Living Gluten Free as a College Student

Kayleigh here. When Jason first began to manifest symptoms of being intolerant to gluten, he was in his last year of college. Luckily, we were living in an on-campus apartment by then, but it was still quite the learning curve to figure out how to eat gluten free with the same level of thriftiness and ease of cooking that we needed. Since most college students rely heavily on ramen and premade burgers/burritos/pizzas, it was…daunting to say the least.

So, what can you do? First of all, read through our previous post about saving money when shopping for gluten free groceries. Second, get friendly with the staff at your dining halls. Ask what is already available and gluten free, and ask what can be special ordered or set aside for you when you need a quick meal. Maybe they’d be willing to cook you a cheeseburger without the buns, or they can get you salad ingredients from a container that has not been crossed with the crouton bowl. Do not be afraid to put yourself out there!

Instead of targeting the gluten free aisle in the grocery store, start paying attention to which normal brands have switched their ingredients over to gluten free ones. You can still get cereal for breakfast- just buy Chex or Cocoa Pebbles! Pick up rice noodles from the Asian food section and some chicken or beef bouillon from the soup section to make your own ramen. Spend some time on the weekends to make your own burritos or personal pizzas, then foil wrap and freeze them for quick lunches and dinners between classes.

Finally, if you are stuck in the dorms without access to a kitchen, look into what cooking tools you are allowed to have. Most of the time, you at least have a refrigerator and a community microwave, so you can get some extra food from the dining hall to reheat later. But many things can be made with just a microwave- baked potatoes, scrambled eggs, brownies, tuna melts, just to name a few. If you can keep a coffee maker, then that can be used for cooking noodles, oatmeal, or other instant meals that just need boiling water. With a rice cooker, you can steam vegetables and chicken on top of the cooking rice- you can even experiment with baking breads and cakes in it! Finally, if you are allowed appliances like George Foreman Grills or wafflemakers, then you have tons and tons of options available to you- pretty much anything can be cooked on a stovetop can be made in these, as long as everything is cut to the right size and in the right portions.

Jason here. As Kayleigh mentioned, I tend not to buy specialty gluten free items unless I really have a particular craving or something specific in mind that we have not yet figured out a good alternative too. Instead, when I first became gluten intolerant I really focused on what I already ate that was gluten free, or could very easily be made gluten free. I was only gluten intolerant for my last year or so of college, but my go to meals were the following.

      1)      Fried Rice. This is really the number one food that got me through that last year. I was lucky enough that my roommate had a nice wok I could use to make large batches of it. You can easily make a whole weeks’ worth of dinners in under 30 minutes. In addition, I found fried rice easy to customize. While my staple was rice, pepperoni, and assorted frozen veggies, I also occasionally added things like fresh mushrooms, bacon once or twice, nuts, and whatever else caught my eye that week.  If I was really pressed for time, I wouldn’t even fry the rice. Not mention, fried rice is ridiculously cheap if your just buying bulk rice and frozen veggies.

 

      2)      Chili. Another food you can bulk make in one go and enjoy for the rest of the week, or month if you make batches like I do. Both Kayleigh and I have given our respective Chili recipes before. You can check out Kayleigh’s here, and mine here. Even before I became intolerant I was making chili, so this was a natural fit. It also tends to be pretty cheap.

      3)      Nachos. This was another quick to make recipe for me, although it doesn’t make left overs like my previous recommendations. Just pull out a baking sheet, lay down a layer of nachos, shred some cheese, and add whatever toppings you’re in the mood for. In college, I tended to make “Pizza” nachos which had pepperoni, and I dipped in marinara sauce. Since college, I’ve learned to really enjoy banana peppers, and Brussel sprouts, and chopped peppers, and other assorted items.

      4)      Anything in a waffle maker. So this one is sort of cheating, as I didn’t discover these recipes until after graduating. However, I feel these have to make the list. We already did a post on these which you can check out here, but let me just say Moffle Pizza’s have now mostly replaced nacho’s for me as a staple food. I enjoy them more, they have less salt which I already get enough of, and they are just as fast to make.

Cheap Ways to Shop Gluten Free

Kayleigh here. I won’t lie- going gluten free and trying to stay to a budget are very rarely concepts that work well together. Especially when you have just received the news about your new dietary restriction, all you want to do is buy bread that is the closest in taste to the bread that you have always eaten. You want fast food burgers, pastries, and packaged cakes and cookies- all the things that will cost you 2-3 times more than their glutinous counterparts, but rarely scratch that itch. So you end up buying another brand, and another, as your wallet continues crying.

Now, Jason and I do splurge on the occasional GF bakery lunch, or a package of English muffins or graham crackers. But we have learned to use them as special treats and indulgences. Overall, we have found that the best way to keep the grocery bill down is to make most of our meals with recipes that never involved wheat in the first place. And if they do, then we get creative and pull ideas from similar dishes to modify the approach. Below are a few examples of how to be a savvy gluten free shopper:

      1)      Use bread alternatives for sandwiches. Gluten free loaves are often quite expensive for the amount of slices you get. Instead, you can buy soft corn tortillas in the Hispanic foods aisle- most of the major brands will say if they are gluten free on the label. Keep a pack in the refrigerator, then warm them to use as wraps or toast them to use as sandwich bread. You can also microwave a potato until soft and serve up the ingredients as a baked potato. Or serve the sandwich fillings over a bowl of steamy rice!

      2)      Shop ethnic markets for unique alternatives. We are lucky enough to live in an area with a massive Asian supermarket (Uwajimaya), so we often use them as a second stop on our weekly grocery trip. There, we can get many different varieties of noodles made of different starches that cost no more than standard wheat pastas. It is also a great source for inexpensive tapioca and potato starch bags, bulk white and brown rice, and Tamari sauce (used instead of the pricey gluten free soy sauce in supermarkets). Check Mediterranean or European markets for buckwheat groats and chickpea flour, and see if your local Hispanic market has buns made out of tapioca starch and cheese.  While venturing into different cuisines with packaging in different languages can sound scary, we have had amazing success finding cheap goods in these sort of smaller stores!

      3)      Order expensive non-perishables in bulk online. To keep things cheap, but healthy and varied, we try to buy things like quinoa, gluten free oats, and more unusual flours online. Since bulk bins at stores have too much of a cross-contamination risk, this is a great way of saving a bit more money on the must-have items that can last a while in the pantry.

Or, if all else fails,

      4)     Learn to love baking! Spend some time experimenting with gluten free flours, and find some good recipes that can be made with cheap ingredients and very little fuss. If you plan on baking often, we find it worth the one-time pricetag to buy a breadmaker. We can bake a loaf or two of bread when we have time on the weekend, then slice it and throw it in the freezer. Then, during the week we can pull out a couple slices and nuke them up to room temperature without them getting stale or moldy. If you really want to make an investment, buy a flour mill or a blender/processor than can grind whole grains into flour. It is usually much cheaper to buy rice, millet, buckwheat, etc. and grind the flour yourself than it is to buy them pre-ground. Eventually, the mill more than pays for itself!

Jason here. Learning to shop gluten free was much like learning to shop cheaply in the first place. For me it’s all about finding those staple foods you can cook regularly with a few core ingredients that can be bought in bulk. Staple starch foods like Rice, Corn Tortilla’s, Potatoes, and other starches. Once you have those in mind, you can start planning meals around them. There are plenty of recipes online and databases you can search given particular ingredients. Find meals that appeal to you in both taste, and the amount of effort it will take to create them. As you find more meals, write them down in a handy list somewhere. As the list grows you can begin to rotate staple meals each week without feeling like you need to eat the same thing over and over again, just to save on budget. Even now we tend to have two dinners in rotation every week. So Monday, Wedneday, Friday we might have our Okonomiyaki, and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday have Moffle Pizzas. That leaves us one day out of the week where we do something special like go out to eat or make some that takes a lot of extra preparation.