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| Gluten-Free Meal Planning Made Simple |
I'm not much of a meal planner.
While I do sort through the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry when making up the weekly grocery list, and jot down possible meal ideas on that list, I don't create a strict calendar and post it on the refrigerator like I've seen others do.
My personal health challenges don't make room for that type of structure. I'm more of an impromptu person when it comes to creating gluten-free meals.
However, I'm beginning to lose vestibular function in the right ear now, something that's common in those with Meniere's Disease.
I need to put together a few simple gluten-free meal ideas that I can use while the brain is adjusting to the additional loss of sensory input, especially for wet-weather days like today, when the vertigo is more intense.
If you need help creating your own easy gluten-free meals, follow along. You'll be surprised at just how simple it can be.
Find Your Gluten-Free Meal Plan a Safe Home
Having a meal plan saves time and money. I won't argue with that. Even jotting down possible meal ideas on your weekly grocery list will help to curtail the urges to buy, buy, buy while shopping.
It did for me.
Having a list also prevents those last-minute panic attacks when you've had a busy day and forgot to pull something out of the freezer for dinner.
If your meals are written down, all you have to do is look over the list of possibilities, provided you've stored the list in an easy-to-access place.
If it gets tossed out with the grocery list, which happens to me a lot, it's basically worthless. That doesn't mean you have to attach the list to the refrigerator, but you do need to find a safe home for it, so it doesn't get lost.
A Word of Caution About Meal Expectations
If you live in a mixed environment where most of your family members are not eating gluten free with you, meal planning will be a bit more chaotic, and cooking those meals will be more time-challenging than if you lived in a 100-percent gluten-free home like I do.
There's really nothing you can do about that.
Give yourself some slack, and don't expect the meal plan to always go smoothly without any snags.
Gluten-free meal plans can make your life easier, but the only reward you'll get for wanting a perfect menu, without any wrinkles, is disappointment when things don't go as smoothly as you had hoped.
It's okay to experience a few bumps now and then.
If the rice gets accidentally contaminated with gluten, for example, just put the rice into a container for the rest of the family and start over. You don't have to be upset.
Focus on what you need to do to correct the situation instead.
When you give yourself permission to be flexible and make last minute changes to your meals, the outcome won't carry the heavy emotional load it would if you nurtured your hurt feelings.
Having a less-than-perfect menu doesn't mean the whole meal is ruined. Focus on what's really important at meal time instead of the food.
If you keep those meal expectations in check, you'll always have a joyful meal, whether you stick to the original gluten-free meal plan or not.
What's the Easiest Way to Create Gluten-Free Meals?
When I used to work as a culinary specialist for a couple of different boys homes, I had to plan for 3 meals a day and 2 to 3 snacks, depending on each home's routine.
This was for teenage boys and their adult supervisors, so I had to give them a lot of food. In principle, the fewer snacks I offered, the larger the meals had to be.
To make the job easier, I leaned on the four basic food groups I had grown up with:
- protein sources (2 servings day)
- fruits and vegetables (5 servings day)
- starchy carbs (4 to 6 servings day)
- dairy products (2 to 3 servings day)
There was no food pyramid or a special committee telling you to overeat carbs.
In fact, if you look at how the food groups were broken down, the divisions and daily serving suggestions made meal planning easy. All you had to do was make sure that your meals included at least one serving from each of the 4 food groups:
- 4 to 6 ounces of meat or another protein source
- ½ to 1 cup of fruit or vegetable
- 1 to 2 servings of something starchy
- some cheese, yogurt, or a glass of milk
Unbalanced Nutrition is the Norm
Today, we've thrown good nutrition under the bus.
We ignore the fact that the encouragement to eat lots of whole grains initially came from a whole-grains ad campaign designed to increase their profits.
I find it interesting that the old Weight Watcher's Exchange Diet, patterned after the diabetic diet recommended at that time, only allowed 2 to 4 servings of grains and starches for the whole day, depending on your gender.
Set up similar to how the 4 food groups were divided, you were encouraged to eat the following per meal:
- 3 to 5 ounces protein
- 1 piece of fruit
- 1 cup vegetables or salad
- 1 serving of grain, bread, starchy vegetables, or less
- 1 serving of dairy, or less
But today, we're taught that if we eat that way, if we carve the carbohydrate level of our diets down to fit our personal carbohydrate tolerance level, we'll get seriously ill and be more prone to heart disease and strokes.
Those types of fear campaigns were basically unheard of when I was raising my kids.
A well-balanced diet meant the meal was balanced between protein, dairy, produce, and grains; it was not grain- or starch-heavy.
Create a Gluten-Free Meal List for Ideas
I'm not a purist.
Hubby and I love WinCo brand ice cream, so it shows up on the menu quite a bit.
However, the celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis we both share requires us to make the best nutritional choices we can most of the time. The cleaner our diet, the better the body likes it.
The level of gluten sensitivity you have will play a large role in the type of gluten-free meal list you come up with for your own family.
Since I'm a super-sensitive celiac, we eat very few processed foods compared to the average gluten-free family.
Where the average gluten-free individual can tolerate products with low-gluten residues of up to 20 ppm, consistently, I can't, so my sample lists below are going to look quite different from yours.
That's okay.
The idea is to populate your gluten-free meal list with simple foods that you and your family enjoy, making menu planning quicker and easier.
The examples below are meant to trigger your own ideas.
Begin by making a list of all of your favorite meals.
What We Eat for Breakfast on a Gluten-Free Diet
If you're new to a gluten-free diet, and don't know where to start, you can use these lists as a jumping off place to create your own list of gluten-free options. Just write down the meals you're used to eating.
You can clean the list up by substituting the risky ingredients with gluten-free choices later on, after you have a core list to start playing with.
For example, our favorite breakfast meals are:
- bacon and eggs, gluten-free toast, orange wedges
- ham and eggs, gluten-free toast, orange wedges
- sweet Italian sausage links, eggs, gluten-free toast, orange wedges
- scrambled eggs with leftover meats and veggies, topped with cheese
- scrambled eggs with chorizo, onions, and peppers in corn tortillas
- fried potatoes topped with a couple of fried eggs and homemade salsa
- mashed potato patties, bacon, eggs, orange wedges
I do have a good recipe for gluten-free hamburger buns, that will last on the counter for a few days. Originally, I used whole-grain flours in that gluten-free bread recipe, but it can also be made with white-rice flour and safe starches instead.
The buns work great for toast, but I don't always have the buns around. When I do, I usually save them for burgers and salmon patty sandwiches instead.
Hubby is able to tolerate whole grains like brown rice and sorghum flour. He doesn't do well with quinoa, but that has to do with his digestion and not the dermatitis herpetiformis.
His favorite gluten-free bread is Sam's Choice, available at our local Walmart. It is certified to be gluten free, 10 ppm or less, and produced in a gluten-free facility. But it contains sorghum flour, so I can't use it.
Sam's Choice bread is very soft, freezes well, and tastes like regular bread. Unlike other brands of gluten-free bread that go stale in the freezer or fall apart once you thaw them out, this gluten-free bread makes breakfast and lunches for hubby much more convenient.
When hubby was laid off for awhile, we also ate hot soup or fried rice for breakfast, and sometimes, leftover tacos, quesadillas, or beans in corn tortillas with cheese.
Additional choices might be:
- homemade gluten-free pancakes
- homemade gluten-free muffins
- homemade gluten-free waffles
- gluten-free breakfast cereal with milk and fruit
Hubby often eats Honey-Nut Chex cereal for a snack instead of breakfast.
What We Eat for Lunches on a Gluten-Free Diet
Due to hubby's job, when we lived in Utah, lunch was always the same thing:
- smoked shredded pork mixed with a chipotle honey mustard sauce on gluten-free sandwich bread
- homemade cheese sticks: swiss, pepper-jack, or cheddar
- sliced sweet red pepper strips, peeled cucumber wedges
- banana or chocolate pudding cup
- hot soup in a thermos
- potato, bean, or gluten-free macaroni salad
- fruit salad or fruit cocktail
- oranges cut into wedges
- pickles or olives
- deviled eggs
- dip for his raw veggies
- chips during the summer
- bacon and eggs
- baked chicken legs with salad or veggies
- sauteed chicken breast with salad or veggies
- hamburger patty with salad or veggies
- main-dish salad with meat, eggs, cheese
- scrambled eggs with veggies
- homemade soup
- lettuce wrap sandwiches
- tuna or chicken salad on gluten-free crackers
For weekends, hubby was fond of Foster Farms gluten-free corn dogs, so that's what we usually had after shopping and running errands. Hubby really loves them.
Before we found the hot dogs, we used to have leftovers on the weekend, or maybe:
- organic corn chips and homemade salsa
- a cheese, salami, and rice-cracker plate
- a meal-type salad with meat, cheese, veggies
- tacos or quesadillas made with corn tortillas
Here in Texas, lunches are a bit different. Hubby now works where there is a microwave most of the time, so I can send him leftovers or a quesadilla. Sometimes, leftover taco filling and corn tortillas.
And the sandwiches are more varied because we now have a meat slicer and can make our own homemade lunch meat and sliced cheeses.
Since my gluten-free baking skills are getting better, I might send some banana bread, a marshmallow treat bar, or homemade chocolate chip cookies with him, as well.
What We Eat for Dinner on a Gluten-Free Diet
Dinner is where gluten-free meal planning gets more complex, but it doesn't need to be.
When I first went through the trials and challenges associated with Meniere's Disease, I was totally unprepared for what happened, so I made a lot of baked chicken for dinner because it was easy.
All I had to do was:
Arrange a few chicken legs and thighs in a 9 x 13 pan. Sprinkle them with Mrs. Dash, garlic power, seasoning salt, and pepper. I didn't measure because I was dizzy as heck. I just sprinkled it on kind of heavy.
I then dumped a can of green beans, including the liquid, over the chicken. Covered the chicken with foil, and baked it at 350 degrees for about an hour.
This makes a tasty chicken and green-bean dish, but 3 or 4 times a week was overkill.
Today, I have a much better idea of what's gluten free and what is not, so our simple meal plans have multiplied quite extensively:
- boneless ham slices, baked sweet potatoes, broccoli
- roasted chicken, rice with Sweet Chili Sauce, green beans
- cheeseburger on gluten-free rolls, lettuce salad
- salmon patty with homemade tartar sauce, fruit salad, peas/carrots
- fried rice with leftover meat, mixed vegetables, eggs
- flat-iron steak, baked potato, asparagus with cheese sauce
- pork chop, steamed carrots, lettuce salad
- sauteed chicken breast, cottage cheese and pineapple, corn
- roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions
- tacos with beef or chicken, homemade salsa
- oriental chicken soup with stir-fry veggies and Pho noodles
- quesadillas with corn tortillas, lettuce salad, brussels sprouts
- pot of beans with ham or bacon, onions and peppers, lettuce salad
Additional main dishes that can be too complex when I'm not feeling well, due to the vertigo and off-balance issues, but show up regularly on our dinner plate when things are fine are:
- enchiladas with chicken, beef, or pork, and homemade enchilada sauce
- chicken cacciatore over gluten-free pasta
- scalloped potatoes with pork chops
- oriental chicken or pork with pineapple, orange, or sweet-n-sour sauce
- stir-fried chicken with vegetables and a homemade teriyaki sauce
- chicken or pork lo mein, stir-fry vegetables, Pho noodles
- spaghetti or other gluten-free pasta with meaty tomato sauce
- chicken Alfredo with broccoli and Pho noodles
- Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes, homemade gravy
Simple rice noodles or sweet potato noodles (made with sweet potato starch) are available at oriental grocery stores and do not have to be soaked first.
The above menus and main dish dinner ideas are only a small sample of what you can do with your gluten-free meal list.
Optionally, you could make separate lists for side dishes, homemade gluten-free breads, desserts, and potential snacks to make meal planning even easier. Just shuffle the cards to keep things varied.
What We Eat for Snacks on a Gluten-Free Diet
Hubby isn't as sensitive to gluten as I am, so I fix all meals to fit my needs, and then hubby makes up for the lack in calories and carbs by grazing through the evening. This works well for us:
- homemade trail mix (pecans, dried cranberries, M&M's)
- Tootsie Rolls, Bit-O-Honey miniatures
- grapes
- apples
- baby tangerines or mandarins
- fresh melon
- cheese sticks
- baked goods
- cold cereal
I'm more likely to reach for a couple sticks of cheese or hard-boiled eggs that I always have on hand in the refrigerator.
If there's homemade pica de gallo or salsa that needs to be used up, I might have a small bowl of corn tortilla chips with fresh salsa.
We are able to get strawberries and blueberries from our local Costco, and sometimes, a few different types of melon from the Farmer's Market during the summer months. When we have bananas in the house, I always eat one of those with either my lunch or for an afternoon snack.
How to Use Your Gluten-Free Meal List
As I go through the week and see that we're running low on something, I jot it down on a tentative grocery list.
Then, on Friday afternoon, when finalizing the list, I check out the types of meat we have in the house, look to see if any produce is still in good shape, and check out the canned goods we have on hand to see if I have enough gluten-free food to put together a full menu for the next week.
Since we buy most things in bulk, I always shop at home first.
Next, I jot down the main dishes I'm thinking of on the grocery list in the upper right-hand corner, so I can refer to it in the store whenever I get the urge to buy more food than we need. If I get stuck for ideas, I will glance at the gluten-free meal list that I just created above to see what I might like to add.
Once I know what we're going to eat for dinner, I can work any ingredients we don't already have into the grocery list.
I will also check for items we tend to buy every single week, such as coffee creamer and what I need to make hubby's lunches.
A lot of our meals and recipes use foods that can be swapped out and replaced with what we already have on hand.
When I worked in the boys home, I had a separate meal list for:
- super-cheap
- average
- and high-cost meals
Those separate budget lists enabled me to keep a good balance between what I was serving, and enabled me to move through a tough week when funds were short and we needed to eat super-cheap every day.
If you live week-to-week, that might be a better option for you.
These ready-made lists can be added to as you find new ideas and experiment with new gluten-free recipes and products. Most of the foods we eat are just real food.
We use very few convenience products, due to the potential for cross contamination and gluten residues.
Make sure you use the lists as simply a guide.
Don't tie yourself down to your gluten-free meal list.
It isn't meant to be an absolute.
I don't confine myself to which day I'm going to cook what. I try to stay flexible, so I can take advantage of the summer's bounty and adapt my current recipes to fit what's going on with us.
If you get home late, for example, there's nothing wrong with chucking your entire menu and serving up a nice omelet with some summer fruit instead. I do the same thing when hubby works late.
The purpose of creating these lists is to help you be able to cook well-balanced gluten-free meals without having to give it a lot of thought and effort.
So what about you?
Got any tips on meal planning you'd like to share? I'd love to hear your ideas!
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