How to save money when eating Gluten Free (or on any special diet)

I got this listing from a gluten free group that I frequent. Some great ideas here! Sometimes I know we feel like a prisoner to our required diets, so I thought this cartoon was cute!
Moe

Here are some tips from Teri Gruss on cutting costs while eating
gluten-free.

How To Cook Gluten-Free on a Budget - Cut Gluten-Free Food Costs Now!
By Teri Gruss, MS

Here are 6 practical tips and resources to help you save money on the
extraordinarily high costs of gluten-free foods. Plan ahead and you
really can save on your monthly gluten-free food costs- and at the
same time eat delicious, healthy gluten-free foods.

1. Focus on cooking with foods that are naturally gluten-free

Fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, dairy products, nuts and seeds, meats,
poultry and fish are all healthy, delicious, gluten-free foods. Focus
on planning a gluten-free menu based on these naturally gluten-free
foods. Pound for pound these foods offer a lot of nutritional value
for the buck, compared to refined, processed gluten-free products.

2. Make your own gluten-free foods rather than buying expensive,
processed products

Savings can be substantial when you make your own gluten-free foods,
especially breads and snack foods. Another advantage in making
homemade gluten-free foods is better flavor and healthier ingredients.

3. It is convenient to keep a few packages of commercial gluten-free
mixes on hand. But you can save a lot of money by making your own
mixes. Measure, mix, package and refrigerator or freeze and you have
created your own fresh convenience mixes. Along with saving money,
when you make your own gluten-free flour mixes, you can customize them
to your own tastes and nutritional needs.


4. Join forces with other gluten-free families and friends to lower
costs. Websites like amazon.com and Shop Gluten Free Grocers sell
gluten-free foods in multi-pack cartons, including pastas and flours.
Amazon's Shop Gluten-Free Groceries website offers free shipping on
orders over $25. Bob's Red Mill sells 25 pound bags of several of
their gluten-free products, including tapioca flour and all purpose
gluten-free baking mix. They also sell 4 bag cartons at discounted
prices.

5. Join a local support organization. You'll meet other people, who
like you, are battling the high costs of gluten-free foods- join
forces, buy in bulk and save money.

6. Use coupons

Nancy Lapid, About.com Guide to Celiac Disease recently blogged about
a website that offers printable coupons for gluten-free products.


Tips:

Once a month prepare your favorite gluten free convenience mixes. I
like to make 3 pound bags of all purpose baking mixes. This amount
generally lasts for several weeks. Use it to make homemade breads,
pancakes, waffles, cookies and pizza crust. Making mixes ahead of time
is SO much more convenient than making mixes every time you need a
gluten-free flour blend for a recipe.

Once a week bake your favorite gluten-free breads, wrap them up and
freeze. Remember, making homemade gluten-free bread is like mixing a
cake batter. Combine ingredients in a mixing bowl. Beat. Pour in a
bread pan, let rise and bake. Homemade gluten-free bread is faster and
easier than making traditional wheat-based yeast breads. So don't
shudder at the thought of making gluten-free bread every week. It
requires less time than you think! The savings, not to mention
superior taste and texture make it worth the minimal effort!

Make gluten-free cookie batter and refrigerate or freeze to use as
needed. There is really no need to buy expensive, ready-made mixes.
Mixing and storing cookie dough, like making bread is faster and
easier than you may think.

Make and freeze gluten-free pizza and pie crusts, which become
economical convenience foods, ready when you need them. Use a food
processor and this task is very fast and again, much easier than you
imagined.

Develop a dependable gluten-free recipe file. This will save you not
only money, but time and disappointment. I have a constantly growing
"favorites" recipe file- my "go to" recipes that I know work and taste
great. This not only saves money, it's healthier.

What You Need

Dependable, favorite gluten-free recipes
Gluten-free raw ingredients- purchased in bulk if possible
Homemade gluten-free flour blend mixes
Motivation
Shop with a grocery list and don't shop when you're hungry!
Consult with an accountant to see if you can deduct a portion of your food costs

Pantry Challenge January Round Up

Let me count the ways that I bombed this past month in the Pantry Challenge.....lol. But I had fun and hope you did too.

For starters DO NOT EVER shop for groceries after being under anesthetic..lol. I felt so well after my upper and lower scopes that we decided to shop at Meijers (remember I love that place!), I wandered through and blew a cool $50 some odd dollars, can't find the receipt now. Got some wonderful produce (did I ever tell you how I just love Meijers produce? I think it's the lighting!).
My dear husband pushed the cart dutifully up and down the isles for me as I plucked things off the shelf (who knows what!) and dropped them into the cart. What on earth was I thinking? That is right I was not in my right mind and what did that paper say that I signed before surgery? "I will not make any financial decisions for 24 hours." I wonder now, does grocery shopping fall under that category? I think so! That brings me up to $122.09 for the month.

Then another $49.56 at the local grocery store this was sort of a woe is me shopping trip, I had to do the prep for my upper/lower scopes (drink the nasty stuff to clean your insides out) and I wanted to treat myself, so I bought my favorite soda Canada Dry, my favorite kool-aid drink TANG, the good ice pops (not those nasty cheap watered down ice pops......lol). Since I knew once the tests were done I would be back on a gluten free diet, I got some Lenders Bagels and Thomason English Muffins, no generics for me on those! I also bought the good juices to drink during my prep time, nothing like Welches White Grape Juice $4.50 a bottle and Mango Peach Juice. Those items added up very quickly. $171.65 for the month.

Then on 1/30/12 I ran to the store real quick like for milk & chicken (remember I did not want to butcher our laying hens so I had to buy chicken)........that cost me $23.76.
They had milk on sale for $1.50 so bought a few of those,
Cannelli Beans on sale for $1.00 a can, I stocked up on those since I can sneak them into a lot of things..lol
Tyson Chicken was on sale for $1.99 lb.

January 2012 cost us $195.41 for three people, doing homeschool math that comes to an average of $65.14 per person for a month or an average of $48.85 per week. I was hoping for less, but I know that I could have done without the $50 bucks spent on surgery day, I am still kicking myself for that one! I am thankful for what I saved and did not spend with being gluten and dairy free, I could have spent a lot more $$ on fancy products.

How is your February going on the pantry challenge? I am going to just keep on going with it and see where it leads me. Remember if you are not gluten free or dairy free you can still use my recipes (comment if you have questions about them), just use whole wheat or white flour and regular dairy and butter in the recipes.

If you are new around here we are having a Pantry Challenge, here is how it works.........It's easy, before you head to the grocery store, shop your freezer, refrigerator and cabinets to see what you can use up. For the first 3 weeks I try to only buy milk, butter and bread, since I usually have an abundance of canned fruits and veggies on hand. If you don't have chickens you may need to buy eggs :-p Make a family game out of this, let the kids pick some can goodies from the cabinet, find some meat in the freezer and go from there.
Moe

What have we been eating?

Well let me see, we have had some very warm weather here so we did campfire school (homeschooling around the campfire), I found 2 packages of hotdogs in the freezer and some hard marshmallows in the back of the pantry that someone had failed to close up with a twist tie.
Note to self: marshmallows burn very easily when they are dried out. We did not have any hotdog buns or chocolate to make smores, but that was OK! We had fun anyway and saved some carbs :O)

I almost fired up the grill, but I thought, ya know we are going to be out here doing school for the day, so why not just roast 2 hotdogs at a time until both packages are cooked. So we had grilled hotdogs for a few lunches last week.

We had some extra eggs to use up, it's amazing how the chickens can lay a GAZILLION eggs one week and then almost nothing the next week! Or the week that we really need eggs, the dear child forgets to collect them (I refuse to use eggs that have been sitting in the nesting boxes too long, I know they are suppose to be fine, but I am sort of a freak about these things.) So anyway we had a gazillion eggs this week, so I made up a large batch of french toast and we had that for several breakfasts, and guess what? When you don't have hotdog buns, a hotdog on french toast bread is pretty good (minus the syrup!). Guess you would call it A Pig In A French Toast (or maybe A Pig In A French Afgan? lol) Anyway it was good.

I found some BLSL chicken breast in the freezer and made this yummy recipe (same recipe that I used at Christmas time with a turkey, but made it with chicken this time.)

Heat oven to 350
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 c light mayo (not Miracle Whip)
2 tsp (or more) thyme
2 tsp (or more) rosemary
2 tsp (or more) pepper
2 tsp (or more) oregano
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine (I used unsalted)
mix all the ingredients together and spoon over chicken. Cover with foil and bake 45 min or until chicken is done.

I found the recipe for the mayonnaise roasted turkey at the blog SheWearsManyHats.com, click on the link and it will take you to the recipe for the turkey.

I served the chicken with Jasmine rice from the pantry, I used my rice cooker (you use whatever type of rice you have in the pantry & can make this recipe on the stove top too)
While the rice was cooking I added
2 T olive oil
1/2 T chili powder
1/2T curry powder
I would have added some cumin, but I was out and it was too pricey for my pantry challenge ;-) I had some carrots to use up so I tossed those through my Salad Shooter on 'shred' and it added some fiber and color to the dish. You might want to add a dash of salt (remember the doctor put me on a low sodium diet last week, so I am learning to taste my food and not taste salt BAH HUMBUG!!

Dessert Scotcharoos

Had some peanut butter in the pantry so I made peanut butter rice crispy treats.
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup peanut butter (we like creamy)
1 cup white sugar (wonder what brown sugar would taste like?)
2 tsp vanilla (GF)
5-6 cups rice crisp cereal (GF)
put everything in the saucepan except cereal, melt and stir together. Then add cereal and mix, pour into 9x13 pan and start eating.......lol.
then if you need it even sweeter add the topping (sometimes we just eat it!)
1 cup chocolate chips (GF/CF)
1 cup butterscotch chips (GF/CF)
melt in a pan very carefully so they don't burn or microwave until melted. Stir well and pour over Scotcharoos, let harden and eat. YUMMM!!

We have also been eating cereal from the top of the fridge, lots of partial boxes up there and one morning I made a suprise breakfast of rice crispy treats........LOL. Oh, well they would have put sugar on the rice cereal anyway, so why not serve them up a nice hot breakfast of melted marshmellows in cereal??

The guys found a few Hot Pockets in the bottom of the freezer and I found some Rice Dream Ice Cream, had a slight layer of ice on the top, but still good....lol.

What have you been eating this week?

Enjoy the saving that you are getting out of eating from the pantry.
Moe