Dear FlyLady,

This spring I found out that I have to eat gluten free. The interesting thing is that once I stopped, my mind realized how sick the gluten had been making me and I’ve had no cravings, even though the idea of stopping was terrifying before I did it.

But, going gluten free also means that grabbing a fast meal isn’t nearly as easy as it was before. Without the bun, you can taste how greasy most fast food hamburgers are – and anything that’s breaded is out.

So menu planning has become a much bigger deal since otherwise, I’m likely to feed my family something easy and then I’ll either skip the meal or nibble on candy or junk food when I’m hungry. Having it as our habit this month and all of your reminders is helping. On the past 2 weekends, when I have my family around, I’ll ask everyone for menu ideas, jot them on a list that I keep with me, note the groceries that I need to go with their ideas and voila, I have a menu that is family approved and a quick grocery list to pull out whenever I’m at the store.

One other thing that I’m learning is to make extra. Doubling my recipe for spaghetti sauce lends itself to either another quick dinner down the road or a super easy chili base later in the week. The more recipes I can make extra of, the more likely it is that I’ll eat leftovers for lunch instead of skipping and snacking on my sons’ Halloween candy or something else just as bad.

Te-ge