Читать книгу Gluten-Free All-In-One For Dummies - Dummies Consumer - Страница 8

This book is about a lifestyle, not a diet. But no matter where that lifestyle takes you – eating in, eating out, attending social events, choosing, planning, shopping, preparing – being gluten-free all comes down to one thing: food.

If you’re a culinary hacker and you’re afraid you’ll have to wake up at 4 a.m. to bake gluten-free bread and make pasta from scratch, turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. Plenty of gluten-free specialty foods are available to take the place of all your old favorites. Better yet (from a health standpoint), you’re likely to find that those foods become less important to you. And considering that they’re really not very good for you, that’s a good thing.

Whether you’re a kitchenphobe or a foodie, living a gluten-free lifestyle offers you an enormous selection of foods and ingredients to choose from.

Planning and preparing

Putting together smart and healthful gluten-free meals is a lot easier if you plan ahead. Walking through a store, perusing restaurant menus, or (gasp!) sitting in a bakery with a growling tummy isn’t exactly conducive to making good food choices.

Give yourself a healthy advantage by planning and even preparing meals in advance, especially if your busy schedule has you eating away from home frequently. If you know you’ll be pressed for time at breakfast or lunch, make your meals the night before, and bring healthful gluten-free snacks in resealable plastic bags.

One of the coolest things about adopting a new dietary lifestyle is exploring new and sometimes unusual or unique foods. You may never have heard of lots of gluten-free foods and ingredients, many of which not only are gluten-free and delicious but also are nutritional powerhouses. With the new perspective on food that the gluten-free lifestyle can offer you, you may find yourself inspired to think outside the typical menu plan, exploring unique and nutritious alternatives.

Shopping shrewdly

The healthiest way to enjoy a gluten-free lifestyle is to eat things you can find at any grocery store or even a farmer’s market: meat, fish, seafood, fruits, and nonstarchy vegetables (see Book II, Chapter 3 for more tips on shopping). If you want to add canned, processed, and even junk foods to your shopping list, you can still do most of your shopping at a regular grocery store, and you can even buy generics.

If you hope to enjoy the delicious gluten-free specialty products that are available these days, you can find them in health food aisles or at health food stores or specialty shops. Or you can shop in your jammies on one of the many Internet sites specializing in gluten-free products.

Considering your kitchen

For the most part, a gluten-free kitchen looks the same as any other kitchen – without the gluten, of course. You don’t need to go out and buy special gadgets and tools, and with only a couple exceptions, which we cover in Book II, Chapter 2, you don’t need two sets of pots, pans, utensils, or storage containers, either.

If you’re sharing a kitchen with gluten, you need to be aware of some contamination issues so you don’t inadvertently glutenate (contaminate with gluten) a perfectly good gluten-free meal. Keeping your crumbs to yourself isn’t just a matter of hygiene, but it can mean the difference between a meal you can eat and one you can’t.

Some people find having separate areas in the pantry or cupboards for their gluten-free products helpful. This idea is especially good if you have gluten-free kids in the house, because they can see that you always have on hand lots of things for them to eat, and they can quickly grab their favorite gluten-free goodies from their special area.

Cooking outside the recipe box

Give someone a recipe, you feed ’em for a meal. Show them how to make anything gluten-free, and you feed ’em for a lifetime. The point is, you can make anything gluten-free, and you’re not constrained by recipes or the fact that you can’t use regular flour or breadcrumbs. All you need is a little creativity and some basic guidelines for using gluten-free substitutions, which you can find in Chapter 4 of Book II.

If you’re a die-hard recipe fan, never fear – you find all kinds of recipes in Books III through V. Most of them are super simple to follow but leave your guests with the impression that you spent all day in the kitchen (and being thus indebted, they may volunteer to do the dishes).