Avoid the Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes!!

Thanksgiving... it's finally here. A day of eating amazing food then feeling sleepy, content and absolutely stuffed. Sounds amazing and typical, right? Wrong. One of the worst annoyances about being lactose intolerant is missing out on the best parts of holiday meals, most of the appetizers, side dishes and desserts. I'm lucky, since there are multiple members of my family suffering from lactose intolerance, our cooks (aka my grandmas, aunts, mom and I) make sure to use margarine or Earth Balance instead of butter and lactaid milk instead of regular milk. These simple changes allow me and my mom (most of my family can still use lactaid pills) to enjoy ALMOST every dish. This year, after my experimentation, we'll even be able to enjoy the pumpkin pie. I highly suggest trying to convince your family to do this, or maybe even volunteer to help them cook, then slip in the changes yourself. I guarantee they usually won't notice.

So what if you can't "help" them cook? Well, then I hope you like turkey. Recently, I have been to two "Thanksgiving" dinners. At the first the only things I could eat were the turkey, cranberry sauce and apple sauce. Be sure to avoid the skin of the turkey, it's often rubbed with spices and butter. Not quite the huge thanksgiving spread I'm sure you imagined. Stuffing almost always has butter in it (even though it doesn't have to). Mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes will have milk and butter. Cooked vegetables are usually made with brown sugar and spices, with butter. And I've already told you about desserts. Pumpkin pie has condensed milk, any baked dessert will have butter. Apple pie usually isn't safe, but the chances are better than other types of pie. Unfortunately this is a meal usually homemade, which means there aren't even labels to check for ingredients.