Gluten Free Christmas
♦ The Christmas season is joyful but certainly not simple, particularly when food sensitivities affect our celebrating and our planning. Hopefully, the ideas on this page will help with some of the hassles. To make things simpler, I’ll divide this article into three sections:
→ the people we celebrate with — (including those who do not live gluten free)
→ the gifts we give
→ the food we share
part 1: the people we celebrate with
♦ Many of my family and friends know just enough about celiac disease to be afraid of having me as a house guest. Others feel that it is OK for me to cheat during this festive season — after all, everybody else does. Both these attitudes have negative consequences, and these articles may help people deal with them: “Showing Hospitality to a Gluten Free Guest”, “Please Don’t Pass the Bread: a Short Guide to Gluten Free”, “Keeping Gluten Free Guests Safe”, and “Hide and Seek: Hidden Glutens at the Holiday Table”. I wrote about these articles in the post I published just before Thanksgiving. Many of these “people problems” are the same whenever people celebrate together. You may wish to read or reread this post and link to the articles.
♦ Issues for children dealing with celiac disease influence holiday activities for many families. Read these two articles by guest columnist Kirsty Cassens, a blogger, the parent of a celiac child, and a part-time teacher. The first article has to do with “seven strategies” for helping kids cope with and hopefully enjoy the season and one deals with problems that may arise during school Christmas parties, etc.
part 2: the gifts we give
♦ Gift cards are a holiday favorite. Check out this post to read about gift certificates that would be welcomed by the celiacs and others on your gift list.
♦ My new favorite cookbook is “Easy Gluten Free Baking”. A wonderful and easy-to-prepare piecrust recipe is found on page 187, and I’m eager to try the chapter on holiday cookies. Click here for more details.
♦ “The Perfect Brownie Pan” is just what it sounds like — an easy way to prepare brownies, cookies, ice cream sandwiches etc. with absolutely straight and professional looking edges. Unfortunately, the only graphic I could find to explain it is a really obnoxious television commercial— sorry about that, but I couldn’t explain this great product without a picture of some sort. Click here for details.
♦ Amazon’s Kindle is a pocket sized reader that enables the user to travel (and even shop for “safe” groceries or select a “safe”restaurant) with a large library of books available to them. There are currently 60+ books that have been adapted for use on Kindle and are indexed as “gluten free”. Click here for details.
♦ Gift baskets are welcome during the holidays. I recently up-dated my post on that subject.
part 3: the food we share
Where ndo I start? Christmas is not about food, but food and all the joys that we associate with Christmas dinner are important and people living gluten are certainly able to participate in these blessings.
♦ These posts contain step-by-step plans for preparing Christmas dinner and including gluten free options. This plan is compliments of e-how.com and the other is from a British blogger who appropriately calls herself The Gluten Free Chef.
♦ Here are links to my last four gluten free recipe posts. Some of them have the word “Thanksgiving” in the title but remember that recipes for the two holidays are very much alike.
gluten free deserts — 3 baking demonstrations
gluten free Thanksgiving recipes
