Here is our dinner menu for our 1st 2 weeks starting gluten free:
1. BLT salad with hard-boiled egg, roasted potato wedges, sliced fruit
2. Chicken alfredo on twice baked potatoes, steamed broccoli
3. Chicken Divan (chicken & broccoli layered dish), with rice (made extra into a freezer meal)
4. Pancakes (I bought a gf mix at the store and made the whole bag; froze the leftover pancakes in single layers with wax paper in between), scrambled eggs, bacon, oj
5. Taco salad with shredded beef, tomatoes, homemade salsa, guacamole, cheese, tortilla chips
6. Pork Verde, salad, tortilla chips, black beans
7. Pina Colada Shrimp and Rice
8. English Muffin Pizzas, salad, cantaloupe
9. Hot Dogs (bunless), baked beans, corn, fruit salad
10. Rotisserie chicken, potato wedges, mixed berries
11. Cheese Enchiladas (red for g-free hubby, tomato/spag sauce for kids), refried beans, corn, salad (made 3 pans extra for freezer meals)
12. Waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, oj
13. Maple glazed chicken, sweet potatoes, celery sticks
14. Chef Salads, banana bread
I started with only a pancake mix, and Pamela's Baking Mix. On Sunday after church, I made a batch of banana muffins that I filled with a dab of natural honey-roasted peanut butter, and a loaf of banana bread/loaf cake and added some semi sweet chocolate chips too. I froze what the kids didn't eat that day, into individual portions and have been taking them out as needed.
I can't even eat what my family eats, so after making and preparing every breakfast, lunch and dinner the first week by myself, I added a few things that I didn't have to make from scratch or chop up(hot dogs, french fries, etc.,). For the most part, I have been altering what my family eats, so that I can make something that fits with Phase 1 Ideal Protein (I ate scrambled eggs with my 2 cups of veggies and salad, when my family ate pancakes and eggs. I had a chicken breast with a tiny little drizzling of enchiliada sauce on it and made my own "enchilada" salad with all my veggies on it when my family had enchiladas). Since I can't even taste any of the g-free stuff yet, I just resorted to buying Pamela's Baking and Bread Mix, instead of buying a whole bunch of different types of flours.
Since we started a g-free diet, this also meant no quick snacks for my kids' lunches (I hadn't made it to our g-free local store yet, just our regular grocery store and I have been trying to cut out sugary/high carb snacks that have no nutritional value. I didn't want to replace sugary gluten filled snacks, with gluten free sugary snacks.). Anyways, here are some of my school lunch ideas that we've done the last two weeks:
1. Rice Cakes Sandwiches (chocolate with PB or PB and Nutella, apple cinnamon with PB, sprinkle of cinnamon and apple slices, or Caramel Corn with PB and banana)
2. frozen string cheese
3. frozen simply gogurts
4. sliced fruit (whatever coordinated with the RC Sandwiches above, or grapes, cantaloupe, etc.,)
5. prepackaged carrots with g-f ranch
6. PB (Jif makes the small individual sizes, although I'd prefer the amount to be a little less b/c my kids never eat the whole thing and just throw some of it away, atleast that's what they have done before going g-free when we tried them at home) with anything you could dip into the PB: bananas, celery, apples, mini rice cakes
7. trail mix
8. dried fruit
9. applesauce/fruit cups/jello cups
10. pudding
11. any of the homemade items that I mentioned above
12. Nacho bar (baggy of chips, with cheese, beans, salsa, etc., in a container)
Speaking of lunch, our breakfasts have been affected too. Here are a few ideas of what we have done for breakfast, and snacks:
1. fruit smoothie (flax seed added)
2. gf yogurt (Brown Cow is a great option b/c of the high protein). My #1 daughter wouldn't eat the honey vanilla by itself the first time (although the switch from yoplait to a greek style, high protein/low carb is a shock and I could understand her reaction). I made the rest of what she wouldn't eat into a strawberry smoothie and it was fine. My attempt at getting #2 to eat the yogurt was a little different....I added maybe a teaspoon of homemade strawberry jam and a chopped up strawberry and she practically liked the container clean.
3. bananas with PB and Nutella to dip
4. Babybel Cheese and sliced apples (my kids would polish off an entire Costco sized pkg of this cheese in one day, if I let them)
5. Chex cereal/EnviroKids Cereal (Winco had the two kinds of EnviroKids on sale for $1.98/box. Much better than the almost $5 I spent at the GF store)
5. hard boiled or deviled eggs
