With the holidays eating somewhere with food allergies is stressful. There are many common allergies that people tend not to have when cooking for potluck type gatherings. Like not nuts or labelling things that do have them. My family has historically tried their best to accommodate allergies since I was young. Some of these things are due to how common nut allergies have been in my family, and others are still a work in process.
The things we do are bring many desserts so that everyone can have a dessert. We tend to have many due to preferences and allergies. None of these have nuts because we just don’t make them. My family has had someone allergic to nuts for nearly 18 years now, one of us grew out of it and I grew into one so this has never changed. Something else we do is not making stuffing with the turkey. This is popular in many households but when cooking bread and the main dish together, it makes the turkey cross contaminated with wheat. This was a big learning curve for my family as they absolutely love to eat stuffing with every holiday, but since we have someone with a gluten allergy, this had to be separated. Along these same line’s, gravy, you can put gravy on everything at holidays, but one of the main ways to make gravy is to add flour to the drippings from your turkey or meat. This is one that can be not gluten free in a few ways. If there’s any type of flour or gluten in the drippings it cannot be used, and when making gravy most people use flour to thicken into the gravy.
These ways of making gravy, while very good, are not gluten free. When these types of allergens are a concern in a gathering you cannot always make a foolproof plan to make everything safe for everyone to eat all of the food. As many recipes that are adapted to one allergen can include an allergen for another person there. This example is very relevant to my life as many gluten free foods use corn starch to replace flour, like in gravy. With things like this you sometimes just make multiples of foods. This is a reality for many people with allergies, as not all families are as accommodating to allergens or just can’t make a single food that everyone can eat.