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My husband is on a gluten free, dairy free diet for 14 days for health reasons per his doctor. I have been trying to be supportive and stick to it as well, but I LOVE my cheese! We are on day 7 of 14. Life is rough. He thinks he’s dying because he can’t have dairy. I know I would die if I couldn’t sneak my cheese. I keep reminding him it’s only for 14 days (hopefully).
Right before the hubs had to start on this journey I did my meal plan and cooked all our meals for the month and did freezer meals. Most are fully cooked meals and only require being taken out of the freezer, thawed, and reheated. I love those kind of meals especially when I’m tired! The ones that require cooking are Instant Pot recipes. If you don’t have one of these, you really should. They make dinner a breeze, especially if you have forgotten to pull out something to make a meal until the last minute. I’m sure I’m the only one that happens to though! I love this one Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Steamer, Saute, Yogurt Maker, and Warmer, 6 Quart, 14 One-Touch Programs and I’ve been told they even have an air fryer lid for the above Instant Pot as well!
Back to the gluten free, dairy free journey. I was so proud of myself for making our month’s worth of foods. I felt so accomplished. Unfortunately they ALL contain some form of dairy. Did I mention we love dairy in our house? When my hubby told me he had to be gluten and dairy free for 2 weeks I felt so defeated. Gluten free isn’t hard in our house. I have to be gluten free due to Celiac’s Disease. I’ve got that down. Dairy free?!!? I don’t have a clue. I have had to get creative to try to figure things out. I started out trying to use what we have on hand. Chicken, potatoes, I had 2 lbs of ground turkey left..yep that pretty much sums up my diary free items. So after spending our grocery budget doing the meals for the month, I now found myself having to go over budget to try to maintain the new diet. I used my handy dandy favorite grocery store app that is still doing curbside pickup to order what I needed and also used Amazon PrimeNow to get dairy free cheese. I still really have NO plan in mind and am just winging it as we go. I’ve made chicken with potatoes and onions seasoned with minced garlic, salt, pepper, and italian seasoning. Honey garlic Salmon (I HATE fish of any kind) served over quinoa. Vegan, Gluten Free Mac N Cheese. Vegan pizza that was also gluten free, roasted zucchini and radish seasoned with salt and pepper. Lemon chicken (no butter, nothing fancy here). Vegan, gluten free breakfast pizza (it got us through 2 mornings)! More quinoa. Chia seed pudding for a snack. Baked potatoes with vegan, gluten free cheese, plant based french onion dip that was vegan and gluten free. I think that’s about it. Nothing fancy. The hardest meal was the honey glazed salmon. As I stated above, I HATE fish. I have cooked fish 1 other time in my life. The smell of ANY fish makes me want to vomit even when I’m not pregnant. I did it anyway to support my husband (he LOVES fish).
If you would like to know how I made the honey glazed salmon, here is what you will need:
Honey Glazed Salmon
1 Cup of quinoa (mine was prewashed but some brands require being washed first-read the instructions on yours!) 2 cups of water
Glaze 1 oz of honey or maple syrup 1 tsp sesame oil 2 tsp of gluten free soy sauce or tamari sauce 1/2 tsp of garlic granules 1 tsp of rice vinegar
I used 1 large salmon filet and cut it up into chunks. 2 green onions sliced
1. First I had to cut the skin off of the salmon (ugh). Now I had salmon stink all over my hands. Perfect. Then I cut it up into squares so it would go nicely in a quinoa bowl.
2. After I finished cutting up the stinky fish, I put my 1 cup of quinoa and 2 cups of water in the Instant Pot and set it manually to 25 minutes (as a side note, you can turn your Instant Pot on to saute while you are getting everything together and it helps warm it up so you don’t have as long added on for your Instant Pot to warm and come to pressure).
3. Start your glaze. Mix the sesame oil, maple syrup (or honey), gluten free soy sauce, garlic granules, and rice vinegar in a medium mixing bowl.
4. Put the glaze ingredients in a frying pan on high heat and let it bubble. Turn the heat down to simmer and stir constantly until it is a glaze consistency. When I made ours, I totally forgot to do that so when it started bubbling I threw in the salmon. It still turned out just fine.
5. Assuming you didn’t make my mistake, you will not throw in the salmon chunks and green onions and turn the heat back up to high. You want to stir the salmon around to make sure all of the salmon gets coated in the glaze. Cook the salmon until it is done how you like it (some like it slightly pink while I chose to make sure ours was fully cooked). Remove the salmon from heat and get ready to assemble your bowl!
6. Make sure all the pressure is released from the quinoa once the timer goes off and before opening your Instant Pot. To do this, open the valve so any remaining steam is let out. Once all the steam is out, open the lid. Place the quinoa in a bowl and top with the salmon.
You can always add more to your bowl. You could add edamame, avocado, whatever you want! I added broccoli to ours. I thought it was pretty tasty even though I hate fish!
