Our agency director is internationally ethnic, so he probably doesn’t even know Holy Week exists and our Program Manager managed to grow up in West Virginia and still be non-religious. She’s totally confused by my not eating meat on Fridays, so she doesn’t know what to do about food and doesn’t know what else I may or may not be up to. This may explain why we’re having an out of town meeting for three days this week.
My in-laws are visiting. My FIL has a wheat allergy. He brings his own bread. I’ll make some special things but I have no idea what yet. I can’t go too off the board or they won’t eat it, make something too traditional and it probably has wheat somewhere in it. I can now make decent corn starch gravy, because my FIL believes gravy is a staple of life. In lieu of salad which no one but me will eat, I’m thinking fried green tomatoes in corn starch/corn meal. That’s a veggie.
Why not browse sites with vegetarian recipes? There are a lot of things out there that you probably already eat that don’t have meat in them (you’ve already come up with a couple ideas), or do not need meat in them even though it’s gratuitously added for some reason (marinara sauce for spaghetti instead of meat sauce, leave the bacon/ham out of the green beans, etc.).
(My Catholic coworkers have yet to figure out why I snort when, every single Lent, they complain that for a few meals out of an entire year, they have to figure out how to eat without meat…)
Mute, if you google “celiac recipes” there is a whole sub-culture out there and many resources. There are gluten-free versions of many traditional dishes. I’ve been eating gluten-free for a couple of months now, and it’s serious business. One little slip-up leads to major digestive disturbance, at least for me. One thing you might want to do is to clean out your toaster or toaster oven thoroughly just before they arrive, so when your FIL wants to toast his GF bread (and GF bread is not edible untoasted), he won’t get cross-contamination from wheat crumbs. It sounds minor but it’s enough to cause a reaction. Better yet, everyone else could eat GF toast for the duration of the visit. Udi’s is a good brand that I actually like, and bread has always been one of my essential food groups. That’s assuming you live in North America, where it’s available - at least I’ve bought it in Florida and here at home.
Thanks for the reminder. That will be nice. I’ll make home made french fries one day. My FIL is really big into mashed potatoes too. I saw a TV show where folks steamed the potatoes so that there was less moisture absorbed by water and a person could add more cream and butter. That sounds unhealthy and tasty too.
Have you ever tried colecannon? http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1950,155175-238203,00.html
That is one recipe, there are many.
Ours is leek, cabbage, potato with massive amounts of butter and cream.
We run the veges through a food processer, saute them seperately til desired tenderness,
and chuck them into standard scratch mash potatoes.
About equal parts veges to mashers.
Absolutely delicious!
Way late on this, but I just have to add that colcannon is to die for! We use kale and scallions instead of cabbage and leeks…tons of butter, and oh…the flavor!
