03-24-2015, 10:06 AM
I'm so glad you narrowed down a food issue! Being gluten free is a good way to pay deliberate attention to what you eat, which is important to body health. Anyway, I'm not gluten free but I spend most of my time in health food stores so here's my tips:
1) You have a whole gluten free store?? I'd try the middle ground - I go to an almost entirely organic grocery store, which means they specialize in specialty foods. We buy gluten free (oat) bread there (fresh baked and just because it's the best bread we've ever had!) for a little over $5 a loaf. They also have awesome sales every couple of weeks when "specialty" type products are way way marked down. I just see it maybe as the middle ground - the regular grocery store marks that stuff way up, a totally gluten free store might take the same liberties. The local organic store's mission statement is to provide affordable, high quality food - I find their prices extremely reasonable on most things that I've purchased regularly from other stores. They also have way more gluten free options for normal items than they do wheat options (like crackers, pasta)
2) How to make oat flour: Buy bulk oats. Put in food processor. I've made cookies/pancakes/etc this way when I was out of wheat flour, in a pinch!
3) As you start exploring different food options, try to wean yourself off of the packaged/processed foods. They just cost way more in general.
4) If you're extremely sensitive, you might have to start removing certain restaurants from your list of go-to places. Anywhere that makes their own bread, pasta, pizza dough, etc, is going to have extreme amounts of wheat particles in the air and covering everything. I used to work in a pizza restaurant and people with extreme celiac disease would come in, freak out if anything that looked like bread was within 10 inches of their food, but would sit within 10ft of an open kitchen where they were constantly pounding out pizza dough and it basically looked like this.
1) You have a whole gluten free store?? I'd try the middle ground - I go to an almost entirely organic grocery store, which means they specialize in specialty foods. We buy gluten free (oat) bread there (fresh baked and just because it's the best bread we've ever had!) for a little over $5 a loaf. They also have awesome sales every couple of weeks when "specialty" type products are way way marked down. I just see it maybe as the middle ground - the regular grocery store marks that stuff way up, a totally gluten free store might take the same liberties. The local organic store's mission statement is to provide affordable, high quality food - I find their prices extremely reasonable on most things that I've purchased regularly from other stores. They also have way more gluten free options for normal items than they do wheat options (like crackers, pasta)
2) How to make oat flour: Buy bulk oats. Put in food processor. I've made cookies/pancakes/etc this way when I was out of wheat flour, in a pinch!
3) As you start exploring different food options, try to wean yourself off of the packaged/processed foods. They just cost way more in general.
4) If you're extremely sensitive, you might have to start removing certain restaurants from your list of go-to places. Anywhere that makes their own bread, pasta, pizza dough, etc, is going to have extreme amounts of wheat particles in the air and covering everything. I used to work in a pizza restaurant and people with extreme celiac disease would come in, freak out if anything that looked like bread was within 10 inches of their food, but would sit within 10ft of an open kitchen where they were constantly pounding out pizza dough and it basically looked like this.
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