Tea Foods for Special Diets
One of the challenges of cooking for crowds is accomodating a variety of foodways. At DVSS, we always provide space for friends who are gluten free, vegan eaters, and low-carb eaters. While folx with special diets are encouraged to bring food that they can eat, when we’re making Tea Sandwiches, it’s really not hard to switch up an ingredient or bread to feed our friends and make them feel included.
The nice thing is that most of these suggestions work for any of the three categories, with a simple change of ingredients.
Here are some strategies for various sorts of accomodations.
Gluten-Free
Gluten free breads and tortillas are readily available; also, look for gluten-free baked goods such as GF scones. Sticky Fingers makes a great GF scones mix.
Cucumber cups, mini peppers, or tomato cups filled with sandwich salads bypass the entire bread issue.
Or bring naturally gluten-free foods such as fresh fruit.
Vegan
Vegan mayonaise and cream cheese are available; of course, margarine is vegan. Stir herbs into any of these for extra interest.
Cucumber sandwiches and watercress sandwiches are afternoon Tea classics, and think about fillings like tomato-mayo. Roasted red pepper and (vegan) pesto, or carmelized onion and hummus make great tea sandwiches.
Tofu is a great egg substitute and can be stirred into “egg” sandwiches.
Many baked goods can be made as vegan, including a Victorian sponge which uses self-rising flour and baking soda.
Low-Carb
Like Gluten-Free, there are lots of options for low carb, Keto-Diet approved sandwich breads.
We also like sandwich salads stuffed into mini-peppers or plied into cucumber cups, or cream cheese rollups using salami instead of tortillas. Another option are tomato cups (scoop out the insides of coctail tomatoes) and fill with herbed cream cheese.
My personal low-carb favorite are deviled eggs. There are tons of recipes out there for a variety of flavorings for deviled eggs.
Nuts are naturally low-carb, as are berries, and dark chocolate.
Melanie Unruh