Making Sense of Sensitivity: Day 3

Just to let you know, this post was written before I started the paleo diet to help ease my psoriasis. Nowadays I eat a more allergy-friendly diet, but leave these older, non-paleo posts up in case they are useful to readers, as I know not everyone eats the same as I do. Thanks for your understanding. 

So here is my video (I found a spare 2 minutes 49 seconds to myself this time...) on my third day of going gluten-free:

One of the things I spoke about was some advice I'd been given on Twitter which completely changed the way I'm approaching this whole challenge. Up until now, I've been basically making what I can on gluten-free bread or toast and thinking up ways to make gluten-free pasta dishes. But Jonathan Dale, who competed in Masterchef this year, gave me some advice that made me think differently. His wife is gluten-free and he told me not to think in terms of substituting foods for their gluten-free equivalents, but to think about foods you normally eat that don't contain gluten. Once you start to think about it, the list is huge: rice noodles in a stir fry or noodle soup, shepherd's pie, curries (including Thai and Indian curries) and combinations of fish, rice/potatoes and vegetables. It was real game-changing advice and made it even easier to switch to gluten-free foods, because then you don't really need to go and do any special shopping.

Anyway, here are my meals for the day:

Breakfast: Gluten-free bread, toasted, with butter.

Lunch: Bruschetta, made the way my Italian housemate at university taught me, using tinned tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, a garlic clove and some basil - but, of course, with the addition of gluten-free sliced wholemeal ciabatta.

Dinner: Persian Chicken Stew. One of my favourite dishes and worth remembering if you're on a gluten-free diet, because it actually contains ground walnuts which thicken the sauce instead of needing to use any flour.

I only have 2 days left, and I'm really enjoying this challenge. It's changed the way I think about a gluten-free diet and I realise there is much more you can eat if you're sensitive to gluten than I thought. Plus, I do feel better and healthier. Roll on day 4!

Are you sensitive to gluten in your diet? Do you have any tips for my last couple of days?