8 Trusted Holiday Recipes for MCAS

holiday recipes

This post provides eight trusted holiday recipes for when you have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. With the holidays around the corner, traditionally a time of eating good food with family, you might be wondering what can you eat for holiday meals when you have MCAS.

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The first holiday season after my MCAS diagnosis was pretty sad. I felt deprived because I couldn’t have the foods that were special to me. There are deep emotional connections between food, family, holidays, and relaxation. So, having a plan for making and having your comfort foods is to you is key to feeling satisfied.

What is MCAS?

Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is a chronic condition that affects all organ systems. MCAS is serious and disabling and people with MCAS experience often significant and debilitating symptoms daily, including anaphylaxis, which can be fatal.

MCAS is often found in combination with other chronic conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).

Frequently healthcare providers do not know about MCAS, and the tests for MCAS are problematic because they are not uniformly reliable. MCAS can be difficult to manage. Treatments include blocking mast cell mediators with anti-histamines and mast cell stabilizers, as well as avoiding triggers.

Check out this post on how to manage MCAS.

Do you know your typical symptom progression?

One of the keys to understanding the level of your bucket is knowing your symptom progression. It is helpful to keep track of the symptoms you are having and to evaluate whether they are escalating. Symptom escalation means that the level of your bucket is rising.

Knowing your symptom progression in a symptom flare is the key to developing your own rescue plan. In this post, I discuss how to determine your own symptom progression. Once you know what typically happens in your symptom progression you can design a rescue plan to address those symptoms.

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Holiday recipes

Here are some recipes that I have found satisfying in past years, and I plan to make them again this year. Not all recipes fit with the keto diet, but most are low in histamine.

Gravy
Cranberry Muffins This recipe could be adapted to fit the Ketogenic diet by switching the cassava flour to sunflower or pumpkin flour.
Cranberry Biscotti This recipe could be adapted to fit the Ketogenic diet by switching the cassava flour to sunflower or pumpkin flour.
Saged Squash Pasta This one could be made Keto by substituting Palmini pasta for rice pasta.
Biscuits You could substitute for sunflower or pumpkin flour to make this fit the keto diet.
Instant Pot Mashed Yucca Root Not Keto-diet friendly, sorry, but generally low-histamine.
Brussels Sprouts with Bacon Omit the bacon if not tolerated. Pine nuts or pili nuts would be a nice substitution for fat and flavor.
Roast turkey – It is possible to make a lower histamine small roast turkey if it is roasted at high heat directly from frozen. But it can be tricky to make sure the entire bird is fully cooked through, and you may end up drying it out. Roasting a frozen turkey breast is less risky because there is less mass to bring up to temperature. Alternatively, chicken breast can satisfy that need for roasted fowl, while being much easier to make low-histamine due to the shorter cooking time. An even lower histamine method is to poach chicken breasts in the Instant Pot using the “meat” program with 1 cup of water, manually releasing the pressure, and immediately consuming or freezing the cooked meat. Portions can be frozen for future meals and the meat broth that you end up with in the pot can be frozen for making future soups.