Easy wheat- and dairy-free lunch and breakfast ideas
July 20, 2013 1:33 PM Subscribe
I've recently cut wheat and dairy products out of my diet, and need some creative ideas/recipes for both breakfast and lunch. Vegetarian and meat/fish-containing suggestions are equally welcome. The higher-protein, the better. Easy recipes please since my cooking-fu is minimal. Since I eat lunch at work a couple of days a week, I want something easily portable (by bike) and ideally not requiring reheating (there's a microwave at work, but it's a bit inconvenient for me to use). Breakfast has no such constraints since I eat it at home (I usually eat scrambled eggs for breakfast, but this is getting old). Bonus points for recipes containing tahini, since I was recently given some excellent organic tahini but the usual method of using it as a dip with bread is obviously out.
Best answer: Breakfast Smoothie:
Ingredients:
- One small handful frozen/fresh banana
- One small handful frozen strawberries
- One small handful frozen raspberries
- One small handful frozen cherries
- One scoop of your protein powder of choice (I use whey protein, you obviously won't.)
- Almond milk
- Optional extras: Peanut/almond/other-nut butter, flax seeds, chia seeds, etc.
Directions:
Add fruit and protein to blender. Top with almond milk. Blend. Enjoy.
Roasted eggplant with tehini:
* You didn't specify if you were given tehini paste or tehini sauce. If paste, follow directions to make sauce. If not, skip ahead.
Tehini Sauce:
Add one part tehini paste to one part fresh-squeezed lemon juice, two parts water, one clove garlic, salt to taste. Shake/blend until completely mixed and sauce turns WHITE.
Eggplant:
Preheat oven to 400. Slice eggplants into thick rounds (about 1/2 inch). Lay eggplant slices flat on a cookie sheet / baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over each round and coat both sides with your hands. Sprinkle liberally with kosher/coarse salt. Place in oven and roast for about half an hour. Turn slices. Return to oven for another 30 minutes, or until slices are completely shriveled and brown. Dip into tehini and enjoy.
Roasted sweet potatoes with tehini:
Same preparation as eggplant, but use sweet potatoes. You will love me for this.
posted by ariela at 2:00 PM on July 20, 2013 [5 favorites]
Ingredients:
- One small handful frozen/fresh banana
- One small handful frozen strawberries
- One small handful frozen raspberries
- One small handful frozen cherries
- One scoop of your protein powder of choice (I use whey protein, you obviously won't.)
- Almond milk
- Optional extras: Peanut/almond/other-nut butter, flax seeds, chia seeds, etc.
Directions:
Add fruit and protein to blender. Top with almond milk. Blend. Enjoy.
Roasted eggplant with tehini:
* You didn't specify if you were given tehini paste or tehini sauce. If paste, follow directions to make sauce. If not, skip ahead.
Tehini Sauce:
Add one part tehini paste to one part fresh-squeezed lemon juice, two parts water, one clove garlic, salt to taste. Shake/blend until completely mixed and sauce turns WHITE.
Eggplant:
Preheat oven to 400. Slice eggplants into thick rounds (about 1/2 inch). Lay eggplant slices flat on a cookie sheet / baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over each round and coat both sides with your hands. Sprinkle liberally with kosher/coarse salt. Place in oven and roast for about half an hour. Turn slices. Return to oven for another 30 minutes, or until slices are completely shriveled and brown. Dip into tehini and enjoy.
Roasted sweet potatoes with tehini:
Same preparation as eggplant, but use sweet potatoes. You will love me for this.
posted by ariela at 2:00 PM on July 20, 2013 [5 favorites]
Best answer: Fuul uses tahini, is wheat and dairy free, and is delicious. Here's one recipe for the variant we grew to love in Syria.
posted by dttocs at 2:04 PM on July 20, 2013
posted by dttocs at 2:04 PM on July 20, 2013
These are mostly breakfast, but could work for lunch too.
Chia pudding: 2 tablespoons chia seeds mixed with a cup of non-dairy milk (I prefer almond- or hemp-milk to soy for this). Add whatever fruits or berries you like, and then shake for 5 minutes (this is critical. If you don't do this you'll get a huge clump at the bottom). Leave in the fridge overnight.
Japanese breakfast: cook some fish the night before (watered-down tahini makes a nice glaze). Cook some rice too, and some vegetables. Serve all those cold the next day (gluten-free soy sauce goes well drizzled on top).
Rice and lentils are a good combination for breakfast. There are a zillion recipe's for daal on the net.
posted by Runes at 2:40 PM on July 20, 2013
Chia pudding: 2 tablespoons chia seeds mixed with a cup of non-dairy milk (I prefer almond- or hemp-milk to soy for this). Add whatever fruits or berries you like, and then shake for 5 minutes (this is critical. If you don't do this you'll get a huge clump at the bottom). Leave in the fridge overnight.
Japanese breakfast: cook some fish the night before (watered-down tahini makes a nice glaze). Cook some rice too, and some vegetables. Serve all those cold the next day (gluten-free soy sauce goes well drizzled on top).
Rice and lentils are a good combination for breakfast. There are a zillion recipe's for daal on the net.
posted by Runes at 2:40 PM on July 20, 2013
My favourite tahini recipe:Japanese-inspired salad dressing (I use it as a dip for vegetable sticks; it's super easy and and it gets rave reviews when I take it to parties.)
posted by Cheese Monster at 2:53 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Cheese Monster at 2:53 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
A lot of what I eat for dinner (and pack for lunch) is in the format Meat-greenveg-notgreenveg with a tiny amount of rice and a basic sauce made from pan juices and lemon or tomatoes or soy sauce, or something similar, or an actual gf sauce in a jar. So I might bake satay chicken thighs and have them with garlicky sauteed spinach and chickpeas (the lemon-tahini sauce above would be boss on those), or curry chicken and vegetables.
Don't forget about coconut milk, both in the can and in the carton. And goat cheese, if you tolerate it. You can replace a lot of dairy in traditional recipes with those things. Avocado makes for a good spread/adhesive where you might otherwise have cheese or sour cream. (Fish tacos, or fish un-tacos, with lots of cabbage and lime juice and avocado? Needs no cheese.)
I premake a week's worth of pre-portioned refrigerator uncooked oatmeal: 1/4c steel cut or rolled oats, 1/4 cup vanilla coconut milk (judging from various conversations about this, many people do water or even juice instead of a milk type product), diced fruit of the week, sprinkle of cinnamon. My husband eats that every day, I only eat it a couple of times a week, usually with a boiled egg snack a little later.
There are corn tortillas that are GF, and you may be able to buy wheat-free flatbreads (or make your own from prepackaged or your own mix of GF flour), so you can still have sandwiches or pita-replacements.
Zucchini, either just cut up or julienned or "noodled" with a vegetable peeler, replaces pasta pretty well, and so does cabbage. That may require more reheating than you really want, though there's no reason it couldn't be good cold, especially since it won't get weird and starchy.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:53 PM on July 20, 2013
Don't forget about coconut milk, both in the can and in the carton. And goat cheese, if you tolerate it. You can replace a lot of dairy in traditional recipes with those things. Avocado makes for a good spread/adhesive where you might otherwise have cheese or sour cream. (Fish tacos, or fish un-tacos, with lots of cabbage and lime juice and avocado? Needs no cheese.)
I premake a week's worth of pre-portioned refrigerator uncooked oatmeal: 1/4c steel cut or rolled oats, 1/4 cup vanilla coconut milk (judging from various conversations about this, many people do water or even juice instead of a milk type product), diced fruit of the week, sprinkle of cinnamon. My husband eats that every day, I only eat it a couple of times a week, usually with a boiled egg snack a little later.
There are corn tortillas that are GF, and you may be able to buy wheat-free flatbreads (or make your own from prepackaged or your own mix of GF flour), so you can still have sandwiches or pita-replacements.
Zucchini, either just cut up or julienned or "noodled" with a vegetable peeler, replaces pasta pretty well, and so does cabbage. That may require more reheating than you really want, though there's no reason it couldn't be good cold, especially since it won't get weird and starchy.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:53 PM on July 20, 2013
Here's a breaky I've been developing, which is an egg scramble but that's not all!
-2 eggs
-1/4 onion, diced
-1 stalk celery, diced
-2 cloves garlic, pressed
-8-10 pre-cooked escargot (which I collected in my yard and prepared according to YT instructions, then keep in the freezer until use)
-Clump of purslane (this grows as a weed in my garden) chopped into bite sized pieces.
-Small spoon of lard
Heat up skillet, add lard.
Add onion, celery, garlic, cook covered 2 mins or until onion is translucent.
Place escargot and purslane on top of above cooked mixture, break open two eggs around edges of pan. Heat one more minute covered. Scramble everything togther and turn/cook to desired doneness. Yum!
I've also subbed other kinds of meat or even cheese for the escargot. But IMO, this dish is best with the snails!
posted by telstar at 3:37 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
-2 eggs
-1/4 onion, diced
-1 stalk celery, diced
-2 cloves garlic, pressed
-8-10 pre-cooked escargot (which I collected in my yard and prepared according to YT instructions, then keep in the freezer until use)
-Clump of purslane (this grows as a weed in my garden) chopped into bite sized pieces.
-Small spoon of lard
Heat up skillet, add lard.
Add onion, celery, garlic, cook covered 2 mins or until onion is translucent.
Place escargot and purslane on top of above cooked mixture, break open two eggs around edges of pan. Heat one more minute covered. Scramble everything togther and turn/cook to desired doneness. Yum!
I've also subbed other kinds of meat or even cheese for the escargot. But IMO, this dish is best with the snails!
posted by telstar at 3:37 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
I eat eggs with veggies for breakfast a lot. Scramble got boring, so learn all the other egg types....boiled, hard boiled, poached, omelette, fried, baked, basted...they're pretty versatile, and all delicious!
Different types of sauces on the veggies can give your egg/ veggie combo a different spin, too. Peanut/coconut milk? Thai omelette! Beans and salsa? Huevos rancheros! Etc. I could eat some egg/vegetable/ sauce variant every morning for months, I think.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:20 PM on July 20, 2013
Different types of sauces on the veggies can give your egg/ veggie combo a different spin, too. Peanut/coconut milk? Thai omelette! Beans and salsa? Huevos rancheros! Etc. I could eat some egg/vegetable/ sauce variant every morning for months, I think.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:20 PM on July 20, 2013
Best answer: My favorite lunch that fits those requirements is pretty easy:
Rice (white or brown, your call), cooked and cooled
Black beans, rinsed and drained
Chicken, tempeh, or tofu, chopped up (optional)
Corn (fire-roasted frozen corn, or fresh corn that you've roasted, or, in a pinch, canned corn.)
Green onion
Avocado, kept to the side until just before serving
Combine all ingredients. Top with a dressing made by blending cilantro, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, and chili powder to taste. If your dressing is lime-y enough, the avocado can be added when you make the salad. Without avocado, this will keep four or five days in the fridge; with avocado, closer to two. Though I've not done it, I'm betting it would also be good with a dressing made of lime, tahini, cilantro, garlic, and olive oil, because tahini is delicious.
I also really like egg salad made with half tahini, half greek yoghurt instead of mayonnaise, though that may be in part because I hate mayonnaise.
Chickpea salad (chickpeas, green onions, assorted chopped peppers, cucumbers, tomato, maybe olives, and some sort of carb--quinoa is good) gets dressed in my house with roughly equal parts tahini, lemon juice, and olive oil, plus some thyme and sumac. Yum.
posted by MeghanC at 10:56 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
Rice (white or brown, your call), cooked and cooled
Black beans, rinsed and drained
Chicken, tempeh, or tofu, chopped up (optional)
Corn (fire-roasted frozen corn, or fresh corn that you've roasted, or, in a pinch, canned corn.)
Green onion
Avocado, kept to the side until just before serving
Combine all ingredients. Top with a dressing made by blending cilantro, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, and chili powder to taste. If your dressing is lime-y enough, the avocado can be added when you make the salad. Without avocado, this will keep four or five days in the fridge; with avocado, closer to two. Though I've not done it, I'm betting it would also be good with a dressing made of lime, tahini, cilantro, garlic, and olive oil, because tahini is delicious.
I also really like egg salad made with half tahini, half greek yoghurt instead of mayonnaise, though that may be in part because I hate mayonnaise.
Chickpea salad (chickpeas, green onions, assorted chopped peppers, cucumbers, tomato, maybe olives, and some sort of carb--quinoa is good) gets dressed in my house with roughly equal parts tahini, lemon juice, and olive oil, plus some thyme and sumac. Yum.
posted by MeghanC at 10:56 PM on July 20, 2013 [1 favorite]
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posted by i_love_squirrels at 1:55 PM on July 20, 2013