How to have a person with Celiac Disease over for dinner.

Some Notes:

• Cross contamination does not only mean raw chicken on a cutting board.  In this case it means gluten getting into things that used to be gluten free.  If a piece of bread is held over a plate of un-covered gf food, that’s enough to cross contaminate it.  If someone touches wheat crackers, then touches the GF rice ones, they aren’t GF anymore.
• We’ve all been trained to not waste food and to eat what is placed before us.  Your friend with Celiac Disease can’t do that anymore and feels weird about it.
• You’ve probably met a manipulative, inconsistent “Gluten-free-er.”   They must be really trying, because I’ve had people demand how I know that I have Celiac Disease, or tell me that they don’t believe in Gluten.  I’m still working on my gracious, confident, Christian response; I had no idea what to say to them.
• Dan, Ben and Matty usually put on their guardsmen faces, and keep me and my hosts in line.  I lose courage when asking other people to bother even more about me.  I know, it’s out of character, I don’t get it either.
• For some reason, the few times I’ve eaten out at a restaurant with a GF menu, when I’ve grilled the server about just how GF is the menu?  They look weary,  and expect me to order a flour based brownie in the end.  But when Dan grills them, they are totally charmed.  He tips well too, but how do they always know that from the beginning of the meal?

How to have a person with Celiac Disease over for dinner

• The safe easy way: let the person with Celiac bring the food.  If you clean your house and wash the dishes, it’s a win – win!  And the person with celiac got to visit with you.
• The next safe, easy way: the person with Celiac brings their own meal.  You cook for the rest of the family.  And the person with celiac got to visit with you.
• Harder, more expensive and dangerous: cook regular for most people, and something GF for the person with Celiac (more on what cooking GF entails in the next option).  Any wee bit of wheat, barley, rye, or un-gf oats, or something made from them, can cross contaminate your gf food, and then your friend will get sick.  But if you really, really want to risk it:
  1. First clean your kitchen surfaces, and all of your utensils, cookie sheets, pizza stones, etc.
  2. If you usually toss your measuring cups back into the drawer after working with flour, clean out the drawer, replace the drawer liner, and wash everything before you put them back. Do not use any flour after this step until the GF food is covered up.
  3. Cook the gf food, cover it carefully and store it on the top shelf in your fridge or cupboard (so any gluten containing foods go below it and are less likely to spill.)
  4. Then cook the gluten containing foods and clean everything again to avoid cross contamination for serving.
  5. Be careful with serving.  Buffets are dangerous for cross contamination, let the person with Celiac go first, in fact, let them fill their plate BEFORE grace.  Remind them to take seconds as they can’t go back after anyone else has eaten.
  6. Prepare enough for everyone to sample the GF food, they will be curious, but they may not finish them, because it won’t taste the same.
  7. Make sure there are separate serving spoons for all dishes.
  8. Do not offer the leftovers to the person with Celiac to take home, they are no longer GF enough.

  And the person with Celiac got to visit with you.

• Easier, most expensive, moderately dangerous: Everyone eats GF for the night.  OK, how do you cook GF?
  1. First clean your kitchen surfaces, and all of your utensils, cookie sheets, pizza stones, etc.
  2. If you usually toss your measuring cups back into the drawer after working with flour, clean out the drawer, replace the drawer liner, and wash everything. Do not use any flour after this step until the GF food is covered up.
  3. You can borrow a cook book from the library, or ask your friend with Celiac for favorite recipes.  They are probably so used to converting recipes by now, they can take your recipes that are easy for you to cook for having people over and convert them for you.
  4. Safety starts in the grocery store.  Gluten can hide in ANY processed food, even spice mixes.  The US laws for identifying allergens is a bit whacky, foods that were GF naturally don’t have to be labeled for gluten content, but may have gotten cross contaminated in processing.  There are plenty of safe foods that aren’t labeled GF (usually around the edges of the grocery store, unprocessed veggies, meat and dairy are fine.  But you have to make sure they are unprocessed)  Read ALL ingredients, and if the food was “processed in a facility that also handles wheat,” put it back.  Save all the packaging to let your friend check, it may make both of you feel better.  You do have to check EVERYTHING.  When you are cooking GF, the questions are not, what is the best unit price, but what is the best unit price of the things that are GF.  Expect it to cost at least 25% more.  My Mom found an app for her cell phone.
  5. Do not use any food that has been opened before, no partly used peanut butter, baking soda, mayo, nothing.  Assume if it has been opened in your kitchen that flour floated in and save it for your friends and family who do not have Celiac Disease.
  6. Since we are replacing a starch, you may want to make a meal based on potatoes, quinoa, corn or rice (naturally GF unless they got cross contaminated in processing.) If you buy a bag of 1 – for – 1 GF flour and use that to thicken sauces and bake, it may be all you need for the meal with just a little left over.  (Yes, you want to use a mix of flours, while corn starch is GF unless it was cross contaminated, baked goods come out rock hard that only use corn starch.  But yes, experimenting with flours is part of the fun!)
  7. Desserts are usually one of the spots where gluten shows up, perhaps your friend with Celiac Disease should bring dessert?

  And the person with Celiac got to visit with you.