This is our first gluten free casein free Christmas. We are going away to visit my Aunt and Uncle near Boston and bringing a lot of food with us. My Aunt and Uncle have always lived very unprocessed homemade lives in the country and in a lot of ways have always been role models of family life gone right so it is ironic that we are bringing our organic homemade food to their house, but it seems to make it less complicated to bring food we know will keep everyone healthy.
What a vacation it will be to be out of my kitchen. I love cooking for my family and seeing my kids healthy and happy, but it is a lot of work. I can’t help feeling like it is almost a religious undertaking because it makes everything so conscious and requires such conviction.
I am taking a beef stew, chicken noodle soup, a Bush Noel (a recipe from the Joy of Cooking which was actually gluten free and contained only eggs, powdered sugar, vanilla and cocoa) and tons of snacks — Kettle potato chips, rice cakes, nuts, fruit strips from Trader Joe’s. We use processed food that has very few ingredients. The potato chips have organic potatoes, oil and salt. The rice cakes contain rice and salt. The mango Trader Joe’s fruit strips have one ingredient: mangoes. The pineapple Trader Joe’s fruit strip has one ingredient: pineapple. It was difficult at first to find convenient snack foods that will work for us. But once you know the products that are less processed and once it becomes a habit it is a lot easier.