Our flour, sugar, dairy free Thanksgiving

We are currently doing a modified diet trying to get our digestive systems working better.  Our Naturopath recommended a blood test which results in an intensive 30 day restrictive diet to eliminate foods to which a person is reactive.  As luck would have it, we were both highly reactive to all dairy, refined sugars, and most flours.  My system is apparently really out of whack because there were some bizarre foods that I'm restricted from -- garlic, aspargus, carrots, and pineapple, to name a few. 

Because Thanksgiving falls in the middle of the 30 days, I thought we were just going to have to lose out on all the holiday food.  But we did some research and came up with some modifications.  If you're interested, this is our Turkey Dinner (posted a bit late). It's a bit picture heavy and I haven't figured out how to make small MB pics yet...

Turkey: 

Hurray, no restrictions on turkey!  If you look closely, you can see the knitter's solution to forgetting to buy twine:      (I really must figure out how to crop in Typepad)

But the bread stuffing was out, so I did a couscous stuffing from the Joy of Cooking with dried apricots and pistachios. 

Yum.  Verdict: A+ for the turkey (in a roasting bag) and A for the stuffing.

Mashed Potatoes:  These were a disappointment.  Soymilk is just too thin to make good mashed potatoes.  Vegan butter worked just fine though, with no bizarre separating that you get from margarine. They tasted good, but not without help from gravy and butter.  Grade: C-

Gravy:

This one was hard.  Partner did a modified giblet gravy with flaxseed flour instead of white flour.  I think perhaps for the next turkey, quick gravy with corn starch might be better.  The gravy had a decent flavor, but was very grainy because of the course flour.  It's okay with potatos or turkey, but doesn't have the true gravy consistency or texture.  Verdict: C+

Sweet Potatos: Yummy.  I think, if I had to do it over, I would have skipped mashed potatos and just done sweet potatos/yams.  These were diced and then roasted with cinnamon and a little agave.  Super yummy and this was the first item I stole for lunch. I just realized I didn't grab a picture of this yummy dish. Verdict: A-

Corn Fritters: 

Partner made an assortment of corn fritters with tandoori, hawaiian, and no spices.  As I suspected, I had no room for fritters, but I've loved taking them to work with my leftovers.  Verdict: A

Our homemade cranberry sauce:  1 pound cranberries, 1/2 cup port, 1/2 cup orange juice, zest of an orange, and cloves (when cooking).  Instead of 2 cups of sugar, I used 1 1/2 teaspoons of Stevia.  The stevia is just too bitter/tart for cranberries.  The turkey did mellow the tartness quite a bit, but by itself it was a bit much.  I like sour and I still take this in small doses.  However, I think with agave, this might rise because the port and orange was great. Verdict: B

Add some green beans and Fenestra 2006 Alvarelhao, and this rounded out the full spread (you can see the cranberries in the back and sweet potatos in the right front):

Pumpkin pie was just too hard, so we opted for an apple pie/apple crumble: 

Before:

               and after  

I made a brazil nut crust, but substituted 2 tablespoons of agave nectar for the 3 tablespoons of sugar.  I used a combination of braeburns, granny smiths, red delicious, pink ladies, and red romes. It was going to be a pie but after I realized I hadn't made enough crust to get to the top of the pie pan, it became a crumble. Verdict: A

And because I've become THAT woman, here is the holiday treat for our kitty.  Because you won't see me within a mile of wet food except as a treat:

 

(I'm not quite so bad because I waited until the fifth post to introduce Beckerman, right?)

And now, for Christmas.  And because this is a knitting blog, this is a dishcloth that I knit when I was sucked into a soccer game at 11 p.m.  I was smart enough to realize that working on Seascape (or rav) wasn't a good idea but wanted something to do with my hands.  About 3 hours to knit...

Happy Holidays!

Comments

[nova]

Mashed potatoes with chicken broth works in a pinch too.

When you are doing sugar again, try this: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cranberry-Tangerine-and-Crystallized-Ginger-Relish-107325 (cut the sugar to 1/2 cup though). It's amazing.