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"Did you have a great holiday?" "What did you eat?" As someone with food allergies, some people don't even want to ask me those questions for fear that I couldn't eat a thing on Thanksgiving! Far from it, I went back for fourths. It is true, however, th...
I'm allergic to dairy and garlic, so I arrived at my parents' house stocked with cans of garlic-free chicken broth, a pound of soy butter, soy milk, soy sour cream, soy shredded cheese, and a few recipes. We were able to make Mom's famous broccoli souffle completely dairy-free, although she still made her version as she was nervous about how mine would turn out. We asked guests to try them both, and they all swore that mine was just as good.
I also made a pumpkin pie with tofu which our guests eagerly devoured until I announced it had tofu. I insisted that my Dad baste the turkey with soy butter and make the stuffing with soy butter and the garlic-free chicken broth. I made the candied yams with soy butter as well, although they turned out quite a bit more carmelized than they usually do.
All in all, it was a success in my mind. I didn't force my food down anybody's throats. They were free to make their own versions of everything. I gave up on making my version of the green bean casserole (the one with French Fried Onions) because my version was just too labor intensive, so that's the only thing I missed out on. It was a bit stressful keeping track of ingredients that were going into the unaltered recipes. There was a stick of butter floating around for a few hours that I couldn't take my eyes off of, until it went into the dairy version bowl of mashed potatoes.
great job laurie! sounds like you had an excellent allergen-free Thxgiving! and i love when others enjoy my "special" food and don't even realize that were eating it or that there was a difference...
happy holidays!