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| "Clean Out the Vegetable Drawer" Day at the Rollers'. Add some spice and a little stew meat and supper's ready in about eight hours. Yum! |
Almost weekly someone asks me what I do with all of my time,
now that I’m retired. That’s a tough question to answer. I usually say I’m busy
traveling, volunteering, spending time with my grown children, or playing
tennis. Those activities do take up a
lot of my time.
But to be perfectly honest, I spend most of my time these
days thinking about, preparing, researching, reading about, writing about, and
eating FOOD! I guess I’m lucky that my celiac disease symptoms didn’t manifest
themselves (in a manner that I couldn’t ignore, that is) until the summer after
I taught my last class and coached my last tennis match and sent my last child
out into the world.
I can’t imagine how overwhelming it would be to manage a
job, a family, extra activities, and a gluten-free diet all at the same time. My
heart goes out to those who find themselves in such a position.
My best piece of advice for busy families on gluten-free
diets is to USE A SLOW COOKER to prepare your evening meals. It’s easy to throw
veggies, meat, a few seasonings, and a little liquid into your Crock Pot in the
morning before you start your day. You can’t really make a mistake—and you will
thank yourself at the end of the day when you don’t have to figure out what to
cook. If possible, double your recipes so that you will have great gluten-free
leftovers for another meal—and you’ll be thanking yourself again the next day.
If you don’t like to go “freestyle” as I did just this
morning, there are a number of gluten-free cookbooks, websites, and Pinterest
boards out there where you can find great slow cooker recipes—or you can easily
modify almost any recipe from your favorite slow cooker cookbook to be gluten-free.
Here are just a few of the dozens of good slow cooker sources:
Chrissy Gower, Paleo
Slow Cooking
Ellen Brown, Gluten
Free Slow Cooking
Carrie S. Forbes, The
Everything Gluten-Free Slow Cooker Cookbook
Lisa Stewart and Jeremy L., Gluten-Free Slow Cooker Cookbook: Gluten Free Diet Made Easy (This
one I bought for my Kindle for $.99 on Amazon—and there are lots of $.99-ers
available.)
I use my slow cooker year-round, but I’ve found that summer
is the perfect time to create slow cooker meals, because a Crock Pot won’t heat
up the house the way an oven or stove will. Your slow cooker will also afford
you the flexibility to play another set of tennis, work a little longer in your
garden, or stay an extra hour at the pool on these wonderful summer afternoons.
