The Gluten Free Pantry

            The Gluten Free Pantry: Gluten Free Cooking in the Real World Where Time and Money Have Limits arose from the very real need to have good, inexpensive food to feed more than one person.  In the past few years several gluten free and whole food cookbooks have come out, however, they fail to meet some needs in the real world. 

          Time is a precious commodity.  As it was necessary for me to feed more people who had high needs for attention I had to develop many skills to meet the need for healthy food that could actually be eaten.  Breakfast is the most important meal I needed yet first thing in the morning I seemed to have no time to prepare anything.  Another huge issue I discovered and needed to share was how to take your gluten-free lunch with you without the bread.

          Paying someone else to prepare food has never been a financial option for me and is probably a limiting factor for many people when you approach gluten-free food.  Costly gluten-free products are also a difficult proposition.  Adding cost for products strains finances in any home.

          The Gluten Free Pantry is not a result of an expert chef or dietician.  I write from the simple humbleness of a home.  I often read a recipe and think, “That is a great idea, but out here in the real world that may not work”.  Who has the time or money to do elaborate cooking with scarce resources on a regular basis?  I realize money is no object for some people, but most people have limits on what they actually have to spend.  Credit creates an illusion of resources but debt is not a sustainable manner to get through life.

          The Gluten Free Pantry is also a result of watching my husband and mother struggle to create gluten free meals.  My husband willingly cooks when the need arises, however, he is very structure oriented.  He cannot, like many people, imagine what would go well in something.  After some practice, I could create and add things on the spot but to recreate it was difficult and to tell someone else to recreate something proved to be impossible.  Writing down what I did to create something was necessary to recreate the exact combination of what I had made.  Recording recipes eventually turned to the idea of writing a book. 

My mother’s dilemma is probably more common.  How does one accommodate a celiac coming to dinner or to stay for a week?  Converting favorite recipes to a gluten-free version does not happen simply by substituting rice flour, rice noodles or even gluten-free baking mixes.  My mother has also attempted making food ahead for a visit and discovered there is no simplicity freezing cooked gluten free products.  Practice or trial and error are required to facilitate this, yet having someone come to stay for a few days does not always warrant a lot of practice.  Many of the recipes are based on whole foods and purchases.  Different meals are easily created for several days using foundations of things like black beans and rice, quinoa or millet that meat can be added to easily if desired.

Pantries are a concept that is older than I can imagine.  Creating a supply of whole foods to draw on is a subject I have not found anything written about for the celiac.  Perhaps the idea of a pantry is taken for granted in some areas, yet to a woman who grew up in an era of computers and where education for a dream career was the focus instead of homemaking, a pantry was a revelation to me.  I believe many in my generation had very little training in homemaking because we were becoming educated and involved in a variety of activities that were going to make us into better adults.  The idea of a pantry is something that escaped my thoughts most of my life and I do not read about.  What I have to get around that learning curve is something I want to share.

I do not spend my entire day cooking or preparing food nor could I.  The Gluten Free Pantry has been written in the hope that it will help my husband, my mother and others who hope to create a whole-foods diet for those with gluten sensitivity.