Sunday at Nonna’s: a little is still gluten (Mila & Friends, Episode 3)

Every coeliac family has a Nonna. Not always Italian, not always a grandmother, but someone who loves you with food and cannot believe that a little would hurt. Episode 3 is about that table, and about the small rule that keeps everyone sitting at it.

Sunday at Nonna's

Sunday lunch at Nonna Rosa's is the best hour of Mila's week. The kitchen smells of tomato and basil, Nonno Aldo hides behind his newspaper, and Luna has claimed the chair by the window. Mila's tummy has one question, and she has learned to ask it before the plates come out.

Just a little?

"Just a little, tesoro?" Nonna means it kindly. She has cooked this pasta for forty years and nobody was ever ill from it, as far as she knows. Mila wonders whether a little counts. Zoe, sixteen and diagnosed first, has heard this question in three languages.

Two pots

"A little is still gluten, Nonna," Zoe says, not unkindly. "But two pots fix everything." Mila gets her own pot of gluten-free pasta, her own colander and her own spoon. The sauce, the famous one, stays the same for everyone. Nonna listens the way grandmothers listen: arms folded first, then nodding.

The Nonna rule

One pot with a teal ribbon, so nobody mixes them up. One colander with Mila's name on the handle. One clean spoon that never visits the other pot. Nonno Aldo sticks the label on himself. That is the whole rule, and it costs a ribbon.

Everybody gets a lot

Nonna serves Mila first. "In my kitchen nobody gets a little," she says. "Everybody gets a lot." Same table, same sauce, two pots. Luna watches from under the table in case anything falls.

Every kitchen

Nonna's rule works in every kitchen that cooks for one coeliac and several others: a holiday flat, a school camp, a friend's birthday. Next Sunday Mila packs for the school trip lunch.

For parents: the three-object rule

The rule holds up outside the comic. In a shared kitchen the risk lives on the things that touch the pasta after it is cooked, not in the sauce: the water it boiled in, the colander it drained through, the spoon that stirred both pots. Give the gluten-free pasta its own pot, its own colander and its own spoon, dress it first with a clean ladle, and the same sauce serves everyone.

Washed pots, plates and cutlery are fine. The two exceptions worth a second look are the toaster and the wooden breadboard, because crumbs hide in them. AIC’s kitchen guidance, DZG’s everyday tips and Coeliac UK’s cross-contamination page all say the same thing, checked 5 September 2026.

The sauce in this episode is our own house sugo, Ilaria’s sugo, one tin of tomatoes for two people. The recipe is on its way to the site and will be linked here.

Read on

• Nonna's rule, the printable card for grandparents
• If my child eats gluten by accident, the fridge card (EN, DE, IT)
• Coeliac kids at school: lunchboxes, parties and a plan that works
• All Little GF Adventures episodes