Going Gluten Free: Sample Menus

Thanks to all those who contacted me after receiving the new Free From newsletter. (If you haven’t signed up yet, why not? See top right and do it today!)

You raised some very interesting questions, some of which I’ve answered by email, but there are some I thought I’d answer here. Here’s the first:

I’ve just discovered I can’t eat wheat or gluten. Can you recommend some websites to help me put together a sample menu for the week?

This must be an issue for a lot of people: where to start? I know what it’s like: you open your cupboard, and everything you see contains gluten. What are you going to eat?

I did a bit of research on this, and there are indeed many great websites to help you get started. Here are just a few I found:

• The Gluten Free Week gives ideas and recipes for main meals, a week at a time. There are 18 weeks of recipes up there today, so I hope you could find something you’d like.
• Then there’s the Gluten Free Cooking School, who offers weekly menus:
  • start here
  • here’s week one
• Some time ago, Gluten Free Mommy started a menu swap to provide ideas for dinner each week. Every week, a different gluten free blogger is the host, lots of gluten free bloggers post their menus for the week on their own blog, and the host collates the links to everyone else’s meal plans. Again, this tends to be main meals only, but a bit of digging reveals lots of fab ideas.

  Start here but do follow the links to the other participating gluten free bloggers, all of whom have slightly different slants on living gluten free. For example, here’s the The Celiac Family (menu item of the week: tomatoes), and here’s the Book of Yum on being gluten free and vegetarian (menu item: zucchini – or courgettes, as we call them here in the UK!).

• The Gluten Free Homemaker has some practical tips on menu planning in general.
• And here’s Angela’s Kitchen, with a post about gluten free batch cooking, and a breakfast/lunch menu plan for a month.
• And finally, of course, The Gluten Free Goddess on how to get started with gluten free living. Fabulous.

I must confess I’m not a great menu planner. I like the idea, but never seem to get round to it. How about you? Any suggestions to help this reader get started with sample gluten free menus for a week?

I’ve written a book summarising what we’ve learnt over 20 years of dealing with the gluten free diet, and it might be just what you’re looking for. It packs the lessons we’ve learned into what I hope is a helpful and straightforward guidebook. It’s available on Amazon, as a paperback or for your Kindle…

Related posts:

How GF-friendly is fix-and-freeze? Planning gluten free meals Gluten free ready meals – delivered to your door Baking More than Meringue