Dr. Jennifer Luis ND

Recipe resources for allergen-free cooking

Every day that I am at the clinic with patients, I am going over food sensitivity testing and explaining the foods that should be cut out of the diet for the near future.  Quite often dairy, gluten or eggs are at the top of the list.  At first glance patients look at the results and think “ok, this isn’t so bad”.  Then favourite foods come into mind and questions are plenty!

One of the most helpful tips that I can give is a list of resources for recipes and ideas for substitutions to common ingredients.  One bonus of figuring out which foods are causing physical and mental symptoms is that it helps push people back to making their own meals and avoiding many processed foods.  My favourite cookbook, which I have mentioned many times on my social media sites, is “Whole Life Nutrition” by Alissa Segerstein and Tom Malterre.  They have published 2 cookbooks which are gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free and egg-free (1st book only is egg-free, the 2nd seems to be pretty heavy on the use of eggs) and I personally use the first book several times per week to cook for my family.  You can purchase the cookbooks at their website at www.nourishingmeals.com or at both of my clinics.

Along with the cookbooks, Alissa Segerstein keeps an excellent blog at the site above that holds many recipes along the same lines as the cookbooks.  There is also a special section on the elimination diet which can be followed as a cleanse or to help determine food sensitivities.  You can sign-up to receive the new posts and recipes as they are published which is nice to have some inspiration for up-coming meals.

My second-favourite gluten-free/dairy-free recipe and blog site is the Gluten-free Goddess Recipes http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.ca where you can find just about anything.  There is a “how to go gluten-free” section, recipes for vegetarians and vegans and an FAQ section.  In fact, I just made these delicious peanut butter, quinoa flake cookies for my daughter and her friend for their sleep-over tonight.  I would suggest reducing the sugar by 25-50% which I will do next time and add in some dark chocolate chunks (Enjoy Life brand has an allergen-free variety) for fun.

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Peanut butter quinoa flake cookies

 

On a final note, if you are becoming gluten-free it is a good idea to maintain a wide-range of baking ingredients for all of these exciting new recipes.  About once a month I make a special trip out to Galloways http://gallowaysfoods.com on Marine Drive just into Burnaby.  This is a specialty store that carries all of the alternative flours such as sorghum, teff, millet, brown rice, tapioca, buckwheat etc. at a better price than our local natural health food stores.  You can buy the flours and sweeteners that you use more of in larger quantities and find just about any ingredient used in whole food baking.  The best vegan gluten-free bread that I bake at home is the Honey Whole Grain bread found in the Whole Life Nutrition cookbook and all of the ingredients are at Galloways.

I hope that you find these resources as helpful as I do.  If there are any additional allergen-free sites or cookbooks that you would like to share, please leave a comment to tell us all about it!