City Life: Hosting Thanksgiving with a 14 Item Gluten Free Menu

This Thanksgiving it was up to me to host dinner. Last time I hosted dinner it did NOT go well so I was extremely apprehensive; I love to cook so I was excited to plan out a large menu of 18 items which I did in September. The rest of the time I just spent organizing and planning where to buy items, when to buy, and when to start cooking.

So, all of the main dishes and sides were prepared by me (except the turkey which my parents brought and the cheesecake which my brother and his husband brought). It can be burdensome to be the main one paying for all of the food, but I am the only one that cooks in a fully gluten free kitchen and have the knowledge of how to prepare gluten free food. I would rather be safe than sorry which is usually what happens every year is someone comes over and swears something is gluten free and it is NOT.  I also just really wanted to go all out.

The majority of the money I spent on food was spent on organic fresh herbs & veggies. I am absolutely in love with veggies and I just could not resist cooking a lot of them as sides. I did want to mention my hubby is my sous chef, he doesn't think I have great cutting skills (which is true) and years ago he started cutting everything for me. It makes a huge difference in the taste and texture of the food to be honest and I would not have been able to make 14 dishes had he not helped in cutting herbs and veggies. I could have done it, but I may have lost a finger or two.

By the way the NIMA gluten tester is on sale through Black Friday for 189.00 which is the lowest the price has been since they went public.

ALL GLUTEN FREE MEALS PREPARED BY MYSELF, RECIPES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

For this Thanksgiving I had to get groceries from three stores and organize the lists of what to get from where. There are items that only Whole Foods Market sales that I needed and over here we have a Publix Greenwise (not really the same as regular Publix) and there are things I needed from there that only they have. What you see in the first photo is a lot of organic herbs, I have mentioned before a lot of times veggies and herbs from Trader Joe's tend to go bad before I can cook them and I needed to buy at least 3 days ahead of time. I have rarely purchased items from Whole Foods that goes bad quickly and it may be because a lot of their items are local so that sale by date has more leeway vrs. maybe produce picked in South America before it's ripe, then shipped, then sits in a store waiting to be purchased. In this case I actually had to go to Whole Foods, Greenwise, Sprouts, and Fresh Market; it was crazy, but I got started early.

I have spent a lot of this year really branching out with my cooking from the Sous Vide to the new Lodge Cast Iron so I think overall, I was just happy to share some good food and new recipes. I was pretty sure I was in over my head with 17 items on my list to cook, but hey, I love a challenge. I started cooking on Wednesday afternoon. In retrospect, I think everyone was pretty impressed, they all know I can cook, but it's been a while since I made anything for Thanksgiving since I tend to be sick. I started out with an 18 item menu and narrowed it down to 14 after just really running out of time vrs sleep. I did have time to make this cute menu though to add a special touch.

Fattouch

Mac & Cheese

There was more ham than this lol

Black eyed peas

collard greens

Stuffing (made with Udi's bread and with my homemade chicken stock)
Gravy (aso made with my homemade chicken stock)
Potato Salad

Roast chicken with rainbow carrots

My husband did not think it was necessary to roast a chicken, but I told him it's always a good fail safe if you don't have time to finish cooking something or if you burn your main meat option.

Truffle Cauliflower mashed potatoes

Holiday rice (white rice with bell pepper and onion)
Sous Vide Corn on the cobb

Veggie kabobs & rainbow carrots

My parents brought the gluten free turkey

This is the typical plate (dinner we have done for Thanksgiving and Christmas all of my life: Ham, turkey, dressing, gravy, holiday rice, greens, and potato salad. And all the other items I made were items I wanted to make and share with my family.