Memorial Day is the traditional beginning of the summer picnic and barbecue season. Here’s a collection of recipes that will last all summer.

♦ My Recipes (dot com) lists 240 recipes under the keywords “gluten free” + “Memorial Day”

♦ About Cooking (dot com) supplies recipes for homemade mayonnaise, hamburger buns, and other holiday goodies.

♦ Elana’s Pantry (dot com) posts a “Memorial Day Recipe Roundup” that you will find useful all summer.

This may be a good opportunity to reread my article on gluten free beer. You will certainly need something to “wash down” all this great food.

Easter, like every holiday, can be celebrated gluten free with a little bit of advance preparation. Of course, almost everything we do needs a bit of planning, but these articles will make it easier:

♦ The simplest way to side step the whole gluten free Easter basket issue is to fill the basket with non-edible items. This article is called “Fifty Ways to Fill an Easter Basket“ will tell you how. Keep a copy of this article and save a few of the non-edible items you bought for Easter — they’ll come in handy on Trick-or-Treat night in October.

♦ The title of this article speaks for itself: “A Fuss-Free, Gluten-Free Easter Dinner: a memorable meal with a gluten-free dairy-free twist“.

♦ Easter and other holidays frequently involve traveling and dining in homes that are not gluten free. This article is from “The Savvy Celiac”, one of my favorite websites, and with very minor revisions, is useful whenever people who live gluten free are traveling.  The article is titled “Easter Weekend Doesn’t Have to be a Gluten Free Nightmare“. The important ideas in this chapter apply to any weekend — with adequate planning, no weekend visit needs to be a nightmare.

Try these “Five Easy Gluten Free Kwanzaa Recipes”. If you need more ideas, here are five more recipes provided by Triumph Dining.

When I began researching this article, I had heard of this celebration but really knew almost nothing about it. I discovered that it is one of the few holidays young enough to have an official web site and that its frequently-asked-questions section contained lots of interesting information.

This recipe for “Steakhouse Potato Salad” really looked great to me. Finally, watch this video in which ‘Grandma Martha‘ prepares candied yams while discussing Kuanzaa with her grandson.

Here’s a recipe for gluten free egg nog. I had always assumed the egg nog required real eggs but I guess that this is not the case. This recipe is from the McCormick website, and since this firm does not specifically state on-line that its products are gluten free, you may wish to use this link to the company that markets spices and flavorings using the brand names Tones, Durkee, and Spice Islands.

For an interesting variation on this idea, try this this recipe for making your own gluten free vanilla extract from vodka. Sounds festive to me!