Gluten-Free Challenge

I have to say that it's a bit frustrating to cook here. Well, more than just a bit because of the celiac issue. I know eventually I'll get the hang of it and have a collection of recipes to cook from which won't require so many ingredients either unavailable here or unavailable as gluten-free (such as soy sauce). On top of that, it's been frustrating to feed a stubborn, picky 2-year-old. I have been spending hours researching recipes, substitutions for ingredients, and finding recipes to make ingredients from scratch like worcestershire sauce, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, vanilla extract, etc.

There aren't a lot of gluten-free flours and other GF ingredients available here. I can find GF pasta, hazelnut meal, all-purpose GF flour, bread (which is dry and hard to swallow), corn starch, and maybe some other products that I never used in the States anyway. I need a lot more than that, namely xanthan gum. It acts like gluten does and provides the elasticity needed for soft, spongy bread.

I ran out of gluten-free oatmeal that I brought from the states so that left me with very little to choose from for breakfast. It's challenging to find breakfast foods that can last me a long time. Fruit and yogurt doesn't always cut it and I end up needing a snack before lunchtime. Fortunately, I was able to buy a crockpot last week from a family here so now I can make porridge from brown rice for breakfast.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to make ranch salad dressing from scratch with fresh ingredients. It wasn't terrible but the recipe wasn't worth keeping. I used what is basically sourish watered down yogurt for the tart milk-based liquid ("ayran," a popular drink here) for the dressing but it was too runny. It wasn't until after the dressing was made that I realized that I could've used plain yogurt. What I didn't like was the tons of veggies left over:

The small pile closest to the knife was all I needed for the dressing. The green onions are bundled together in such a single, large item so I had to buy the whole thing. I ended up chopping the rest of the green onions and freezing them. The white container to the right was filled to the brim. It'll be good in omelets and as toppings on salads.

I also learned how to make crepes which can be a good breakfast (with scrambled egg stuffed in it - if I could eat eggs) and dessert with jam inside the crepes. I just found a recipe for raisins and bananas in crepes with vanilla ice cream scoops on top. Delish.

Anyway, for now, I will just have to make simple dinners like steamed veggies and rice. My mom is mailing me a couple of packages of GF stuff so life might get a little easier once the packages (hopefully) arrive.

**EDIT**
After hours of reading and searching, I finally came up with a menu plan for the next 5 days or so. Take a gander:

Ratatouille
Balsamic Veggies with Pasta (a variation of my friend's recipe at scarbroughkitchen-dot-blogspot-com)
Mediterranean Chicken with Vinegar Roasted Peppers
Zucchini Fritters with something else on the side
Curried Tomato Lentil Soup
Lemon Yogurt Cake

(Recipes are from kitchenparade-dot-com, glutenfreegoddess-dot-blogspot-dot-com, allrecipes-dot-com, cookitallergyfree-dot-com. Let me know if you want to know where a recipe is specifically from).