AskBeehaw

To be honest, most gluten-containing items that I can think of are quite bland and are used to "carry" less bland foods- pasta on its own is bland, the flavour is in the sauce.

During my gluten-free years I just found other "carriers" for my flavourful items. Rice is a great example. Potatoes are another. Oatmeal bread is another. I haven't tried gluten-free pasta in 15 years, but I understand it's improved greatly since I needed it.

For inspiration, I'd look up recipes for those with Coelaic disease (spelled Celiac by Americans). Another common search term is "GF". Gluten free lifestyles are so popular these days, the Internet is flooded with ideas and recipes.

Ok, I’m gonna be Debbie Downer here, but please I beg you to hear me out.

I had nearly the exact same food sensitivities you describe. I struggled with them for nearly a decade. My doctor gave me all the information they could on creative ways to deal with it.

Finally, I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy.

Stage 4 colon cancer. Not cool. My oncologist estimated from the spread that the cancer probably started 10 years ago. What an amazing coincidence….

Please, please, please get an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Not the little poop-on-a-stick test, an actual colonoscopy and endoscopy. Digestive system cancers are exploding in younger people that “shouldn’t” be getting them. The fastest growing population is young women (who are often told it’s just IBS) but young men are getting these cancers at an alarming rate as well.

A truly gluten free diet (not just wheat free, but gluten free, and without cross-contamination) can be really challenging and I'll be the first to admit that it can really stink sometimes to have very, very few options. That said, it's actually typically really easy to do yourself.

Today there are some decent gf breads available, and some good pre-made flour blends if you want to bake your own. Or, you can get your own constituent flours and powders and make your own flour blend. Pastas are similar - I prefer corn pastas as I find those that are primarily rice tend to be too flimsy to hold up both boiling and adding any sort of sauce. Though do be warned of a couple things. Gf pasta really sucks up sauce, so don't be afraid of adding extra sauce (mostly if you're expecting leftovers, by morning the sauce will be gone). Leftover gf pasta rarely holds up and can often be nothing but pieces by the next day - corn pastas are much more robust, and some pastas are decent at avoiding this.

Meats, veg, fruit, raw ingredients are very typically fine. Just be careful of cross contamination. If it's more than just plain butchered meat, for example a pre-marinated meat, either make sure the ingredients are fine (and accept risk of cross-contamination from prep) or don't get it - these often don't have ingredients listed.

Many cuisines are super easy to do gluten free. Indian is a great example - curries very rarely have flour added as a thickener, for example. But honestly, I typically make normal, glutenous recipes just with gf ingredients. Something like bread is the biggest no-no, needing special prep, but I rarely find things that need special provisions.

GF doesn't need to be bland - it's just a different prep style, usually.

My partner is vegetarian, avoids lactose because it doesn't completely agree and recently can't have gluten. It's certainly challenging but can work.

Baking with gluten free flour usually comes out a lot better than the pre-made products in the store, especially with a little xantham gum to add elasticity. Pre-made baked food is already not as good as fresh, so add in gluten free flour to that and you have a shell of what you really want.

So, pizza can still be decent; fake cheese is getting pretty good. You can bake bread, although the pre-baked loafs can be okay. Soy "milk" usually works better because oats are often contaminated. You'll also be surprised by how many chips add gluten, presumably for texture.

I'm not sure exactly what your reaction to acidity includes, but I still make good curries, stews, nacho plates and tacos with meat alternatives. It's not the real deal but it's more than edible.

It’s a journey. You may find that a wide variety of neurological and muscle issues ease or vanish with a super strict GF diet. There’s also evidence that within 5 years of starting a true GF diet many with celiac find that other food intolerances wane or disappear.

I just bought a gluten free cookbook that comes highly recommended called ‘The Gluten Free Cook’ by Cristian Broglia, an Italian chef, who looked for naturally gluten free recipes from around the world. This seems to be the kind of thing that might be useful to you. (Haven’t really tried much in it myself yet.)

One cookbook that I find super reliable is ‘Healthy Gluten Free Eating’ by Davina Allen and Rosemary Kearney of the Ballymaloe Cooking School in Cork, Ireland. Ireland has the highest prevalence of celiac in the world and the Chef’s school there has been at the forefront of developing workable recipes.

Another cookbook that I rely on is ‘Gluten Free Flour Power’.

Last, ‘Baked to Perfection’ is a recent award winning GF baking book by a woman who was a PhD student in inorganic chemistry when she wrote it. She understands a great deal about making GF baking work and explains it in an understandable way.

There is a supermarket where I live whose almost all products are gluten free. We don't buy them because they're gluten free, but because they're generally cheaper than other supermarkets, having gluten or not. I think that bread and other pastries are the only products that are not gluten free, but I don't care.