Gluten Free Engineer - Making Gluten Free Easy

What I eat in a Day - Ideas and Tips to make Gluten Free Eating Fun

• Carrie Saunders • Episode 39

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Ever wonder what a full day of eating gluten-free actually looks like — without being boring or bland? 

In today’s episode, I’m walking you through exactly what I eat in a day. You’ll hear my go-to meals and snacks, how I keep things simple and satisfying, and a few ideas you can borrow for your own kitchen. 

And stick with me until the end, because I’ll share the mindset shift that helped me finally stop stressing about food and start enjoying it again.


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It’s a space where you can connect with others living gluten-free, ask questions, swap tips and recipes, and get support from people who truly get it. Whether you’re newly diagnosed or a seasoned gluten-free pro, you’ll feel right at home.

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Carrie Saunders:

Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. Ever wonder what a day of eating gluten-free actually looks like without being boring or bland? In today's episode, I'm walking through exactly what I eat in a day. You'll hear my go-to meals and snacks, how I keep things simple and satisfying, and a few ideas you can borrow for your own kitchen. And stick with me to the end, because I'll share the mindset shift that helped me finally stop stressing about food and start enjoying again. Let's dive in.

Carrie Saunders:

Welcome to the Gluten-Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Saunders. In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything, but I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle, make it fun and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders:

Today, we're talking about what do I eat in a day. What does Carrie eat in a day? Hopefully to give you some other ideas of how you can switch things up for you and to give you the confidence to enjoy your food again. So first off, let's talk about breakfast. I am not a breakfast person, so we will just want to frame it there first. I for many, many years, didn't eat breakfast at all and as of the past several years, I just decided, you know, maybe I actually should eat some breakfast, and I've started making that compromise for myself and eating a small amount of breakfast. I probably only eat about 100 or 200 calories when I wake up. It's just what my body needs. I don't work well with a lot of food first thing in the morning, so one of my go-tos is Belinsky's chicken sausage. It's kind of hard to say. I had to reread that word to make sure I pronounced it right. This is a savory chicken sausage. It's actually really good. It's low in fat. If you're looking for something low in fat. It's high in protein, so I basically try to start my day with a high in protein type of breakfast. I also sometimes use a different sausage which is a pork-based sausage. Now that one's a lot higher in fat, so I try to switch it up. Personally, I'll go several days eating Bilinski's sausage chicken sausage and then I'll do several days in a row of eating the pork sausage in a row, just because I want my breakfast to be simple, easy and fast. I am not a morning person and my breakfast is just simple and fast.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, sometimes I'll also add a gluten-free toast with peanut butter, if you tolerate that. Well, I actually have recently taken out peanut butter on my life and I was putting sliced strawberries on it, which was absolutely delicious. I absolutely loved it. But I found that peanuts and peanut butter on my life and I was putting sliced strawberries on it, which was absolutely delicious, I absolutely loved it. But I found that peanuts and peanut butter was actually kind of causing my body to be a bit inflamed and for me to have a little bit heightened allergies. So I took out peanut butter. So sometimes what I will do now is I get a grain-free bread and I'll just put a hat of Kerrygold butter on it. A little bit of Kerrygold. Absolutely love that batter my favorite batter in the whole world. It reminds me of when I was a child, because it's all grass-fed. So if you need a little bit more calories.

Carrie Saunders:

You could do either gluten-free toast or grain-free slash, gluten-free toast with some butter or some jam or whatever your avocado, whatever might be your favorite topping for that. So what we do want to make sure we're doing from all the research I read, and a lot of nutritionists will say we want to start with protein in our morning and then you may also want some carbohydrates for your brain activity, depending upon how your body works. So some other ideas. If you tolerate yogurt, you can get Greek yogurt. We also very much like the silk coconut Greek yogurt. It's absolutely delicious. I personally actually like that better than a dairy yogurt. It's really, really good.

Carrie Saunders:

You can add fruit into it. Many of those are already a little bit flavored. If you tolerate granola, you can add gluten-free granola to it. You can also do overnight oats. If you are a person who can tolerate oats, again, you could do scrambled eggs with veggies. You can do hard-boiled eggs. So many options for breakfast. You can do sausage, bacon, turkey sausage, you know, obviously making sure everything is gluten-free.

Carrie Saunders:

So you want to start with a breakfast. That is just right for you, whether that's a large breakfast. A lot of people I know eat a large breakfast in the morning, unlike me. So start with that large breakfast, if that's what works for you, or work with a smaller breakfast if you're like me and just kind of aren't awake or ready to consume much food in the morning, and then for lunch. What I typically do is I try to make it very simple. I like to use leftovers from the previous weeks or days, not weeks previous days dinners. Leftovers are such a great go-to because they're super fast, quick and easy. Another thing I really like to do is really full salads Okay, so you know, salads with lots of veggies on it, protein and then some great gluten-free dressing if you like to use a salad dressing, which I think most of us do.

Carrie Saunders:

Tessamay is my favorite ranch brand of dressing. It is so, so good. It tastes like you homemade it yourself. They also have other really good flavors. So just be really careful, though, when you get salad dressings, that you're looking for gluten in them and any other sensitivities. Like us, for example, we can't have soy most of us in our family so we have to find the salad dressings that are not soy based as well, and so you can add all kinds of different vegetables on it carrots, cucumbers, peppers. I love to add Parmesan cheese or sometimes Mexican cheese. I like to add a little bit more protein and a little more delight to my mouth by adding a little bit of cheese. So if you tolerate cheese, that's a really great option to add on your salads.

Carrie Saunders:

And then a tip here with salads is I feel like salads can seem a bit daunting and kind of a pain, honestly, to put together. So what we do in our family many times is we will cut up everything for salads on Sunday night. Cut up all the lettuce, cut up any vegetables we want to put on it, and we will put those in separate containers, because some of the vegetables I like to put on my salad my husband doesn't like to put on his salad or in vice versa. So we'll have all the veggies, the toppings that you can put on our salads separate. So then we can decide on the day well, what toppings do we want on our salad? And that can help you mix it up. You can pre-cook bacon if you love bacon and chop it up. So it's all ready for your salad too.

Carrie Saunders:

That way a salad is actually a fast meal during the week. That really can help that. It makes it a lot less stress, there's a lot less waste and there's more time saved. Whenever you have, either using leftovers or a pre-prepped type of salad, that really can help. Some other options would be some turkey lettuce wraps or a ham lettuce wraps. You know whatever you might like for some protein there, maybe chickpea salad with some gluten-free crackers, homemade soup and salad. I tend to go to that during the winter many times and then add some extra protein into it because my body does tend to prefer to have a lot of protein in it, and so just have something ready, plan ahead. Plan this ahead on your weekend so that you can have really nice, easy, simple, um fast meals for lunches during the week. I find that just makes things so much less stressful.

Carrie Saunders:

And then for dinner, we I'm I'm a steak and potatoes girl. You probably have heard this on the podcast before. Um, I absolutely love a steak and potatoes, so that might be one of our go-tos. We may do hamburgers. I typically, since going gluten-free, don't even use a bun with my hamburger. I'd rather eat my carb calories in something else than a bun, even though we found some really great gluten-free buns. Many times we'll make tacos and I love to use the siete casava or almond flour tortillas, because I don't tolerate corn very well. We also can. We'll make fajitas. Sometimes we love to make chicken fried rice with coconut aminos. Instead of gluten-free tamari we use the coconut aminos since we don't tolerate soy. It's so delicious. Actually, just talking about it right now it's kind of making me hungry. And one of our other favorites might be a little bit surprising and it's meat, spaghetti and meatballs. So what we do is we will on the weekend get two pounds of hamburger, two pounds of gluten free ground pork. I will, actually we actually.

Carrie Saunders:

I came up with this recipe on the fly. I'll work on putting it on, kind of measuring it out and putting it up on the glutenfreeengineercom here soon. But basically I take two pounds of each of those proteins and then what we use to make it gluten-free is I use Bob's Red Mill potato flakes for the kind of starch binder inside of it, and then we use egg to also help, you know, keep the meatballs together and then I will put a mix of spices in it. I'll put, obviously, salt and pepper. I also put Italian seasoning and some onion powder and some garlic powder and I put this in my husband thank goodness he doesn't mind to mix the meat up. I'm kind of not a person to stick my hands on raw, cold meat. Thankfully, he will do this for us and we'll mix up the meatballs.

Carrie Saunders:

And what I do is I will do a sniff test. I have a very sensitive nose so I'll just sniff test it to see if I've got the right spices in it. So that's why I don't have the recipe on our website yet. So I'll make sure to get a good estimate of how much of each of those I put in there so that you guys can replicate it. So I just smell it to make sure it smells like I feel like it should to make tasty meatballs. And then we use just like an ice cream scoop to get that rounded shape and consistent size and we'll just roll them into a ball.

Carrie Saunders:

And then what we do is that's a lot of meat, right, that's four pounds of meat. So we will take a section of them about five meatballs each for dinner for that night. And then what we do is freeze in Ziploc baggies sets of those. So right now we have just three people living in our house, so about 15 to 20 meatballs per baggie, and we'll put those in our deep freezer. So then that actually becomes a very quick meal.

Carrie Saunders:

Later on, like maybe the next week or the next, you know, two weeks from then, I can actually cook those meatballs from frozen, from deep frozen too, and have a quick meal done in about 30 minutes. So what you wanna do, let's say you do that and so you do the meatballs. All you have to do is brown them from frozen until they're brown on each side and then they kind of start, you know, coming into their individual meatballs and then you just pour your tomato sauce in it and let it simmer until they're done, cooking your gluten-free pasta while you are browning and cooking the meatballs, and they all come together and are done at about the same time Again, about less than 30 minutes, even from frozen. So that's a great dinner tip and kind of our favorite go-to and our youngest child's favorite right now. And so I want you to like think about what are your favorite dinners, what do you really love, and rotate those in pretty regularly so that you are happy and satisfied, and then have maybe a day or two a week you might experiment or do something else. That way you aren't in like a boring rut of dinner. You still have your favorites in there, but you have some variety in there. You want to focus on the meals that the whole family enjoys and they don't need to be special gluten free meals. Like I said, I just told you how I do spaghetti meatballs. That's not traditionally a gluten free meal. We make a gluten free pretty easily with just substituting potato flakes from breadcrumbs and gluten free pasta for the pasta side.

Carrie Saunders:

And then let's talk briefly about snacks and treats. Some of my go-to snacks and I will have to admit it lately is I love the Simple Mills Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies. They are grain-free, which is much better on my stomach I've found grains don't do well on my stomach and my body and they are so delicious and they actually have a decent amount of protein in them because they're made from almond flour. So sometimes go for that treat if you need to, and you know, make it as healthy as you can, like I'm trying to. You can also go for fruit plus nut butter. You can do gluten-free pretzels or chips with hummus, string cheese, boiled eggs if you tolerate eggs. You can also do like treats. Like I said, I just absolutely love those chocolate chip cookies. I try to limit myself to like two or three a day. They're pretty small so it's not too bad. But make some snacks that are enjoyable, you know, healthy ones as well as ones that satisfy your brain and your you know just whole well-being there.

Carrie Saunders:

So if you loved hearing these everyday meals, I share even more easy gluten-free recipes and tips in our newsletter. You can just head on over to theglutenfreeengineercom to sign up for that. I have lots of recipes over there as well and our show notes are there. So that is a great place to find other gluten-free resources. And then here's a mindset shift that to find other gluten-free resources. And then here's a mindset shift that really changed my gluten-free life Satisfaction matters.

Carrie Saunders:

For a long time I tried to eat perfectly, to only eat clean or be good, and honestly, it sometimes can mentally backfire on you. Now, obviously I am very, very, very strict on gluten-free, but in my snacking sample I had those gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. That is just something to help me mentally. You know, be happy too, because I have so many food restrictions beyond just gluten. It just kind of helps give my brain that relief of not feeling so so restricted. So once you give yourself permission to eat satisfying meals and treats within you know, obviously, healthy limits and without guilt, your relationship with food will completely shift. It really helped me shift mine. So if you've been feeling stuck or stressed about food, I want you to hear this. You can feel safe and enjoy what you eat at the same time.

Carrie Saunders:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten-Free Engineer. If you found value in this story, please share it with someone who might need encouragement on their own gluten-free journey. For more tips, recipes, resources and even links to my YouTube channel, head on over to theglutenfreeengineercom. It's your one-stop hub to make gluten-free living simple, fun and full of flavor. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss out on an episode. And we will see you next week. The Gluten-Free Engineer podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I share my personal experiences and stories about living with celiac disease and navigating a gluten-free lifestyle. This podcast does not provide medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for medical questions, concerns or advice specific to your health.

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