Celiac disease

Waitrose is best to shop for pasta: other brands and their own. (I find Tesco own brand ingredients not great and it tastes inferior)

This is the best bread, esp toasted. Promise Gluten Free soft white loaf.

Since going gf my diet is a lot healthier as I'm not filling up on empty carbs. It's hard and expensive but honestly you will look back and feel better. Good luck
Pm if you want

Warburtons pittas, wraps, crumpets and tiger bread are good alternatives
Morrisons carry a good GF range and they have a an offer on just now until the 7th of May to save 25%

it depends on your eating habits if you cook from fresh you’ll be fine as it’s usually easy to adapt recipes.
at the beginning check everything then you build a
core staples cupboard

have they said youll be given b12 injections or monitor your b12? You might also be sensitive to lactose so keep an eye on that.
it sounds daunting but places are getting better at offering GF options
the gluten free scanner app is good l, not everything is on it but it does help doing a quick shop

Also, you can get gluten free ‘malt’ vinegar (our fish and chip shop does it along with gluten free fish and chips) and also gluten free Worcestershire sauce. (As I just saw reference to these on the thread.)

Hiya, sorry to hear you’ve been diagnosed coeliac - from my experience, it’s likely to be a steep learning curve… My youngest is coeliac and we’ve known for 8 years and a fair bit of trial and error over that time.
The loopy whisk website - and her recipe book - is amazing for dough - pizza, pasta and bread - and baking recipes. I tend to make a loaf and slice and freeze some - or if I buy some, slice and freeze it as my daughter doesn’t eat enough bread on her own to get through it.
Over the years, we’ve managed to find some really good substitutes / recipes - people genuinely don’t realise they’re gluten free. If you want any, please do pm me. The only one I haven’t cracked is American style cinnamon buns so if anyone has a fail safe recipe, please share!
xanthum gum is your friend for baking - stops it crumbling apart - but too much makes it like rubber so be careful!
psyllium husk helps for bread and pizza dough.
Schar for me does the best products - a lot of dupes of things and they do frozen croissants and pain au chocolate and rolls which are useful to have in the freezer. My daughter tells me the warburton wraps are the best, although El Paso also do gluten free ones.
For holidays, Italy and Spain are great - they are countries with a relatively high proportion of coeliacs and take it seriously and we’ve found excellent gluten free restaurants and good gluten free options at other places and there’s a lot of products in the supermarkets.
Also, in terms of beer - if you’re a beer drinker - there are gluten free ones, estrella damm and peroni amongst others, in the gluten free aisles.
One final thing, gluten free does not always mean coeliac safe - this is particularly the case in places like pizza restaurants. That said, the range of substitutes now are amazing and getting better all the time - it is better now than it was when we started on this journey 8 years ago.
Good luck and feel free to pm if you want any specific recipes.

@Loveduppenguin Italy is one of the best destinations for coeliacs, even though the first thing you think of is pasta.

Coeliac is common in Italy, in Rome we noticed a lot of restaurants specifically advertising gluten-free. Detailed allergy menu breakdowns also were very common.

There's also lots of information out there on coeliac friendly restaurants worldwide. We regularly eat out with a coeliac friend, just google the town + coeliac and someone will have provided a run down of where does a proper gluten-free menu and no cross contamination in the kitchen, where you have a couple of options and where claims to be gluten-free but isn't trustworthy.

But there are so many other vinegars you now have the perfect reason to try.

Rice and Apple Cider vinegar are great on chips (as is balsamic or gherkin vinegar - and mint sauce - but I am an absolute culinary heathen).

Sounds like you might be a 'savoury' type of person, though - so, important stuff. Stokes sandwich pickle and piccalilli are GF. For mustard, get Colman's mustard powder and mix it 1:1 with water (it will be hot) instead of the premixed jars. French's mustard is GF. Most supermarket own brand yeast extract is GF. Mrs Elswood pickles are GF. Squid brand fish sauce is GF and if you splash a little bit of that and a little bit of balsamic on cheese on GF toast, you get a similar enhancement to Worcestershire Sauce.

Don't bother with Bisto GF. It's phenomenally overpriced. Get a supermarket version (eg, ASDA or Morrison's).

A lot of processed GF foods seem to have more sugar in them, which makes them taste weird. If you've got no choice other than to eat them or go hungry, adding salt/salty things can reduce the weirdness. Black olives are really useful for rendering slightly weirdly sweet things edible, as is anything that adds acidity.

Whilst most Bisto Best products are not made with gluten containing ingredients, you will notice that the manufacturer, Premier Foods, has included a ‘May Contain’ statement on the packaging. This is in line with best practice guidance for including gluten contamination advice on labels.
Bisto Best is made on equipment which is also used for products containing wheat flour. Although there are controls in place to reduce the risk of cross contamination, Premier Foods cannot remove the risk of gluten contamination completely.
Previously, we have listed Bisto Best products that were not made with gluten containing ingredients as the product when prepared for consumption, would be suitable for a gluten free diet. Under our new policy, we are asking food manufacturers who include a ‘May Contain’ to consider the threshold for gluten free (< 20 ppm gluten) and if they have determined their products consistently have no more than 20 ppm gluten, to also consider labelling them gluten free. In the absence of a gluten free label they will no longer be included in our food information listings. We are continuing to engage with the manufacturers to achieve a commitment to enable these products to be labelled gluten free in the future.
Premier Foods have a Bisto gravy which is labelled gluten free, this product can be found in most Free From supermarket sections.

Oh! What do you use then? I have never had a problem with it

Bisto Best is a "may contain".

So staples are

Rice
meat
fish
seafood
Tamari (taste just the same as Soy)
Bisto Best for stock cubes and gravy

Marks and Spencer do GF Chips and fish cakes and more
Sainsbury’s very good for GF processed crap like cakes and biscuits

Restaurants I’d recommend
Giggling Squid
Honest Burger
Pizza Express
Leon
Cote
Sushi restaurants generally. (Ask for tamari or take your own)

Ready food
Poke bowls are great too just read the ingredients

Puddings
Ice cream
Jelly
Creme Brulee
Many brownies are GF
Cheese (Nairns GF oat crackers)

Sarsons malt vinegar was certified GF very recently, as was Branston pickle.

Becky Excell cook books available on Amazon have helpful bits to guide you
Also feel free to DM
My recommendations are the Schar rolls you bake , frozen white Schar rolls (very close to regular fresh crusty rolls ) and lots of non "free from " food which are now available
If you cook, you'll be fine. Honestly.

I think it's been 20 years since I was first diagnosed and it's still shit to be honest. Cooking at home isn't a problem but there's no spontaneity in just going out to eat, I can't just go grab a coffee and a pastry, holidays always require a tonne of research, products get discontinued on a whim when the latest food fad comes along.

Thank you! I will keep a look out. My family can’t tell the difference between the fish fingers/GF breaded chicken (M&S is good and you get loads in a pack), so I tend to just buy that now. I’m not so keen on tempura, but I will give it a go.

My DH is coeliac and dairy free, and we are thankful that some items are both gf and df. So often we find a gf item which looks lovely only to find has dairy in it, or vice versa. Once someone has one intolerance or auto immune condition, they are much more likely to have others, so it makes sense for things to be multi free from. Also, if diagnosed later in life,damage done to a person's gut may mean they struggle to tolerate dairy.

Although our DD2 can have some dairy, she prefers coconut milk, soya yogurt, doesn't like cheese except the dairy free one, I think he also inherently knows that dairy is not great for her.

But many things are just gf, or just vegan/dairy free.

@MrsCravensworth that's really rubbish. I have several family members who have Coeliac's disease in my extended family and so I have a gluten cupboard in my kitchen to reduce the chance of cross-contamination and when we host for them everything I cook is gluten free. People don't think and e.g. use the same knife to cut something containing gluten then something gluten free. Much easier to make it all gluten free.

@Loveduppenguin your biggest issues will be processed food and eating out, home cooking it is easy to avoid. Get a gluten free cookbook so you can find some good recipes for cakes and biscuits that are gluten free, eat lots of potatoes, rice, beans and chickpeas/gram flour and you'll be fine.

My favourite naturally gluten free puddings:
Pavlova / Eton mess
Torta caprese (there's a very similar French recipe called Reine de Saba but I prefer the Italian version)
Tarta de Santiago
My nephew loves the HFW chocolate & bean cake

You can borrow Becky Excell books from your local library - if not in branch they can usually order them in for you.

Ha ha!

I did too - until a Saudi colleague told me to double check as her little brother still had it despite having Coeliac. Obviously your decision, I suppose the key is whether somebody reacts to 20 ppm and/or if there's actually an allergy rather than Coeliac.

It's a lot cheaper (and longer lasting) to get the cordial and then add fizzy water - there are Vimto recipes on the .sa website, too; the Muhalabiya is inherently GF, as is the rice pudding and marshmallows.

My dh was diagnosed mid 40s as silent coeliac
Avoid BROW - barley rye oats (unless gf) wheat
The aldi gf products are a trial we don't have it anywhere in our area. There's plenty options in both lidl (saw some gf pasta recently) and aldi though if you look then bigger supermarkets for gf bread.

There's some great gf cook books out there amazon have Becky excell and meghan mckenna ones.

Eating out needs some planning we tend to stick with places we know but even that has got easier in the last few years. Nandos is pretty safe.

Really important to stick with it as not doing so can cause significant health issues including cancer.

Good luck

The other thing that pisses me off with GF food is that everything is so tiny. Small pieces of bread, half the size of a normal loaf. A packet of biscuits with only 8 in it. Why can’t we have normal sized food and a whole packet of biscuits? Especially when we pay so much more for it.

And so much is milk free or vegan too. I know it makes sense for manufacturers to cover it all, but it’s annoying.

The white rabbit gluten free pizza are delicious x

When I was first diagnosed, one of my family died and to do something nice for me, dh found a chip shop that did everything gluten free on a Tuesday. He went and got me some as a suprise but then put normal vinegar all over them when he got home. I heard him swearing in the kitchen when he realised what he was doing! He drove half an hour back and got me more, bless him, along with lots of bottles of gluten free vinegar that the chip shop sold!

A bread maker will also be your friend, as much shop gf bread is hard and brittle, I think m they add lots of stiff to make it last longer as so expensive, so we make our own now. Only lasts a day or 2 but with 2 people eating in our house it goes quick anyway

Gluten free soy sauce is easy to find.
Another one to watch out for is malt vinegar and some brands of mayonnaise.