OT: grain free eating

This is my Pinterest board for grain-free, dairy-free recipes (also tomato-free because one son has an allergy). Unfortunately, many have almond flour so you’ll have to skim over those. I always write a review as to how my family liked it or didn’t in the comments section.

As far as I know (and I’m not an expert) there is no straight across substitution for almond flour…if you use coconut it has to have more eggs. If you use a gluten-free all-purpose mix, then it’s totally different. I’ve never tried any of the other seed flours so I can’t really help there either.

I don’t have either Against All Grain cookbooks, but they are on my list of ‘wants’. She has a lot of recipes on her website to get you started. I also really like Empowered Sustenance, Oh She Glows, Spunky Coconut, and My Whole Food Life. There are many others I follow, but these are the easiest and I’ve really liked their recipes.

I have 4 boys, plus obviously homeschool, so I too want to get in and out of the kitchen! I like simple, fast, and hopefully not too expensive.

I avoid grains mostly because I follow the nutritional balancing diet as closely as possible. White rice is something that is allowed occasionally. My son and I both have non-celiac gluten intolerance, so that’s another reason we are always gluten-free, but grain-free makes it even safer. Also, I tend to be very hypoglycemic, and I have found that keep my diet low in simple starches like rice, tapioca, and potatoes makes sure that my blood sugar stays stable. I also don’t eat fruit, except low-glycemic berries, and no honey or sugar. My preferred sweetener is stevia since it does not affect my blood sugar. We rarely eat beans or other legumes, and my diet is low in nuts. Yes, our grocery bill is quite high for our small family, but it is the norm for us now. I don’t know that it’s very possible to eat this way and have a low food bill. 🙁

We are not low-carb, although it probably sounds like it. We eat a lot of vegetables as our carb sources, especially sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, peas, carrots, and others. Those foods do provide enough carbs because I eat 1-2 cups of veggies per meal. My meat portions are very small compared to my veggie portions. I have a spiralizer, so we do a lot of “noodles” out of zucchini and sweet potato. I feel like our meals are very simple, because it’s almost always a protein and veggies. I just change the way I cook it to give us variety.

ETA: I’m posting from my phone and can’t link here, but my Pinterest name is Lindsey Dietz. I have a grain-free main dishes and sides board and a nutritional balancing board. Both have many, many grain-free, high-veggie recipes.

We eat grain-free in an attempt to help heal my sons from an auto-immune disease. I have Type 2 diabetes as well. We originally eliminated all grains and dairy so we had a cleaner slate in order to better determine what was causing one son’s ticks, temper tantrums, uncontrollable sobbing and such. Within a week or two of no grains his ticks stopped and his behavior gradually improved. We’ve been no-grain now for 6 months, but have sucessfully reintroduced rice and oats and quinoa. Each month we add one new thing in to see how he and his brother react. We too eat a ton of vegetables (no restriction for my kids; less starchy for me). The kids eat a lot of fruit, but I limit both my quantities and types due to the diabetes.

I found that it took me a good 4 or so months before I felt comfortable cooking like this and that I had my feet under me.

I also have hypoglycemia problems… Like caedmyn, I’ve found that lots of butter (or coconut oil, etc.) with my starches really balances the blood sugar effects.  It was a dramatic difference the first time I tried a bowl of rice loaded up with butter, vs plain like I used to have it (yes I love rice…)  No spike-and-crash at all!  Protein with it is good that way, too.

I understand people have lots of reasons for avoiding grains!  Just wanted to throw out white rice as an option, as many of the diets out there (primal, celiac, and Perfect Health Diet for example) consider white rice acceptable–especially if you really need to keep your budget down while providing filling meals.  (I know primal doesn’t technically include white rice, but blogs like Mark’s Daily Apple suggest it as an acceptable food if you need cheap calories.)  In my case, I tend to struggle with being underweight, and we’re on a tight budget, so a lot of white rice (loaded with butter, or cooked with some coconut milk) is one way I get extra cheap calories.  Of course that’s balanced with a lot of the good stuff!  But pure primal can be pricey!