LSRUS: Holiday Meal Menu E-Swap

Hi, everyone! I am at too many swaps to officially join any right now, but winter is an interesting challenge.

Any food I have is geared towards Celiac disease, where the immune system is so strong it kills you for having gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and lots of other things. People's attitude towards diets and what's "good for others" is precisely why I don't trust anyone and try not to eat when invited to relative's for dinner. Tampering with food is never a "joke," and no, no one knows what's Really 'fine' except the person who it's for. Working in restaurants made me even more bitter and paranoid... and my family is just. Awful. Unless it's their own disabilities, THEN they are True Victims. I don't cook for those people and I try to avoid eating with them if at all possible. What does it even look like to have ... safety?? for just... being able to have breakfast? Trust me, this celiac thing is not a choice. I would consider felonies for a bagel again. I would fight you in the parking lot over the promise of a real cupcake. I used to live in my car on ~700 calories a day and I am hungrier now than I was then. Don't make it even HARDER for someone to eat around you.

Now for the menu!

If you want low-effort, low-cost, allergen-friendly food (especially GF or milk-free) let me know. <3

I have a few holidays in December, so I just have a month of cooking like this. Many things can even be batch-made so they last two people for 2-3 days. Some 'recipes' are semi-homemade so they're easy and don't need a lot of special Stuff.

• Baked sweet potatoes with some kind of butter or a butter/Smart Balance mix, sugar, cinnamon, and sometimes a dash of other spices
• Sweet potato fries with a sauce I make from butter, honey, cayenne, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, smoked paprika, pepper, and a little bit of brown sugar OR a tiny bit of amber spiced rum (depending on dietary needs of others. I can have liquor, some friends can't.)
• Regular baked potatoes, skin and all, or mashed potatoes with sour cream, peppers, and chives. If I get fancy, mashed potatoes baked with pepper, curry powder (just the pre-mixed turmeric kind, iykyk) and small chunks of gouda or other mild cheese.
• My partner loves a gluten-free broccoli quiche.
• Devilled eggs; no pickles, just paprika, salt, pepper, and sometimes (but rarely) sriracha. Use the best mustard and savoury mayo you can afford for these. Few ingredients so they each need to be great. Variation: bread the whites in gluten-free italian seasoned bread crumbs and quickly fry before filling with the yolk/mayo/mustard mixture. This mixture MUST be kept very cold while the eggs are frying. Room temp will soften it too much when it hits the hot fried egg slice.
• Baked chicken in olive oil and various Northern Italian-style herbs like marjoram and basil. Keep the juices from this to cook with.
• If he really wants, I'll make GF gravy.
• This year, Aldi has GF stuffing for chicken and turkey... but OMG, it is SO salty. y'all. I have dysautonomia, which many of you now have as "long covid." High salt helps with that fatigue and dizziness. This is too salty for ME. I will make it... if everything else is very low in salt. Because a fork of stuffing with a bunch of chicken more than balances out the flavour. Oof.
• I don't generally eat pork, but my partner loves baked cinnamon ham this time of year.
• If not sweet potatoes, I'll make carrots with vanilla extract, spices, and a bit of butter or Smart Balance. I prefer the higher-cholesterol butter for the cream content, but I try to find out health concerns of others in advance.

• If he really likes, steamed broccoli. I don't get it but sure, bro.

• If I'm super fancy, make an olivade with toasted GF baguette (super expensive, seriously, the bread is $20 here.) or GF crackers. MAKE THE OLIVADE THE DAY AHEAD. This is to let it absorb the flavours. Slice the bread and the tomatoes an hour or so before the olivade is served, while it comes up closer to room temp (but is still cold. Just not fridge-cold.)

You'll need a small, 2-3oz log of honeyed goat cheese, a tub of mascarpone (this is about 5oz,) and possibly 2-3oz ricotta. Herbs and olive oil. Kalamata olives. Also you need mini tomatoes (I like the three-coloured ones) and fresh basil. I use purple African basil and mediterranean basil. You can also use other herbs like fresh Greek thyme or marjoram.

Mix the cheese together with a bit of rich olive oil, parsley, rosemary, a little oregano, salt, and pepper. You want to PRESS your kalamata olives to get the liquid out as much as possible and chop them well. Kalamatas are quite different from your green pimento olives, but try it to taste and figure out what you like.

How much of any of those? dude idk, ask your ancestors. Taste it as you go. Get a consistency you like. Use what you got if you can't get a specific thing.

Once those are well-mixed in, fridge it for some hours. An hour before service, slice your tomatoes in half and get the seeds and excess juices out. This reduces the acidic content AND keeps the olivade from being wet. Cut your bread but remember to not let it dry out.

Layer your very thin baguette slice or cracker with a spoon of olivade, a leaf of basil or small sprig of herbs, and top it with half a tomato. It is rich, full of colour and flavour, and all of it keeps well for a few days if you pack it all separately in the fridge.

For that recipe, normally dried herbs are just fine. Who cares. But normally, I try to stick to a rule: fats like butter and cheese require fresh herbs because those fats cling to the oils, flavours, and fragrance of the herbs, but dried ones lack that. The flavour is weak so you end up needing way too much to achieve too little. If you're using water, use dried herbs like a tea. So for the olivade, use fresh herbs because it's a soft cheese. If you're making noodles, add the herbs to the boiling water.

I can also make a GF oreo cheesecake, but I need energy to do it. It's the same way you make any other cheesecake but Oreo makes GF cookies and now, they've come out with Golden Oreos. There are also GF graham-style crackers that aren't too bad once soaked in butter and seasonings before being baked into a cheesecake. Last time, I used a silicone cupcake pan to make individual cheesecakes and topped some with cherry pie filling. Did away with most of the liquid and kept the cherries.

I can also make various other desserts, fairly easily. One quick fancy-looking dessert: get a plain boxed white or chocolate cake mix. Make it according to instructions. Swirl it with fancy jelly, like get out the expensive strawberry and blackberry preserves in the vanilla, or seedless raspberry in a chocolate cake. Bake it up like normal, frost it with a mellow not-too-sweet frosting (like whipped icing or a neutral buttercream) for vanilla or a chocolate ganache. If you have it, put just a little fresh fruit on the top right before serving.

Alternatively, I paired cupcakes made this way with a scoop of complimentary ice cream. I've also done white cake with apple pie filling and a cinnamon crumble topping, like coffee cake with cooked red apples.

Our Holiday Menu will be as follows:

• Vegan stuffed turkey roast with root vegetables

• Roasted whole seasoned chicken with root vegetables

• Smoked turkey drumsticks

• Mashed potatoes and mushrooms gravy

• Macaroni and cheese

• Green bean casserole

• Creamy spinach bake

• Sweet potato casserole with praline topping

• Jellied cranberry sauce

• Dinner rolls with margarine

• Cupcakes

• Lemonade

• Ice tea

• Egg nog

Both of your holiday menu sounds incredibly delicious, but it’s quite different to what we normally eat here in the UK. Our Christmas dinner typically consists of turkey, ham, and a seitan / soya-based meat alternative roast for the vegetarians / vegans. We had a tasty meat free wellington a couple of years ago too. It’s usually served with mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, pigs in blanket (sausages wrapped in bacon), sage and onion stuffing, Yorkshire pudding (savoury batter mixture), cauliflower cheese, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, carrots and parsnips with gravy and cranberry sauce or mint sauce. For dessert, we have a Christmas pudding with sweet white sauce, mince pies and there’s always plenty of chocolate tubs like ‘celebrations’, ‘quality street’, ‘roses’ and ‘heroes’ to snack on throughout December 😊