Hello I'm A Newbie

[Racheleona]

Hello, I just posted in the post diagnosis section, and then saw there was this teens only section, I just turned 19, and after 6 years of troubles with my health, my doctor and I have come to a conclusion to go gluten free since I display many symptoms, including having no menstration for almost 2 years! I really hope going gluten free will help correct a lot of my problems. Anyhow, how do you guys deal with having a busy school schedule, and continue eating gluten free? I'm starting school soon and don't know what to take for lunch or quick dinner cooking. Talk to you guys later!

[stargirl]

Hiya and welcome to the site. I'm 17 and I still live with my parents so it makes it easier for me to deal with food. I live in California and do a lot of shopping at Trader Joes and Lassens. I really like the EnviroKidz bars. They are made from rice and are either peanut butter flavored or berry. (They also have chocolate but I didn't like them) They have been a lifesaver for me when I'm on the run. It's also pretty easy to cart around fresh fruit or celery or peanut butter. All offer a quick energy boost and good protein. I also make lunchable style lunches by taking rice cakes, cheese, and sandwich meat and just putting them together as I eat them, since they get soggy when premade together.

[Racheleona]

Hello stargirl,

Thanks for all of your suggestions! I also am lactose intolerant so I can't have the cheese : ( My mom suggested that I could take soup for lunch as well, ( some of the organic canned soups are gluten and dairy free) or just take deli meat. This diet is going to be so hard for me considering my favorite foods are all what I can't eat, sandwiches, muffins etc. and my friends and I like to socialize by going out to dinner. I couldn't stop crying yesterday... I know you all obviously know what I am going through. I have to keep in mind that I will feel better by doing this. Thanks for your reply again stargirl

[lyndszai]

Hey Racheleona im 15 and also Lactose intolernt .You can still have some of your favorite things they mite just not taste the same.You can get gluten-free muffin at the grocery store.Some stuff you could take to lunch are sandwhiches on gluten-free bread,rice,tuna.If you like peanut butter than you can make peanut butter cookies.All you need is 1 egg ,1 cup of sugar ,and 1 cup of peanut butter(make sure the peanut butter is gluten-free),fruits,veggies,skittles, regular lays chips (they might come across contamination tho),veggie cheese (its lactose free) .Im not sure if any of this will help but its worth suggesting

Heres a topic someone made before it has lunch ideas

Open Original Shared Link

[Guest ~wAvE WeT sAnD~]

Hello Newbie!! Welcome to the bunch!

I've seen some great suggestions here! I was wondering, have you contacted your school's cafeteria? I've been working with mine, and things are going pretty well. At first, it takes a lot of patience when you're still educating the staff about hidden gluten, but eventually (and it's still an "eventually" in my case, since I'm newly diagnosed), life will be easier. Provide the staff members with plenty of celiac disease info/literature---promoting awareness is key.

Good luck in school!!!

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Hey, I am 19 and school has started up agin for me this week, waw. I usually take a snack with me on campus and eat at home. Though, if I get hungry I just go to the cafeteria and pick up some fruit and make sure I wash it myself before eating. When I get home I'll make things like egg sandwiches and salads or homemade fries (dosn't take too long) or hashbrowns and fruit. I am not sure how you feel but I love bananas and apples, mmmm. Quick things are just sandwichs I guess but if you plan out what you are going to do ahead of hand and have everything it will be easier.

Kristina

[Racheleona]

Hi Mysuicidalturtle, I love apples and bananas, I have tried the gluten free bread and really don't care for it : (, but I guess I could make wraps out of corn tortillas instead of sandwiches. Does just eating fruit keep you full? I get hungry quick after only eating fruit...(I guess peanut butter with them would add protein and prevent hunger for a little longer, right?)

[tarnalberry]

if it's just lactose intolerance, you might consider taking lactaid (pills) along with you, or using soy cheese that is lactose free if you want to option of having dairy.

[stargirl]

Don't worry about missing the foods you used to be able to have, we all do. I was the biggest breadaholic. I ate bread with every meal and my favorite snack was a flour tortilla with butter or a bagel. It gets easier after a while to see your old favorite foods being consumed by others and your brain adapts to the idea. When I see a bagel now I don't think about how good it would be but rather how sick it would make me. It makes it easier for me. I miss easily going out to eat with my friends too, I still do but it takes a lot more forethought and they can accidentally be really insensitive about where I can eat. I am also lactose intolerant so it does make it harder. But it can be done! Outback has a gluten free menu and even though it isn't cheap for college students it makes it a lot less of a hassale to eat. Just a thought . . .

[celiac3270]

I concur . Pre-diagnosis I ate a bagel every morning for breakfast.........for about four years with only very occasional breaks for french toast or some other gluteny breakfast. You'll miss your old food at first, especially while you're in the trial and error stage, trying new things and you experience some really---gross food. Anyway, looking at a bagel now literally makes me feel sick.....I think I've developed such an aversion to this stuff that if I found out for sure that I wasn't a celiac, I'd still have difficulty eating it again.......ick. I think one thing we all dislike is that there's such a lack of spontaneity.....everything has to be planned out--you can't just walk into a deli and pick out something to eat, etc. Additionally, there is a lack of variety after awhile......I already feel like my dinner is always the same. Starch: rice, potato, noodles........Meat: steak, chicken, pork, etc........Vegetable: carrots, beans, broccoli, etc. Anyway, I think beyond the symptoms, which are by far the most aggravating and upsetting, those are two...problems....not ones that I have now, really, but I'm only 13......I know that in 40 years, I'm never going to want to see another potato...what do I do then?

Fruit is good on-the-go food........I guess if you had a plastic spoon that you could toss, yogurt might be pretty good. With most gluten-free yogurts, such as Dannon, the only gluten-free flavor is the plain. However, I know that all flavors of Yoplait Custard Style yogurts are gluten-free....I eat at least two yogurts a day, now....they're really good for digestion cause of all the cultures they have......I think that's what makes them good for you . Anyway, Richard said that all Yoplait is gluten-free......I haven't checked personally, but you might want to call them and confirm their gluten-free status. Hmmm......on-the-go.....Genisoy makes two gluten-free bars......one of them is actually very tasty......there's a Southern Style PB Chocolate something one.....dark brown wrapping, I believe, and a PB bar with honey.........remember, though, that only those two bars are gluten-free......others contain gluten, so you can't try any others like the cheesecake kind, etc. I like the chocolate one, cause it actually tastes a little bit like a candy bar, but you're getting nutrition from it.......14 grams of protein, I think....don't quote me on it, a few calories, a few grams of fat, some carbs, and about 25 vitamins and minerals. Let's see.......don't know if you're a chip person.....I wasn't really, but have been eating a lot since going gluten-free. Many FritoLays products are gluten-free including Cheetos, Lays potato chips, Fritos, and all kinds of Doritos except for the Nacho Cheesier (red package), which contains gluten. Jessica (angel_jd1) posted their updated gluten-free list somewhere.....I have an older version, from April or something, but they're the same, I think.....or similar. Keep in mind that although Lays potato chips are gluten-free (wavy, regular, etc.), Lays Stacks are not........be careful in that sense. You mentioned PB, so in case you don't know which ones are gluten-free, I checked Skippy and all their PBs are gluten-free.....I know that Jif creamy is gluten-free, but I am unsure as to the crunchy, etc.

Good luck.

-celiac3270

[tarnalberry]

One way to address the issue of the same food getting boring is to learn how to vastly change HOW you cook the same food. This takes some time to learn by looking through cookbooks, particularly cookbooks representing various cultures

Take those potatoes for instance. Here are a few ways to cook them that taste VASTLY different from one another:

* curried with cauliflower

* mashed with roasted garlic

* baked as french fries in the oven with chili powders

* in a stew, with beef, onions, and carrots

* shredded into hashbrowns

Or the rice, there are many many different flavors and textures you can give rice:

* brown rice with stock and boullion

* sushi rice with a bit of soy sauce

* long grain rice reheated for fried rice

* pumpkin risotto

* making actual sushi rice (served with avocado, cucumber, and real crab meat for an unrolled california roll)

* brown and wild rice mixed with mushrooms and onions and italian seasonings for a rice-based stuffing

* mixed with cheese or mushrooms, grated carrots, grated zucchini, and maybe even ground meat and stuffed into vegetables

* mexican rice

And, of course, it's well worth the time to explore those other options for starches in your diet:

* beans! (hmm... if you search all my entries on food, I wonder if less than 100% of them contain the word "beans"... ;-) )

* root vegetables (beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, jicama, etc.) (you can make a ginger glaze for these and bake them... ooo, they're SOO GOOD!)

* the more esoteric grains: millet, buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth

* corn (I always give short shrift to corn, since I avoid it, but there are OODLES of things you can do with corn)

Another thing to consider is that not ever meal need to have it's own unique starch. If you load up on relatively caloricall dense vegetables, you can fill yourself up with meat and veggies and still get plenty of carbs. (Carrots are obviously a good one for this.) And if you follow it with a dessert of fruit, you've really done just fine in the carb department.

As for variety in those vegetables... I find the best thing for me to do is go to the grocery store, and buy a different vegetable for each day of the week - and some extras because I'm not only going to eat one vegetable in the day! Staples around my house, pre-elimination-diet, that I would purchase on almost every shopping trip: carrots, tomatoes, green beans, spinach, zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, bell peppers, onions, leaf lettuce. More rarely, but not infrequently, I'd get sugar peas, kale or collards, asparagus, bean sprouts, mushrooms, bok choy, chinese cabbage... oh, I just walk around the produce department and see what looks good and what's on sale.

For me, when I feel like my meals are getting into a rut, I use it as a signal to go peruse my cookbooks again. (I don't use them for recipes straight up most of the time, I use them as reference material to think about what tastes and textures to combine.) And if that doesn't inspire me, I take it as a further sign it's time to buy a new cookbook (or put one on my christmas list) ! :-) (Gotta have an excuse somewhere, right?)

With any situation where you do a lot of your own cooking, it can be an uphill battle to get the sort of diversity in foods that keeps you happy until you find that it makes you happy just to create that sort of diversity. It takes a lot of creativity, but that can be fun too if you look at it as an art form. (And let me tell you, I do spend plenty of time day-dreaming about what to cook... I need SOMETHING to do in those long meetings as work!)

[Racheleona]

Thank you so much for your suggestions! Thats great that Outback has a gluten free menu, I hope more restaurants take up the same idea. I've already had an event happen that made me cry again, I had a guy ask me out on a date to dinner, and I had to turn him down, because I didn't think I would be able to eat at any restaurants. I will have to spend time finding a variety of ways to cook the same foods, even though will not have time to cook : ( (I'm a full time college student, and working). Do you guys have any suggestions on the cheapest gluten free foods, or budget saving tips, because I realized that everything gluten free such as meat, produce, gluten free bakery items are so expensive, and we're really tight on money (my mom got laid off). Also I have another question, how do you guys handle holidays and family dinners? That is another thing I am dreading...upcoming Thanksgiving. I will try and keep in mind that the food will continue my symptoms, and not how I miss it, the best I can

[MySuicidalTurtle]

During the day fruit works good for me. Try KinniKinnick brand. . .great bagels, bread, and english muffins.

Yummie.

I don't know about cheap. . .our food is expensive but once you find what you like and see who caries it you'll see price differences. It's weird learning to cook with new foods too so at first you'll find lots of mistakes and such, ha. When I go to family dinners I don't eat anything there. . .just eat before hand and after.

[tarnalberry]

Thank you so much for your suggestions! Thats great that Outback has a gluten free menu, I hope more restaurants take up the same idea. I've already had an event happen that made me cry again, I had a guy ask me out on a date to dinner, and I had to turn him down, because I didn't think I would be able to eat at any restaurants. I will have to spend time finding a variety of ways to cook the same foods, even though will not have time to cook : ( (I'm a full time college student, and working). Do you guys have any suggestions on the cheapest gluten free foods, or budget saving tips, because I realized that everything gluten free such as meat, produce, gluten free bakery items are so expensive, and we're really tight on money (my mom got laid off). Also I have another question, how do you guys handle holidays and family dinners? That is another thing I am dreading...upcoming Thanksgiving. I will try and keep in mind that the food will continue my symptoms, and not how I miss it, the best I can

Really and truely, eating gluten-free doesn't have to be more expensive if you're willing to forgo the specialty items and just eat whole foods that are naturally gluten-free. Rice is cheap. Beans are cheap. Fruits and vegetables that are in-season can often be cheap. Meat that is on sale and can be used in small portions can be cheap(ish). Eggs are cheap. And none of it has to take that long to cook. Doing a fair amount of prep work on the weekends (cutting up vegetables, making salads/other dishes that you can take for lunch, getting a plan for what you're going to cook) helps a lot, as does really learning how to put foods together. You CAN come home from school, whip something up in fifteen minutes, eat, and be out the door in another fifteen. It takes some thinking about it ahead of time, and sometimes some planning on the weekends, but you can. (Ok, I've not gotten a meat based chili to cook in less than 20 minutes, since you've got to brown the meat...)

The tips that I've used before: stock up during sales. When beans go on 2 for $1 sale, stock up. When canned tomatoes go on sale, stock up. When 10lb bags of rice go on sale, get it. When potatoes go on sale, if you have a good place you can store them, stock up. Always look for the produce that is in season and on sale. Then look at what will last the longest. Chinese cabbage is often not only fairly cheap, but works well in soups and lasts for a long time in the fridge. Cauliflower and cabbage also last for a long time in the fridge. Buy whole chickens for baking, and use all the parts. (Make your own stock for use in soups, use all the little bits of meat on the back and wings for making enchiladas or to put on top of salads, etc. - obviously, good weekend activities, as this isn't always the fastest approach. ;-) )

(I remember the summer after my freshman year in college, I was working on campus, trying to figure out a way to pay for an expensive private college on my own, and eating on about $30/week. It sucked, and I'd have to replace the pasta I was eating (I had a lot of pasta salads!) then with rice (or the cheap rice pasta available in the asian section of the market), but with the help of a lot of eggs, a little bit of meat, a lot of rice, and a lot of salads, I made it through. I thnk it was the only time I was GLAD to get back to the college dining hall! ;-) )

Thanksgiving... I think Thanksgiving is probably the easiest to do, unless you have family that is completely unwilling to try new foods. Rice stuffing is an EXCELLENT alternative to bread stuffing - and still a very classic dish. You do need to make sure to avoid self-basting turkeys, but there are plenty of those. Root vegetables (yams, parsnips, turnips) are often traditional, and green vegetables (spinach or green beans) are naturally gluten-free as well. You can make baked apples instead of an apple pie (pretty much, you just make the apple pie filling, not the crust), if you want to not try making a pie. And, of course, gravy can be made from the juices with cornstarch or rice flour or potato flour. It CAN be very easy to cook gluten-free family dinners if you're family is willing to eat healthy food and learn how to cook things naturally.

Let's see... the fastest dishes I make:

cold bean salads - takes about 10 minutes to make, and you can put it in a portable container and eat it on the go.

fajitas - just takes one pan, and cutting the meat is the longest part, with plenty of corn tortillas, it's filling, and you can stretch a little bit of relatively low quality meat a long way

hummus/bean dip - to eat with raw veggies, again, something you can take with you

smoothies - trader joe's has cheap frozen fruit, but this can be more expensive than the other dishes I mentioned

chili - yeah, it's 20 minutes, but I'll throw it in. I put the recipe in another post somewhere...

The stuff I make on the weekend and just reheat throughout the week:

chicken rice soup - easy to make from scratch and filling!

pasta sauce - not really that time consuming if making it from cans (also a good way to make a little bit of low quality meat go a long way), but I always make it in large batches so I can have it for leftovers - I'll eat it over rice just as much as over pasta

I know I've posted this sort of thing before, but I really believe that once you get a hang of doing fast cooking from scratch, your brain's creativity will kick in, and we'll all think of it as second nature! :-) I'll keep hoping, anyway. :-)

[Racheleona]

Tiffany, I guess your right about Thanksgiving being easier, but it is the fact of getting my family to not buy canned yams that have gluten, turkey, stuffing etc. And oh my will I miss that pumpkin pie! And I will watch out for sales on groceries...but do you find gluten free items cheaper on any websites?

(Also side note; I emailed info@celiac.com a few days ago and haven't gotten a reply, but when i tried to add a picture to my profile, it says the moderator hasn't enabled me do that, how do I go about doing that?)

[tarnalberry]

Oh, they'll thank you! Canned yams are cardboard in comparison to fresh sweet potatoes. There's just no substitute!!!

As for a pumpkin pie, actually, that's an easy one. I made one a few months ago, and bought Pamela's shortbread cookies and crumbled them for the crust (pressed into a pie tin), used a can of pumpkin, and the recipe on the back. It was tasty - even to the non-gluten-free folks who tried it! It's REALLY EASY to make. (I mean easy easy... I'm all for cooking even when it's not easy, but this was easy!

I hope it goes well... there may need to be some compromise... they'll go for fresh yams, but you'll have to skip bread-based stuffing, but hopefully they can work out something.

And maybe they'll go for gluten-free stuffing if you'll make them the pie? (The pie really is good! Now I just have to find a substitute for condensed milk for the pumpkin pie since I can't have dairy any more.)

[celiac3270]

Racheleona,

If you're referring to a "personal photo" option--nobody can do that. If you're referring to update your own picture to be your avatar (pic. on the side of every post you make), you need to be an advanced member to do that (30 posts).......

[Racheleona]

Oooh, okay, I'll just wait for my 30th post then : ) Thanks celiac3270

Rachel

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Are you sure it's 30?

Like tarnalberry said. . .pasta, rice, and eggs. . .good way to go.

[celiac3270]

Well, I know that an advanced member is thirty, and I believe that that is when you're allowed to upload your own picture as an avatar.