Celiac-Friendly Thanksgiving: Dessert was smashing!

Definitely a year to be thankful in my family…for lives changed, family members and their health, and yes, even celiac disease.

Believe it or not, celiac disease is something to be grateful for. At a recent gluten-free cookie exchange I attended, someone told me about a quote from Dr. Joseph Murray of the Mayo Clinic– and I’m paraphrasing because I am not entirely confident I have every word right.

He said you can’t choose whether you have celiac disease. But you can choose to accept and deal with it.

Once you accept and deal with it I think you can learn to be thankful for a more fulfilling life with your health.

For some with celiac disease, this Thanksgiving was their first on the gluten-free diet.  As a result it may have been harder than others.  If this includes you or someone you know, I hope you will keep this website handy for future tips and education and embrace the new direction your health has taken.  It was my brother’s first Thanksgiving with celiac disease, and he was thankful for the change in his lifestyle with the diagnosis. Judging from the pie he ate (and the rest of us–no it wasn’t just him) the feast was a success.

As you know at our house, we take the disease on with gusto and no one feels left out for a big holiday meal.  A quarter of the people at our Thanksgiving meal have celiac and I know they had all the food they desired. The stuffing was perfect and the gravy was tasty. Plus seven years of  my baking gluten-free pies, finally paid off for a family member with celiac. My 9-year-old doesn’t eat pie, Ida had never had it and was doing dessert taste-testing. But my brother was perfectly content eating up the apple pie– ala mode thank you very much. It all tasted great. The pie was definitely my favorite of the whole meal. My husband would probably vote for the stuffing.

How was your Thanksgiving? Did you have a gluten-free recipe that was a hit? Let me know and we can publish it on this site to help others. If we share enough there could be just enough goodies here to help us pack on a few more pounds over Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.

Tags: celiac, Christmas, dinner, eat, gluten-free, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, pie, stuffing, Thanksgiving