For example, you could be planning on attending your work’s Christmas outing, followed by Christmas lunch at a family member's house, then find yourself navigating a party food buffet in the space of a week or less. For a ‘normal’ person, this sounds like the celebration of the century! However, for a gluten free person, it can quickly turn into a nightmare. 

Each of these situations poses their own unique challenges and solutions, but luckily for us, they can all be approached by considering the three same tips: 

 

1. Get involved 

Whether you like it or not, being gluten free means getting involved and giving your input…otherwise you risk being forgotten about entirely! But a crucial part of getting involved means doing it as early as possible; so for example, helping to decide the restaurant where the work Christmas outing is going to be well before it’s booked. If dining at a friend or family member’s house on Christmas day, ensure that there are safe options for you and that your host understands your needs before they’ve bought everything. If there are any party food buffet situations on the horizon, ensure that whoever is organising it has been sent a few helpful links to products that would be safe for you to eat - again, well before they’ve bought everything! 

 

2. Plan, plan, plan! 

Of course, having me just write ‘don’t forget to plan’ seems pretty self explanatory, but in order to get involved as I described above, your involvement will likely need to be based on some savvy planning and research. 

For example, where was the work Christmas outing last year? If you hopped on the restaurant’s website and checked the menu, is there anything you can safely eat? If not, where else could you suggest that’s more suitable? 

If it’s an event at someone’s house, ask yourself if you’re confident that the host understands your needs or should you take safe products with you? If so, what should the products be? To make it as easy as possible for them (and failsafe for me!) I’d usually send them a link to a specific product so they don’t need to worry about checking labels. Or if I have time, I’ll take some gluten free food I’ve made to share with everyone and let them know the usual Christmas fayre tastes as delicious without gluten! They sometimes even ask for the recipe so they can have a go at making it for the next party.  

I could go on and on here, but I hope you get the point about how each of your involvements should be based on your own knowledge of restaurants, available products and reliable recipes. It’s never too early to start brushing up on your knowledge and planning! 

 

3. Watch out for cross contamination 

Avoiding cross contamination at the work Christmas outing, at a family member’s house on Christmas day or at a party food buffet will all involve vastly different considerations. My advice would be to take each one separately and treat them as you would at any other time of year. Here’s a few condensed tips to consider:

• For work Christmas outings, ensure that you contact the restaurant ahead of time regarding their preparation, cooking and serving processes and check to see if you need to ask any more questions to make sure there’s no cross contamination eg. do they use a separate fryer for gluten free food? Don’t forget to use Coeliac UK’s Live Well Gluten Free app and Venue Guide to find a suitable restaurant. 
• Chat with the host of your Christmas lunch to ensure you understand how the food will be prepared, cooked and served and which products will be used. A tip I learned early on was to ask them to keep the packaging of any food so I can double check the labels myself. A bit of a phaff, but better to be safe and no-one minds – they usually quite like having me double check. Also let them know that they cannot put GF and gluten containing food on the same plate, nor use the same spatula, tongs, knives or other utensil. Lots of people are super careful and then forget about this last bit which means we can’t eat any of the lovely food they’ve prepared for us. Ideally, you’d be involved in the preparation and cooking of all the food so you can keep an eye on things and manage cross contamination more closely! 
• If hosting Christmas lunch at your own house, keep it simple and make everything on offer gluten free! If people want to bring some food to share then I might know someone who has some lovely GF recipes they can try.
• If there’s a party food buffet scenario, ensure gluten free food is served as far away from gluten containing food as possible, with separate utensils and dips. Venues should be fairly good at this and should be able to make you up a plate in advance so you don’t have the worry of cross contamination, or if it’s at a friend’s house, ask them to set aside some items for you before everyone gets stuck in.  

That’s all I’ve got room for here, but there’s a far more detailed, comprehensive guide to avoiding cross contamination at Christmas starting on page 14 in my new book Gluten Free Christmas which is available now in the Coeliac UK shop. Don’t forget that when you buy anything from the Coeliac UK shop, the proceeds support their hard work, so that makes it two Christmas gifts in one! 

Hopefully you can now see why my first two tips were ‘get involved’ and ‘plan, plan, plan!’ as a combination of both will ultimately allow you to be in the best position to manage cross contamination. And of course, as I said, don’t forget that a lot of your festive headaches will vanish if you’re in the position to be able to host and cook Christmas lunch yourself (the same goes for party food buffets) at your own house and make everything gluten free. 
 
Good luck and merry Christmas! 

Becky x 

 

Photography: Hannah Rose Hughes