Since going gluten-free, I have wanted to stay home for the holidays. I am tired of negotiating which part of the meal will be gluten-free and figuring out what gluten-laden dishes/desserts the other family members “can’t live without.” I would love to be able to help my mother fix the Thanksgiving meal from start to finish. It is not because I need all the food to be gluten-free or that I am afraid of cross-contamination. It is not even about my love for cooking.
It is about the mother-daughter ritual of preparing the holiday meal that I miss. I can only help prepare part of the meal. The part that is gluten-free. I hate that I can’t help roll out the pie crusts or sprinkle the streusel. I want to be involved in the entire meal. It is like our Thanksgiving dinner has gotten a divorce.
And I really hate the imposition I put on my relatives.
Last year, my mother bought a $70 fresh, organic turkey to make sure I could eat it.
[that’s love]
Sometimes things are just too hard. Going gluten-free should be my burden.
I feel even worse when explaining my situation to my husband’s family. They live in CA- far away from the safety of my gluten-free kitchen. Either I impose some sort of menu change or I eat nothing (or few things) and make the hostess feel bad. [I suppose] the third option is to borrow their kitchen for a few hours to make alternate gluten-free dishes, but this causes quite an imposition when the hostess is making her holiday feast.
The hardest thing about being gluten-free is feeling like you are a complete inconvenience to everyone else.
Explaining once again that you really don’t mind that the cheesecake is not gluten-free.
Yes, really.
Please just ignore that I am eating green beans and mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner.
At least I don’t have to worry about gaining five pounds at the holidays.
Our Thanksgiving Resolution:
Since Thanksgiving is at my mom’s this year, my mom is making sure that most of Thanksgiving will be gluten-free. She called on the way to find that overpriced, out-of-this-world organic turkey. She is going to make the gluten dishes/desserts on Tuesday, and I am going to come help with the gluten-free dishes/desserts on Wednesday. This will limit the chance of cross-contamination and it also means my mom and I will get to cook together on Wednesday!
Our Gluten Free Thanksgiving Menu
Turkey
gravy (thickened with arrowroot starch/flour)
Oyster dressing (we are going to use Whole Food’s Prairie bread)
White Acre Peas (with rice)
Homemade Cranberry Sauce or Homemade Cranberry relish
Possibly Shrimp (if I can convince mom they are necessary)
Pecan Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Gluten Free Menu of the Week
Sea, over at Book of Yum, has graciously agreed to host the swap this week.
You don’t want to overtax the cook the week of Thanksgiving. I think it is important to make dishes that can be made quickly or meals that can stew all day in the crockpot. You never know when relatives are going to arrive hungry!
Monday: Vegetable Cabbage Stir Fry
Tuesday: Chili
Wednesday: Tinkyada Pasta with tomato sauce and Al fresco brand chicken sausage
Thursday: Thanksgiving dinner
Friday: leftovers!!
Posted on November 19th, 2007 by Natalie
Filed under: Menu Plan, Thanksgiving
I know what you mean about the joy of cooking with your mother. We are traveling to see family and have Thanksgiving at my Aunt’s house. I feel like a burden when I do things like ask my mom if my Aunt knows not to stuff that free range, organic turkey that she bought so that I can eat the turkey, mashed potatoes AND green beans while everyone is enjoying a full Thanksgiving meal. We will be coming home to fix our own fully gluten-free ‘Thanksgiving’ this weekend. It’s a lot of work but I can’t wait! Have a fun and healthy Thanksgiving.
Janine
[…] of Gluten Free Mommy is planning on making Vegetable Cabbage Stir Fry, and she has all kinds of yummy Thanksgiving dishes planned, […]
I feel you. I feel every word. Christmas will be my holiday with those feelings. No partaking of my dad’s out of this world homemade clam chowder (it’d be award winning if he’d enter it somewhere!). And just overall not being able to partake of anything except what I brought.
This year, my husband’s stepmother asked about every detail. She lives alone and lives very “clean” so I’m totally not worried, but I still feel like an imposition! I’m bringing stuffing and dessert, and thankfully, no one else is going to be there but us.
Sigh. ENJOY Weds. Pass on that cooking tradition to your kids.
Misty now….
Gee Gluten Free Mommy,
That was a really beautiful thought and I can relate totally… I have always made Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday of the year… No religion ( Jewish), just family and good friends… now that I am GF for 4 months, my friend offered to invite me and my parents for a gluten free Thanksgiving, and I too, feel so guilty, but am thrilled at the gesture of friendship… Happy Turkey Day to you!!! SK … [email protected]
These are my first gluten free holidays. Last year I didn’t know what I was allergic too, I was reacting to every food so I ate so little…compared to that the choices seem endless now that I know what it is!! What a difference perspective makes. But all your thoughts in this post have been my thoughts. This has changed our lives in so many ways. Then I realize how grateful I am to feel healthy again. I went from using a cane from the pain of chronic inflammation and arthritis to working out at the gym…no cane in sight. The change after going gluten free is that dramatic. So I am grateful. Gratitude is a very good thing!! Thanks for all your amazing posts!! Happy Thanksgiving!!
alexsandra
Hi Natalie!
What a familiar feeling. I just got back from 4 days in California where we celebrated an early Thanksgiving with my mom, dad and my boys (3 of them live in California still and 2 are still at home with me).
And not only do I need to be gluten-free, I need to be dairy free as well.
My mom and I planned the menu together. Fortunately, she is really understanding of my menu limitations. She just doesn’t know how to cope with it all. So I wrote up the shopping list, we went shopping together, and I was able to pre-screen everything we bought.
And, honestly, I think she was more than happy to let me cook everything! And dinner was a hit. Even my 3 oldest boys, who are extremely picky eaters, enjoyed it and my dad called it a success.
Not one of them realized the pumpkin pie had a rice flour crust and was made with soy milk. In fact, very little of it survived!
Something else I did, to make things a little easier for me, was to pre-mix zip-lock bags with all the dry ingredients I needed for the pie crust, some GF CF EF brownies, and your delicious apple-quinoa and carrot-zucchini muffins. Because all the dry ingredients were pre-measured, all I had to do was add the wet stuff, and bake. This way I made sure I had plenty of GF things to munch on and also introduced my family to a new way of eating.
Well, I am off to do grocery shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner at home tomorrow. Hope it’s as as successful as Sunday’s was.
And hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.
Several posts at various blogs have made me feel better about the fact that Thanksgiving was, well, hard for me this year-my first gluten-free, allergen-free year-even with my mother trying to make concessions for me. So thanks.