When my husband was first diagnosed with his food intolerances he was struggling to 
know what to eat. He usually had wheat in some form or other for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. There was also a lot of dairy which is one of his intolerances but to a lesser degree. Sulphites (preservative 220 – 228) would have been in a lot of what he was eating. Basically every time he ate he was having foods that he now couldn’t eat. My husband is quite happy to have the same foods everyday so for breakfast, lunch, morning and afternoon tea he’ll generally have the same things. Dinners vary as I like variety. My husband is also not a big salad or fruit eater so we had to find/make other alternatives.
So what was a typical daily menu before discovering his food intolerances:
- Breakfast: Weet-bix with cows milk & toast with honey
- Morning Tea: Sao’s with cheese
- Lunch: Cheese sandwich
- Afternoon Tea: Green apple & possibly some sweet biscuits
- Dinner: Often included wheat in some form whether as pasta or whatever we were eating was served with bread
This is a typical daily menu now:
- Breakfast: Coles Cornflakes with cold water and on Sunday’s bacon & eggs on corn/rice thins
- Morning Tea: homemade sweet biscuits such as chocolate brownies
- Lunch: Corn thins/Rice thins with peanut paste or corn thins pizza (if working from home)
- Afternoon Tea: Green Apple & possibly a handful of peanuts
- Dinner: Rice based dish (eg. fried rice), gluten free pasta dish (eg. Mum R’s Mince & Pasta) or meat and vegies (eg. rissoles)
As you can see, apart from afternoon tea, his diet has changed considerably. My husband does not like any of the alternate nut or rice milks so chooses to have cold water on his cereal. Coles brand cornflakes are one of the few that don’t contain barley malt extract so are gluten free. They are not suitable for coeliacs as they may contain gluten. Bacon and eggs for breakfast has become a weekly thing, before that about the only time we would have bacon and eggs was for breakfast on Christmas day.
My husband tends to steer away from commercial gluten & dairy free sweet biscuits as many of them contain flours that may have hidden sulphites. I’m trying to reduce the sugar I use in the homemade biscuits. Even after reducing the sugar in a recipe, I’ll often make things with half normal cane sugar and half rapadura/coconut sugar. I’ve reduced the amount of sugar I use in my Peanut Butter Cookies but was making them with no added sugar peanut paste so thought I’d increase the sugar again. They were too sweet! I’m also using more recipes that have maple syrup instead of sugar, eg Maple Quinoa biscuits. My husband doesn’t like dates so usually doesn’t like anything with dates in it.
Just like the commercial gluten free biscuits most commercial gluten free breads contain hidden sulphites. My husband hasn’t particularly liked any of the gluten free breads I’ve tried to make. He doesn’t think they are like bread most of the time. He’s quite happy to eat corn thins or rice thins.
I also think my husband would often go and buy himself some hot chips to go with his cheese sandwich. Frozen chips will usually have sulphites to preserve them so he can’t do this anymore.
Before my son was diagnosed with his food intolerances our dinners often contained a milky, creamy or cheesy sauce as I loved these. Now I know that my body doesn’t love dairy. So we had already cut back or made dairy free alternatives before my husband was diagnosed. Though, we had been using a lot of oat milk or cashew milk both of which my husband couldn’t have. So this was when we changed to almond milk or coconut milk or similar.
What are your go to daily menu items?