So this past week, my grocery store had pork shoulders buy one get TWO FREE. Yasss. So on Monday I put a shoulder in my slow cooker with a few spices and when I came home it was ready to go and just fell apart *sigh*. I mixed in some BBQ sauce and it was all set. So then I was on to my side dishes. I felt like this meal was really just asking for some crispy roasted potato wedges 🙂
So since being diagnosed with Celiac, I thought about whether I wanted to have my wedding be gluten free. I kind of toyed with idea, thinking that it would be a little over the top to go all gluten free…but then I changed my mind. My husband and I eat gluten free at home all the time and a run-in with gluten at my wedding would completely ruin the whole thing. So why couldn’t I just do all gluten free!? Most people don’t even notice unless you tell them and the piece of mind I would have knowing I wasn’t going to be poisoned on my special day would be priceless!
As fate should have it, I found a pretty reasonable catering company that specialized in allergy-friendly foods! They are a nut-free facility and will happily accommodate other allergies as well. This is where my dream wedding menu began….
Being diagnosed in college, a major concern for me was what I was going to order at a bar or drink at parties. There’s a lot of information out there about this topic and much of it is conflicting…it’s hard to know what to do. Many sites and doctors say that all distilled liquor is safe for celiacs, while other resources say that celiacs should avoid liquor made from wheat, barley, or rye. So what’s a celiac to do? Honestly, it’s different for every person I think.
I could start crying at any moment as I write this post because I miss this vacation SO MUCH. Just know the DR is the reason for the teardrops on my keyboard (bad Taylor Swift reference…anyone?).
So senior year of college, all of my friends tried to plan a big spring break trip together. As often happens, this large group could not actually decide on one thing and we all ended up doing our own things haha So my then boyfriend, Adam, and I decided to just go somewhere together. I had gone to the Dominican Republic in high school and had a blast so I figured maybe we could look into that. My sister had used a company called Apple Vacations when she was in college so she recommended it. Let me tell you, that was the way to go! They do all inclusive vacations and you basically tell them how much you want to pay and where you want to go and they find you the best deals. So I thought I had done a lot of research before calling them…this was my first time taking a major trip with celiac disease and I was SCARED. I spent hours googling resorts and reading people’s reviews. Most of them said that resorts would accommodate if you just sent an email to them ahead of time. Feeling confident, I called Apple Vacations and set up our reservation for a resort in Puerto Plata at a great price! Then after getting off the phone, I emailed the resort about my celiac and told them when I’d be coming….their response? “We don’t accommodate any food allergies. We apologize.” I. PANICKED. Totally lost it. I was NOT spending $900 (great price, right?) to be sick and starving for 5 days!!
So I have this thing for pesto…it’s a huge thing actually. The flavor is just so satisfying to me! I ended up making a sandwich for lunch yesterday and it was kind of a kitchen sink project. I had some veggie burger patties in the freezer, some lettuce, some avocado…and then I realized I needed some kind of sauce to put on it so it’d have a little flavor and not be too dry. Typically when I have this problem I just use hummus, but I spotted a jar of pesto in my fridge and thought YES. So after I ate that for lunch, of course my brain was like yeah…we’re gonna need infinitely more pesto ASAP. Hence this dinner was born!
I’ve made this dish several different ways depending on what I have in my fridge that I can throw into it. There have been times where I really wanted to make this but the only veggie I had on hand was frozen green beans and I used those…it was still good! If there’s a will, there’s a way…and there’s always a will for pesto.