The Holiday season might be one of the most stressful for a food allergy family.  There’s so many holiday traditions that involve food…feasts, desserts, baking, cookie swapping, candy, and the list goes on.  However, ever since the moment we knew there were food “issues” in our family, we were determined to make sure we didn’t miss out on all the fun. Even if that means a little extra work.

The way we approach the holidays is the same way we approach everyday life.  We find an item we loved in our “pre allergy” life and figure out how to make it in a safe way.  Sometimes this means altering the item just a bit, sometimes it means sourcing items from a single facility, sometimes it means making everything from scratch.

Today I’m going to describe our process for cooking for Thanksgiving this past week. The prep for this meal started months ago with growing or purchasing in-season produce, in bulk, then freezing in our 3 deep freezers. 

First, we came up with a menu: Turkey, Green Beans, Broccoli Casserole, Sweet Potato Casserole, Mac n Cheese, and Pumpkin Mousse Pie.  Then we gathered our ingredients.  Some items were in our freezer, a few things we could pick up at a grocery store, specialty store, or farm store, the rest were made from scratch.

Turkey: 

We got a farm-fresh, never frozen turkey from our favorite local farm, Local Homestead Products.  As mentioned in a previous blog, commercial meat is a no-go for us.  The processing, washing, packaging, preserving…it’s all a cross-contamination risk or straight up corn product. We have locally sourced safe butter and all of our spices come from one brand, except for salt.  For salt, we get himalyan pink sea salt that we grind ourselves. 

To prepare the turkey, we pour melted butter on the turkey and sprinkle on salt, pepper, thyme, basil, garlic, and paprika.   Then we smoked the turkey in our pellet smoker.  Again, even with our pellets, we have one safe brand of 100% wood pellets that are not glued together with a corn product. 

Green Beans: 

This was probably the easiest dish of our Thanksgiving dinner.  We have geenbeans in our freezer that we bought in bulk over the summer from our local safe farm.  We thawed them, threw them in a baking dish, covered them with a bit of melted butter and sprinkled salt, pepper, garlic, and cheese on them. Then we baked them at 350 for about 25 minutes.  Easy peasy.  Oh and we have one safe brand/type of cheese.  This cheese is one of the very few items we can purchase at most major grocery stores…of course it’s $7 for 7oz, but that’s a trade off for being able to buy it in multiple locations.

Broccoli Casserole: 

Again, we had broccoli frozen in our deep freezer from a bulk purchase from our local farm earlier this year. The onion came from the same local farm.  Milk and cream came from the same local dairy as our butter. The bread crumbs were from homemade bread baked earlier in the week.  I stuck a few slices in the back of the fridge to hide from the kids so I wouldn’t have to bake another loaf just for this casserole. The flour we use as a thickener is Einkorn flour, a specialty, ancient wheat that is very careful not to allow cross contamination in their facilities.  

To make the casserole, we chopped the frozen broccoli with my favorite pampered chef item, the food chopper.  If you don’t have one, seriously, get one.  You can thank me later.  Then we boiled the broccoli until it was starting to become tender.  While the broccoli was boiling, we made a thick white gravy (butter, flour, milk, and heavy cream) with our preferred seasonings (you’ll come to realize we use a lot of salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika).  Then, we used the food chopper to chop up half an onion.  We combined all the ingredients into a baking dish, then baked for 30 minutes on 350. 

Sweet Potato Casserole:

The ingredients for this are simple: Sweet potatoes, heavy cream, maple syrup, and homemade marshmallows. Our sweet potatoes also come from our favorite local farm. The maple syrup is also one of those handful of products we can buy at a grocery store…but only at Wegmans. The homemade marshmallows are made with our safe sugar (specialty, unrefined cane sugar…but again, we are blessed that we can get it at multiple large grocers), gelatin, and water.

First, we peel and quarter the sweet potatoes.  Then boil them until they are tender.  Once they can easily break apart with a fork, we drain them and then mash them with a potato masher.  Next, we pour them into a casserole dish.  Add some maple syrup and heavy cream to taste, then bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.  

While it’s baking, we  make the homemade marshmallow base.  To do this, boil 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water until it’s soft ball stage, meaning when you drop a bit of the mixture into a container of cold water, it forms a soft ball.  Once you get to soft ball stage, remove from heat and add 2 envelopes of softened gelatin.  Then you whisk the mixture until it forms stiff peaks. (we use our kitchenaid for this)  We don’t wait for the marshmallows to harden when I’m using them for this recipe, but if we were making them to be actual marshmallows, then I’d pour them into a dish and let them stiffen up for a few hours before cutting into squares.

The marshmallow batter is usually done right around the same time the sweet potatoes are done baking.  So then, we pour the marshmallow onto the top of the casserole and bake for another 10 minutes, or until the marshmallows start to turn a golden brown.

Mac n Cheese:

This is probably the most involved recipe of our entire meal.  For this we have to make the noodles from scratch.  Our noodles use the Einkorn flour, water, and butter all mixed together to form a dough.  Then, we roll the dough out with a rolling pin and cut into approximately 1” rectangles with a pizza cutter.  For this mac n cheese, we made bow tie type noodles, so after all the rectangles were cut, we pinched the middle of each one and then dusted them with flour.  We let them dry for a few minutes (15-20) before boiling them and they tend to keep their shape better that way. 

While the pasta is boiling, we made the cheesy base. We did this by making a white gravy with butter, flour, and heavy cream.  Then I added spices (salt, pepper, paprika, and cayenne pepper) and cheese.  When the pasta was al dente, we combined the cheesy sauce and pasta into the baking dish and added a bit more shredded cheese on top.  Then bake for 30 minutes at 350. 

Pumpkin Mousse Pie:

This was my very first attempt at making any kind of pie.  My extent of pie baking experience is opening a box and popping a pre-made pie in the oven.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and uncomplicated this pie was.

For the crust, we baked it ahead of time so it was less to do on Thanksgiving day. We used the dough hook on the kitchenaid to mix 1 ⅓ C flour, 6-8TBSP cold butter, and 3TBSP cold water until they make a sandy, crumbly mix. We also added a little sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg since I knew this was going with pumpkin. Once the mixture was a sandy texture, we used our hands to form it into a ball. We wrapped it in parchment paper (we don’t have a safe plastic wrap) and chilled for 15 minutes. After it cooled, we rolled it out into a circle and placed it into our pie pan. Then trim the edges so they don’t stick up over the side too far. You can pinch the edges to make a pretty crust, but I was running out of patience, so I was just happy with the fact that it was in the pan evenly. Then we baked at 425 for about 20 minutes or until it looked cooked through.

Then on Thanksgiving day, I made the mousse pie filling. In hindsight, I’d make this ahead of time as well and chill the whole pie overnight. The pumpkin I used for this is one that we grew in our own garden. I had already roasted, pureed, and frozen the pumpkin weeks ago. I thawed 2C of pumpkin puree and then combined it with 1C Heavy cream, ¾ C of powdered sugar, a pinch nutmeg, and cinnamon in a pot. (for powdered sugar, we blend our safe sugar in our Ninja until it is a fine powder). We simmered the mixture for about 10 minutes. It felt like it wasn’t quite thick enough, so I mixed 2TBSP of flour with water until it made a paste and added it to the pumpkin mixture and stirred until it thickened up just a bit more. Then we turned it off and allowed it to cool completely. While that mixture was cooling, we whipped up 2 cups of heavy cream into whipped cream. Once the pumpkin mix was cool, we folded the whipped cream into the pumpkin mixture. Once it was completely combined, we poured it into the pre-baked pie crust. It’s definitely a liquidy texture at first, so I threw it in the freezer until we were done eating dinner. This helped it set nicely, but like I said, I would make it a day ahead of time so it could chill overnight and set up better.

Then after all of that, we finally got to sit down and enjoy a meal. Whew, I’m tired just writing that all out. But it is all so worth it. The kids all said it was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever and they are requesting another full feast next week! I guess I can put this one in the win column.