Thanksgiving and the Aftermath

There's nothing like discovering you have a food intolerance right before a food-based holiday to make you feel like a bit of a freak.

My husband does most of the cooking at our place (he's way better at it than I am), and he's been an absolute trouper about adapting to a soy-free diet. He still eats tasty soy-based noms when I'm not looking, but my belly is full, so what do I care?  ;-)  We've only had a couple of missteps, like the bread he thought would be safe but contained unspecified mono- and diglycerides. No big deal. It's a learning process, and he's taking it right in stride.

Generally for Thanksgiving, Casey's parents come over. We make most of the food, and they bring dessert. We usually have the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. The good part about this is that it's very easily adaptable to a soy-free diet. We had to have cornbread stuffing instead of the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, but that's fine. Casey brined the turkey according to Alton Brown's recipe from Good Eats, only instead of a sweet brine he made a citrus pepper brine with oranges and jalapenos instead of apples and allspice. I was set to make the mashed potatoes and the baked macaroni and cheese-- another Good Eats special!

My worry was the pies, pumpkin and chocolate cream. I found out on Wednesday that the in-laws got them from a local bakery, so I called up to see what kind of shortening they use for their crust. The girl who answered the phone had no idea and acted like I was silly for asking, and said the bakers weren't available. Srlsy? You've never had an allergy-related question before? After some hemming and hawing and wondering if I should make a pan of brownies so I'd have a safe dessert, Casey suggested that I could try eating the pie filling without the crust. This seemed reasonable enough.

So, we got to Thursday and everything seemed in order. The apartment was clean, the food was underway, and the turkey was starting to smell really good.

Then I completely messed up the mac and cheese.

We had whole wheat flour instead of plain all purpose flour, and I didn't realize that when one is making a roux with whole wheat flour, it turns really dark really fast. Yikes! I'm supposed to build the sauce with a barely-colored roux, and this thing has, in the space of an eyeblink, become a brick roux. But it smelled okay, so I made the macaroni anyway. Big mistake! It tasted burnt and nasty. I was so disappointed. This thing is not exactly a health food, so I make it maybe once or twice a year, and I always look forward to it.

The turkey, on the other hand, was absolutely divine. And so far no ill effects from the chocolate cream pie filling. (It's been about 3 hours, so I should be pretty safe by now, I think.)

My mother-in-law had a rather strange reaction to my newly found food intolerance. She suggested that I should really think about it before I take on this allergy, because it will really change the way I have to eat.

Um? No one told me I had an option here! Why didn't I know this?!? (She means well, I swear...)

Anyway, they've gone home and we got the kitchen clean. And the refrigerator now has plenty of room in it. We can fill it up with soy-free foods for my new "hobby" of being soy-intolerant. Sigh.