Roast beef & sweet potato
Christmas 2009 was my first gluten free Christmas. Dinner was at my mum’s house with her husband, my brother and his wife and my boyfriend John. As my mum was in charge of preparing dinner she decided that everything would be gluten free. There was no point, she felt, in risking contamination and almost everything could be prepared gluten free anyway. I didn’t like the idea that anyone may be missing out on their favourite Christmas dinner treats because they wouldn’t be suitable for me but I soon realised that no one had any objections at all to staying 100 percent gluten free and were happy to eat whatever I could eat…safely.
On looking around a variety of different supermarkets on the lead up to Christmas it looked as though almost everything contained gluten. Anything prepacked at least. Most of the turkeys were basted with in many cases something glutenous or in others something which could be and lots of turkeys were stuffed with various flavours of stuffing that I would definitely not be able to eat. Luckily I don’t tend to be someone who buys prepacked foods anyway (especially when it comes to veg) and would much prefer something fresh to prepare myself rather than something already cut up and covered in glutenous sauce or gravy so it was fairly easy to stay away from these things. There were however, all those Christmassy nibbles that the festive season tends to bring. Things like mini sausages wrapped in bacon, breaded mozarella sticks and sausage rolls grinned their wheaty grins at me from the shelves and freezers of supermarkets and there was no way I could eat these.
For any Coeliacs out there who do love these kinds of festive nibbles, for most there will be either a gluten free alternative or something similar,which can be made gluten free by missing out certain ingredients and using others instead. In the case of mini sausages wrapped in bacon for example, most prepacked varieties I found did contain gluten but there are sausages and bacon out there that is safe for us so you just need to do a bit of research and prepare these things yourself if you really want them….personally I can quite easily live without them.
Candy sushi
My first gluten free Christmas dinner was home made tomato and lentil soup made with Bouillon stock,  roast beef, cooked only in it’s own gluten free juices with roasted sweet potato, carrots and parsnips. We had M&S gluten free Christmas cake for dessert. I had also made lots of rice krispie and marshmallow, sushi shaped treats for snacking on with Kallo puffed rice cereal,  Haribo marshmallows, Sainsbury’s fish shaped sweets and Humzingers fruit treats for sushi decoration. There was also lots of lots of tasty vino 🙂
My first gluten free Christmas wasn’t a difficult one. We kept things simple. Everything was delicious and 100% safe for Coeliacs!
