Gluten-free and vegan? HELP!

pixiepea · December 2011

I just found out that at least five of my guests are gluten-free and vegan and my caterer doesn't have anything to accomodate them! Does anyone have any entree recipes that would work for my guests? (My plan is to make them the day before and ask the caterer to heat them before serving). Thanks!

ArynBaker · December 2011

If you really feel like you want to make the vegan dessert yourself then maybe try making a batch soon to see how it turns out. If it turns out tasty then you're set! But if it doesn't, you'll have enough time to figure something else out.I would honestly suggest trying to find a local restaurant or grocery that has vegan options, even just cookies. My mom is vegan and it has taken her a lot of trial and error to make good vegan desserts.

ElisabethJoanne · December 2011

My mother is allergic to wheat, rye, and oats, and dairy. We plan on serving roasted meat, rice or potatoes, and asparagus. If we were concerned about vegetarians, we'd have eggplant or the like as an option instead of the meat. [We just don't have any vegetarians on our guest list, yes, we're sure.]

Haven't quite figured out cocktail hour yet, but fruit plates and veggie plates with hummus would be vegan and gluten free.

jessicabessica · December 2011

I agree with MilkDuds. Your caterer sounds unreasonable, and even though you're well-intentioned, I don't know that your plan of preparing the meals yourself would work for the reasons she mentioned. Also, I really would not want to have to cook meals the day before my wedding when I hired a caterer to take care of the food.

Can you find some recipes and suggest them to your caterer? Maybe you could pay a little extra to have a tasting session for the vegan/GF entree options, so the caterer could try the recipes, and you could pick the tastiest one?

As for suggestions, what about pasta primavera (no cheese), but use spaghetti squash instead of regular pasta? A stirfry over rice would also work--although soy sauce can have wheat in it sometimes.

As for dessert (not sure if you're that concerned about dessert for them), we had non-dairy sorbet and fruit. If you can do something more, that's great, but I don't think you have to drive yourself too crazy.

DreamWeavr020 · December 2011

One of the entree options that we're offering is a delicious zucchini and quinoa cake. It's similar to a risotto cake. It's vegan AND gluten-free. So maybe you could do something similar. I don't think it would be too difficult to make, though I'm not sure how well it holds up overnight. Good luck!

lyndausvi · December 2011

I can't wrap my head around a caterer who can't accommodate gluten-free and vegans.

weird.

SmollenLove · December 2011

Yikes! Sorry about your caterer. I had a 100% vegan and gluten-free wedding and its really not that hard. Check out www.rosepedalsveganweddings.com for recipes and ideas. My wedding is in the Real Vegan Weddings section under "Liz & Sarah" and you can read our menu there. The other weddings' menus sound amazing too. Good luck!

peanutty2 · December 2011

really, your caterer should be providing something! but if they're being difficult, i probably wouldn't trust them to really know what they're doing anyway. you might want to try ordering some meals take out from a restaurant and serving them.

i can't think of anything very exciting off the top of my head, but you could do a gluten free pasta primavera (the gluten free pastas are sold at any natural food stores like trader joes or whole foods and a lot of regular grocery stores have them now) and just put different veggies and an olive oil based dressing. or our caterer did a eggplant parm and just left the breading off the eggplant - guest at least said it was good! you could do that and serve it with roasted veggies and potatos.

for dessert... you could do a vegan chocolate mouse. it's tofu with chocolate basically (vegan chocolate). i bought it prepared at whole foods but i hear it's really simple to make as well.

thejucheidea · December 2011

Coming from a celiac, if you're going to make something at home, make sure you've sterilized your cooking utensils and cooking surfaces. If you're going to be using the surface of your counter, clean it well and use something like a clean Silpat or large, sterilized cutting board to avoid cross-contamination.

One of my favorite GF/vegan dishes is kale, pinto beans, carrots and tofu over quinoa. It's well balanced and filling, and it is very, very tasty. Everything in it is easy to make too -- if you've never made tofu before, there's very good GF/vegan ready-made tempeh available at pretty much every grocery store.

You can also order meals from Whole Foods. You might also see if there are some good vegetarian restaurants in town that could throw together a few GF/vegan dinners. I know that there's one family-owned vegetarian restaurant here in Nashville that is very up on what is GF -- I've never been glutened there and it's fabulous.

ETA: And in regards to the others, I can kinda understand where the caterer is coming from. Caterers can claim to be able to handle GF/vegan, but there's an extra cost involved and the risk that they aren't 100% up on their special diet knowledge. I'd rather have a caterer say no to my request than have guests who are ill for days because the caterer wasn't completely knowledgeable about the special request.

pixiepea · December 2011

We're having our wedding at a family-owned banquet hall who does their own cooking... the closest they get to vegetarian is a fish entree... I'll look into a quinoa and veg casserole or something (thanks for the website, Smollen!)

Thanks for all of your help, ladies!

Gluten-free and vegan? HELP!

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