gluten free kids Archives - Page 4 of 4

Appetizer Ideas for Thanksgiving

thanksgiving-apps

I spend so much of my energy on the main meal, by the time I get to the appetizers I try to keep it as simple and hands off as possible. It’s also a great thing to offer for someone else to bring if they ask and you know they’ll be on time 🙂

I know, I know, if you have someone in your family with celiac disease or an allergy, the thought of allowing others to bring food into your house can be daunting. I usually only ask people who offer to bring something and who know to bring something safe that is packaged or bring the ingredients and make it at my house (like a fruit plate or veggie platter).

turkey-cheeseball

My children could fill up on appetizers alone and usually do, so I have to make sure I put more than enough out and wait until guests arrive before taking the cover off. Some years it is as simple as 2-3 different blocks of cheese with some crackers (I LOVE Van’s GF Everything Crackers!), a package of prosciutto from Trader Joe’s and some baby carrots with hummus. Other years I have put in a little more effort and made a cheese ball shaped like a turkey or even spinach and artichoke dip to keep warm in a mini Little Dipper CrockPot.

NOTE: I do not get money from any of these companies I’ve linked to in this post. I only recommend items my family uses. I will let you know in the post if I ever do get money or an advantage, but the recommendation will always be for something I use and love!

My plan for Thursday, which may change depending on how much time I have, is:

A Pumpkin Cheese Ball (I will make the day before) based on this recipe I found from my.recipes. They serve it with apples, but I think I’ll add some crackers to the dish too.

Hummus with vegetables I use store bought hummus. Our family favorite gluten-free options are Tribe or Wegman’s store brand. Just drop it on a plate with the vegetables! Easy.

Tortilla chips and homemade salsa (if I have time or can get my daughter to make the salsa!) Our family favorite gluten-free tortilla chips are Xochitl or Tostitos Natural. Here is a link to my newest salsa recipe! .

Shrimp cocktail (if I have time) I have Wegman’s already cooked frozen shrimp in the freezer, which I buy whenever it’s on sale, so I have it on hand for either an easy meal or easy appetizer. I do like to make my own cocktail sauce. It is simple, quick and tastes amazing! I use Ina Garten’s cocktail sauce recipe except I don’t usually have chili sauce on hand, so I make it entirely with ketchup and it is still AMAZING!

That is what we like to eat in our house. These are all items where you definitely do not miss the gluten because they are almost all naturally gluten free. What do you like to serve for appetizers?

Here are some appetizer ideas from past blogs (as always the disclaimer that they may not be gluten free if from before April 2014 when my son was diagnosed with celiac disease – contact me if you need help to adapt it to be gluten free! mammascooking@gmail.com)

Dinner of Appetizers: Thursday night or a special party (July 2011)

Entertaining with Appetizers and what to do with leftovers (Feb 2012)

Comfort Food and a Cookbook (Oct 2016)

Happy planning and may your trip to the grocery store be filled with happy people and full shelves, not stressed, grumpy people fighting over the last sweet potato. If you know of someone who would like this blog, please share far and wide. Click on one of the many social media buttons available. Thanks!

Cooking your Thanksgiving Turkey

I decided to post a bonus blog today, since Thanksgiving is next week and I have barely even mentioned the star of the show: the turkey! Everyone has their opinions on the best way to cook a turkey, so here is mine 🙂 First of all, if you are buying a frozen turkey, get it today or tomorrow, so that it has time to defrost safely or buy a fresh one on Monday. I started brining my turkey a few years ago and it makes such a huge difference in flavor. Don’t be scared, its easy!

Step One: Buy Turkey

Can turkeys have gluten? Yes they can. Many times poultry is injected with broth before you buy it. Make sure the brand you are buying or have ordered is gluten free. Butterball and Shady Brook Farms both say on their website that they are gluten free. Most of the time when you order a fresh one from a farm, they have not been injected with anything, just ask.

If frozen, let it thaw for 2 -3 days in a refrigerator or keep on ice in a cooler where the temperature doesn’t go above about 40 degrees.

Step Two: Butcher the Turkey (optional – you can still follow the other steps if you keep the turkey whole)

I have been doing this for years, after listening to some professional chefs talk about making the turkey this way. I separate the dark meat from the light meat but keep all the bones in. There are many YouTube videos on how to do this. If you do not want to do this, buy a fresh turkey and ask if the butcher will do it. Whole Foods has done it for me in the past, when I’ve asked ahead of time. My Dad did the honors last year as I was so sick I could barely stand! (I cooked the rest of the meal the next day with a surgical mask on).

Save the giblets, the stuff inside the bag! Keep reading and you see how it helps make the most delicious gravy.

Step Three: Brine the Turkey

Get a large bucket. I use a bright orange one from Home Depot that serves as my brining bucket. I have found that using a oven bag designed for turkeys in the bucket, makes clean up easier.

Basic Brine Recipe (inspired by this one from Our Best Bites)

Ingredients

2 cups of salt

2 cups of brown sugar

1 cup of peppercorns

3 Tablespoons of coriander seeds

12 small sage leaves, roughly torn

8 sprigs of fresh thyme

4 stems of fresh rosemary

4 Tablespoons of onion powder

2 Tablespoons of cumin

8 cloves of garlic, smashed

20 cups of water (may need more water to cover turkey)

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a large stock pot. I use a lobster pot. Cook on medium high until it boils. Take off the heat and let it cool.

Once the brine is cool, you can pour it over the turkey inside the bag in the bucket. Add more water or even ice to the brine if the 12 cups do not completely immerse your turkey. If your garage is cool enough or you have a refrigerator that can fit the bucket great. If not keep ice and ice packs around it and change every few hours so that the temperature stays under 40 degrees.

Brining for a couple of days or even one day will help enhance the flavor and juiciness of your turkey. I am also building in an extra day for the turkey to “dry” in my refrigerator outside the brine, as I heard that it will allow the skin to crisp up more. I’ll let you know if that works.

Step Four: Cooking the Turkey

If you did not butcher your turkey, put the whole turkey into an oven bag on top of a bed of onions, garlic, chopped carrots, celery and fresh herbs. I even throw in a couple of sliced lemons for the bed of the turkey. Remember to shake gluten free flour or cornstarch around inside the bag first!

Stuff some of the bed into the cavity of the turkey or if you did butcher it, you’ll have just the turkey breasts still on the bone. Rub butter or olive oil all over the turkey. I often make a compound butter (fancy name for mixing some of the herbs, salt, pepper and lemon zest in with some softened butter) and spread that all over. Close up the bag and cook accordingly with how many pounds of turkey you have. The breasts alone will cook faster. I roast it at 375 until the breast registers about 170 degrees. The dark meat (wings, etc should register about 180 degrees).

If you braved the butchering, the dark meat is braised on the stove. A large heavy bottomed pot is what you will need. First brown the meat and then add onions, garlic, chopped carrots and celery with fresh sage, thyme and rosemary. Pour chicken or turkey stock about 1/2 up the meat. Add the giblets and make sure they are covered with stock. Braise for about 1.5 to 2 hours until the meat registers 180 degrees. Save the braising liquid to make the gravy!

Let the turkey rest for 30 to 45 minutes before carving!

Step Five: The Gravy

Pour the braising liquid through a strainer and then pour it into a sauce pot on medium heat. Let it reduce a little and then taste it. Add 1 Tablespoon of corn starch and whisk. Repeat adding 1/2 teaspoon at a time until it is the consistency you would like. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and adjust the seasonings to your taste. Just before serving, add a tablespoon of butter and whisk it in.

I serve gravy in insulated coffee mugs. That way it doesn’t get cold! Not fancy, but practical. I think everyone has come to expect the old Westlaw mug at the table 🙂

Ok. Breathe. That seems like a lot of work, but it is so worth it! This is the star of the show. The actual cooking time is shorter when you cook the dark and light meat separate.

Please let me know if you have questions. There are buttons all over this page now that will put you in touch with me or make a comment and I’ll respond!

If you have missed any of my recent Thanksgiving posts, here are some easy gluten-free side dish ideas:

My Favorite! Acorn Squash

Holiday Mashed Potatoes

Easy Thanksgiving Side Dish: My favorite! Acorn Squash

A question I frequently get from readers is whether my house is completely gluten free. Yes, it is. Except for my husband’s beer 🙂 It is a personal decision to make the entire house gluten free, but it is what works for us. I mixed the kids’ lunches up once while we lived in a shared household and after that decided to go gluten free. Too much work for me to keep it separate! Holidays at our house are also completely gluten free. I love the challenge to make traditional holiday meal items so that no one misses the gluten!

Most of the meal is naturally gluten free, except for the stuffing and the rolls. This year I am making my own stuffing. I am going to base it on this recipe, but use all the ends of the gluten-free bread that I have been saving in the freezer for the cubes. I will also substitute vegetable stock so that it is vegetarian for one of our guests.

I tested some recipes for rolls and decided that I am going to use the corn-based rolls recipe from Roben Ryberg’s book, You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten-Free! I will cook them just before we eat, so they come fresh out of the oven onto the table.

Here is my super easy Thanksgiving side dish recipe for acorn squash. The hard part is timing it for your oven space! This can be cooked while your turkey is resting and you are making gravy. Then keep it warm and covered while your rolls cook. Just prep it in the pan earlier in the day so that whenever you have time and space it’s ready to go into the oven.

acorn-squash

Chili Rubbed Acorn Squash

Servings 4 servings

Ingredients

1 Acorn Squash sliced into half moons
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon chili powder

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Toss squash with the rest of the ingredients in a baking sheet (you can probably fit 1 ½ acorn squashes on each baking sheet).
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Take out, flip each piece of squash and return baking sheet to oven and bake for another 15 minutes.

Recipe Notes

You can easily double or triple this recipe for your holiday meals. You can also prep the squash ahead in the pan, ready to go in the oven when you need to cook it.

acorn-squash-cuts

Don’t try to over complicate your meal. I have done that many, many, many times and only you suffer for it. Thanksgiving is not the time to experiment with fancy recipes. Keep it simple with just a couple of seasonings and the fewer the steps for you to take the better! The more you can prep in advance, the better and the more help you can take from the store, the better.

If you missed it, check out my Holiday Mashed Potato recipe and ideas for easy sides, how to simplify your Thanksgiving meal and about the star of the show, the turkey.

Send me a message or comment below if you have any questions about making your Thanksgiving meal gluten free.

Crowd Pleasing Chili

If you are having a crowd over for a big game or just hanging out with friends and family around the holidays and need a big satisfying meal, chili is always a great option. It is a blank canvas and does not require a lot of hands on work. It is also very easy to make gluten free, vegetarian or allergy friendly, which is great when you have a large crowd and don’t know what everyone’s food allergies or preferences are. I don’t think I have ever really made chili the same way twice, but I made this one recently to fuel up some friends before we enjoyed a long walk.

Quinoa Pumpkin Chili for a Crowd

Ingredients

1 to 2 pounds of your favorite beans or mixture of beans

½ of a large onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1-24 ounce can crushed tomatoes

About ½ a 15 ounce can of pumpkin

1 ½ teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

2 Tablespoons of chili powder

¼ teaspoon dried oregano

3 Tablespoons of cider vinegar

¾ cup of chicken stock (or vegetable or beef stock)

1 ½ Tablespoons brown sugar

½ cup of quinoa

Optional, add 1 to 2 cups of leftover roasted vegetables and/or turkey, chicken or beef

Directions

Pour all the ingredients into your slow cooker and stir. Cook on high for 2-3 hours or low 6-8 hours. Taste and add more seasoning if needed. Serve with sour cream and sliced green onions.

This is yet another way to disguise Thanksgiving leftovers. To stretch the meal even further, you can serve it over mac-n-cheese, as I did for lunch the day after I made it.

quinoa-chili-for-a-crowd

When you are entertaining for the holidays, having easy meals that can stretch to feed a crowd are very useful. This is a healthy meal and a hearty meal that will give you the fuel to warm you up after hiking, skiing or keep you going during overtime of your favorite team’s game.

What are your favorite crowd pleasing meals? Stay tuned for an extra post this week with some gluten free holiday entertaining ideas and a recipe!

Here are some past crowd pleasing or tailgating recipes and ideas for using leftovers (Always the same disclaimer that they are from before our family started eating gluten free so make adaptations as needed or ask me how I do it! mammascooking@gmail.com

Fall Football and Tailgating

Lessons Learned from Thanksgiving and Cooking in the Aftermath

Pre and Post Thanksgiving Ideas with a Potluck Recipe thrown in

Happy Thanksgiving

Taco Tuesday – Step outside the Taco Shell (Gluten free!)

Getting Ready for the Holidays

Turkey time, a visit to a butcher shop and italian sausage mac-n-cheese (I think I’ll make this mac-n-cheese GF tonight!)

Thank you to Mamapedia for highlighting Mamma’s Cooking 3 Easy 10 Minute Meals on Mamapedia Voices on Friday!

3 Easy 10 Minute Meals

The election is now behind us and whoever you voted for, we can all agree its time to move forward! Now we can occupy our brains with the holidays instead! Which unfortunately for many can be just as stressful, especially when you cannot rely on take out. I, like many of you have a endless list of things to do: keep the children alive and fed, go to school meetings, do laundry, clean, pay bills, juggle all the activities, work and do more laundry, so I completely understand that dinner needs to be done in 10 minutes time most nights. Especially with the holidays coming, our time is even more limited. These are three of my go to super fast recipes for when dinner needs to be on the table ASAP and hopefully help keep your stress levels down!

Kielbasa and Peppers with Mashed Sweet Potatoes

kielbasa-and-sweet-potato-10-minute-meal

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon of olive oil

1 Turkey kielbasa (make sure it is GF if you need it to be), diced

1 red pepper, diced

1 green pepper, diced

1 package of already made mashed sweet potatoes (I like Wegman’s) or a couple of large sweet potatoes

Directions

Heat your cast iron skillet (or sauté pan) over medium heat with the olive oil in it. Once hot, add kielbasa and peppers, stirring occasionally. Cook for about 5-7 minutes. While that is cooking follow the instructions on your mashed sweet potatoes (or just microwave a couple of sweet potatoes-remember to poke holes with a fork!- and serve with a little butter, salt and pepper). You can either leave out the kielbasa for a vegetarian meal or substitute leftover turkey, chicken, steak or your favorite already cooked sausage.

Asian noodles are always a hit in my house and are a great option for an easy weeknight meal. Healthy, tasty and a great alternative to take-out.

Asian noodles with shrimp and broccoli

asian-noodles-10-minute-meal

Ingredients

1 package of Maifun Rice Sticks or your favorite noodles (GF if you need them to be)

1 pound of shrimp (frozen or fresh, even faster if already cooked!)

1 head of broccoli, roughly chopped

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup rice vinegar

¼ teaspoon fish sauce, optional

¼ teaspoon sesame oil

2 teaspoons of ginger (either this stir-in paste from Gourmet Garden or minced fresh)

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon onion powder

3 Tablespoons lime juice

4 Tablespoons brown sugar

Directions

Cook noodles according to package. Add the broccoli to noodles with 3 minutes left in cook time. Drain all. Mix the soy sauce, vinegar and rest of the ingredients in a large bowl. Toss noodles and broccoli with sauce. Toss in cooked, peeled shrimp and its ready to serve. I serve it with fresh cilantro, chopped peanuts and a couple splashes of siracha. A squeeze of lime juice is also a great way to finish the dish.

If shrimp are fresh or thawed and not cooked, this can still be a quick meal, as long as they are cleaned and deveined! Here is a quick delicious way to cook them. Mix 1/8 cup vegetable oil, splash of sesame oil, 4 cloves of garlic – minced and juice of ½ a lime. Toss with the shrimp and cook for 3 to 4 minutes each side in a 400 degree oven. Cool, peel and toss with noodles.

This dish is extremely versatile. It would also be great with, zoodles (zucchini noodles), rice or cauliflower rice in place of the noodles. You can easily substitute tofu, scrambled egg, leftover chicken, steak or even turkey from Thanksgiving. It is good hot, room temperature and cold.

Having these jack-of-all trade meals in your back pocket will make dinner easier to make with what you have on hand.

Pasta with Pink Sauce

pasta-with-pink-sauce-10-minute-meal

Ingredients

1-16 once package of spaghetti or your favorite pasta (gluten free of course if you need it to be)

1 jar of pasta sauce (or one 15 ounce can of tomato sauce)

4 ounces (1/2 block) of cream cheese

Directions

Cook pasta according to package. While water is boiling, pour pasta sauce into sauce pan and heat on medium. Add cream cheese and stir until combined. It will be clumpy. While pasta is cooking pour pink sauce into a large serving bowl and then add drained pasta. Stir and serve.

This is a great base to add whatever cooked vegetables, leftover turkey, chicken or shrimp if you like. I recently made this and served steamed green beans on the side. Stop and Shop steam in the bag green beans. My husband liked them more than when I buy green beans, clean them and steam or roast. Lesson learned! I don’t need to exert the energy!

These three easy dinners will hopefully make your busy nights less stressful and your holiday leftovers easier to finish and disguise! What are your favorite ways to use leftover holiday food? Comment and let us know! I am working on creating Pins for Pinterest for these recipes, so for now just follow me on Pinterest or follow this page and you will be the first to know when you can save these recipes!

Back to reality, work and school…

I finally feel like I am coming out of the storm that was in my head after my son’s celiac diagnosis. I have my cooking groove back. We even made a trip out to the midwest and hosted friends at our house without any incident. I feel more grounded, more myself. I grilled pizza for the first time in a long time! One gluten free and one not. No cross contamination! Yay! Now I just need to figure out who to make my own gluten free pizza dough and how to make my gluten filled pizza dough without feeling like I have to scrub down the entire kitchen so no flour cross contaminates anything! We also met with my son’s nutritionist at Children’s, who made me feel good, like we are on the right track. Woo hoo! Let’s just hope his blood tests in the fall come back showing that the diet is working! Fingers crossed.

Anyway, back to the food! End of summer and early fall still leaves plenty of time to grill. I love to grill pizza, sausages, steak, chicken, pork, salmon, shrimp, corn, green beans, zucchini and I could keep going. To make our grill gluten free, I scrubbed it down and then turned all the burners on and let everything just cook off for about 30 minutes. When I grill something with gluten, like pizza, I usually cover that section of the grill with foil and go through the heating process before the next time I grill. I’m probably going a little overboard, but better safe than sorry!

I’m starting to see my favorite fall foods in the grocery stores…butternut squash, acorn squash, I can’t wait! That however means its also back to school and for me back to work! My kids will all be in school full day so that means three lunches to make, everyday. I have to also send a snack for my 1st grader and donate bulk for the class for the twins and make sure Paul has a selection of gluten free snacks at school. My entire Friday was basically spent at 2 different grocery stores and I still didn’t get everything! Luckily the 2nd store (Big Y) has a Kid’s club, where the kids are happy to play the Wii while I shop, but of course make the sitter buzz me while I’m in the middle of checking out because they have to the go the bathroom 🙂

Here is what my menu plan looks like for back to school week, starting with tomorrow, Tuesday (the first day of school!):

Tuesday

Breakfast – oatmeal and fruit (if I find the energy tomorrow I will make THIS one in the crock pot over night, if not it is Chex gluten free oatmeal packets. (Oats are inherently gluten free, but are often grown and/or processed with wheat, so you have to make sure it is gluten free if you need that).

Lunch – Leftover asian noodles (used rice noodles and gf soy sauce with leftover grilled chicken for dinner on Monday night), hummus with carrots and fruit

Dinner – Grilled cheese and french onion soup in the crock pot. I have adapted the recipe linked from my earlier blog post and just throw everything in the crockpot (substitute white balsamic for the beer) for 6-8 hours on low.

Snacks – yogurt, grapes

Wednesday

Breakfast – hard boiled eggs with fruit

Lunch – ham and cheese or sun butter (hopefully the kids like it! I have never used it before) and jelly sandwiches with fruit. (I use Udi’s bread for Paul)

Dinner – pancakes [King Arthur Flour’s GF pancake mix or Bisquik’s GF pancake mix are the best I’ve found so far, until I make my own blend :)] and sausage with fruit

Snacks – cheese and crackers, bananas

Thursday

Breakfast – cereal and fruit

Lunch – turkey and cream cheese roll ups, celery, sunbutter and craisin “ants on a log” and pretzels

Dinner – Pasta with meatballs (going to try ronzoni gluten free) and the meatballs are Mama Mancini’s Gluten Free from the fridge section in Shaw’s. I add some fresh ricotta and basil. Yum.

Snacks – yogurt, plums

Friday

Breakfast – Toast with peanut butter and honey and fruit

Lunch – ham and cheese or sunbutter and jelly sandwiches with fruit OR Leftovers

Dinner – Pizza (I usually use Udi’s GF crust for the kids and whole foods or trader joe’s pizza dough for Tim and I) served with salad or carrots and hummus and fruit.

Snacks – celery, cream cheese and craisin “ants on a snow covered log”, pirates booty

Coming up…if the cold weather starts to set in, chili with zucchini cheddar corn bread and my butternut squash soup! all in the crock pot 🙂 Stay tuned! I’m writing down my ingredients now so will actually have measurements for recipes!

Good luck with the new school year everyone! You can always ask Mamma if you need any new ideas or have a question about what to make! Just email me at mammascooking@gmail.com.

A New Food Adventure…Gluten-free not just trendy but necessary

This has been my longest hiatus from posting since I started Mamma’s Cooking over 6 years ago. This blog has morphed along with the changes in our family. Initially, I blogged about making food for my first baby. Then it went through her toddler years with the addition of her twin brothers and my back and forth working outside of the house, working from home and periods of hard work as a stay-at-home mom. That boomerang has continued for the past 4 years as I strive, like many, to find that balance between career, home and self.

If you follow me on Facebook you will have seen some of the recent changes to our family diet. Our weekly pasta nights, quesadilla nights, pizza nights and pancake Sundays have been turned upside down. My son, Paul, was diagnosed with Celiac disease. This is an autoimmune disorder that effects the stomach and esophagus. He had stomach issues for a while, we tried cutting out dairy to no avail and I asked his doctor to test him. Autoimmune disorders, including Celiac, run in my family. Today there is a simple blood test that can tell you if you are likely to have celiac. An endoscopy can confirm it. Let me tell you how fun that was with a 3 year old stubborn boy who hates being told what to do! The Celiac diagnosis is a blessing in disguise. Yes, I’d rather he did not have it, but if he gets “glutened” once it is not going to require an epi pen or hospitalization for an allergic reaction. Rather, if he is continually “glutened” it will have severe consequences for his health and growth.

I thought gluten-free was just a trend. Everyone is going gluten-free. There are people, like Paul, who need to be completely gluten-free and others who do it to help them eat less processed food and live a healthier lifestyle. It has made us eat healthier. It also costs a lot more but we wouldn’t think twice about paying for a medication, so why not pay more for gluten free foods to keep up health?

It has been overwhelming, but will be manageable. We eat lots of the same items, just healthier versions. Sure, Paul asks sometimes for Goldfish or cake, but there are so many alternatives these days that he is easily appeased and distracted. Visiting other people’s houses and eating out are a challenge, but nothing that we cannot overcome.

This is a copy of the email we sent to family when we discovered the diagnosis,

“Hope you all are well. We are settling in back at home after a whirlwind trip to Disney World last week. The kids had a blast! Fortunately and unfortunately, just before we left we got an official diagnosis of Celiac disease for Paul. He has had stomach issues for months and we have tried various things, but knowing that celiac and autoimmune diseases run in the our family, Marie pushed to have him tested and there is something to be said for a mother’s intuition 🙂

We just wanted to give you all a little information on Celiac if you are interested in learning more. We do not expect when we visit your homes for you to be fully prepared for gluten free meals. We will have a travel kit so we make sure to keep Paul safe. Unfortunately even a crumb can set off a flare up once gluten has been fully removed. We even had to buy a separate toaster, utensils, plates, tupperware, cutting boards, etc for our kitchen! Gluten is in things you wouldn’t even think of like ketchup, soy sauce, mustard, some candies,some ice cream and more. He can’t even have things made on equipment that may have wheat. Oats are a good example of something that is naturally gluten free but is often grown in the same fields and processed in the same factories as wheat, so it must say gluten free on the box/bag or else it is not safe.

We are trying to teach Paul not to accept food offered without asking first if it is gluten free, but for now are just not letting him accept offered food. He doesn’t fully understand yet, but with the help of our GI and nutritionist at Children’s and his teachers and nurse at his pre-school he will adapt 🙂

Here is a link to some great information from Children’s:http://www.childrenshospital.org/centers-and-services/programs/a-_-e/celiac-disease-program/support-group

If you have any questions, let us know.”

We have been grilling a lot and eating brown rice pasta and taco shells that are gluten free. We found a great gluten free pizza crust (Udi’s) that works really well until I figure out my own recipe. We still have pizza night, taco Tuesday and pancake Sunday, just modified. There are so many wonderful foods that are naturally gluten free, we just need to make sure that they are not processed with any wheat, rye, barley or related products.

Paul is now feeling better, smiling, potty trained!!!!, and enjoying life as a healthy 4 year old. My new bucket list and food challenges will come, but this year keeping everyone healthy is first on our minds. I hope you’ll stay with me as I document this journey.