Believe it or not, there actually is a gluten-free book in that “….for Dummies” series. It’s called Living Gluten-Free for Dummies. Two of our local libraries have it. I haven’t read it myself, but I just might pick up a copy to look over.
Hi I have read that book and it is a very good one! Definitely a good read for beginners!
Heather, I have a sensitivity to wheat also. I get stuffed up and nose running w/in 20 minutes of eating it! I feel yuck for a while and then it wears off. I am really trying to do GF again! I have done it off and on. But mainly stay away from wheat. However, I am able to eat Ezekial bread from the Natural Frozen Foods. Not too much ..but enough to have a veggie sandwich in the week!
I also need to get my ds off of wheat. He gets very angry at times after having it. Not always. I am not sure if it is the grains turning to sugar quickly or if he is just sensitve to it. But come to think about it ..it prob is the gluten. He cannot eat oatmeal w/ out having a breakdown afterwards. I know that aounds NUTS! But, I have tested my theory and decided no more oats!! I have to feed him a protein at each meal also. So it might be a combo of blood sugar and sensitivity to gluten!
Well, I have rambled enough! LOL Good luck!
As far as cookbooks go, I have been using 100 Best Loved Gluten-Free Recipes by Carol Fester, Simply Gluten-Free Desserts by Carol Kicinski, and The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book by Roben Ryberg. So far there is only one recipe I’ve tried that I didn’t care for.
I have been on and off gluten for the past couple months, but as January 1st, our whole family is gluten free. It takes some time to get the hang of it. I feel like I have to learn how to cook and bake all over again! Lots of new flours I never heard of before, and strange sounding ingredients!
My husband has Crohn’s disease, so that is a major reason we are going without gluten. A book that I’ve heard good things about is Wheat Belly. Don’t know the author. It goes beyond gluten, but you could take a look at that one.
I am trying to find the 100 Best…..cookbook by Carol Fester, but it’s not available at any of our libraries and I can’t find it on Amazon. @ alice, do you have the ISBN number for it and would you be so kind as to post it?
I’ve been looking online at our library catalogs, and wouldn’t you know it? The Living Gluten-Free for Dummies book is checked out and on hold for someone else. A lot of the gluten-free books are checked out, so this is really a big topic these days. There are others, though, that I am going to borrow to look over. One is a book called, Gluten-Free Kids : Raising Happy, Healthy Children with Celiac Disease, Autism, and Other Conditions, by Danna Korn. She’s the same author of the “Dummies” book. I’ll let you know what I think of it, or maybe someone else has read it and can comment.
Sure! Here’s the number 978-0-470-47583-6. I bought mine at Amazon here…
Hope that helps!
My MIL bought Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s book, The G-Free Diet, for me when we first eliminated gluten from our diet. It is not a cookbook, but it helped me get through the initial stage of the transition. At first, I only knew to avoid wheat, so we bought a lot of packaged gluten-free items. They were and are extremely expensive, but I was just learning and desperate. Prior to that, we didn’t buy any packaged, processed food, so even that was a big change for us! As I learned to bake and cook gluten-free, we weeded out the packaged junk and went back to a style of eating and cooking we were more familiar with. One of the ladies on this forum generously sent me two of her gluten-free cookbooks that she was no longer using, and they were a HUGE help to me: The Gluten-Free Kitchen by Roben Ryberg and The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy by Bette Hagman. Once I started cooking traditionally (out of Nourishing Traditions), I found my son and I could tolerate grains when they were soaked or sprouted prior to baking/cooking.
The one thing I would caution you in…grains (even gluten-free grains) are difficult to digest. If you are really looking to heal the gut and not just eliminate behavioral problems, dark circles, rashes, etc., you need to avoid grains altogether for a period of time. This gives the gut a break and allows it to begin healing. Just swapping out one set of grains for another will provide relief, but it will not provide healing. I’m not a doctor, but we’ve walked this road long and hard enough for me to be able to say that with confidence. And our family has experienced some of this healing, so I speak firsthand as well. Hope that’s helpful to you!
Blessings,
Lindsey
Thanks for the Amazon link, Alice. I don’t know why I couldn’t find it earlier. There are a lot of gluten-free cookbooks there. I even saw a couple called something like “Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking” and “Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes.” Wow, you can be gluten-free and trendy!
Thank you ladies for these book suggestions…@ Lindsay, I have a question about the “all grains” comment that you shared. Does this mean literally “all grains”?? Already, I rarely buy pre-packaged things, we eat lots of beans and fresh produce. I mill our wheat to make everything from stratch and even roll our oats and crack barley for breakfast cereal. We drink raw dairy and eat grass fed beef occasionally, but for the most part we’re not big meat eaters since quality animal protein is so expensive. I am wondering how you go from such a grain rich diet to no grain at all if you don’t mind my asking? Do you just eats fresh produce, eggs, dairy (if you can tolerate it) and meats? As shocking as that seems to me to type it out…it also offers me a sort of relief that it can be very simple…
Yes, Heather, we literally went from eating grains to not eating any grains at all for about two months. The ONLY reason we are on a “break” from this way of eating is the cost. I have evaluated it from every angle, and I just can’t figure out how to make it cost less. Before doing this, I also ground my own grain, sprouted wheat, soaked those grains to remove phytates, on and on and on. So, yes, I literally mean all grains. If you’d like me to give you the scientific explanation, I will; but that’s a lot! I heartily recommend you read Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.
What did we eat when we weren’t eating grains (or potatoes)? LOTS of eggs, bunless cheeseburgers, roast w/ carrots, TONS of soups with homemade bone broth, LOTS of winter squash, fresh-pressed juice, and I learned to bake muffins and rolls with almond flour and coconut flour. Thankfully, we don’t have dairy issues, so we love yogurt, smoothies with raw kefir, raw cheese, and sour cream. We snacked on a lot of soaked-then-dehydrated pecans, almonds, and sunflower seeds, apples with almond or peanut butter, butter fudge, bananas, dried coconut flakes, and the muffins I made with coconut flour. Although I don’t say we’re on GAPS, we are still mostly grain-free. The children eat oatmeal with breakfast 3-4 days a week, and we are eating organic corn chips with homemade, lacto-fermented salsa and guacamole. I am still not preparing grains (ie. soaking or sprouting), but plan to introduce those things VERY slowly in the coming weeks. We are having rice for the first time tonight! Of course, the rice soaked for more than 24 hours in a water-kefir mixture to break down anti-nutrients.
Let me know if I can help with anything else. I’m certainly not an expert, but have learned much from the School of Hard Knocks!
Blessings,
Lindsey
I have seen a few recommendations of books by Roben Ryberg, so has anyone gotten her book entitled, You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten-Free! : 500 Delicious, Foolproof Recipes for Healthy Living? This is another one I’ve stumbled upon at my library that I might pick up.
Somehow, 500 gluten-free recipes seems too good to be true, lol!
Thank you Lindsay. I’m still having a little trouble with the whole idea of no grains, but you’ve helped me to see it can be done. I’m not freaking out in panic anymore, just having some trouble wrapping my own mind around it!
I think what I’m going to do for right now is try gluten free first and then transition into breaking free of all grains later on. Since this is just a hunch I am having and not definitive results that I am acting on, it’s probably wiser to try it this way anyway.
I am going to check out some of these books mentioned and hopefully get a bit more educated on the subject…and I’m sure today’s grocery shopping experience will be most interesting!
Thanks again to everyone for your help!
@Lindsey –
I have a question that has sprung up after reading your post about what you ate when off grains. I get the value of bone broths (denser in nutrition, etc.), but 12yo ds (who has the most issues that would prompt dietary changes) does not like soup anymore. He has been refusing to eat soup for the past few weeks.
So, what other ways do you use bone broths for meals? Just looking for various ideas.
Thanks,
Sue
Yikes, Sue! Is there a way to use bone broth other than in soup?? The only other way we have ever had broth is on the side of our meal, in a mug. I have also heard of people taking their unseasoned broth, mixing it with freshly pressed juice, and freezing it in a popsicle mold. The flavor of the broth is masked by the juice, but you still get its benefits into your child. I never had to do that, as my dc will readily eat soup. You could also use the broth to make sauces or gravy. You wouldn’t get much broth into the children, but every little bit helps, in my opinion. I don’t know…that’s a tough question!
…but I just started reading them again…and I think a few of us in our family may have an issue. I’ve just spent some time researching symptoms that rang true to me from another GF post…although I think maybe we have more of a wheat “allergy”. I think we could benefit from going gluten free anyway since I really don’t see any great nutritional contribution that the gluten adds to the diet.
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