Help with Gluten Free Cooking

My adult daughter who has had Krohn's disease for 15 years has been recently diagnosed with Celiac's disease.   She is very sensitive to Gluten.  We cook nothing but gluten free food for her but she still gets attacks when she eats at our house.  Do we need to buy new pots and pans for her food?  

Yesterday her 9 year old daughter was helping us cook dinner.  She ate some normal bread before we started cooking.  Is it possible some crumbs from her bread got in the food?  

We are totally frustrated and very concerned about what to do for our family Thanksgiving Dinner.

I would get as much gluten free items as you can comfortably afford and have room for. Clean the oven before she comes over, toaster oven, microwave, etc. Clean any utensils and flatware you'll use in cleaning vinegar first, then hot soapy water. New sponges. Disposable napkins. Send all towels - dishtowels, hand towels, etc., through a hot wash, I'd use vinegar there too. 

Similarly, different condiments for gluten and gluten free. 2 ketchup bottles - one for burgers with buns, one for gluten free folks. One butter dish and knife for rolls, one for the mashed potatoes - and never the two shall mix. 

There are a lot of things you could identify the culprit as here. I'd just go for a "kill it with fire" approach rather than try to figure out if it was kiddo unknowingly sharing a glass with mom, or bread crumbs getting in, or the pot was used for macaroni the night before and some gluten was stuck to it in a small enough amount to not be visible but still enough to cause a reaction from your daughter. 

Time your cooking such that any gluten free food is cooked and prepared first, then any food with gluten after that. Better yet, have someone else make it in their house. 

Wow - I hope she can find good answers.  I didn't realize how intense this could be. 

Good luck. 

As someone with a food intolerance, intolerances/allergies certainly make things tricky, but not undoable.

Keep things separate and ultra clean. When your daughter comes over, nothing with gluten gets out of its container after deep cleaning the kitchen and dining room until she leaves the house after Thanksgiving. That's probably the safest bet. 

Thanks for the help.  We bought some new pots and pans to cook only her food in and we ordered some gluten free cook books.  This is a very frustrating situation.

In reply to Mustang50 :

I totally understand your frustration. It takes some getting used to with allergies/intolerances. However, there are paths - it takes some creativity, though, especially when eating at restaurants. Keep us posted in how Thanksgiving goes.

BTW: I have seen boxed GF stuffing. They're fairly tasty, even for the non-GF folks. It's not like Grandma's, but it fits the bill.

i'll second the "kill it with fire approach". My wife can't eat gluten and we have to be really careful. I have once or twice made a sandwich and inadvertently put the knife back in the mayo jar after using it on my bread. jar of mayo is no longer safe.

I'll also say that there are products that you can buy that say gluten free (or don't say that they contain gluten) that are just wrong. especially things like condiments or things that have food coloring. For instance, almost all caramel coloring has gluten in it, but products that have caramel coloring in them don't always advertise that they contain gluten. My additional advice would be to use as much "whole" food as you can to avoid that risk

A close friend of mine is GF.  She wont eat anything from my house, because its contaminated.  Stainless utensils you might be able to clean it off of, but wooden spoon, cast iron pan, etc. are going to be berkeleyed once they've been glutened.

Same with condiments, etc.  Its easy to accidentally contaminate those.  

You basically need a controlled GF environment to make sure you are safe.

Traveling and going out to eat is even harder because some places don't take it seriously and its hard to know without walking back into their kitchen and watching.

 I know a few people with Celiac's. If you are cooking for them its always a good idea to thoroughly clean the oven/ other cooking surfaces before cooking for them. Even if you think you haven't cooked anything with gluten in awhile, better safe then sorry. At the same time don't clean the gluten dishware with non gluten dishware. Even though you cleaning, if its not super well done you can get cross contamination through that. 

Another tip is to clearly mark items that are gluten free or for gluten free use only. You can mark the pots and pans with some type of tape and get colored chip clips etc. Put them in their own cupboard if needed to avoid using them by accident. 

Youtube also has some great content from Celiac creators who share tips and tricks as well.