Thanksgiving Archives

In Public Service November 23, 2021

Host An Allergy-Friendly Holiday

Disclosure: This post is inspired, in part, by the recent online Gluten Free Expo, sponsored by the Gluten Intolerance Group and presented by the Nourished Festivals. I was not asked to write a blog post–and per usual, everything in here is mine (thoughts, opinions, ideas).

I can’t wait to see my family for Thanksgiving and many of my friends are just as excited for Hanukkah, Christmas, and all of the other winter celebrations. The first year we had our annual family Thanksgiving extravaganza after I stopped eating meat, my parents were very concerned that I was somehow going to starve during the week I spent at home. I love them for stocking up on all of the frozen veggie burgers and such, but it really wasn’t necessary (I was perfectly happy to gorge myself on the mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, turkey-free “stuffing,” cranberry sauce, green salad, and other meat-free items). Eventually they got used to the idea that I didn’t need special pretend-meat items for every meal. I’m lucky this isn’t a food allergy, and that the majority of the world is pretty easy to navigate as a vegetarian.

Later on in life, my Bonus Mom (that’s Dad’s wife, they got married long after us kids moved out of the house, so “Stepmother” sounds weird and also she’s not some meanie from a fairy tale) had to follow a low-FODMAP diet one year due to a health issue. We were all pretty baffled, as we found out at the last minute and didn’t have time to adjust our plans. When we asked her what was on the “no list,” she was frustrated and baffled herself, as it was a new-to-her situation.

What is a Food Allergy?

Let’s start at the beginning: a food allergy is not a personal choice. When a person with a food allergy eats that food, their immune system kicks up a fuss. The body produces extra histamines–the chemicals that cause inflammation–as they go on attack. The results might be itching, hives, or a rash; side-effects can include constipation or diarrhea or vomiting; severe side effects might include swelling of the throat (cutting off the ability to breathe) or an anaphylactic reaction–a severe, life-threatening condition that requires immediate medical attention. The symptoms might last a few hours or a few days.

Even a very small amount of an allergen can cause serious, life-threatening reactions in some people. A food allergy is very different from a personal preference (a la “I went gluten-free because [celebrity name here] told me it was the best”). Not that I’m saying you should ignore a guest’s food preferences, but an allergy is not the same as choosing not to eat something!

Food allergies are common! About 5% of all adults in the U.S. have a food allergy. Food allergies are more common in children. Since you can’t see a food allergy, your guest might not have an obvious need for accommodation. If you don’t ask, you won’t know. If you’re a guest, remember that–it’s important to let people know!

Know the Top Eight. The top food allergens are: cow milk/dairy, eggs, tree nuts (including but not limited to walnuts, pine nuts, cashews, pistachios, almonds, Brazil nuts), peanuts (which are legumes and not tree nuts), shellfish, wheat (including but not limited to gluten, a component of wheat), soy, and fish.

Be a Gracious and Communicative Guest

If you have a food allergy or other dietary limitation, or another allergy, please tell your hosts! Be clear about what your limitations are and how they can be accommodated. For example, most people do not know that “gluten free” is not the same as “safe for people with Celiac disease.” They don’t know they can’t use the same knife on the gluten-free pizza that they used on the wheat-pizza.

Teach people how to feed you. If you can, make up your own “guide to safely feeding me,” with bullet points of tips and lists of “safe for me” foods. Offer it as a way to help your host learn, and make it clear you’re not demanding all food in the house follow “your” rules. Definitely include a definition of your allergy and how serious it is (will you sniffle, or is there a chance you’ll die?). You might include a link to your favorite medical website that addresses your allergy, a favorite food blogger.

Help keep yourself fed. The typical advice is to offer to bring a dish you know you can eat to the meal. I’m writing this in the context of allergies, but as a vegetarian I’m always bringing something substantial to ensure I get fed. If it’s appropriate, offer up a dish! Of course I’ve also packed emergency food in my suitcase (just in case).

Have an allergic-reaction plan and share it. This seems like a no-brainer, but if you have a plan and have not shared it, in the event you become incapacitated no one else will know what to do! If you have an epi-pen in your purse/pocket at all times that’s great, but someone else needs to know when to use it.

Be a Warm and Safe Host

Ask your guests about allergies. You don’t want to accidentally poison your guests! Find out what they allergy is, and ask how severe it is. Do they need the allergen to stay 6′ away from them? Or just not in their food. One of my parents’ friends was allergic to eggs. While visiting a friend in the hospital he was there long enough to need to eat a meal. In the cafeteria, he asked for a grilled cheese sandwich–no eggs in that, right? When he ate the sandwich, he went into anaphylactic shock. Why? The grill had eggs on it earlier in the day, and while the grill was scraped down/wiped down in standard restaurant practice, that’s not good enough to prevent cross-contamination. (He was in a hospital, so got prompt medical attention, and lived many more years.) ASK QUESTIONS. A guest with food allergies will appreciate you trying to accommodate them!

Ask your guests for tips and suggestions. Maybe they have a favorite recipe, meal suggestion, online resource, or other pointer for you. Again, ASK QUESTIONS.

Educate yourself about best practices. This is super important if your guest has a serious food allergy (one that might kill them) or has Celiac disease. For example, you should assume that any kitchen implement that is porous–made of wood, stone, cast iron, etc.–is NOT safe to use on the allergen you’re trying to avoid. Assume your best bet is to use a fresh/clean pan for the allergen-free dishes (one that hasn’t just been used to cook something with the allergen in it). Head over to Laulima Kitchen for up-to-date information about a Celiac-safe kitchen (and grab her “10 Ways to Keep Your Kitchen Celiac Safe” while you are there).

Include allergy-friendly dishes. In most cases this isn’t that hard to do. I once made dinner for a group that included vegans (so no meat, dairy, eggs, honey in those dishes) as well as different people with allergies to potatoes, chicken, onions, and bell pepper. I wrote out my plan on paper to make sure I had enough options for everyone, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d imagined–I made two crock pot dishes and a soup, and served the meal with an appetizer cheese and veggie tray, bread, salad, store-bought hummus, and fresh fruit for dessert.

Learn about local allergy-friendly restaurants. Local bloggers are often your best bet for finding a safe place to eat a meal out, and this is especially true for those with Celiac disease. If you’re not sure about your favorite, call them up and ask. Do they have items on the menu that might be appropriate? What about kitchen prep? (If your guest has Celiac, potatoes cooked in a shared fryer–one where a wheat-batter-coated onion rings once fried–eating those potatoes can make them sick for a few days. Yuck.)

Don’t Forget the Non-Food Allergies!

While this post has focused on food allergens, there are plenty of people who are allergic to other things. Just like food allergens, non-food allergens can send the immune system into overdrive and produce symptoms from mild (runny nose, slightly itchy eyes) to the severe and life-threatening (anaphylaxsis).

Indoors: Pets and Pests and More, Oh My! The top non-food allergens inside your home include pets (cats, dogs, and others!), pests (dust mites, cockroaches), latex, pollen, mold, medications, perfume/fragrance (including essential oils), and medication. The number one thing you can do to help your guests with allergies is to deep-clean everything; rugs, carpets, drapes, and bedding can all harbor pet hair and pet dander, pests, pollen, and more. Mom used to choke when the air had strong fragrances and perfumes, as it exacerbated her asthma. (Not really an allergy, but equally unpleasant.) Hot tips indoors:

Steam clean carpeting and rugs
Wash drapes and bedding in hot water and dry thoroughly
Avoid scented laundry detergent and soaps for bedding and towels (I use Dropps unscented)
Dust using a microfiber cloth
Avoid using heavily-scented cleaning products (or air out the house after cleaning)
Avoid air fresheners, including essential oil diffusers
Stock your medicine chest with an over-the-counter allergy medication
If you live in a moist climate, run a dehumidifier and ensure air circulation in closets and around furniture to avoid mold growth (I live in Oregon–this IS a thing)
Groom your pet (a bath and a brushing go a long way to remove both dander and other items that may get trapped in pet hair/fur)

If your guest has a pet allergy, find out well in advance how severe the allergy is. I have a cat, and I have many friends with cat allergies. Some of my friends are fine staying in my house for a weekend as long as they have an over-the-counter allergy tablet; others are so allergic that they will break out in hives if the cat rubs against them. You might be able to keep your pet and your guest separated if they have a mild allergy, but for a more serious allergy your guest might be better off in a hotel.

Outdoors. The nice part about outdoor allergies in the winter is that they tend to be less of a problem, at least in places like Michigan where the air turns crispy and everything gets covered in snow. (If you’re out in the Pacific Northwest, mold allergies can still be ugly in the winter.) Top outdoor allergens include pets (hey, dogs go outdoors!), insect stings, and pollens. Insect allergens include biting (mosquito, horse fly) and stinging (wasp, bee, yellow jacket, fire ants) insects. Pollens from trees, flowers, and grasses can cause misery almost all year long. Hot tips:

Pollen can be problematic almost all year: tree pollen is most common in spring, weed pollen in summer and fall, and grass pollen in summer. If your guest is very allergic, it’s nice to move some of the party indoors.
To avoid attracting insects–you may attract them, but they can bite/sting who they choose–don’t wear perfume/cologne or use heavily scented products for outdoor events.
Have bug repellant products on hand for outdoor gatherings
Consider careful use of bug repellant products (such as candles, sprays, bug zappers, and sonic products) to keep pests away from your gathering.
In addition to an over-the-counter allergy tablet, add topical anti-inflammatory and anti-itch products to your medicine cabinet

Got Tips?

What are your best pointers for hosting an allergy-friendly meal?

What are the best things you can do for a guest with allergies in your home to make them feel comfortable?

In Uncategorized November 27, 2015

Thanksgiving All Year

I’d love to have Thanksgiving all year. Well, maybe not the endless food parade, since it is definitely indulgent (and generates a lot of dishes, too!). The parts I like the best do revolve around food, but only because my family likes to eat, and pretty much all of us like to cook.

My favorite Thanksgiving moments all involve laughing, and much of that laughing takes place around the table or in the kitchen. When the Three Stooges assemble (that’s me and the brothers), hilarity ensues. In 2011, I brought home my first iPhone. I’m pretty sure I took more pictures of the dog than I did of the family, but here are the highlights.

This is my first selfie. You can tell, because I hadn't learned that you never look down at the phone. (If Mom were alive, she'd kill me for posting this picture.) — This is my first selfie. You can tell, because I hadn’t learned that you never look down at the phone. (If Mom were alive, she’d kill me for posting this picture.)

Why yes, I do have a weirder neck than the turkey that graced the table that year. Centering? Filters? Editing? Retakes? Yikes. Onward and upward (you’re supposed to look up at the camera!).

Traditionally, it has been Dad's job to cook and carve the turkey. — Traditionally, it has been Dad’s job to cook and carve the turkey.

Thanksgiving dinner at our house must always include certain items: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, vegetables, cranberry sauce (the kind that comes in a can) and bread. (Why yes, I did grow up in the Midwest!) Over the years, traditions evolved around past events. Required commentary included asking Mom ten times whether she remembered to take the rolls out of the oven, mocking the cranberry sauce shaped like a can (the one year I mashed it up, one of my brothers yelled at me), asking Bruce to go put the leftover turkey in the workshop, and reminding everyone to feed green bean innards and corn kernals to the pet cockatiel (still thriving at age 23).

We used to haul out all the china, but after Mom got sick, we decided to use the everyday dishes. Why? One word: dishwasher.

There appears to be some kind of prohibition on leaving any empty space on the table. Part of the required commentary is advising others on how to rearrange the food so it will all fit for at least 10 minutes, at which point we all give up and stick some of it on another piece of furniture (preferably one that is too high for the dog to reach).

This is how Bain does Thanksgiving! How about you?

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What? You don't recognize the world-famous band, Cruise Italy? — What? You don’t recognize the world-famous band, Cruise Italy? (This is literally the only photo I took that year. What’s up with that?)

There is also a required program of entertainment. I was shocked when we ended up deviating from it this year, but the typical day goes like this: get up early to stick the turkey in the oven. Drink lots of coffee, while claiming that not eating breakfast will make it easier to stuff ourselves at dinner. Hang out and catch up. Start drinking beer. Give in and eat lunch, then start picking on random snacky things while watching the Lions lose a football game. Start drinking wine. Eat dinner. At some point the brothers disappear to the basement, where they play Intellivision for hours, and you can tell which games they are playing by the sounds emanating from the basement–not the ones from the games, the sounds from the brothers. Eat dinner. Pause. Round two. Then we have Christmas.

Note the matching wrapping paper. (The kids do all the wrapping at home, where Mom and Dad have all the wrapping paper and bows and tags.)

So it goes, from year to year. Some years we have Christmas on Saturday morning. Once the three kids moved to three different locations, and I hit the west coast, it just got too expensive (airfare!) and impractical (a day off work to fly each way) to do two separate holidays. Thanksgiving was the first time I met the then-to-be-sisters-in-law. It’s sort of the acid test: if you can’t hang with the siblings, you’re not going to cut it in this fam.

Thanksgiving without Mom isn’t the same. If you’ve lost a parent, you know what mean.

In 2014 I decided to try something new: go run the Detroit Turkey Trot, even though no one else in my family would have anything to do with it. (One brother is just not getting up that early on Thanksgiving, the other insists he’s not paying anyone and he can go run 10k whenever he wants; the sisters-in-law don’t run; that leaves Dad, and someone has to cook the turkey.) It was the

Registration for the Detroit Turkey Trot comes with the opportunity to selfie with the giant heads from The Parade Company. (See the improved technique?)

I took a billion pictures, you know, “for the blog,” and notice how I reviewed the 2014 Turkey Trot on the blog? (Don’t go looking for that review…)

This is the first time we'd seen each other since...like 1996. — This is the first time we’d seen each other since…like 1996.

Funny thing about Thanksgiving: the more ways we have to take pictures, the fewer pictures I have! I’m sure I could dig hundreds of pictures of Thanksgivings past out of the basement in Dad’s new condo. I bet there are several table shots from two houses ago, the year that my brother and my cousin broke the decorative wood off of the front of the china cabinet. Yet I have none with my friend Michelle (who I see every year), and fewer than a half dozen from each year on my phone. Hm.

It's White Castle stuffing. No, I am not making this up. — It’s White Castle stuffing. No, I am not making this up.

The last Thanksgiving in the house was special for many reasons. (I wish I’d known it was going to be the very last one.) At several points there were seven of us in the kitchen cooking. It was also the year that me, the vegetarian, accidentally won a turkey during the #CompleteYourFeast twitter contest. Oops! I’ve got to say that I’ve never had customer service like we got from Diestel Turkeys, and I wasn’t even a proper customer! After I won, a few quick emails back and forth got the home address connected with the turkey, a 15 pound Organic Heirloom Turkey (which I’m told was uber delicious). Tuesday I got a call from Heidi–yes, Heidi Diestel!–to let me know that the turkey’s plane was delayed, and I should call immediately if the turkey wasn’t the proper temperature when it arrived (they’d express another one). The next day, she called again to make sure the turkey had arrived in good shape. (I was napping, so she talked to Dad, who was very impressed that I’m somehow important enough to get a call from a Diestel!)

Overview of most of what was in the box--it barely fit into one shot, much less one meal! — Overview of most of what was in the box–it barely fit into one shot, much less one meal!

The twitter chat contest also included a box of produce from Melissa’s Produce. (Honestly, when I stumbled into the #CompleteYourFeast twitter party, I was hoping I’d be lucky enough to win one of the runner-up prizes, like a cookbook.) There were apples, dutch yellow potatoes (the BEST), small onions in every color, fennel, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, steamed and ready to eat beets, two packages of quinoa, fancy salt and seasonings, and even an dessert sauce! Dad had already bought some produce, and we had no idea what might show up in the box, so it turned into quite the feast. Fennel was a new one for me, so I made one of the recipes I found on the Melissa’s website; same with the quinoa.

There’s an old funny story that ends with, “here comes Bain with a second load!” and that might as well have been our motto last year. It was the first Thanksgiving meal we shared with Dad’s new fiancée (she passed with flying colors, and baked enough pie for dinner and breakfast–very important!).

We all ate ourselves silly. The post-dinner interval lasted much longer than usual, as we all wanted to eat pie, but none of us could figure out how on earth we’d manage to put more food in. Per our tradition, we spent “Black Friday” sleeping in and then hanging around at home while eating everything we had for dinner the night before.

This year was the first year the brothers and I have eaten the family Thanksgiving dinner in anyplace other than our childhood home on Moonlight Drive (we moved there in 1979). We’ve had a few “moveable feast” Thanksgivings, where we had Thanksgiving the second weekend in December, for example, or the week before the actual holiday, but never in a foreign location. It turned out just fine.

Sporting my BibRave orange at the Detroit Turkey Trot.

First, I convinced Dad to join me at the Detroit Turkey Trot. (Note the evolution of my selfie technique.) Ellen wasn’t so sure this was a good idea, since he’d decided to tackle the Detroit International Half Marathon on four training runs no longer than six miles, but I promised I wouldn’t let him injure himself. We did 1 minute intervals, walking and running (“jogging,” said my brother, “with a soft J”). In between viewing the amazing architecture of the Detroit that once was one of the richest cities in America, I played Ingress, we watched multiple groups of costumed runners (the ghostbusters, turkeys, turkey dinner, and all sorts of other things).

This year there were two turkeys, all the things my family usually had (but not the White Castle stuffing–Bruce was on strike), the fluffy marshmallow and oranges thing, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, green beans, two kinds of stuffing (including some vegetarian stuff not cooked in the bird for me), and another dozen dishes that didn’t fit on the table.

Most of the dinner, and all of the company--the host and hostess avoided getting into ANY of the pictures! — Most of the dinner, and all of the company–the host and hostess avoided getting into ANY of the pictures!

We shared dinner with Ellen’s daughter and her family, using all of the counter space, all of the chairs, and most of the dishes. The brothers never did hook up the Intellivision, but that might have been because the football games were so exciting. We were all in shock that the Lions won, and then the Chicago/Green Bay game kept us up well past when we wanted to go to bed. Thais is still doing her American residency, so she had to work on Friday, meaning there was less wine drinking and laughing until all hours. We only made it through one pie.

Phoenix, exhausted from exuberantly greeting every guest and attempting to mooch from every plate

It was a good year to start some new traditions. (I wonder if the Intellivision will come out again next year.) I could do this every weekend! Well maybe not every weekend, that would put a serious dent in my running calendar. How about once a month?

What do you like best about Thanksgiving? Does your family have any traditions you love (or hate)?