gluten free and dairy free on a budget?

[mummyelse]

Hi I have 4 children 2 have been diagnosed gf and df but we are on a very tight budget so I was wondering if anyone could give me inspiration for meal times that do not involve expensive flours or bizarre ingredients. Thanks

do they get anything on prescription?

Rice based food.
Potato dishes. E.g. Jacket potatoes, wedges, sweet potato.
Eggs/omelettes.
Home made soup made with filling root veg such as parsnip, butternut squash.
Beans/pulses including baked beans, home made mild chilli bulked out with kidney beans.
Porridge half water half non-dairy milk. (Gf oats, check they are pure) bananas are cheap and filling.

One of my dd is gf and df, so far it has only been 3 weeks so am no expert. Jacket potato with vitalite spread and baked beans is gf and df. You can buy lactose free cheese also for about £1.50 a block. Ragu pasta sauces are fine add mince and veg with gluten free pasta.

Potatoes and rice are your friends!
Meat/Poultry, potatoes and veg
Curries with rice
Stew with mashed potatoes
Roast chicken thighs on a bed of med veg, served with rice.
Omelettes
Jacket potatoes
I know you said no expensive flours but to make sauces I use doves farm plain and a little goes a long way! I use it to make pastry also.

lactose free is no good for dairy allergy as it still contains the milk proteins (lactose is the sugar)

Tesco.have a large dairy and gluten free range four strawberry ice creams in cones are £1.50 so not much more than the normal kind.

How about meals based around bean/tofu and rice combinations? Cheap complete protein if meat is out of your price range. You should be able to find a fair number of Mexican/Chinese/Japanese recipes that don't involve gluten or dairy. Although some soy sauce is made with wheat, so you would need to check labels.

Agree with rice and potato based meals
Risotto
Soups / stews are cheap

Can you ask your GP to prescribe GF products to supplement what you buy? If your child has coeliacs disease you should be able to get some stuff on prescription www.glutafin.co.uk/after-diagnosis/gluten-free-prescription/

I stick to potatoes, rice and lots of veg with some meat or fish. I sometimes use g/free pasta. G/free porridge is fine but I can tolerate lactose free milk. Think my brother uses soya milk. I also use lentils, butter beans etc to bulk out meals. I use cornflour as a thickener.

Red lentil sauce (onion, carrots, red lentils and tin tomatoes, cook and then stick in blender). Can be served with rice or pasta and great to stretch roast chicken.

I've just found dairy free pesto which I have used in 3 meals this week (including a chicken casserole with lots of veg and potatoes).

TBH, once you get used to avoiding bread, and cooking from scratch it's not too bad.

I would echo not using special gluten free foods and expensive flours but choose naturally gluten free ingredients and meals instead. And don't over compensate on sugar or ready made GF products.

There are lots of Paleo and other websites and blogs (not all have recipes without odd ingredients but you will find some ideas.) Deliciously Ela, Helmsley and Helmsley, PaleoMom, Marks Daily Apple.

Lucy Burney's books are good if geared a bit towards toddlers.

I would also recommend looking into bulk buying the foods you need a lot of through one of the organic wholesalers, Suma in the North and Infinity Foods in the south. They can tell you if there are any food buying co operatives in your area. It's worth price checking because some of the supermarkets have cheap options but when I first started df and gf 8 years ago, this was not the case. Also look at some of the Indian / Chinese supermarkets for things like rice and depending on where you are, local farms for potatoes and vegetables (sacks of farm potatoes are much cheaper than supermarket potatoes and last well as they have not been cold stored or kept in a warm supermarket).

My favourite GF deserts are chocolate moose made with dark chocolate, fondant au chocolate made with dark chocolate with eggs, sugar and a tiny bit of rice flour or ground almonds and any combination of eggs, ground almonds / hazlenuts, dates, coconut, cocoa, coconut oil which makes macaroons, cakes, snack bars and biscuits in a variety of shapes, colours and flavours! Popcorn is a great and cheap GF snack! Oh and chopped up bananas put in the freezer for a bit then whizzed in the blender makes a good icecream.

It's not easy and I have often found myself crying in frustration and at the unfairness of it so I wish you luck!!

If anyone is willing to buy you a good blender that will grind nuts, frozen bananas it is worth the investment.

I come from a family of 5 and 4 of us are coeliacs so have lots of experience of gf cooking!

Like others growing up we just avoided gluten containing foods - we ate lots of potatoes, rice, veggies, meat, and fish.

My mums method which she taught me is just to replace normal flour with a gf white flour or cornflour. (I get flustered with gf recipes calling for lots of different flours and special ingredients!)

Juvela white flour which I get on prescription I use in any recipe asking for normal flour! Including pizza dough, cakes, pancakes and biscuits! The results are great and would thoroughly recommend! My DH doesn't know the difference!

Cornflour is also great for sauces to thicken.

Just a warning, my uncle has coeliacs disease, DS has CMPA. We've now discovered quite a few gluten free foods contain milk when the 'normal' version is dairy free. So watch for that. We tend to avoid the 'fake' dairy and gluten foods, they tend not to taste as good as the real thing and are a lot more expensive. We've seen our food budget go down since we now buy less cheese so there's a positive.

We've found savoury food is fairly straightforward for both of them as long as you avoid pasta or pastry (pastry made with GF flour is foul). Gluten free oatcakes (from Nairns) are a godsend for snacks (oats are naturally gluten free but are often contaminated in the mill). Puddings are harder but there are a few options, jelly, almond based cakes, fruit salad. 'Cake Angels' has some of the best sweet recipes, and HFW has got a new book ' Light and easy' that has some good recipes although not at all cost conscious (bought some chestnut flour at great expense recently which made heavenly muffins).

If you have been diagnosed with Coeliac's disease then a lot of health authorities will give you gf food on prescription. My uncle says now it's trendy to not eat gluten the supermarket have massively increased their gluten free options though and is a lot cheaper than it was 20 years ago (when he was diagnosed).

We use chickpeas more and more and I just bought lentil flour to experiment making pancakes with that.
DD's favourite breakfast is pancakes made from gluten free oat flour (I just throw gluten free oats in a blender and add 2 eggs and milk/ water)

Ask your GP to prescribe your LOs gluten free products. We get oats, cereal, pasta and bread on prescription, and my LO has wheat and dairy allergy. The dietician wrote to the GP recommending they prescribe. This has helped a lot.