Looking Forward to Another Great Gluten Free Year

I've only been Gluten Free for about three years, but I don't need to make any New Year's resolutions to keep it that way. If I eat wheat, barley or rye, I'll get very, very sick so I'm not tempted. However I'm planning to continue to improve my diet and health, and to find the best ways to eat food that tastes good and is good for me.

Less Rice
Some authors (such as Phyllis L. Potts in the book Going Against the Grain: Wheat-Free Cookery ) say that people who have allergies or an intolerance for wheat, barley and other grains are especially likely to develop additional allergies toward still more types of grains. For this reason they should not switch to only one other type of grain, but should use several different kinds of grain to avoid this. I use a lot of rice and rice noodles, but if I became allergic to rice products I would be in big trouble. It would be better if I found more substitutes for rice products.

Alternative Grains
I need more ways to make millet and buckwheat appetizing. Millet is good as a substitute in rice dishes, as long as the recipe has a strong flavor like curry. Buckwheat is not very useful, but I think there is a Russian recipe for buckwheat biscuits that I might like. Quinoa noodles come in the form of spaghetti noodles for $2.25 a box and I like those, but lately they have been giving me a very bad stomachache. And I have no clue what to do with teff. I need to find more alternative grains, and good ways to fix them.

More Baking
I've tried most of the fake breads that they make for gluten free people, and I don't like them (rice flour bread--gah!) and besides they are very expensive. Baking is easy and cheap, but it can be more trouble than I want to bother with. Still it's inexpensive to make a dozen small muffins and toss a few of them in the freezer to take out later for breakfast, and I could do this at least once a week with this easy fluffy cake recipe. I like this recipe because it only has about five ingredients and it can be made in the microwave. It can be either sweet or savory so it works for sweet cake or it can be used to make dumplings to go with soup for dinner.

Dry My Own Mushrooms
I like dried mushrooms because they add flavor to tasteless foods like millet and rice noodles, but buying them is expensive. Something like a northwest mix which has porcini, lobster mushrooms, morels and black trumpets is really good, but it costs $4.50 for one half of an ounce. Of course, that's convenient but it would not cost much to buy the mushrooms fresh and dry them on a piece of string like people did in the old days. The dried mushrooms can be kept in the freezer, and then just a few taken out and added to bland foods like rice noodles. Mushrooms do not have any particular health benefits that I know of, but they don't do any harm either and they are very easy and tasty, for less money.

Less Expensive Foods
It's incredibly expensive to eat gluten-free, even though it is much healthier. One of the critically necessary foods for gluten-free people are the various kinds of flour made by Bob's Red Mill (Disclaimer: I don't own stock in this company or have any other relationship to them). These folks make packages of garbanzo bean flour, millet flour and other kinds of flour that I use all the time as substitutes for wheat flour, but they are a little pricey. I certainly use them for the standard muffins and biscuits, but I would like to find ways to bake without paying $2.50 a pound for the flour--at least some of the time. Short of grinding my own grains, I'm not sure how I can best stretch these items.

Less Meat and Dairy
I like meat and I think I need the protein, but I don't think I need the associated fat and chemicals, and it makes me sad to eat animals. It's also really expensive, both to me and possibly to the environment. I would like to find more ways to eat vegetables that are not too bland, and I need to find better sources of protein, since I'm not too keen on soy products and cannot eat whole wheat.

Fewer Beans
Beans are Good For You! Beans and other legumes (peas, lentils and chickpeas) often fill the place of grain products for people who can't eat whole grains, because they help things along if you get my drift. But too many beans are not socially acceptable. They have a good level of protein and I like them, but enough is enough! So I would like to find other replacements for beans in my diet so that I am not as dependent on them.

Five Vegetables
This is one of my favorite easy meals to make using five different kinds of vegetables: 1) roots like potatoes, 2) orange or yellow things, like squash, carrots or sweet potatoes, 3) onion-type things for flavor, 4) green leaves like spinach and broccoli, and 5) legumes, especially fresh green beans or peas. These can be cooked easily and I am resigned to spending 20 minutes to wash and cut them up, but I like this because I can pick different vegetables depending on what is available at the time of year. This adds variety without having to break out the cookbook. But by itself, Five Vegetables is a little bland and I would like to find better ways to flavor it other than by adding chicken or a bucket of butter.

More Fruit
Like most Americans, I will only eat apples, bananas and an occasional orange. It's not our fault, it's just that the fruit that is available in standard grocery stores here is so bad. The major grocery chains buy it for it's color and shininess and hardness (necessary for shipping), not taste, so it's hardly edible. When I first went to Europe, I was amazed at how good the fruit was. I went from town to town, buying whatever they had in the markets and it was fabulous. Of course it was disgusting looking; the pears were brown, the cherries were black and the apples were all speckled and stripey and never were they either red or yellow. Now I am more open to eating funky-looking fruit but it helps to memorize favorite varieties and stick to those. I like gala apples, and golden delicious apples, but not red delicious apples which have a bitter skin, a mealy texture and no flavor at all. Those hard, green Bartlett pears that you can break a tooth on don't please me, but I like juicy golden pears with French names, comice, bosc and d'anjou. I plan to eat more fresh fruit in season but I have to work to overcome my reluctance.

Be a Locavore
I'm trying to be a locavore--someone who eats food grown locally and in season. I'm not obsessive about it and I like to use spices and flavors from foreign countries, like cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and chocolate as a treat or a flavoring. But there is no need for people in the US to eat meat imported from Europe, or gala apples from New Zealand in the summer though they are very good. And there is no need to eat fresh cucumbers and tomatoes from Mexico in January, though they are good too, and I am not going to live off turnip greens all winter. I find it helps to shop at the local health food store which has their fruit and vegetables conspicuously marked as to what is local and I can recognize the names of the farms. They also have their meat marked as to which farm it is from. I know those farms are nearby and I trust them a little bit not to feed their animals a ton of antibiotics if they are supposed to be organic, or make them stand in a miserable stockyard for six months to fatten up. Decisions about eating locally have implications beyond anyone's personal health and determine how we interact economically with people in other countries. Are we turning farmers in poor countries into plantation labor? I don't want to do that, so I am trying to buy food from farmers and dealers who have a responsible attitude toward their sources.

Inulin Crops: Sunchokes, Tuckahoes, and Camas
These plants were important foods for Native Americans and were widely cultivated by them. Inulin crops have a form of starch that does not cause spiking in the blood sugar of diabetics, in contrast to traditional sources of starch such as wheat and barley and white potatoes, so these foods may be healthier for some people.
Sunchokes or Jerusalem Artichokes are extremely easy to grow and they can be eaten raw. Unfortunately, they don't store well, they don't have any real flavor and if they are cooked for more than a few minutes they melt down to a disgusting mush. I would like to find better ways to incorporate them in my diet in appetizing ways.
Tuckahoes grow wild in American rivers in huge matts and the roots or rhizomes can be used as a form of starch. I know that they can be grown in a pot of water like water lilies, but I don't know how and I don't know how to prepare them for food either.
Camas (pronounce the -s on the end, it's not camoo as in Albert Camus), is a kind of beautiful blue flower which grows wild in moist meadows. The bulbs can easily be dug and they produce a kind of flour. The Indians did this by roasting them in pits, like a clam bake but I don't know how to do this nor do I know how to prepare the flour as a food. Also I think the wild flowers might be protected, though the bulbs can be bought at Garden Nurseries. I have grown the flowers in the garden which is very easy but I have never tried to harvest them. I would like to learn more about all of these foods.

Gardening
I plan to have a garden again this year. Anything grown in the garden tastes better than food bought in the stores, and it's better nutritionally because it's perfectly fresh. Gardening is good exercise and anyway it's fun. I can harvest food from my garden twelve months of the year, so I plan to start planning my garden for this year in January and I look forward to fun and good food all year long.

I want to eat well but I have to be realistic about how much time, money and effort I am going to spend on food every day. I'd like to eat less meat which is difficult because meat is one of the easiest foods for gluten-free people to manage. And I'm planning to learn how to prepare more foods, but without turning the process into something so difficult and complicated that I fall back on unhealthy or unacceptable alternatives. In this way I hope to find better ways to improve my diet, and to make sure that it is appetizing so I am not tempted to have a pint of Ben and Jerry's for dinner. Because of course, I never do that!