Celebrating Halloween involves lots of food and lots of temptation. It can be spooky in the fun sense of that word but there are also real dangers for people living gluten free and the people who care about them. Celiacs and their parents need to acquire three basic skills:

→ identifying gluten free candy and other goodies.

→ re-inventing trick-or-treat, since few of the items in most goodie sacks are acceptable for us.

→ planning parties that will excite and impress children, especially those who have to modify the normal “trick-or-treat” tradition.

CHALLENGE #1 Identifying gluten free food and holiday goodies. Many lists of gluten free candies exist although I was not able to find one that been updated this year.  Here are two possibilities dated 2010. Click here for the other list. Keep in mind that the mini-candies usually found in treat-or-treat bags may or may not be identical to their full-sized cousins. Here is an article with ten recipes for gluten free candy.

CHALLENGE#2  Re-inventing trick-or-treat.

♦ One family created a tradition that involved the Great Pumpkin arriving very late on Halloween night, taking the treat bags collected by the children, and leaving a special gift pre-selected by the children. I think this is a great idea for families that need face-saving reasons for avoiding both sugar highs and gluten reactions. The article where I read this is apparently not still on-line.

♦ I also recall reading about a couple who went door-to-door in their neighborhood leaving a special bag for their child and a photo of the child in costume to avoid confusion.

♦ Another family turned trick-or-treating into a game where various types of candy were assigned different numbers of points. The winner received the grand prize. I like this idea, particularly because the children lost points if they dipped into the trick-or-treat bag too soon and learned lots of arithmetic while they were adding up their points.

CHALLENGE #3. Planning exciting parties for children.

It is relatively easy to find Halloween snacks that everyone will love and children living gluten free can eat freely. In almost every case, you are looking for visual effect and not gourmet taste or texture so the substitutions will be easy and obvious. Browse through this collection from About Gluten Free Cooking or this one from Britta.com. Here  is another article containing Halloween Ideas.

If you need more information, consider this set of Halloween ideas and party plans. Keep in mind that some adjustments may be needed to make these parties gluten free and that some of the ideas are unsuitable for children. Click here for another set of plans and ideas.