How it started

We recently discovered, mostly by trial and error, that my husband, Mike, can't tolerate gluten in his diet. We are mid-diagnosis, so not completely sure yet if he has Celiac's Disease or not. Regardless, this has created a whole new lifestyle around our meals, snacks and drinking. Along with some other major life changes, getting married, moving to a new house and losing my job, this has been a year of change and adaptation. I thought it may be fun to track our progress of giving up gluten in our diet and trying new recipes and ideas so our family and friends can understand what we can or can't eat. It may make it easier on people trying to accomodate for him to know where we get our supplies and if I may say so myself, some of these recipes are pretty darn good regardless of if you like gluten! Also, maybe I will find some new G-Free friends to swap ideas with as we come up with them. Please feel free to share your ideas if you have any! I could use someone with more experience for sure!

We have been making small changes over a year period, like switching to brown rice pasta and getting rid of bread on his hamburgers but after learning how serious gluten could be for him if he did indeed have Celiac's, we decided to eliminate it completely from his diet (and mostly from mine as well). I am by no means an expert chef but I do all the cooking and we both seem to enjoy what I make. If anyone out there is interested in giving gluten free living a try, I hope some of my simple ideas may be helpful to their cause. We are trying to find a great balance in a household of one gluten free eater and one gluten light. All the dinner meals we share together are fully G-Free and most of my breakfast and lunches are as well, but occasionally I sneak in a real bread sandwich or some cookies. I should also mention that we chose to eat a diet that is mostly low in fat, high in vegetables and fruit, using lots of non gluten filled whole grains, almost never eat beef or pork (we generally use chicken, fish and turkey) and at least attempting to be well balanced. We try to have most of our meals include a protein, a starch and a vegetable (or five). At least once a week I try to have a vegetarian dish. We are also tying to eat at home as many days a month as possible and keep our grocery bills relatively low. I have been following several different food blogs that do one or two of each of these things but I haven't been able to find anyone else who has all those same criteria. Maybe there are lots more people out there who want the same things nutritionally though. Speak up! :)