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Kids In The Kitchen: Cutting Down Cross-Contamination in a Shared Kitchen
from Tasty Eats At Home

Alta Mantsch of Tasty Eats at Home

Do you share a kitchen with people that don’t follow a gluten-free diet? If so, you know how difficult it can be. Labeling packaged food, keeping separate butter, separate jars of peanut butter, etc. It can be overwhelming at times. Let alone issues like looking out for possible gluten-contamination in sponges, pans & dishes, and counter surfaces. A lot of folks who are diagnosed with celiac disease opt for a 100% gluten-free kitchen, others just take extraordinary precautions and do their best to coexist, and then there are some who just simply take their chances and haphazardly and superficially avoid gluten.

Which ever of these scenarios fits you, Alta Mantsch of Tasty Eats At Home has written a wonderful post sharing her great tips on preparing a gluten-filled dessert for her daughter (someone who is obviously not gluten-free). The one tip that she has that really made sense to me and one that I’ve never thought of or heard before, was to take the preparation outside — providing you have a patio or other appropriate outdoor area, it sounds like a great idea to me. Many people love to BBQ, so there’s really nothing wrong with a little baking preparation outdoors.

What are some of the precautions you take in your kitchen? Is your family 100% gluten-free? Or, do you peacefully coexist with them? Let us know.

Alta does show off some photos of the Molten Chocolate Lava Cake that she made with her daughter, but I’m purposely leaving it out as I don’t want anyone to think it’s gluten-free — I can’t wait for her to create a gluten-free version of that — it looks really decadent.

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“This weekend, Brittany wanted to make molten chocolate lava cake. She’d had a version of it at a restaurant for her birthday, and wanted to recreate it at home. I researched and found several gluten-free recipes and was confident we could make a tasty version. But during this past week, she stated that she wanted to make it “with gluten”. I explained to her that it’s very likely it would taste just as good gluten-free, and that since I had zero molten chocolate lava cake experience, gluten-free or not, that gluten would not necessarily guarantee good results any more than gluten-free. But it was her decision. She insisted this was what she wanted to do. I agreed. (After all, the reason for the kids in the kitchen is to teach them cooking skills. Since they are not gluten or dairy-free, it is their decision whether they want to make their recipe gluten-free and dairy-free or not.) I started to make plans…”

Read the full post »

About Chris

After over a decade of troubling symptoms that finally led to a diagnosis of celiac disease in 1999, the Celiac Handbook website was created in an effort to streamline the process of finding relevant information regarding celiac disease and the gluten-free diet.