Christmas

Here are some ideas for Christmas and festive food during the holiday season, and some tips for staying sane.

1. Set your limits.  Decide in advance whether you are prepared to stray off your current dietary restrictions.  This is a personal decision and will depend on the consequences of a reaction and what kind of trade-off you are prepared to make.  If you are on the strict elimination diet, this maybe as simple as adding a few moderate salicylate or amine foods to your menu, such as carrots in a salad or salmon, or letting the kids have a few lollies or use natural food colouring to decorate biscuits.
2. Don’t try and cook for everyone.  If you are getting together with family and friends you don’t need to cater for everyone.  If you are hosting, provide food that your family can eat (and can be shared) and ask others to supplement with a dish of their own.  That way you will have a variety of dishes without all the work.  If you are the guest of someone else bring some dishes your family can have, it’s easier than trying to make sure someone else caters, and the host/hostess will appreciate the contribution.
3. Put it on the side.  It’s quite easy to cater for multiple tastes and diets by having dressings, sauces and vegetables on the side.  Don’t add the Failsafe dressing to the salad, put it on the side and have the option for people to use other dressings as well.  The same goes for sauces.  With vegetables and salads  you can always include extras, such as a bowl of cherry tomatoes, or a platter of sliced avocado and let people build up their own salads.  You don’t have to provide all these yourself, ask someone else to contribute them.
4. Presentation.   Even if you are preparing food and dishes that you’ve had before or that don’t seem very Christmassy, presentation can easily change that.  Christmas tablecloths, napkins, platters, decorations, etc. can be picked up quite cheaply and can easily transform a dish (see the Carob Syrup cake and Bite-sized Meatloaves).  On the other hand, you can make the most delicious dish  and poor presentation can detract from it.
5. Don’t tell.  No-one else needs to know what is or isn’t in your dishes (unless they have their own food intolerances), so don’t tell them.  If you’re hassled, just tell them you’ve been trying out some recipes from a really popular website.  (I’m not just blowing my own trunpet here, you can use this line regardless of where you found the recipe!)
6. Practice.  I always try new recipes in advance for special occasions   This is a lesson I learnt after Oscar’s First Birthday party when a couple of recipes didn’t turn out as planned.  If you don’t want to spend between now and Christmas eating Christmas food share it with your family, friends, neighbours and co-workers.
7. Go it alone.  This is may be a pretty drastic decision, but sometimes it may be the only solution.   I love Christmas and getting together with family, but there was one year when it was all too much trouble , so we had Christmas lunch at home, just the three of us.  It was wonderful – one of my favourite Christmas days.  We ate exactly what we wanted, it was a chilled, stress-free day.  We caught up with that side of the family after Christmas when there was no family politics involved.
8. Have fun.  Whatever you decide to do, have fun, enjoy yourself and enjoy the day with your family.

 

The following is a list of all the recipes I have either used for special occasions;  including Christmas, or would do so.  I can’t cater for everyone’s dietary restrictions, so against each recipe I’ve listed the level of salicyaltes, amines and glutamates, and whether it is nut-free, gluten-free, dairy-free or egg-free.  This doesn’t mean you can’t make changes to the recipes, it just means that I haven’t tried it with other substitutes.

 

Nibbles and Starters

These simple platters are filled with plain chips, white marshmallows, Smarties (Amines and Salicylates from natural colours), white Jelly beans and white musk sticks, pretzels and Savoy biscuits.  It was enough to keep the munchies away before lunch was served, but there are more great ideas below.

Sushi

 (Low/ Moderate Salicylates, Low / Moderate Amines, Low Glutamates, Egg-free, Dairy-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Bite-sized Meatloaves

(Low Salicylates, Low / High Amines, Low Glutamates, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Sweet Potato and Cashew Dip

(Moderate Salicylate, Low Amines, Low Glutamates, Egg-free, Dairy-free)

Cucumber and Chickpea Dip

(Moderate Salicylate, Low Amines, Low Glutamates, Egg-free, Dairy-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Hummus

(Low Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Low Amines, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Nut-free, Gluten-free)

 Chicken and Ricotta Pinwheels

(Low Salicylates, Low Amines, Low Glutamates, Nut-free)

Bacon and Cheese Pinwheels

 (Very High Amines, Low Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Nut-free)

 

 

The Main Meal

Roast Chicken with Stuffing (Serve hot or cold)

This stuffed roast chicken recipe is my Easter and Christmas staple.  Oscar’s first Christmas on the diet we had to travel, so I made two at my Mum’s place on Christmas Day.  We had one hot for lunch and the second one travelled with us to the In Laws for Boxing Day to have cold.

(Low / Moderate Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Low Amines, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Nut-free, Gluten-free)

 

The Seafood / BBQ Lunch

If you want to do a BBQ/Seafood lunch, then the links below might be of interest.  The best thing about the BBQ Christmas lunch is that you can have a variety of meats, including sausages, rissoles and even burgers, catering for a variety of tastes.

BBQ Scallops

(Low Chemical / Failsafe, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Potato Skewers

(Low Chemical / Failsafe, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

BBQ Salmon with Fruit Salsa

(Low Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Moderate/High Amines, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free) 

BBQ Whole Chicken 

(Low Chemical / Failsafe, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

 

Salads

Whether your having a BBQ, picnic or more formal lunch, there is always room for salad on the table (especially on a hot day), so here are some of my favourites:

Lentil and Rice Salad

(Moderate Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Low Amines, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Green Bean Salad

(Low Chemical / Failsafe, Dairy-free, Egg-free, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

Potato, Egg and Bacon Salad 

(Low Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Very High Amines, Gluten-free, Nut-free)

 

Chicken and Risoni Salad 

(Low/Moderate Salicylates, Low Amines, Low Glutamates, Egg-free, Nut-free)

Apple and Sour Cream Coleslaw

(Moderate Salicylates, Low Glutamates, Low Amines)

 

Cakes and Desserts

Coffee Cake

(Low Chemical / Failsafe, Dairy-free, Nut-free)

To decorate this cake for Christmas, make it in a round tin and wrap a Christmas cake wrapper around the outside. The top can be decorated with just icing sugar using a Christmas themed stencil, or the maple cream icing with plastic decorations.  Or make them as cup cakes decorated with natural food colours and 100’s and 1000’s.

 

 

 

 

 

Honeycomb and Banana Ice Cream