Saving Money On A Special Diet
By kathy77
@kathy77 (7485)
Australia
March 18, 2007 1:46pm CST
Hi Friends and Members, This one was sent to me from my sister and I though that it was very good so I have sent it to you I hope that this can be of help to you.
We have children with multiple food intolerances and have learned that it is not necessary to pay high prices for gluten free and special diet foods. Gluten free food is most expensive if you try to replicate a typical Western diet, and it's very expensive to buy anything ready made or ready-to-cook mixes. If you get to really like cooking this way you can even save money! Takeaways are often off the menu and junk food at our house is rare. It is possible to have an occasional inexpensive night off; when planning to eat out, ask questions of staff so you can find a chip shop that cuts potatoes fresh and cooks them in suitable oil, and order chips only. Stock the pantry and fridge well with allowable foods that are affordable and learn to substitute ingredients. If a substitute is very expensive, such as soy cream cheese, just take it off the menu; chances are it will not even be missed. Try to take the emphasis off bread, biscuits and grains, and stick to rice and lots of vegetables. Other countries eat like this and they are very healthy. After a while you stop being sick of rice and we really look forward to it now! A few good ideas are creamed rice with sultanas, fried rice or leftover fried rice made into a bake with eggs and so on. Breakfast cereals can be really expensive, so you can avoid them and make hot rice with brown sugar, milk or soy. Purchase a rice cooker, if you don't already have one. We don't bother with bread much, or the expensive rice and corn thins which have little food value, instead we make a lot of pancakes out of buckwheat and so on. Cook meat and vegetables, or perhaps rice meals that the whole family can have for dinner and try to keep enough leftovers for lunch. Other lunch ideas which work well are soups, or baked potatoes, and some kids love easy sushi rolls for packed lunches; you can make them with kid-friendly fillings like avocado, cucumber and ham, just wrap it in plain rice and nori sheets. Spring rolls made out of rice paper with vegetables, rice noodles and so on are another popular choice.
2 people like this
5 responses
@shelagh77 (3643)
•
20 Mar 07
Thanks for that, but I would caution against re-using rice. I attended an informal lunch and was seated next to a chef and he told me that the majority of complaints about a curry causing tummy upsets were actually caused by rice that was heated too many times, apparently it breeds germs very successfully.
I copied this one too, hope you do not mind :-)
@kathy77 (7485)
• Australia
20 Mar 07
No I do not mind that you copied this but you know that you can only re-heat food two times that applies to all food otherwise you could end up with tummy upsets.
@1grnthmb (2055)
• United States
20 Mar 07
I am really happy to find this post. I was looking through your profile after seeing a couple of good recipies. I also have gluten intolerance (Celiac Disease)and have been living on the gluten free diet for twelve years. Unfortunatly I am the only one in our house with the problem but I am the one that does almost all the cooking. Because the gluten free products are expensive I have found a lot of substitutes. Instead of buying the pasta at the health food stores I go to asian markets and buy bags of rice noodles for under a dollar. I also cook a lot of rice (with much complaining from my wife)and have gone through so many rice cookers in the last twelve years that I have lost count. They do not seem to be made to last very long and you can usually can tell when they are going out when the rice does not fully cook when it turns off and stands for ten minutes. I buy rice in twenty pound bags see you get the idea how much rice we go through. I have to say that being on the gluten free diet my vegetable intake is now way above the daily recomended servings. Unfortunately I am not much of a fruit eater so that is lacking. I am also a big fan of using lettuce wraps in place of sandwhiches and thanks to all the low carb diets these can be found in a lot of fast food restaurants today. My favorite is Carl's Jr. where I can get just about any sandwhich low carb style and I have not had any bad complications from doing so. I do avoid their french fries because I have gotten sick from them because they use the same frier for all the fried foods. A side salad is so much healthier anyway. Another safe fast food resataurant is In-n-Out Burger with the protein style burger (not on the menu) and their fries are safe because that is the only thing cooked in the friers. I have found the Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Baking Mix (The one with the sorghum flour) to be the best flour to use in place of regular flour and you can make just about anything with it that calls for flour. Do not use it for cakes because it is to heavy. I have not found a good substitute for cake flour yet. The only other problem is that is does not raise like normal bread and you need to use zanthum gum in just about everything to substitue for the missing glutten so the bread products come out heavy. You also have to increase the cooking time some th adjust for the different flours used.
@kelly60 (4546)
• United States
20 Mar 07
Very interesting discussion. Though we don't have an actual food alergies, my son has some undiagnosed stomach problems that we are still trying to determine the cause of. We have tried many different diets and maybe we will try some of the suggestions from your discussion while waiting for more tests to be done.
@bicklelady (1404)
• United States
18 Mar 07
Hi, that is so interesting. I wish I could learn everything about making from scratch. I know it would be healthier. thanks
