Wheat-Free Diet

The following blog is for Brenda, and anyone else out there who wonders about going gluten/ wheat free.
When I was first diagnosed with my wheat allergy (I'm actually allergic to wheat, not gluten) about 4 years ago, I thought "what am I going to do?" because I LOVE wheat products.  I talked to a few of my friends, who also had wheat allergies, did research, and experimented, and this is what I learned. 

• I soon discovered that wheat-free cookbooks/ websites weren't really that helpful unless you had multiple food allergies or had never cooked before.  I found it was easier to just adjust my own recipes.
• One of the websites I looked at was www.sophiesafecooking.com 
• I had been making my own bread, so bread was one of the first things I tried to find a substitute for.  There are mixes and pre-made breads.  I tried multiple brands of both kinds.  Some were awful and  others were okay, but I've yet to find a great substitute for bread.  Mostly I just do without sandwiches or other bread unless I'm desperate, traveling, or pregnant ;)
• My favorite bread mix is Bob Red Mill's Hearty Whole Grain.  It's okay for toast or grilled, but I don't like it as a sandwich bread and it doesn't freeze well.  Some of the other breads that come frozen are a good alternate, if you just want a slice or two every now and again.
• When adjusting my dinner recipes, I use corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas, rice flour for thickening, rice pasta, wheat-free cream soups, and spice packets that don't use wheat as a thickening agent.
• Trader Joes has the best and least expensive rice pasta, but it only comes in a few varieties, so recipes like lasagna actually look a bit different (I actually use quinoa in place of noodles in lasagna because I get tired of the same old rice noodles).  If you don't have access to a Trader Joes, there are other rice pasta brands out there, but they're a lot more expensive.
• I used Wolfgang Puck's Organic soups because they were thickened with rice instead of wheat flour.
• When it comes to baking, I tried to make biscuits, brownies, pizza crust, etc. from scratch, but found it was easier and better tasting to use a mix.
• Pamela's makes good pizza crust and cookie mixes.
• Bob's Red Mill has a fabulous (and I mean fabulous) corn bread mix.  I like this even better than corn muffins made with wheat.
• There are a lot of different brands that make brownie mixes; I've tried quite a few and have found that most of them are pretty decent.  But then, they involve chocolate and sugar, so really, how can it go wrong?
• There are some decent rice crackers for snacks, but I actually prefer corn chips/tortillas instead.
• Overall, I had to learn to not expect as much from wheat-free/ gluten free foods.  There really is no substitute for wheat for it's texture and baking properties.  I also learned that it's more expensive to use wheat alternatives.  After going through withdrawals and just doing it, I found going without wheat wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
• It took a few months of being wheat-free to really notice a difference, to completely get rid of the symptoms I was experiencing.  And now when I eat wheat, I usually notice a reaction within 24 hours, which reminds me why I stopped eating wheat in the first place.

I think I answered Brenda's 1 or 2 questions, and hopefully this has been helpful to others as well.