So Hard To Cope With Thanksgiving

[terri]

For potatoes, there's a few ways it could get CC, really. One likely one would be the butter, if you're making mashed potatoes. If the butter wasn't a new stick of butter, and someone had, say, used a knife on their bread AND the butter before it was used with potatoes, that could be an issue. Or if someone was making biscuits or rolls near the potatoes, flour poofs in the air and a small amount settles on the potatoes - again, CC funtime. Or if the pot hasn't been scoured completely after anything with gluten was cooked in it, like chicken and dumplings or pasta, then it still has gluten enough to contaminate the potatoes with.

But really, how much you have to worry about CC with gluten depends somewhat on how sensitive you are to the gluten in the first place. There are four celiacs in my family, and we have three different levels of sensitivity. Two have to avoid gluten ingredients and the really major CC, but they usually don't worry more than just a quick 'does this have gluten' moment. One is much more sensitive and reacts to about 1/4 the amount of gluten that is usually in gluten-free products. And the last one in our family (sigh, that'd be me), well, I react to even less than that.

So...hopefully, you'll end up less sensitive and you can just relax and enjoy thanksgiving. :-)

[terri]

Once again, see my reply above. Why does it keep putting my name to this post?

[terri]

So yet another explanation as to how I got gluten today. I never thought about the stuffing being inside the Turkey. This is my 1st Gluten Free Thanksgiving. (I've been gluten free 3 weeks)I've learned for all future family dinners to bring my food in a cooler! Today was great as far as family but the food situation was a total nightmare. My family is 1) Clueless about what gluten is despite my efforts to educate them. 2) certain it's not a "real" problem. They kept telling me I was being too picky.

That is typical. You must just take care of yourself and keep educating yourself. Use this forum, it taught me so much! And read as much as you can on the subject. I can't promise your family will ever come around, but eventually, they will stop encouraging you to eat food which you know will not be safe. It is a long road but has a wonderful reward. A healthy life!

[terri]

Good for you! Reading your story has made me feel less alone. Thank you for sharing.

I'm just learning about gluten free cooking. I enjoy my cooking but my mom says it's bland maybe eating healthier food is making my taste buds more sensitive.

Use lots of fresh herbs and spices. If your mom says it is too bland, hand her the Cayenne pepper for her dish! LOL Not really! Keep experimenting. Cooking is fun and gluten free cooking is better because we use fresh ingredients and not processed packed chemicals. Best of luck to you!

[i-geek]

It's done. I'm home. Only ate my food and must admit my deviled eggs and cheesecakes were awesome! On the way home my son asked, "Are we still having Thanksgiving on Sunday?" I said yes we were and he said " Good! Because their food just didn't taste good at all. There was something wrong with the turkey ( they had injected it themselves and marinated it) and something wrong with the potatoes ( not mom's!) and he wouldn't even take anything home for his wife but a piece on pumpkin bread! See, my gluten free cooking CAN taste better than the glutenous! So on Sunday I will cook for my husband, son and his wife and we'll have turkey and potatoes and green bean casserole and pumpkin muffins and cranberry sauce. Oh, and carrots and parsnips too. Should be lovely.

Thank you again for your support. It helped me through today tremendously!!

Awesome! Your planned meal sounds delicious. If you don't have a stuffing recipe, we found out today that bread made from Gluten-Free Pantry's French bread mix makes terrific stuffing. I baked that up and my mom used it as the bread in her regular stuffing recipe. Everyone liked it better with the gluten-free bread- my dad said that the texture was better.

[anabananakins]

My family doesn't eat turkey with stuffing cooked in it, we smoke our turkeys separately, so I can eat ours. Also, I'm just starting the gluten-free diet as of last Friday and I'm not so sure I need to worry this much about CC. Why is it possible to have CC with potatoes? If they are boiled potatoes and cooked by themselves, they should be fine. I'm eating the potatoes!

In your own gluten free home, the potatoes would be fine. But given all the other foods being prepared at the same time, even gluten free by ingredient dishes can get ruined. Back in the day if I were making multiple dishes I would have easily used the same utensils. Boiling pasta, dumping out the water and then boiling potatoes in the same pot, seems harmless, right? Stirring a pot of rice, then stiring a pot of pasta, similar enough flavours, why use another spoon? But for us it's terrible. You can remind people til you are blue in the face, but it takes quite a while to get used to instinctively considering all the potential dangers and preventing them, all in a split second (especially with multiple cooks in the kitchen!)

Even if you aren't super sensitive to cross contamination now, it may well develop the longer you're gluten free. I felt much the same as you until I got glutened the first time :-)