Do you feel limited when you look at a recipe that has ingredients in it that you either don’t like or can’t eat because of an allergy?

Wouldn’t it be great to, on a whim, be able to alter a recipe to fit your dietary needs and appeal to your taste buds?

A main reason why I created my cooking website and the menu planner was so that I could help people be more inspired in the kitchen while they cook.  And this includes having the know-how and the creativity to change a recipe around if it doesn’t fit your needs.

As people on restricted diets, you are constantly running into situations where you can’t eat certain foods because they contain ingredients that you can’t eat.

However, when you are home cooking your own meals, do you feel the same sort of limitation that you can’t really enjoy delicious food?

This blog post is the first of many that will help you to broaden your horizons when it comes to preparing meals specifically to your needs and taste buds.  In fact, I am working on an e-book that will be all about how to replace ingredients in recipes to fit your diet.

Here are a few tips to start with:

1. Instead of focusing on what you can’t eat, focus on what you can. If you are on a very restricted diet, this becomes even more complicated.  Even so, the first step is to make a master list of foods that you can eat.  When you are cooking and preparing food from recipes that may call for ingredients on your “no” list, you will immediately have a place to look to find something that you can substitute the ingredient for.

2.  Think outside of the box. Sometimes it takes some creativity and ingenuity to come up with something that will replace an ingredient you can’t eat.  Start with your list of foods you can eat and go from there.  Or, browse the produce section of your grocery store and find some new and interesting things you may not have thought of using before.

3.  Learn basic cooking techniques. Switching a recipe around becomes easier with the more skills you learn in the kitchen.  That way, if you are converting a recipe’s main ingredient from chicken to fish, you will know a good way to prepare and cook the fish.

4.  Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. It can seem daunting at first to adapt a recipe to your needs.  But an important first step is to try new ideas.  This way you will know what works and doesn’t work.  Even if something doesn’t turn out great, you will learn something in the process.

Did you find these tips useful?  I would love to hear anything else that you would add to this list!  Thanks so much!