OK, so I think I am going to do it. It can't hurt... and the more I read, the more I see sympoms in each of my children (hyperactivity, oversensitivity, excema).

So where do I start? What do I need in my pantry to make GFCF foods?

I have a bread machine, and would love to make bread. But my kids and I love cheese on everything. ;D Pizza... well, let's just say that the pizza man knows our name. We wouldn't mind making pizza, but the kids definitely want cheese on the pizza.

I will be going to Wild Oats this week to get some things... tell me what I need to get to make healthy foods for us.

*Rice is good, right? white and brown?
*wheat, unbleached, etc flours are out, right?
*what about rye flour?
*what kinds of pasta?

What are the other names used for gluten and casien that I should look at labels for before serving? I'm thinking of pasta sauces, condiments, salad dressings, etc.

I have a lot of questions, and am hoping to get some ideas.

Can you list some of your favorite meals? I want to introduce this to my family over the next month or so.... is that realistic?

Hi Heather. First let me say, GOOD FOR YOU! You're right, it can't hurt, and I would never have guessed how much it would change William's health, sense of well being, speech, socialization, happiness, etc. It's nothing short of a miracle.

So, for foods to buy, here's what we get (at Wild Oats). All of this stuff is SO delicious. I won't buy or recommend things unless they are very good tasting and satisfying:

-Diestel and Applegate Farm lunch meats (expensive, but you can freeze individual slices to make them last longer. You can ask for samples too at the counter.) You can make yummy sandwiches with these and a little avocado on rice crackers or gf/cf bread.

-Hog Wild brand pork breakfast sausage links

-Hog Wild hickory smoked bacon (I think it's now sold under the Wild Oats label).

-fresh meats like hamburger, pork chops, roasts, chicken (I buy chicken at Safeway, otherwise everything else comes from Wild Oats.)

Purity Farms organic ghee. It costs $4.99 for 8 oz, which is very expensive. But a little bit goes a very long way. Great on top of popcorn (you can't tell the difference between this and butter unless you taste them side by side.) Also great for gf/cf baking. Ghee is clarified butter (milk solids removed), and is very strictly tested to make sure it's cf.

Dry goods:

-bulk organic popcorn (you can buy non-organic too at regular store). I pop in the air popper and put ghee on top.

-Edward and Sons rice crackers

-Gluten free cereals by Arrowhead Mills (buckwheat frosted flakes ROCK!) and Envirokidz (Gorilla Munch is a lot like Captain Crunch).

-Gluten free mixes by Bob's Red Mil, Gluten Free Pantry, and Pamela's:

- Bob's Red Mill GF pancake mix, delicious!! I make my recipe slightly differently then they do, I add a little sugar, vanilla, and a bit more oil than called for.

-Pamela's Ultimate brownie mix. OMG, these are SOO Good! Don't overbake.

-Gluten free pantry's Yankee Cornbread mix, Cookie and cake mix (makes delicious cupcakes), and muffin mix.

I've had less luck with the Arrowhead Mills mixes, I don't like them but many others do.

Fresh veggies and fruits (again, you don't have to buy organic but they're nice if you can afford...esp. apples and broccoli.)

Misc:

Pacific Foods rice milk in vanilla and plain (you can add chocolate syrup like Ah-laska brand to this to make choc. milk or hot chocolate). Don't buy Rice Dream brand, it has gluten in the barley malt.

Bearitos spicy refried beans are the best!
Heather, you should look into getting or borrowing some cookbooks from the library. I recommend these to start with:

Special Diets for Special Kids I and II, by Lisa Lewis. Has lots of great recipes, very kid friendly. Things like Sheperd's Pie, casseroles. She explains why diet is important too.

The Gluten Free Gourmet books. There are a bunch of these. The first one is great, and absolutely invaluable is The Gluten Free Gourmet bakes bread. TONS of great recipes.

The flours I've had best luck using for baking with are white rice and sweet white rice, sorghum, tapioca and potato starch. These books will explain the ratios, and how to's. Gluten free baking is different than baking with wheat, it takes a bit of getting used to. But once you get used to it, it's not bad at all and you can turn out some really delicious baked goods (so yummy that people can't taste the difference...that good!)

I have several wonderful recipes, I will post them here if you'd like. A chocolate chip cookie recipe, a couple of soup recipes, and a killer waffle recipe that tastes just like wheat. Take a look back at the last few pages of threads here, there are tons of great recipes listed.

A couple of other tips:

try using a small George Foreman grill to cook meats. It makes the best hamburgers, bacon, and grilled chicken breasts. You don't need a lot of extras because the meat tastes so good already.

For dinners, we eat pretty simply because my ds has such a limited palate of what he'll eat (we're working on this.) So we might have burgers. Ds will eat hamburger plain, I put a tiny bit of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper on it and stick in the Foreman grill for a couple of minutes. Cut up and serve with french fries. We make baked chicken using brown rice bread crumbs and some Mrs. Dash garlic and herb seasoning. I would start with sort of a modified Atkins: meat entree, but have potatoes, corn or rice on the side. For potatoes, you can have baked, mashed (with rice milk and ghee, delicious), smashed in a pan with oil, ghee and salt, hash browns, etc. Rice can be wild, white, brown, there are lots of ways. Fried rice would be good too, but watch that soy sauce.

I gotta go, but will say that gluten is found in:

wheat
spelt
triticale
rye
barley
oatmeal that is produced in the U.S. (you can use Irish oats that are produced in Ireland, McCann's is the brand which is available at Wild Oats.)

Gluten is hidden EVERYWHERE! Check out www.gfcfdiet.com for terms to look for like modified food starch, natural flavorings, etc that are often hidden gluten. Try to take the diet slowly though. I would get off the casein first, it's easier. This is a process, don't try to do it all in one day and get discouraged and give up because you couldn't do it all at once. That's not the idea. You have to help your kids to retrain their palates and bodies to get along without foods that are poisoning their bodies and brains. Sometimes there is withdrawal as they get off these foods. It may not be easy, but I hope you'll find it is worth it. : )

Let us know what else we can answer mama, good luck!

Wow, um - Laura covered it. :) Laura, you are awesome! Let's ask a mod to make this a sticky or something - or make your post a FAQ.

I found the recipes on the thread here to be incredibly helpful. I love the choc chip cookie recipe Laura posted.

We also love the Applegate Farms turkey hot dogs cut up and served with ketchup.

I make my own ghee - I know it might not be strictly casein-free but I skim off all the milk solids I can possibly see and then don't pour the very bottom - it is crystal clear when I'm done - so though not scientific I am pretty sure I get 95% or better of all the casein out. YMMV...but Jake needs good fats very badly and casein isn't our hugest problem here. (Gluten is.) We use tons of ghee and it is much, much cheaper that way. I cook eggs in it, we put tablespoons of it on home-popped popcorn (we use a Whirly Pop, which requires oil, we use olive oil), I cook with it. I also cook with coconut oil, which is a very healing, antifungal, immune-boosting and liver-cleansing food. (And does not require bile salts to be digested, which is good for Jake.) You can simply buy food-grade coconut oil at the health food store. We make fries in it - yum! And bake with it.

Oh and Tinkyada pasta is the best! It's brown-rice-based. You will NOT be able to tell the difference between it and semolina. They have it in all shapes.

Thanks, girls! :D

I went to the library... looked up 'gluten' on the computer there... NO returns. NONE!

I also looked up celiac and didn't come up with ANY cookbooks. UGH!

So, now I am waiting on interlibrary loan for the Special Diets books and also for some Gluten Free Gourmet. We'll see when that comes in.

This is the way I do searches for books Heather. I go to Amazon.com first and type in the search subject, find titles and author names, then go to my library and look for those specific titles. It's more time consuming than doing a search at the library, but it does seem to yield more results for me.

Here's what I get at Amazon when I type in gluten free:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=stripbooks&field-keywords=gluten%252520free%252520cookbook&search-type=ss&bq=1&store-name=books/ref=xs_ap_l_xgl14/104-7221468-8037522