Easy Gluten-Free Cooking on a Budget

It's only in the past year that I have really gotten the hang of meal planning. I still fall off the wagon - often - but meal planning is becoming more of a habit. Now that I am seeing some benefits of meal planning, I'm starting to enjoy it a lot more. When I first started meal meal planning, however, I was very frustrated. It felt very overwhelming to think of all of the meals I wanted to have each week, what ingredients I would need for each meal, and how much each meal would cost at the grocery store. Now I realize that meal planning is the same as every other skill - it takes time and practice to get the hang of it. If you feel stressed out at the very thought of meal planning, take a deep breath. You CAN do it, and I hope this hub will help motivate you to try it!

"But what about gluten-free meal planning?" you might say. You might even whine - I understand. You're right that gluten-free meal planning is more of a challenge. The good news is, it's only really a challenge at first. Once you have a handle on the gluten-free diet and have a repertoire of a few standard gluten-free meals under your belt, gluten-free meal planning is no more difficult than regular meal planning. One strategy that works for me is to NOT plan out the entire week in one go. I tend to plan out just a few days - usually three - at time. Going to the grocery store two or three times a week is just fine with me, so planning three days rather than a week is still a big time-saver. I hope that one day I will work up the courage to plan meals for a week, and do just one "big shop" a week!

To give you some meal-planning inspiration, in this Hub I am going to share what a typical gluten-free day looks like for me. You will see that it's not tricky, or more expensive, than a regular day!

First things first: Coffee is gluten-free! HALLELUJAH!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway:

Breakfast is usually a grab-and-go meal for me. Like many people, eating right when I wake up makes me feel kind of ill. I'm also always rushing out of the house, so I don't have time to make anything very complicated. A typical breakfast for me includes:

1. A hard-boiled egg. I boil 6 or 8 eggs at a time, and keep them in the fridge. If you take your egg to work, you don't even have to wrap it - just toss it (gently) in your bag! Easy.

2. Dry cereal, like Honey-Nut Chex or GF puffins. Toss in a sandwich bag or small tupperware. If you eat this frequently, you could keep a big tupperware container at work, or even a whole box of cereal.

3. Piece of fruit - Anything portable, like a banana or apple. If you've always wished that fruit was more portable, check out this Stephen Colbert skit about PepsiCos new product, Tropolis, which is pureed fruit drink/snack. Good for babies, but for adults..?

I'm trying to incorporate more protein in my breakfasts, so something like peanut-butter on toast is also a favorite.

A gluten-free lunch is just as easy as a gluten-free breakfast. A typical lunch for me might include:

1. Leftover chicken from the night before, cut into chunks.

2. Salad, with chicken or a hard-boiled egg. Diced cukes, tomatoes, lettuce/spinach, green peppers, red peppers... whatever is on hand. If I am really organized, I will dice up a bunch of veggies that will last for a few days, which makes a quick salad a snap!

3. Apple slices and peanut butter, or almond butter. I LOVE this snack! It has protein and fiber, two things I am trying to eat more of these days.

4. GF granola bars or trail mix.

5. Leftovers. Any kind of leftovers are delicious for lunch. Just make a little too much for dinner, and toss the rest into a transportable container. Stir fry, chili, lasagna, etc.

6. Deli meats and cheeses, rolled. Roll up a slice of deli meat and a slice of cheese, and presto! A delicious snack or addition a meal.

7. Hummus and chips. There are so many tortilla chips that are gluten-free, naturally. One of my favorite brands of chips is Food Should Taste Good. They have so many delicious flavors, like Sweet Potato, Multigrain, Cheddar Cheese, and Olive. They also have a coupon on their site for $1 off.

8. PB and J with Udi's bread. Yum!

Many of these lunch ideas involve smaller amounts of a great variety of foods. Hummus and chips, deli meats and cheese, veggie chunks, apples with almond butter... it all adds up to a lot of packing materials. If using a lot of plastic bags bugs you, I highly recommend using a bento box. A bento box is any kind of container that is separated into many sections, all of which hold different foods. I don't own an "official" bento box, but I have numerous plastic (BPA free) containers that I use for lunches. I use wax paper or cupcake tins to separate the food. That way, I can stuff all sorts of odds and ends into a box and have a great lunch without all the plastic bags. Packing your lunch in a bento also encourages you to use up bits of food that you might otherwise throw out. Only have five grapes? Toss them in! Three slices of salami left? Roll them up and stick 'em into a bento. Who wouldn't want to add three slices of salami and five grapes to a lunch, anyway?

The great thing about gluten-free dinners is they are usually indistinguishable from regular dinners. If you make a meal that is "naturally" gluten free (meaning there are no subsitutions, like GF pasta for regular pasta), nobody will even comment. Chili topped with cheese, avocados, green onions and diced tomato, for example is a perfectly healthy, budget-friendly, and gluten-free meal. You can easily make cornbread to go with it that is gluten-free, either from a mix or from scratch. My cornbread, even when I was eating gluten, was nowhere near as good as the boxed variety, so I always bake cornbread from a mix. Now it's just a GF mix!

If you are nervous about cooking gluten-free, I hope this Hub has inspired you to go out there and do it! You may end up eating fewer baked treats and bread, but that is probably a good thing. If you're a good baker already, the challenge of GF baking should appeal to you. If you're extremely good at it, you could even start a GF baking business! Here in Boulder, it seems like one or two companies pretty much control the entire GF baking market in town. Every single coffee shop (and there are multitudes!) sell GF baked goods from the same one or two companies.