[Guest post from Mom! Celebrating 3 years Gluten-Free this January. Dined with her GF Brother this Thanksgiving]

Our family’s classic spinach salad with a poppy seed dressing from the Silver Palate cookbook calls for bacon pieces, mushrooms, red onions and hard-boiled egg pieces (we don’t include the egg.)

It also calls for croutons and there’s the rub.

How to make gluten-free croutons? The Silver Palate cookbook says to cut up pieces of bread in bite-sized pieces and either toast them in the oven at 400 degrees or put them in a fry pan with butter and garlic and stir fry.. Thinking that sometimes gluten-free baked goods can get kind of rock hard, I opted for the butter and garlic. Opting for garlic and butter is usually a good thing, right? Even if not the least caloric.

I used Udi’s bread. And the croutons were terrific. Gluten-free flour products have a tendency to scorch faster than wheat – at least, that’s my experience so I watched them closely. I made them a day ahead and then popped them in the oven to warm them just before we made the salad.

Our “unfrozen” turkey had been frozen and took almost two hours longer to reach 165 degrees than we had counted on. So folks standing around in the kitchen began nibbling on those croutons. A quick hand here. Then another one…plucking them from the undressed salad.

And pretty soon the croutons were all gone…an appetizer, I guess.