Five Years In

This is Celiac Awareness Month, and we are about five years into our gluten-free journey.  There's always a lot going on in that department; I don't expect to ever get bored.  However, one thing that can get boring is the same old gluten-free meals day after day.  We eat out so very rarely that one of us is in the kitchen prepping most every meal, and it's easy to get in ruts or to just grab junky gluten-free treats.  We decided to revamp the food list and also see about pulling in grocery budget, because bringing food costs down for the family is not something we've perfected yet.

This will be an imperfect journey, but if you want to go on it with us, here are a few things to know:

• You can follow me, Kristy Trammell Ramirez, on Pinterest, for easy access to recipes.  The Week One Grocery Challenge board has most of the recipes we're using for this week.
• We don't follow one particular diet, except gluten-free of course.  We're not 100% Paleo, vegan, Mediterranean diet, whatever.  We do a bit of this and a bit of that, and I modify recipes to make them work for our crew.  If you ever see a recipe on my boards with gluten in it, know that I have replaced the gluten product with a gluten-free alternative when cooking it for my family.
• I always have a back up plan.  My kids are good eaters, but sometimes they go through food jags where they decide to throw sass about anything that looks new or different.  I ask them to try everything, but if they really don't like the food, I let them grab raw veggies and boiled eggs.  I'm not going to cook a whole new meal for them, but I do want them to eat.  
• You won't see a ton of desserts.  We are only doing real, hardcore sugar once a week.  Tomorrow night is smores!

Here's the plan for this week:

Breakfasts:

Lemon Yogurt

Banana Granola

Eggs and fruit
Two Ingredient Pancakes
Sauteed Apples with Honey

Lunches:
leftovers and anything we can wrap in rice paper

Dinners:
Rice-free Sushi
Perfect Stir Fry
Greek Burgers with sauce and okra
Chickpea Masala
Pan Roasted Lemon Chicken with a side of green beans
Chicken Pot Pie
Tacos

Snacks:
Fruits, veggies, or Aldi's grabs

Aldi's used the be the store I shopped at when I lived in Ohio because I was broke and did not care if I ate chemicals.  However, they have come a long way.  They now have a gluten-free line that has decent ingredients (read your labels, some are better than others) and is affordable.  I grab snack foods at Aldi's and combine them with fruits and veggies from Costco.

I hope to do this meal planning for at least a month or two until we have a good rotation of meals and a pretty decent idea of how much each meal costs to make.  That will help with budget planning and food ruts.

I will post a few more things this month about gluten-free living since this is the official month of awareness.  We've learned a lot; we don't know as much as we'd like.  As always, we're in progress.