I keep making meal plans but by the time it comes to meal times find that I'm lacking energy or motivation to cook.
I'm really keen to eat better but I'm not a great cook and it's hard to create good food when your appetite is zero.
I need easy quick recipies to tide me over!
I've been GF for 3/4 months but I've cheated a couple of times over the last fortnight and I have noticed that my thyroid has started hurting. Which is annoying because I really wanted to not have to go GF forever. 🤣
Obviously not all GF, but a good number are or can have a GF substitute, so I just work around it, e.g. I use tamari instead of standard soy sauce. It's more just getting new ideas to get me out of a rut. Can also highly recommend her book East, lots of east and south Asian recipes, many gluten and dairy free or have an alternative suggested. I'm not veggie and need some meat sometimes, so I just change tofu for chicken for example and works fine. There's a great peanut butter and broccoli Pad Thai in there, super quick 😋
Becky Excell's website also has some decent GF recipes, especially for baking, and she also flags things that are low FODMAP: glutenfreecuppatea.co.uk/
After posting this I took the kids to the library and for a cookbook by Becky Excell! Wouldn't have looked at it without a recommendation.
Thank you so much; as you say, it's about finding inspiration more than anything. I'm just so bored of it all! Especially as the kids are total fusspots and I have to cook 2 evening meals. argh!
I usually keep jacket potatos and eggs in the fridge for a quick meal. Also tinned tuna and mayonnaise. Can usually whip something fairly nutricious up from that and anything else thats in the fridge/cupboards.
That's a good suggestion. When I've tried gluten free I've found the snacks tough especially when the T3 hunger makes you feel like you are going to die if you don't get substantial food now.
Familiarise yourself with the 'free from' aisle in all your local supermarkets and try different things over time. You will eventually find things that you like and your cupboards/fridge/freezer will be better stocked with GF/DF foods.
The issue for me is that I just don't know how to put ingredients together. I might have the same ingredients in but wouldn't know what to do with them. I need actual recipes! 😂
If you look at paleo recipes they will always be gluten and dairy free. So long as you have GF gravy, substitute 'milk' in the cupboard then most recipes translate well.
Have a look at the Zoe suggestions. Easy to choose the g/f ones and leave out the cheese (which they seem to use a lot of).
I cook 12 hard boiled eggs, a whole chicken and large tray of roasted veg every week just for the fridge, for snacks or meal use. Also always have some sort of salad made up and large pot of hummus or dressing.
If you cook a meal, make twice the amount so you get a ‘free’ meal another night. If I make a spaghetti bolognaise sauce then I’ll do a huge pot so can freeze portions for lasagne next week or to cover a jacket potato for instance.
If I don’t menu plan it all goes horribly wrong pretty quick because household members raid the fridge and eat essential ingredients!
I always buy at least a couple of meals a week that are simple for days with low energy when I can’t be bothered with recipes.
It’s mostly variations of no prep meat or fish of choice that can be shoved in the air fryer/ oven (chicken legs or salmon my favs), veg that just needs to be opened and in the steamer like green beans with a couple of small potato cut up with skins ons. Or even microwave packs of steamed veg!
I suppose they’re accidentally “clean”, gluten free, and most importantly 5 mins prep max!
Not sure if it's any help, but I regularly bulk cook and freeze meals. So if I'm making chilli/ curry/ casserole, I cook 6 portions and freeze 4. That means I don't cook daily. We also have a tray bake each week. Chicken thighs, chopped peppers, red onion, potato, olives, courgette, sprinkle with a little olive oil, salt & pepper and Italain herbs. Single layer over large oven tray. In oven until its cook. You can add some df feta style cheese near end. I also do a Chinese flavoured version, - no olives, veg oil, gf soy sauce and chinese five spice. And sprinkle a little sesame oil before serving.
In this weather I find doing a quick salad with some feta cheese or boiled eggs fills me up nicely. I am not a great one for salad but I find chopping everything up fairly small and adding some kind of fruit - mango or apples are good - makes it quite enjoyable. Throwing in a handful of seeds is a good idea. I particularly like pumpkin seeds. Mangos are my favourite food at the moment because you can add just about a quarter of a mango to a salad to tart it up and then you have some left for the next few days. I don't peel the whole mango. I just peel the part of the mango I am going to use.
Do you follow Becky Excell at all? She is a fantastic gluten-free blogger/author, and always shows dairy free alternatives in her recipes (her partner is lactose intolerant). She also shows alternatives for people who have to be low fodmap, as she needs to be so understands that side of things very well for anyone it's applicable to.
Her blog is gluten free cuppa tea, and there are 100s of free recipes on there. She has a hugely active FB group, and is also on Instagram. I'm not on Insta, but she has done lots of series on there of quick and easy meals, budget meals, 5 ingredient meals etc, slow cooker meals (sling them in!) etc.
Her baking recipes are amazing, you would never know they were gluten free. We've done a lot of her savoury and sweet recipes recently, as we did a dairy free trial (to see if it made a difference to any of my symptoms but it didn't, so I'm back on dairy now).
I'm in her FB group and she is extremely accessible on there despite the size of the group - she's the only mod, and answers everything personally.
If you could make a few of her meals then chuck some in the freezer for when you can't be bothered, then I really think that would help.
I prep my dinner in the morning when I have more desire to do anything and when dinner time comes around all I have to do is cook and put my few dishes in the dish washer.
Batch cooking and freezing maybe best suited if tired or lack motivation … it may take up one afternoon to prepare few different meals for the week ahead or use slow cookers etc do one pot dishes that can leave cooking.
Most dishes can be altered and alternatives used, fill up store cupboard with essentials and then just shop for fresh produce… then you’ll have most things to turn too.
Personally being coeliac I don’t use free from aisle much I buy high fibre pastas and flour… I avoid ultra processed food where I can. I would do same if went dairy free, I would use as natural products as possible or go without… but making sure if I eliminate certain food types I try get those missing nutrients in from elsewhere even supplements.
This is how I'm leaning too. We were vegan for a spell but we just swapped everything out for 'free from' versions and I'm certain we were worse off for it.
I do miss cheddar though. I haven't missed anything else.
This is my go-to because I can throw together whatever I have and it covers most food groups. If I put in some brown rice (or other grain) and eat some fruit for dessert, I have it all covered. I make a big pot when I'm up to it and keep it in the fridge for three days or portioned in the freezer for 3 months (never stays there that long ). ohsheglows.com/2017/07/21/8...
Make nutritional yeast your friend, if you can (I'm still trying...) as you can use it in df sauces, to replace parmesan with, or just to add some flavour to things. I have developed a taste for parmesan free risotto though. Who knew?!
Re more complex meals, another vote for making a bunch at once, refrigerating enough for 2-3 days, and freezing the rest. If you do this with a few dishes you get plenty of variety through the week too.
For breakfast oats is super simple - cook enough to last 4-5 mornings and refrigerate, they last a while. Each day just add whatever milk/nondairy milk, heat up, and throw on the topping(s) of choice if desired.
A very simple and very healthy way to make potatoes or veggies when you have little energy is to chop and steam them in a pot (don't need a huge pot with a steamer, which can be too much work to clean - just some tablespoons of water on the bottom of a simple pot and throw the veggies on top once it starts steaming). Once cooked, flavor the food with EVOO (be generous!), salt and pepper, and lemon juice /other spices/sauces/cheese if desired. As a bonus, the EVOO is never heated so it retains all its amazing goodness, and since all of the water gets used up, you're not losing nutrients you would if you boiled and had to drain off a lot of water. (And no worry about acrylamides from baking or PFAS from nonstick cookware, etc. ) It does take some time to get used to accurately guesstimating how much water you'll need, but can always add a bit more as needed or drain some off at the end if you used too much. Can also throw in some chopped garlic or other things in the last few minutes of steaming. Not the same flavors as you would get from more complicated recipes of course, but its honestly still quite good most of the time and such a nutritious prep for little effort.
I’ve found batch cooking to be the best way to have filling nutritious food when I really don’t feel like anything - one or two things each weekend in large batches means that after a few weeks there is plenty of choice and then just needs topping up. We did have to buy a new separate freezer though 🤣
As others have said, there are many recipes where you can substitute a non dairy milk or butter alternative - and coconut milk is useful too.
I found the cooking without book by Barbara cousins useful at first - I was just so pleased to find so many things that I could eat all in one place.
I also use the bbc good food website - you can put in an ingredient or meal type and there are loads of suggestions.
It’s a big adjustment, eating differently can take a bit of trial and error. Stick with it and I’m sure you’ll see some real benefits.
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