Contamination Tip: serving dishes

We used to serve “fancy dinner” on Sunday evening with our three young girls.  We needed an excuse to teach our little orangatangs some manners so that was it.  We put out a table cloth, candles and let them drink juice out of wine glasses.  Mommy kinda enjoyed it too.    And of course we put the food that was being served into serving dishes, instead of the handsome stainless steal pots that it was cooked in.  When we used butter it too was put into a butter dish, and even, really truly fancy, we used a butter knife! I tell you our fancy dinner tradition for more than your reading pleasure but also because it was a very good way of keeping the larger food containers decontaminated.

This tip is especially useful when you are starting out your gluten free diet and the kitchen isnt entirely gluten free yet.  Invest in small snack-size plastic containers with lids and keep small amounts of peanut butter or butter in them.  I started out putting the foods that I wanted to remain gluten-free in the containers.  But then I didn’t have enough for entirely gluten-free meals or baking.  So now, I find it a better idea to keep everything in the kitchen gluten free except for the small amounts that we intend on contaminating.  You can’t uncontaminate the 1kg jar of peanut butter, but you can definitely add a scoop to your smaller contaminated container.

In summary, keep all food stuffs gluten -free, and store small amounts of food to be used with gluten in small sealable containers.  Keep the outside of these containers clean before you put them away.