We don't live on them exclusively, but we are gluten-free and dairy-free and we eat a significant amount of non-meat foods. Looks like your family can eat eggs, which is a great help.
Some of our standard dinners:
- curried red lentils (my adaptation of a recipe I got here)
- green lentil stew
- french lentil stew (though my recipe includes bacon, which we eat)
- red beans and rice, or mixed beans and rice
- tempeh stew (vegetarian)
- "taco salad" - tempeh crumbled and pan-fried with oil and taco spices, salsa or fresh tomatoes, lettuce, refried beans, taco sauce...no need for taco shells!
- New England baked beans (also includes bacon, but you could omit or substitute) - DH eats these with fried eggs on top
- quinoa stew
- veggie stirfry over rice, millet, or quinoa
- curried veggies over millet
- stir fried rice with veggies and eggs or bits of leftover chicken
- sausage rice - basically rice, turkey sausage, onions, kale, and tamari
- frittata - anything fried up in a cast-iron pan with scrambled eggs poured over it and baked in the oven, cut like a crustless quiche (we like using onions, thinly sliced potato, kale or broccoli, salsa or canned tomato)
- roasted root vegetables
- veggie soup
- mashed potatoes served with peas; eggs optional
- hash made with leftover mashed potatoes
- peanut-chickpea-tomato-cauliflower curry sort of thing
easy lunches:
- scrambled eggs over brown rice with tamari - my Chinese friend introduced me to this years ago as a yummy quick meal
- "sushi rice" - we put cut-up or crumbled dried nori, sesame seeds, and tamari over brown rice; with your seafood allergies I wonder if nori would be a problem?
- thin or thick rice cakes and nut butter
- cold chicken or hard-boiled eggs, cut up raw veggies, cut up raw fruit, dried fruit, nuts...
- hummus is a good dip for raw fruit; so are refried beans
- homemade oven fries
- roasted marinated tofu
- roasted chickpeas served with other cold things
- green salad with hard-boiled eggs, or pan-roasted sunflower seeds, or sesame seeds
breakfast:
- fruit smoothies; you could add silken tofu for more protein (I make mine with simply fresh fruit, frozen fruit including banana, a small amount of water, and vanilla)
- cut up apples dipped in nut butter
- nut butter on rice cakes (we like the thin cakes; they're easier to make sandwiches with)
- dried fruit and nuts
- rice pudding (or you could do quinoa or millet as hot breakfast cereal - add cinnamon, vanilla, a dab of maple syrup, dried fruit, fresh fruit, nuts, whatever you like...we use almond milk if we have any, but you can also use soy or ricemilk or water).
- applesauce
- oatmeal with cinnamon and a drop of maple syrup (I see you can eat regular oats - that is great - some of us GF folks have to buy the ungodly expensive kind!)
You said no packaged food, so I'm assuming potato chips are out, but if you ever can get them, they are great to dip in egg salad or avocado mixed with salsa, or any "sandwich fillings" chopped small and mixed up (even chopped/mixed lettuce, tomato, and mayo makes a good dip). Rice crackers (rice snaps) are equally good. I only buy them when they're on sale.
Also, Food for LIfe brown rice tortillas are not very expensive (relatively) and would be a fun base for bean/rice burritoes or other wraps. We buy one or two packages a month for a treat.
And baking - I am not sure how the prices would look to you, but I buy 25 lb bags of brown rice flour and 10 lb bags of tapioca flour and xanthan gum, and use those three things in place of wheat flour in recipes I've modified to use these cheaper ingredients. I don't fuss with more complicated/expensive flours. I make plain and blueberry muffins, corn muffins, waffles, pancakes, and that European oven pancake called Huffy Puffy or German Pancake or Pannekoeken or Pannukakku..do you know which one I mean? It's mostly eggs, a little sweetener, and a little flour blended together and baked in the oven.
Wheat-free tamari is worth the price, even if it's about the only condiment you use. I use it in so many things, and it's great on just plain rice. San-J gold label is the kind I get. Most tamari/soy sauce has wheat in it, but the gold label is wheat-free.
We eat mostly brown rice as a grain, because my family isn't too fond of quinoa or millet, but we eat those occasionally and I like them all equally. I think they're pretty interchangeable if you're serving something like stirfry or curry over them.
FWIW, the basic spices I use are oregano, basil, ginger, garlic, mustard, cumin, curry, chili powder, taco spice, and cinnamon. I also use salt and Herbamare seasoned herb salt - it's expensive, but a little goes a long way, and a generous dash of it transforms just about ANYTHING into fabulous soup.
Hope this is helpful. Once you get the hang of it, it's not hard, and it doesn't have to be expensive, though I sympathize with the learning curve. You'll get past it!
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