“We are one pie short,” remarked my son-in-law, a statistical analyst, in the same tone of voice that I could imagine him using to delicately announce to his boss that he is missing an entire page of critical data. I looked at the kitchen table where there were nine beautiful, homemade pies arranged for the annual photo that would document for another year that the women in our family could bake the likes of Martha Stewart under the Thanksgiving table. It looked like plenty of pies to me. I gave him my best quizzical frown.

“One pie short?” I questioned.

He grinned down at me. “We always have the same number of pies as we have people, except for the year that we had one more pie than the number of people. We are one pie short this year.”

It was his way of pointing out the bounty that we enjoyed and for which we were gathered to celebrate and give thanks. I glanced through the doorway at the dining room table. It was laden with bowls of steaming vegetables, pans of dressing, baskets of rolls, and the large platter bearing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. Truly, we had much for which to be thankful.

To the newly diagnosed celiac, it may seem that such a feast would be forever lost, only to be enjoyed in memory. Such is not the case. With some effort and home cooking, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner can be created gluten free.

The typical centerpiece of the table, the roast turkey, is probably the easiest part of the dinner to acquire and prepare. There are several brands of turkeys that are gluten free. San Antonio H-E-B grocery stores carry Riverside brand that states “gluten free” right on the label. Butterball is a national brand that has several turkey products that are gluten free. Fresh and frozen turkeys that are “minimally processed” have nothing added to them and should be naturally free of gluten. However, if there is any doubt about whether or not a turkey is gluten free, the prudent thing to do is call the manufacturer; if the turkey is a store brand, ask the butcher to call the manufacturer for you.

Thaw a frozen turkey before baking it. Because it takes about five hours per pound to thaw a turkey in the refrigerator, which is the safest way to defrost it, it may take several days. To prepare a thawed or fresh turkey, take off the wrapper and remove the neck and giblets from the cavity. Rinse the bird inside and out and place it in a roasting pan. Sprinkle herbs such as rosemary, thyme, sage, and garlic on the body, place onions or garlic cloves and fresh sprigs of rosemary inside the cavity, or just leave the bird unadorned, depending on your preference. For moist, tender meat, cover the roasting pan with a lid or with aluminum foil to allow the bird to steam in its own juices. Set the oven to bake at 325°; it is not necessary to preheat it. To calculate the baking time, consult a cookbook or the turkey wrapper for the correct number of minutes per pound, keeping in mind that most guidelines are based on an uncovered turkey; baking a covered bird will take less time. To brown the skin, remove the lid or foil for the last half hour or so of baking. I usually omit this step, as we do not eat the skin. When the turkey has finished baking, remove it from the oven and allow it to stand a few minutes before carving it.

Making gluten-free gravy is surprisingly simple. To make gravy, dip out some of the broth that has cooked out of the turkey. If time permits, refrigerate the drippings until the fat rises to the top and hardens so that it can be skimmed off. If there is not enough time for that, use a gravy separator to remove the fat. Bring the broth to a boil in a saucepan. To thicken the gravy, stir cornstarch into a small quantity of cold water or milk, using about 1 tablespoon of cornstarch per ¼ cup cold liquid to thicken 1 to 1½ cups of broth, depending on how thick you want the gravy to be. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the broth and bring the mixture back to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. As soon as the gravy reaches the boiling point, remove it from the burner. Add salt and pepper to taste, and the gravy is ready to serve.

Almost as central to the Thanksgiving feast as turkey is dressing. Cooked inside a turkey, stuffing absorbs fat from the meat drippings, and the leftovers do not keep well. Therefore, I prefer to bake our stuffing separately in a flat casserole dish or 13 x 9-inch pan, which is why our family refers to it as “dressing” rather than “stuffing.” The base for celiac-safe dressing can be any gluten-free bread, but our favorite is cornbread, which I make a day in advance. To use a traditional (non-gluten-free) recipe for cornbread that calls for flour, substitute a gluten-free flour blend for the wheat flour or use all cornmeal. Cornbread made without flour is crumblier than that made with flour, but it is just as tasty. Adding an extra egg to the batter will make the bread less crumbly. To make dressing, add sautéed onions, garlic, and celery, herbs such as rosemary, thyme, and sage, salt and pepper, and possibly even chopped nuts to the bread or cornbread crumbs. A traditional recipe can be used to supply the proportions. The dressing mixture can be made a day ahead to allow the flavors to blend and to save time on the big day. When it is time to bake the dressing, douse the mixture with a generous amount of turkey or chicken broth, stir to moisten it evenly, and pat it into a baking dish or pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake it at 350° until the top begins to brown. The time required will depend on how much liquid was added and whether you prefer your dressing to be moist or somewhat crunchy, but a fair estimate is 30 to 45 minutes.

If sweet potato casserole was a part of your Thanksgiving tradition before diagnosis, it still can be. Simply substituting a gluten-free flour blend for the flour in the recipe may be all that is needed. As a faster, easier alternative to casserole, serve baked sweet potatoes with butter, cinnamon sugar, and chopped pecans on the side. To bake sweet potatoes, scrub them well, cut out any dubious-looking spots, and put them in a covered casserole dish or roaster. Bake them at 350° until they are soft, usually about an hour or more, depending on their size. For small potatoes or a small number of them, cook them in a covered dish in the microwave oven.

For other side dishes, use either fresh or frozen plain vegetables and season them according to taste. As our green bean dish, I sauté rosemary and garlic in olive oil, then add green beans to the pot with a little water and cook it on the stove for about a half hour. Our family tradition is to have our corn creamed. There may be canned creamed corn that is gluten free, but I make ours from frozen corn using the recipe that is in The Alamo Celiac Cookbook. A simpler corn side dish would be to cook frozen corn in a microwave and season it with butter, salt, pepper, and pimiento. To cook corn on the cob, shuck the corn, rinse the ears, place them in a microwave-safe dish, and cook them on high for 1 minute per ear. Turn each ear over and cook an additional 1 minute per ear. A total of 2 minutes per ear should be sufficient unless the microwave has low power.

A feast as important as Thanksgiving must also have its decorative elements. Cranberry sauce and olives are typically gluten free. Commercially made pickles and other relishes, on the other hand, may not be. It is important to check with manufacturers, either through their Web sites or by phone, to verify the gluten-free status of the products.

Finally, there is dessert. Ah, yes, there must be pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Some canned pumpkin pie fillings may be safe, but it is also possible to make the pie filling from canned plain pumpkin, which is always gluten free. A traditional recipe will give the amounts of sugar, milk, eggs, and spices that are added to pumpkin to make pie filling. While making the custard filling is as easy as mixing a cake mix, the crust can be intimidating, especially to the person who has always used prepared piecrusts. One way to avoid the crust issue altogether is to make a pie with no crust at all. A recipe for a no-crust pumpkin pie (“Impossible Pumpkin Pie”) is in The Alamo Celiac Cookbook. For those people for whom crust determines the difference between pie and plain custard, there are numerous gluten-free crust recipes available on the Internet in addition to the one in The Alamo Celiac Cookbook. In making piecrust, the trick is in rolling out the dough and getting it into the pie pan without it falling apart. This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds if the dough is rolled between two layers of plastic wrap rather than on a floured surface or between layers of stiffer substances such as wax paper or parchment. For complete instructions on making homemade gluten-free piecrust, see “Pie Crust Made Easy”.

This year, our family will share its fourteenth gluten-free Thanksgiving dinner. Among our innumerable blessings, we will count the bounty of food that is available in our great country, the scientific knowledge that defined the source of our inherited food intolerance, and the health that we have gained from the foods that we are able to eat. It will be a marvelous feast, and of course, there will be pies – probably as many as there are people.