We decided to take the plunge and do something that I have been thinking about for a while. A gluten free diet. I find it intimidated and potentially expensive but possibly worth it. Mostly this comes because Aneliese has not been as healthy as I feel she should be and after talking with various people and doing some reading, I realized that she seemed to have many of the symptoms of at least a gluten sensitivity. Now I need to do more research when I can find the time and we haven’t done any testing but for now this is the step that we are taking.
We are in week two of truly gluten free. We have bought a few special snacks (mmm gluten free pretzels) to lessen the blow as this Mama wades through gluten free recipes and meals. Harder than I realized. I can’t even count how many things I never thought of as having gluten in them. And here I thought we had a really veggie based diet! I have different categories of recipes: good, okay, bad, really bad, even worse, and do people actually eat this?.

I will only share the good and possibly the okay. Some were okay until I tweaked them. But maybe they are only good to me. Feel free to let me know if you try them! I would love any suggestions and pretty please share if you have some other good recipes.

I will add the link for the original recipes as well:

This is a very basic pancake recipe and I plan to play with it but it is the best I have tried.

Gluten Free Pancakes

1 ¼ cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour (mine is a rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour mix)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cup buttermilk (I use whole milk with a tbs of lemon) (Or use almond milk and do the same with lemon)
2 eggs (or sub using 1 banana per egg or 1 tbsp milled flax seed and 3 tbsp water per egg)
¼ cup coconut oil (or a little less)

Add the coconut oil to buttermilk. In large bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. Add the buttermilk/oil mixture and eggs. This is key, DO NOT OVERMIX (believe me). Mix and cook on hot griddle.

I really liked these biscuits and am going to work to make them a little more healthy, but they were very close to our favorite biscuit recipe. And I didn’t really change much at all!

Gluten Free Biscuits

• 1 1/4 c white rice flour (7 oz.)
• 1/2 c potato starch, cornstarch, or tapioca starch (2 oz.)
• 1/4 c brown rice flour or amaranth flour (1 oz.)
• 1 tsp. xanthan gum
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 4 Tbsp. butter or shortening (I used butter but I am going to try lard for those who also need casein free), cut into pea-sized pieces
• 1 c buttermilk (again add a tbs of lemon) (You can also use almond milk and do the same)

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Sift together rice flour, potato starch, brown rice or amaranth flour, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder. (You can also do this in a large mixing bowl with a whisk or in a food processor.)
3. With your hands or a spoon, cut in butter or shortening until the flour mixture resembles bread crumbs and all fat is incorporated into the mix.
4. Create a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk. Mix the liquid into the flour mix (with your hands or a spoon) until the batter just comes together, then pour batter onto a sheet of parchment paper. The dough should be very loose — thicker than pancake batter, but much wetter than cookie dough. Add a little more flour if dough is too loose or a little more buttermilk if dough is too dry.
5. Using your hands, pat the mixture into a flat mound, roughly one inch thick. Cut biscuits with a biscuit cutter and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Biscuits should touch shoulder-to-shoulder on the sheet for best rising — I usually do mine in rows of three biscuits.
6. Bake for 10 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. (I did 12)

This next recipe is from 101 Cookbooks and she has tonnes of great recipes, seriously. This isn’t gluten free so I just subbed some things in which I will note below in bold.

Animal Cracker Cookie Recipe  (Minus the shapes since I can’t find cookie cutters)

The kind of coconut oil you purchase is key. You want it to actually smell like coconut. You want pure, unrefined coconut oil – it will likely have the words virgin or extra-virgin and (hopefully) organic on the jar. If you see the word “refined” on the jar, find a different brand. I’ve just finished off a jar of Nutiva, and really enjoyed cooking with it – but there are other great brands out there as well. You can make your own walnut (or almond meal) by pulsing almonds in a food processor until it is the texture of sand – don’t go too far or you’ll end up with almond butter. For added depth feel free to use lightly toasted shredded coconut.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I used brown rice flour)
1/4 cup walnut of almond meal (see head notes)
1/2 cup unsweetened finely shredded coconut, very finely minced (I also have tried ground flax, just use a little less than 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup extra-virgin coconut oil, softened
1/3 cup fine-grain natural cane sugar  (Or less, maybe a 1/4 cup or less especially when using bananas, I used turbinado sugar but I am going to try honey next)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten  (Replace this with a banana, not for gluten free but we run out of eggs regularly and it tastes good)

a few tablespoons big-grain turbinado sugar

Whisk the flour, walnut meal and shredded coconut together in a medium bowl. Set aside. In a separate medium bowl, beat the coconut oil with the sugar and salt until it’s smooth and looks a bit like a brown sugar frosting. Beat in the egg until everything is uniform in appearance. Add the flour mixture and stir just until incorporated. Turn the dough out onto the counter-top, knead it once or twice and gather it into a ball. Cut the dough in half, flatten each piece, wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Place the racks in the middle and line a couple baking sheets with parchment paper. On a floured work surface roll the dough out 1/8-inch thick. If the dough cracks, let it sit and warm up for a couple more minutes. (My experiences has been that you have to work it a little more to keep it from falling apart) Stamp out shapes with floured cookie cutters and place the cookies an inch apart on the baking sheets, sprinkle with a bit of the turbinado sugar. Bake until the cookie are just beginning to color at the edges 7-8 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool the cookies on racks if you have them.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutters.

And just because there has been way to much text in this entry, a photo to prove that they were a hit:).

And finally, I found this blog that has some great tips and looks like it could have some good recipes too. It is also casein (dairy) and egg free too.