The Challenges of New Foods

I'm finding one of the most challenging things about eating wheat-free is that I'm having to re-learn how to cook.  It's taking much longer to make meals now since I'm not able to use many of my tried-and-true favourites!  I am going to work on adapting them, though. 

I actually didn't crave any wheat today, except at lunch when we made our kids Kraft Dinner and I really wanted to have a spoonful of it!  Instead, I enjoyed my spinach salad with egg, turkey, cheese, mushrooms, garden peas, tomatoes and raspberry vinaigrette dressing.  It sounds so much better than Kraft Dinner when I type it here, but I really, really wanted that scoop of goopy pasta! I'm very proud of myself for holding back!

I made hamburgers for supper, which is one of our family's favourites.  Usually I put bread crumbs in to hold the meat together, so I had to improvise.  I used an egg, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, tamari soy sauce and some Epicure French Onion dip mix (I usually use Onion Soup mix, but I threw the box out, so I didn't have the list of ingredients to check if there was any wheat in it - that's on my to-do list!).  They actually held together really well on the barbecue, so who needs bread crumbs?  I topped my burger with a little grated cheddar and some guacamole.

Another new thing tonight was that we had portobello mushrooms for the first time.  I found this recipe and we decided to try it.  My husband is an avid mushroom-hater, but he decided that for this month, he will try anything at least once.  And he actually LOVED these mushrooms.  He ate a whole one himself!  we also topped the meal off with some baby potatoes roasted in the oven in olive oil and Epicure Garlic Dill topper (YUM), along with some steamed cauliflower that I mashed with some grated white cheddar and a little nutmeg, so it looked like mashed potatoes.

Our kids have not been overly impressed with our wheat-free experiment as they are also having to veer from their comfort foods that I normally make (we're not making them eat wheat-free, but we are insisting that they try at least a bite of everything we're eating so they get some new taste experiences).  They covered the portobello mushroom bite that we gave them with mustard and ketchup, but at least they ate it!