saving money with a mid disgnosis coeliac child no gluten/dairy/soya

A question about : saving money with a mid disgnosis coeliac child no gluten/dairy/soya

as the title suggests.
son is not yet formally diagnosed so is unable to get anything on prescription.
would like tips and ideas on cheap but healthy gluten free meals.
I also have a dairy and soya free child too and I also cant have dairy.
so the meals need to be gluten, soya and dairy free (with the exception of a wee bit of goats products ( ie just a small sprinkle of goats cheese/ splash of goats milk.)
thanks in advance

Best answers:

• Are you all vegetarians, or do you eat meat?
• Try the old style board - it has a huge list of recipes with costs, and they have plenty that are, or can be adapted to food allergies or intolerances.
  And a tip from someone who is severely lactose intolerant (me!) - don't eat normal food. I have the most bizarre concoctions that taste amazingly good, but most of my friends and family laugh at. My fave is sticky chicken pasta - throw veggies in a wok with chicken (or other meat, or just the veggies on their own), cover in fave sauce (I love hoisin, no idea if it is gluten free or soya free but it is lactose free!), add pasta (you can get gluten free stuff from most supermarkets), stir like a maniac. It is one of my favourite dishes, as it gets plenty of veggies in there, but still tastes like real food. I don't intentionally eat Soya either because when I was very small, soya products were disgusting at best!
  I also make my own sauces a lot, I grow tomatoes in a hanging basket which get cooked and blitzed into a lovely sauce which goes on anything I can find, and I know exactly what has gone in it.
  If you could give us a list of what you like to eat, then we can give you suggestions; most things can be worked around.
• My cousin is coeliac with a dairy allergy. Untreated coeliac disease attacks the part of the bowel that digests milk protein so coeliacs that have waited a long time for diagnosis can have problems with dairy too. I make him cakes using gluten free self raising flower and Pure sunflower margarine. I use jam as a filling if I'm making a bigger cake like a birhday cake as obviously buttercream is not an option. My son who isn't coeliac says the gluten free stuff tastes better and it's easier to control what goes into them.
  My next plan is to melt some dairy free chocolate to make him some chocolate cakes as cocoa powder can't be used because of dairy. I also made him some home made hobnobs from a recipe on here (delicious biscuits) using gluten free flour and the Pure again, and flapjacks worked fine with the same substitutes too.
  Possibly not the kind of recipes you were looking for, I just wanted to let you know they work well.
• We eat meat!
• For a quick and child friendly meal- checkout M and S for gluten free sausages. Surprisingly reasonable in price.
• hi,
  I am mid diagnosis for coeliacs too (bloods positive, waiting for rest of tests, specialist referal etc...) and I have been told until diagnosis is absolutely definate (by biopsy) to continue to eat gluten - because not eating gluten could give a false negative result on other tests.
  So it may be worth checking with doctor before excluding gluten?
  My doctor says I may as well make the most of being able to eat foods containing gluten (lovely bread, cakes etc etc... lol) and having an 'unrestricted' diet - cos if do have coeliacs its going to be quite the opposite forever!
  Kind regards,
  helen x
• You can make your own sausages. I think it's just sausage meat wrapped in bacon. And you can make your own things like burgers, etc.
  Rice and corn are fine to eat too.
• You can get rice milk at the Supermarkets now.
  Basically, you can have curries, chillis, veg stew, ratatoui, salads, falafel, fruit, rice, etc.
  If you need to you will loose weight with that lot.
  Sainsburys has a free from range now for celiacs which is gluten free.
  If you have meat you can include that in with the above.
  Theres loads there you can be getting on with.
  Lentils as well are very versatile and can be included in stews, curries etc. You can also buy/make lentil pate. You could have that on rice crackers.
• Aldi sunflower spread is 69p and dairy free!
• I know someone that has a toddler with something similar. She paid to see a consultant because the GP and NHS were unhelpful. Anyway she spent Ј600 but thinks it well worth it because the consultant wrote to the GP and now she can get things on prescription.
  As a baby he was always crying and being sick and she had to put Gavesgon in his bottles. He was not gaining enough weight and was miserable. She was back and forth to the doctor and in desperation paid (I think her father paid).
  Now he leaves off gluten and casein and is fine. Very jolly and has recently started walking.
• Do you have Polish shops near you? A lot of their sausages are gluten free and cheaper than the special gluten-free options in supermarkets. A friend of mine is gluten intolerant and uses sliced potato to line dishes for quiches, instant mashed potato instead of breadcrumbs to coat chicken or fish for frying, buys corn tortillas instead of wheat ones when she can find them, and the 99p stores near us have started selling Nairns gluten free biscuits and soya milk. Rice noodles from chinese supermarkets, leek sliced lengthways and blanched in place of lasagne pasta, and with a little practice polenta can be turned into a really tasty carb option whwn you're fed up of spuds.
  Holland and Barrett do gluten free and dairy free ranges as well and a lot of their stuff is long-life/long date so use their buy 1 get 1 for a penny sales and stock up on anything you find really useful/hard to live without.
• When i was trying to cut my carbs, I found that green string beans were a good substitute for spaghetti ( with tuna and tomato sauce) and blanched cabbage leaves/spinach for lasagne sheets. I made the bechemel with cornflour and olive oil and soya milk (you could use rice/nut milk?), alas for you, I was heavy handed witht he cheese which i only ever put on top. Could you have a cumb and parmasan mix for the top made of gluten free cereal crunched up.
  Have you tried asian shops for alternative flour? Chick pea flour (is that ok?)
• By mid-diagnosis do you mean he hasn't yet had his biopsy - if so he can't stop eating gluten or he will get a false negative (which ends up with not getting precriptions or bone density scans etc) - or having to go back onto gluten for 6 weeks (which having done that makes you feel worse as your body has adjusted)
• If your son likes pastry/cakes etc. you can use cornmeal (fine polenta) instead of wheat flour (btw it's not the same as cornflour which contains gluten, it's yellow and you can get it for Ј1 per kg bag in the Indian food section in Asda):
  1 medium quiche base/2 small quiche bases:
  200g cornmeal
  100g margarine
  Rub together until breadcrumb consistency then stir in a little water until it just balls together (not sloppy) then press into a Pyrex dish.
  As pastry it's difficult to roll as it's crumbly but can be easily pressed into pie/quiche dishes and makes lovely crumbly pie crust also, cornbread is great (savoury or sweet) as a side dish to chilli (savoury) or as cake (sweet).
  As someone said, ethnic food shops are far cheaper for gluten free foods than supermarkets who make them speciality products and hence charge a small fortune!
  Rice noodles are cheaper from Chinese supermarkets and you can buy in bulk.
  Cornmeal is cheaper from ethnic food sections/Indian supermarkets.
• sorry ive been away for a while, ive been dissertation planning/ writing and forced myself to stay off MSE otherwise I procrastinate on here instead of doing my work!!!
  He is off gluten as he is far too poorly when he is on it. The plan is to conduct the bopsy later in life for him (consultant dieticians idea) as he has spent a long lime not knowing what was wrong so now he needs a break from the gluten. Now he has been gluten free for over a year he is able to tolerate small amounts of cheese/ yoghurt, the consultant thinks the damage from the gluten in his bowel was causing his dairy problems and the soys problem which apparently is common.
  been experimenting with zucchini/squash pasta ( pasta made from veggies) and its amazing, I have found some great advice from coeliac uk and now we are enjoying the variety of gluten free foods more than with it. tBH im not buying loads of gluten substitutes like the GF cakes/bread/flour as we are cooking lots of meals with potatoes, rice and loads of veggies.
  thanks or all of the tips though, he will probably have a coeliac biopsy in a year or so when he is a bit older as at 2years its a bit to much for him to cope with and TBH apart from the dex scans etc I gain nothing more than some prescription food.