glutenfreedirtcheap

1.  Find a grocery store near you that sells gluten-free rice bread. I like Udi’s. They sell it most places in the United States. Bread is easy, familiar, and now common enough, that it is probably not expensive.

2.  Buy a bag of rice. This is breakfast cereal, and a good dinner side.

If you don’t have access to a kitchen, you can even make it in the microwave.

3.  Find a protein you like that is not expensive, and shelf-stable. Bush’s beans are $1.00 a can. Mori-Nu tofu (in the shelf-stable packages) is gluten-free. Water or oil packed tuna is safe to eat two or three times a week. (Water or oil packed, only—broth can have modified food starch that has wheat.) If you can’t tolerate soy, gluten-free almond milk in aseptic packages is a good, cheaper, gluten-free source of protein.

4.  Start reading labels on anything you buy. The label has to say, “no gluten,”  or , “gluten-free,” or you have to be looking at something that can not possibly have gluten in it, because it’s never been near a mill. (Nuts, beans, seeds, and flour of any kind, may have tiny particles of gluten in them; as for what you can eat, apples, potatoes and garlic keep pretty well without refrigeration.)

5.  If you eat out, even in cheap places, tell your server. There is really no way to tell if something is gluten-free by looking at it. (Rice noodles can be cooked in the same water as wheat noodles; corn chips may be fried in the same oil as wheat flour tortillas, making them unsafe.)

6. Wendy’s, Chick fil A, and In-and-Out Burger have gluten-free meal options for less than $5.00.  If you have two dollars in your pocket, you can get a baked potato at Wendy’s.

7. If the only thing you have access to is a convenience store, you can probably buy eggs, Fritos, Spam, Vienna Sausages, fruit juice, and some fruit, and still stay gluten-free.

8. If you are up for buying kitchen appliances, and your living situation allows it, get a microwave, a crock pot, and a large toaster oven. You can bake cake and cookies in a toaster oven, while wheat-eating roommates are cooking something else, and you’ll need a separate toaster to avoid wheat flour crumbs. You can make rice, lasagna, baked potatoes and rice noodle soup in a microwave. Crock pots can handle larger amounts of potatoes, and gluten-free soups, pretty easily. (I had a stand mixer and gave it away–you don’t need a kitchen full of appliances to make good food.)

9.  You will need to replace some of your kitchen utensils, if you have a kitchen. Start small. Get a cast iron pan, a few wooden spoons and some Tupperware–all of these things keep particles of wheat, so the’re not safe unless they are new.  Anything made of smooth metal, or glass, is probably safe, once you clean it. (Except nonstick pans; they’re actually porous, and can’t be reused or shared once they’ve been used for wheat.) You can even buy glass at a thrift store, wash it carefully, and then designate it, “gluten-free”; if you don’t have a kitchen, and you’re eating out of a microwave in your dorm, just get glass.

10.  If you drink, and I’m not suggesting you do–because that would be setting a bad example–beer isn’t gluten-free. However, you can get halfway decent, cheap, truly gluten-free beer, if you find this stuff.