Dear Gluten-Free Friends,
As we transitioned our kitchen to be celiac safe, one thing comes to mind. Glitter. Gluten is like glitter, it gets everywhere. Bread, crackers, the crumbs get everywhere! Especially with toddlers in the house.
What a learning process.
It’s as if the change sunk in slowly, starting off as the ignorant assumption that gluten-free meant without wheat. This is far from the truth. Gluten-free does not always mean celiac safe, and we were not fully aware of how, quite yet. First, came the pantry, where we purged the gluten containing snacks and such. Diagnosing a toddler meant she wasn’t quite ready to even know what was going on. Here she was, old enough to ask for her favorite foods, but not old enough to understand what gluten was. She knew her routine and was fond of it as most toddlers are. She knew what she liked to eat, but overnight, all of that had to change. At this time, 6 years ago that is, we had 3 kids, ages 4, 3, and almost 1. Our oldest 2 loved frozen mini pancakes, wanted them every day for breakfast. Suddenly, we couldn’t wake up in the morning and fulfill their requests. Without telling them what our plan was, my husband Tim and I purged the gluten containing foods from the house. We donated what was unopened and offered whatever else we could to friends and family. We packed up and moved out of sight the foods that were not gluten-free. We had not met with a dietitian yet, which is something I highly recommend doing to help guide the change. In this moment, we were flying blind! Googling and checking every label, unaware in that immediate moment of all of the place’s gluten can hide. Unaware that foods really should be certified gluten-free and not just void of wheat on the ingredients list.
We stopped taking our kids to the grocery store, that was our next step. Out of sight, out of mind. Kids have an amazing way of adapting and looking to their parents as a guiding light. We didn’t talk about it, didn’t make a big deal about it, we just made a shift and kept our thoughts, worries, questions private. We started buying other foods, gluten-free foods. Trying out new brands and searching for our new favorites. When our kids would ask for a specific gluten containing food, we simply said, “oh we don’t have that right now, but here’s this instead!” After a while, they developed a new pattern of favorite foods to ask for.
I think immediately our biggest concern was to be worried about their feelings with this change. Will they notice? Will they miss our old patterns? The doughnuts, the mini pancakes, and so on. We did not want our daughter, (the one with celiac,) to feel left out, so for that reason, we made our house dedicated gluten-free and changed what our son was eating too. Our son was tough, he had strong emotions and was an extra picky eater. This was a big learning curve for us! We got him involved in cooking with us and let him help us pick from new recipes. We made NEW a cool and fun thing within our home and would get excited to try out a new recipe. He loved to help out! He didn’t always love the final product, but we would play a taste test game. This game meant having our kids close their eyes, we would feed them a bite of food, and they would excitedly guess what they took a bite of. Often, they wouldn’t even realize that a veggie they thought they would hate, was actually really yummy! To be honest, changing over to a gluten-free lifestyle for our daughter, actually made all of us a bit more food focused, proudly, we got our picky eaters to eat their veggies!
In time, we learned more and more of what we weren’t doing correctly when it came to food safety and keeping our kitchen gluten-free for our celiac daughter. I will say that we did not have the best medical guidance at this time, the GI Dr we saw was not very informative, did not perform a celiac scope for proper diagnosis. A few years later, we switched Drs, had to work backwards and reintroduce gluten for a gluten study, do more labs. Next, to make us feel the most confident about our medical care, we landed at a celiac center at a children’s hospital which has been WONDERFUL. We have the best support and guidance now, so if we seem extremely ignorant with how clueless we were at the start of her diagnosis, it’s because we were! For this reason, we had to do a lot of our own learning and have come a very long way.
I am certain that other families are in a similar boat as we were in and have little guidance when starting out on this new gluten-free journey. Our pediatrician is incredible, but GI support took a few tries. I hope as celiac awareness grows, and further research is done, the medical care becomes universally stronger.
In case this helps to guide someone, here is a list of how to transition your kitchen to be celiac safe:
Gluten-Free Kitchen Guide
- Either eliminate or separate the gluten containing foods. This includes spreads that might otherwise be gluten-free. Butter, jam and jelly, peanut butter, cream cheese you name it! If the spread was used to apply to gluten bread, or pasta, then most likely, it is now contaminated with gluten. The best practice is to label! Write gluten-free on the butter dedicated for gluten-free bread, along with anything else in your kitchen of the like.
- Do not let gluten and gluten-free bread share a breadbox.
- Buy a new toaster or buy sleeves to toast the gluten-free bead in when putting it in the shared toaster. I have never used these, but I have heard it can be a great option.
- Toss the wooden spoons. Wood is absorbent, can have cracks in it, and can be hard to completely clean, this goes for cutting boards too if it isn’t sealed well.
- Do not continue to use scratched plastic containers or scratched baking sheets. Applying parchment paper can be a solution rather than tossing the baking sheets. If you do choose to replace the baking sheets, your old ones can be recycled at a scrap metal recycling center.
- Cast iron, some recommend getting a dedicated cast iron pan for gluten-free food.
- Convection ovens are not safe if previously used for gluten foods. The fan in a convection oven will cause flour to blow around and cause cross contamination to occur. One solution is to cover the gluten-free food with foil to protect it from contamination.
- Wash your oven mitts and hot pads, if you’re like me, when you grab something hot from the oven, it likely brushes up against the food.
- Wash your utensil drawer and tray. Think about the times you toast bread and then realize you need a knife to spread butter. The toasted bread flakes are basically like opening a jar of glitter in your kitchen, it gets everywhere, and you’ll keep finding it forever.
- Make sure the gluten-free food is labeled gluten-free. This seems like such a basic one, right? It wasn’t to us. We really thought that without the presence of wheat, rye, barley, on the ingredients list and we were good to go. Unaware that oats are not always safe, unaware that natural flavors too can mean sneaky gluten is present. Not to mention that some foods might itself be gluten-free, but it might have been produced alongside gluten containing food, making it unsafe for celiac.
- If your countertop has hard to clean crevices, like mine does, I would recommend avoiding laying food directly on the countertop and instead using a plate, or a baking mat.
- eliminate old sponges, wash dishcloths, and towels.
- Some people choose to replace colanders.
- Cookbooks, now this is just speaking from personal experience and something to consider. I had a Better Homes and Gardens book that I used often for baking recipes, the pages definitely had flour all over them. I chose to gift this book to my brother and purchase a new version instead of worrying about cross contamination while baking.
- Wash the rack in your oven or toaster oven if you bake directly on the racks, like pizzas.
- In general, I would recommend doing a thorough cleaning of your kitchen and pantry. You do not need to disinfect but clearing surfaces and using a food safe cleaner such as vinegar spray, would be a great option. The gluten residue needs to be REMOVED, not just wiped off with water. Clean off knobs, handles, the microwave, pantry doorknob and so on.
- If you cook while following recipes from a phone or tablet, make sure you clean these surfaces as well each time you’re cooking with said device.
- A general rule in our house is that everyone needs to wash hands before getting into anything in the kitchen, this cuts down on cross contamination potential.
I have done a cross-contamination activity with my kids where I put finger paint on my hands and go around the kitchen touching surfaces. This activity has helped me explain how something invisible can spread from surface to surface. Imagine all of the places within the kitchen where gluten might have been in contact, and clean that. It is possible to co-exist with gluten food in the same kitchen while also keeping the kitchen safe. A mindful cleaning routine, separate storage, labeling, and cross contamination education and awareness for those sharing the kitchen can make this possible! The goal is to support our celiac family member without it feeling like a burden, adopt a new routine and the support can become second nature. Please feel free to drop a comment if I have left something out, or if there is something you’d like to share that works for you! I hope someone will find this to be helpful!
Love, Tiffany
xoxo
