What are your favorite recipes/foods for Thanksgiving?

Michelle – to keep the contamination down, please buy her some rice flour.  My dd4 just tried to see if we could add wheat back into her diet as an occasional thing, and she was sick for over 12 weeks.  She’s only “sensitive” to it.  Don’t want to see a true celiac reaction.  Yikes.  HOWEVER, you will only need rice flour if it is called for in a recipe.  =)

There are gluten free pie crust mixes at Walmart in the Gluten Free section of the  canned fruits and veggies aisle.  Be sure to check with her to make sure she doesn’t have any other sensitivities, like corn, rice, soy, bean, milk, etc.  Often those are in prepackaged things and lots of times celiacs have other issues too.  Glutino makes a gluten free cracker that will work in your recipes, and as a casserole topper (as long as she is not sensitive to yeast.)  I think that they are also on the shelf at Walmart.  If not, check your grocery store and health food store.

Really,  most of us with these issues don’t mind plain fruits and veggies – we know that they are safe.  =)  So make your gracy with cornstarch, get a gluten free turkey, make your potatoes, have a bowl of beans, corn, peas or whatever, and have a yummy relish tray for free munching.  She will appreciate it.  And if she can have yogurt, the roll recipe I gave above is really delicious.  We also use those for turkey sandwiches later.

When in doubt, call her and read the label to her.  Call the information number on the side of the labels – they are extremely helpful and quick with answers about gluten…they get the calls all the time.

Good luck with this, and bless you for inviting her when it makes it so complicated for you.   It is very limiting for us now, people are scared to invite us over any more and I miss that a lot. 

The bird will say “Gluten Free” on it – and if it doesn’t call the 1-800 number on it,  I really think that they don’t label them as such if they have gravy packets, because the gravy packets probably aren’t GF.

It is rather complicated, but once you figure out your parameters, it really isn’t that bad.  (just don’t ask my dh – he moaned for the first 7months of this, and last year at Thanksgiving, we had a new sister here that was serious celiac – and then he announces that we needed to have them over for Thanksgiving so she could have “a real meal” – in his words.  Made me laugh)

Your mill will definately cross contaminate.  Make sure you don’t do it!

ebcsmom, here is the recipe:

1 lb of cranberries
1 unpeeled & well-washed orange, sliced into 4 – 6 wedges
1 1/2 c sugar

Place berries and orange into blender and chop adding an orange wedge at a time – fairly quickly, but make sure the one in the blender is pretty well chopped before adding another.  Remove from blender & stir in sugar.  Allow to set overnight.

THANK you all for the help on my Thanksgiving guest.  I spoke to her again at church yesterday and am having fun getting all ready for our guests next week.  We are really excited to find ways to serve her.