Food Restrictions: Attempting a Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free, Rice-Free Diet

The kids had a snow day today, so I had to plan two safe meals.

The oatmeal will be used for baking, since my son didn’t care for a bowlful of oatmeal made with water. When you’re used to milk in your oatmeal, it’s hard to make the change, even if Mom does put in extra brown sugar.

I made quinoa-banana muffins from the back of the quinoa flakes box. Everyone tried one at lunch, and no one liked them. The birds are seeming to enjoy them, though, although with all the snow we have they don’t have many other food choices.

Next attempt was chocolate tapioca pudding from the tapioca box. To its credit, I don’t think it was the tapioca that was the problem, but making the pudding with coconut milk after being accustomed to dairy. The Enjoy Life chocolate chips were really good, though. I liked them better than Hershey’s or Nestle’s semi-sweet chips.

Today was buckwheat day, so I made buckwheat-potato pancakes, which had both buckwheat flour and potato flour in them. The batter, and the pancakes, were very thick, but boy-who-needs them gobbled up two in a jiffy. They weren’t hits with anyone else, so I put the rest in the freezer for future school lunches.

For supper, I made vegetable soup with safe vegetable broth, some frozen soup vegetables, a can of mushrooms, cut-up leftover roast beef, and some millet thrown in the last 10 minutes. I purposely undercooked the millet because I’m not sure what will happen with the leftovers. I didn’t want it to get too thick. My husband really liked the soup, and he’s not a fan of vegetable soup normally. The boys, who aren’t big on vegetables, didn’t do too badly either.

The kids are still working on the chocolate cake from a few days ago and it’s almost gone.

Coconut milk is not a hit with anyone, even if we put chocolate in it. That’s all right for now, as I can used the canned variety for baking and not have to drive to buy the chilled version. We’ll reintroduce soy in a few weeks, so hopefully soy milk will be a better alternative.

One of my friends commented that we’re getting to experiment with new recipes and new grains in a wheat-filled world. That part is very true, and with some successes it will get easier.