My First Thanksgiving After...

Hello readers! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday! As many of you may know, I was diagnosed with celiac disease last January (almost a year) so this was my first gluten free holiday dinner!

My first Thanksgiving after being diagnosed
with celiac disease

Before going home to eat dinner with the strange people I call my family, I was already expecting to not eat anything. To be realistic, I thought that everyone in my family was going to forget about me and that I was going to angrily sit in a corner and watch everyone eat. Well, that almost happened. No one in my family is brave enough to even attempt to cook a Thanksgiving Meal. In fact, the night before Thanksgiving, my aunt called me and asked what I wanted her to order for me. When I went online that caterers Thanksgiving menu, I was pleased to find a variety of gluten free options. Well. Who am I kidding? The only gluten free option were the green beans and I am sure that those were probably laced in sodium. Being the optimistic that I am, I checked to see if the ham and turkey she ordered were also gluten free but of course they weren’t. Then, my loving mother asked if I wanted a green bean casserole. You read if correctly folks, green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup, topped with fried onions. That pathetic excuse for a vegetable dish has two sources of gluten in it- one from the cream of mushroom soup and another from the crispy onions. I cannot blame my mother, it is not her fault that she cannot identify sources of gluten in food.

Now, this dinner could have gone one of two ways: they could have completely forgotten about my gluten allergy or they could have made an attempt to remember me. Luckily, they remembered me!!! You have no idea how happy I was to see a table of gluten free Thanksgiving options. The entire table wasn’t gluten free, or clean, or non-GMO, or even healthy but it was something. 

Would it be perfect if everything were gluten free and non-GMO…YES! But I can’t impose my lifestyle upon my entire family. Well I can, but I will take baby steps!

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

-Eating Clean in College