How to Make Your Christmas Dinner Gluten Free

Christmas, as they say, is a time for giving, a time for sharing and generally eating a lot of food, and drinking some fine wine. But if you have special dietary requirements, such as coeliac disease, which means that you have a reaction to foods containing gluten, the holiday can seem a little more difficult to enjoy. After all, what do you eat? What do you drink? And how can you have Christmas dinner without having a bad reaction to it? Here are some ideas.
Sort Out Some Gluten-Free Recipes
While this may sound like fairly obvious advice, sorting through your recipe books and selecting some tasty recipes for meals that you can eat on Christmas Day is absolutely paramount to making sure you will enjoy your meal. Once you have selected a few recipes, make sure you have the ingredients for them well in advance of the 25th, as the shops will be closed for the Christmas holidays during that time, and missing a vital ingredient could mean wasting a much wanted meal.

Know Where Your Dining
Again, this may sound obvious, as most people will be eating their Christmas Dinner with friends or family on the big day. However, firming up your arrangements in advance will mean that you will know whether you are going to be doing the cooking or if someone else is. Once you know where you'll be having Christmas Dinner, the easier it will be to prepare food for yourself and put it to one side in your own home, or prepare something for yourself and take it to a friend or relatives house. You could also buy gluten-free ingredients and offer to help the host with your meal, which they will probably appreciate.
Have a Support Network
If you have coeliac disease, or if someone who does is coming round to your home on Christmas Day, then sometimes the best advice to get is from other people with the disease, as they will have a wealth of tips, tricks and advice to help you prepare the Christmas meal. Join an online forum or two and see what advice other sufferers have for the big day, such as how to prepare and store food and how to keep it apart from foods that contain gluten.

While it's become so much easier for sufferers of coeliac disease to eat the kind of foods that they need to, certain social occasions, such as Christmas Day, can prove to be challenging for the coeliac sufferer. However, it's important to define the difference between challenging and impossible, because this condition can actually open up lots of different opportunities to try out gluten free recipes and foods, and to experiment with cooking.
Remember, a bit of preparation can communication can help any coeliac sufferer enjoy an important meal, especially during celebrations like Christmas.

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