Kara Buntin – Cook for Folks

If you're having holiday guests over for dinner, but some of them have special dietary requirements like gluten-free or food allergies, you're going to need to do a little bit more planning than usual. It's not impossible, but you'll definitely need to do some research to make sure that the ingredients that you're using aren't going to give someone a bad result. You definitely don't want your Thanksgiving (or Friendsgiving) dinner ruined because someone has a bad reaction to something that you served! How to start planning. To get started with your meal plan, you're going to need to make sure that you know what restrictions every one of your guests has. This is basically going to mean that you'll need to get responses from everyone so that you know if they have any actual dietary restrictions that you need to accommodate. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take their food preferences into account as far as things that they like and don't like, this is really just to see if people have sensitivities to certain foods. For example, some people do trendy diets where they avoid certain types of foods for a while, but they don't have a real food sensitivity to it. For that kind of thing, I wouldn't be too worried about certain types of cross-contamination, because that's just a preference and not a requirement. There will always be certain dietary trends where people who don't need to restrict certain things do it anyway, so what you want to do is really figure out if you have to restrict certain ingredients or if you're just doing it because somebody says that they're on a specific diet this week. Some types of food restrictions are a lot easier to accommodate than others, but if someone is just avoiding something because it's trendy, I wouldn't worry about that at all. There will always be things that they can eat, and if you're doing planning for other people as well there will definitely be enough overlap that they won't go hungry. Get a list together. The first thing to do would be to basically contact everyone who's going to come to your dinner and ask them if they have any medical restrictions for their diet. This goes back to the trend versus medical thing, because you do want to make sure that you're not sending someone to the hospital during your meal, but if someone is just avoiding something because it's trendy for them to do it, I wouldn't worry about that too much. Make a list of everything that people have to avoid because they have either a food allergy, food sensitivity, or dietary restrictions, and use that language when you ask them. This isn't the time to say what foods don't you like. If you're cooking a good variety, people will find something that they can eat and that they like. But if somebody has an actual medical reason to avoid something, you'll definitely need to know about that. Make a list of things to avoid, and then you'll have a basic way to know what you need to stay away from while you're cooking for the crowd. Research your own recipes. If you have recipes that you always cook, take the list of things to avoid and see if there's anything that you need to not make this year based on that. You could also look to see if there are substitutions that you can make that would work with your own recipes if there's only one or two ingredients that you need to leave out. If it's only one ingredient this is probably going to be pretty easy, but depending on what people have to avoid, it can get a little complicated. And if you have people who have multiple food allergies, it can get pretty hard to figure all of this out. Take your time doing this so that you give yourself time to really make sure that you're not going to serve anything that's going to give someone a physical reaction. If it turns out that all of the recipes that you use are fine, you're good to go, and all you need to do is make sure that people don't bring things to the dinner that might be on the forbidden list. Be aware of hidden ingredients. You need to be very careful if you're buying food that isn't made from scratch by yourself, including things like salad dressings, margarine, and anything else that you might think looks innocent but might not be. For example, a lot of regular margarine brands have whey in it, which comes from milk, so it's not good for someone who's vegan or allergic to dairy. Make sure to get a plant-based option and don't assume that something is safe, read the labels! I have a friend who ended up in the hospital recently with anaphylactic shock because she ate some salad dressing that had infused walnuts in it. It didn't have the nuts in it when it was served, but the oil had been soaked in walnuts to give it the flavor. Since she has a tree nut allergy, she ended up in the hospital overnight and it was not a good situation. Make sure that anything that you buy off the shelf to use for your dinner is something that you've read the label thoroughly and that you're 100% sure is safe to serve. Have your guests contribute. If you only have one or two guests who have sensitivities to things, you might want to ask them to bring a side dish or something that they know that they can eat safely and that everyone else can also share. For my friend who ended up in the hospital, I would ask her to bring at least one thing that she knows that she can eat safely, and that way if she's nervous about eating the food that I'm making she can at least have that. This is also good if you have people who have food sensitivities that are more widespread than just an allergy to a specific thing. Gluten-free diets for medical reasons can be very tricky because of the possibility of cross-contamination from airborne gluten. If you've baked with wheat flour at any point, the residue can get on your mixers and it can be in the air, and it actually can get into what you're making and create cross-contamination that can affect someone with celiac disease. Gluten-free diets are tricky, and they might actually need extra caution. Gluten-free diets as a special thing to look at. A lot of people do gluten-free diets because it's a trendy thing, not because they have to. Other people actually have celiac disease, which can be really serious if they eat gluten. If you have anyone coming to your dinner who has celiac disease, you need to be very careful not to use any products that have gluten in them when you're cooking anything for the entire meal. You should also make sure that you're wiping down all of your mixers and equipment that may have residue from previous baking on them, because wheat flour does get into the air and it will create cross-contamination if you've baked with it before. I had a friend who had celiac disease, and she was so sensitive that she couldn't eat packaged foods that were labeled gluten-free because she wasn't sure if they actually were. She ended up opening her own bakery that was a dedicated gluten-free facility, and that was the only place that I would tell people to buy baked goods from if they did have celiac disease. Get packaged options. For some special diets that aren't necessarily medical-related, like for people who are vegan or vegetarian, you can probably get away with making your normal recipes and just substituting out anything that has animal products in it. If that's not possible because you're talking about something like meat, you can always get a vegan or vegetarian option at the grocery store. There are so many different options available now it's not difficult to find plant-based versions of meat products that are going to be fine for people who are vegan. Even if you personally don't like it, it's thoughtful to have an option so that people who follow a vegan diet can eat along with everyone else and not worry about it too much. If you plan to have a lot of vegetable side dishes, just make sure that you're using vegetable oils or a certified vegan margarine and not butter to cook with while you make them, and that will be safe for vegan diets. Cook with fresh ingredients. The safest thing to do if you're avoiding specific allergens is to cook with fresh ingredients that don't have added ingredients in them instead of packaged ones . Fresh fruits and roasted vegetables, homemade bread, it's not too difficult to throw together a meal that everyone can enjoy and that avoids the allergens that can be a problem. Packaged foods all have preservatives and additives in them, and a lot of those are derived from things like corn, so that could cause a problem if someone has allergies to some of the preservatives. Some people are also sensitive to food dyes, so cooking from fresh ingredients is the safest thing if you're dealing with someone with a serious food allergy or sensitivity. I knew a woman who was going through allergy testing, and it turned out that she was allergic to pretty much everything including corn. The research that I did to figure out what she could eat was very eye-opening, because I didn't know how much corn was used in a lot of products that you just wouldn't expect it to be used in. It's something to be aware of, because you could read a label and not know that something was derived from certain things, because the chemical names hide a lot of that. Planning for safety. If someone who's coming to your event has a really serious food allergy or a medical condition that means they can't eat certain things, take it seriously. Food allergies and sensitivities are on the rise these days, so you do need to be aware of things that could cause your guests to have a physical reaction. Again, I'm not saying that you need to take everyone's preferences into account as far as what they like and don't like, but you do need to be careful if someone has a real genuine reason why they need to avoid certain foods. Planning ahead will save you a lot of problems, and it's not going to be as difficult as you think because there are so many options available today for certain dietary requirements. And the best type of food to serve is always going to be the stuff that you cook using fresh ingredients, without preservatives, so that you can control everything that goes into every dish.