Tips for wheat free school lunch box please.

[orangehead]

I know you can get special bread, but ds only really likes it when it toasted which is a bit hard to do at school. Also it quite expensive for what you get and could really do with cutting down on shopping bill at the moment. I thought boiled egg and salad. Any other suggestions? Thanks

[morningpaper]

uuugh NOT boiled egg PLEASE, it is VILE after being heated all day in the cloakroom

What does he normally eat? Wheat-free pasta/rice/small boiled potatoes?

You could toast his special stuff and let it cool down and pack that?

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Slices of tortilla (as in the sort made with eggs and potato, not the sort that's a wheaty pancake!).

[orangehead]

He does how a cool lunch box. His strawberrys are always cool. All the wheat free stuff is expensive and you get very little. So wanted some other alternatives

[cmotdibbler]

Cheese and ham roll ups - ie wrap ham around a cheese stick
Rice or pasta (wheat free) salad
Make mini gluten free quiche
GF bread sticks, carrot, cucumber and hummus/guacamole dip
Frittata
Anything hot in a flask

The gluten free pitta breads are really good for lunches as they stay nice and soft

[HumphreyPillow]

It's tricky when they can only have wheat free bread isn't it? It really is horrid if not served straight from the toaster, ime.

I used to send DS2 with a little container with gluten-free pasta, and some tuna and sweetcorn.

Or make a load of sushi and send that.

[orangehead]

sorry have not how

[barmymamma]

i use a small flask, so when its cold weathr, ds can have baked beans on toast for lunch. i do cook the toast before he goes and wrap it in foil. he doesnt seem to mind that its cold when he eats it!
if you dont want him missing out on carbs, make muffins and bulk out rest of packed lunch with goodies he likes. muffins can be savory too and you could do cheese ones.

On diff point, im so suprised you all send in things made with egg. my ds is severly allergic to egg and school have assured me that its very rare for kis to have egg in lunch boxes......are they wrong?

How upset would you be if you were asked not to send in egg foods cos of another childs health??just curious??

[LadyG]

gluten free pasta salad or pasta and pesto staples here. Gluten free crackers and cream cheese. Mini muffins (will only have fruit ones home made ) plus cheese sticks or baby bels fruit and er small pack of crisps (well he is underweight). Haven't tried mini quiches (recipe anyone???) but will have mini g-free pizza (home made) cold. Will have to try noodle salads and sushi too. DS still at nursery with nut free policy asssume school will be same otherwise nuts and raisins good healthy but calorific snack. It is really hard isn't it? How I long to just make a sandwich. I havent got round to trying them but gluten free rolls might be less 'stale' after a morning in lunchbox and could have them with little pack of philadelphia??

[tkband3]

I make DD1 toasted cream cheese sandwiches in the morning and she has them for lunch - doesn't seem to mind the fact that the toast is cold. In fact some of her other friends asked their mums to do toasted sandwiches for them too!

Once she asked me to put fishfingers in her lunchbox (which she did eat, but has not asked for since, so don't think they were that good cold ), and she sometimes has carrot sticks and houmous. But generally, sandwiches, yogurt, fruit of some sort and a g-f bar (nut-free of course).

To barmymamma, we have a nut-free policy at our school but no-one has mentioned eggs. I wouldn't have a problem with being asked not to put anything eggy in a lunch-box.

[MetalMummy]

Dietary specials do wheat free light crisp breads which are really nice. DS used to take them with tofutti cream cheese on them. They did go a bit soggy though so if your DS is old enough you could put a plastic knife in his lunch box so he could spread things on them himself.

[controlfreakinfreaky]

oatcakes!

[milge]

gluten free sausages ( cut up of course. M&S sausages generally are gf, so I am told)

sausage rolls made with cornflour not wheat flour

cold chicken drumsticks

err soup and oat/rice cakes?

[ivykaty44]

oatcakes with cheese cubes and apple - ploughmans.

Melon balls and frozen grapes

Rice cakes - you can get them with garlic or seasame - can he have these? Put cream cheese on them and sandwhich them together.

Soup in a flask? Or fishfingers and bakebeans in a flask? You can get flasks with a wide neck to have foody stuff rather than soup.

My dd used to take chicken drumstick, I marinaded them with honey, mustard and redcurrent jelly and told her they were harry potter drumsticks. I cooked them up on a Sunday and put two in a sandwhich bag and pop them all in the fridge ready for the week. I then cut a melon into 6 slices and cut into each slice to make it easy to eat in your fingers but still attched to the melon skin - put each slice in a sandwhich bag and pop in the fridge. two rice cakes and a yogurt and pop it all in the pack up box each morning and add a drink.

[hennipenni]

How do the posters who's DC's take pasta salad type things keep the pasta nice? I try to do pasta for DD but it just goes rubbery. Poor DD is surviving on w/g free crackers with cheese. Sorry for the hyjack orange head

[BlueBumedFly]

Hennipenni - We do bacon and egg pasta salad, lots of tomato, sweetcorn, avocodo and salad cream, seems to end up as a bit of a mish mash but DD likes it and all the nice bits take away the fact that the pasta is rubbery.

[BlueBumedFly]

hennipenni - how about making rice salad instead of pasta salad?

[thesockmonsterofdoom]

my dd has rice cakes sandwich which is 2 rice cakes stuff together withg jam, or houmous and crackers. cheese, ham, piece f fruit, crisps and a yoghurt.

[ToughDaddy]

-if you live in London u can buy ripe plantains. Allow them to get very ripe (softish, black and yellow). Then shallow fry very slowly. Put in flask with other stuff - chicken, corn etc.

-Corn on the cob.

[ToughDaddy]

Plantains at Indian shops or even Tescos these days depending on where u live

[struwellpeter]

How about cooking a batch of drop scones with buckwheat flour? They don't seem to dry out quite as much as the gf bread and can be spread with butter/cream cheese/ marmite etc. My mum is coeliac and buckwheat is gf so imagine it would do for wheat free.

[Wordsmith]

Can I just say thanks for this timely thread. DS2 was diagnosed coeliac in Feb and he starts school full time this week. There are some really good ideas here! I second the one about GF crackers and cheese, DS loves these. The pitta breads are good too. He also likes cheese strings and peperami.

Does anyone have any experience of school dinners with a coealiac child? The catering service says they will cater for him but haven't said how - and the food is not cooked on the premises but brought in and I don't really trust it so he's going to be doing sarnies for the time being. It would be really useful for him to be able to have a hot lunch a couple of days a week when I work as we don't get home till 6pm those days, so I'd like to think he could do school lunches one day.

[tatt]

easier to cater for a gluten free child with hot food - traditional meat and two veg is fine if gravy doesn't have wheat or rice dishes are OK too.

Despite the name there's no wheat in buckwheat.

I use Doves breadmaker recipe and freeze sandwiches and its not too terrible.

[bramblebooks]

my husband's coeliac and gets a great deal of stuff free on prescription. He cannot eat oats, though, as although they are lower in gluten, they still contain the stuff.

A note of interest for you, coeliac disease is linked to type one diabetes as it is in a cluster of auto-immune diseases. Had I known this, I'd have spotted ds2's diabetes a bit faster when he presented with it last year (linked to my dh's coeliac). (And it is just a 'by the way', I don't want to worry anyone as the chance of developing it is relatively small).

[phdlife]

bramblebooks is coeliac disease linked to allergic conditions? both my dsis's kids are coeliac and anaphylactic, she's often wondered if there's a link.

re the lunchboxes, I think my dsis makes gf pizza and sends wedges of that to school.

[bramblebooks]

from personal experience, phd, my husband is highly pollen allergic, seems to have rhinitis and unfortunately, since diagnosis has developed a severe allergy to eggs - makes eating fun at ours!

any diabetes, hyper/hypo thyroidism, addisons or coeliac elsewhere in the family ? It all fascinates me to see how it's linked - one day these clever doctor people will work it out and there'll be a cure! (forgive me, am slightly pixellated with tiredness as I was up until 3am with ds2's diabetes ...)