At first going gluten and lactose free seems impossibly overwhelming. I love to cook. Our family loves to eat. Food is a central part of our family memories and celebrations. Giving up our traditions of blueberry pancakes on Saturday mornings, homemade dips, nachos, or fruit cobblers Sunday night after church, and homemade pizza or stromboli on weekends seemed like the end of the world.
After we started processing the changes though, we agreed that rather than cook twice for every meal it was easier to find things we could all eat and enjoy. We also realized that much of what we were eating would work fine, simply because we were “foodies.” We had piles of recipes to work with and we were used to cooking from scratch! The hard part would be to stop obsessing over the foods Esther couldn’t eat and work on finding yummy substitutes.
If you are just starting out, as we were a few months ago, this is a summary of those first few steps:
The easiest way to start is to forsake all processed foods. That has a double bonus of also cutting out chemical additives that are hard on your system. Go for “real foods,” that is, foods in their natural state that can be cooked and eaten simply…organic if you can get it. And of course, no dairy or wheat/rye/barley. Lean meats, fruits and vegetables, legumes of all kinds (navy, pinto, kidney, black, white, lentils, garbanzo beans are full of fiber and protein and iron and are easy on the digestion), rice, corn tortillas, olive and vegetable oils, all are healthy and easy to cook with if you like “cooking from scratch.” Ethnic recipes, particularly Mexican, Asian, and Mediterranean, are very useful, but even just good old-fashioned meat, potatoes and vegetables fit the bill just fine. The hardest thing to get used to is losing the dessert and snack foods, breads, and Italian foods if they are a favorite (they were one of ours!)….but if you think about it, those are all things that are caloric and high in sugar and fat, so in the long run you are better off! (And actually, many people who are lactose intolerant can handle cultured lactose– cheeses and yogurt– better than they can straight dairy, so at some point you can experiment with the cheese thing. For starters you’ll probably need to stay away from any milk products whatsoever.)
This has become Esther’s favorite breakfast cereal, that she cooks in her college dorm’s kitchen.
