From the Archives: Thanksgiving Recipe Round Up

Here's a list of recipes from the archives for a delicious Thanksgiving:

Chicken Stock:  Homemade stock makes everything better.
Grandma Annie's Candied Carrots:  Easy yet uplifted side dish.
Thanksgiving Mashers:  Only once a year do the all the elements fall into place to make these amazing potatoes.
Cornbread & Wild Rice Rice Dressing:  Friends and family demand that I make this every Thanksgiving.
Buttermilk(less) Biscuits:  Throw these little darlings in to bake in just 15 minutes when the turkey comes out of the oven.  Then watch them disappear.
Pumpkin Bundt Cake:  Who says it has to be pie?

For more ideas, be sure to check out The Biggest Gathering of Dairy-Free Thanksgiving Recipes by Alisa Fleming at Go Dairy Free.  (There are lots of additional restricted diet options, such as vegan and gluten free, included in the list.)

I wish you a wonderful, family filled and food allergy safe Thanksgiving!

This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days.

Food Labels: Reading Between the Lines for Cross-Contamination

I simply adore sesame oil.  I love the flavor it brings to Asian cooking, and the nuttiness it adds to other dishes.  For the last few years though, I have essentially stopped using it, because of my difficulty finding a brand that wasn't at risk of cross-contamination.  It seems every distributor of sesame oil that I've contacted is also bottling peanut oil in the same facility.

(By the way, an easy way to spot another allergy mom at the grocery store is to look for a woman squinting at an ingredient label with a cell phone pressed to her ear and a look of extreme frustration on her face.)

So imagine my excitement when my husband proudly brought home a bottle of Sun Luck Pure Sesame Oil.  "All Natural" the label exclaimed.  "No gluten" was featured in a little symbol on the side.  And the ingredients?  "Pure sesame seed oil" followed by "NO ALLERGENS, NO PRESERVATIVES ADDED."

It seemed like my lucky day.

Being fairly untrusting, especially when it comes to glib assurances regarding allergens with the potential to threaten my child's life, I still pulled up the web site to do some checking before cracking open the bottle.  There I found another item in the Sun Luck product line, Thai Peanut Sauce.  I immediately tried calling the company's phone number to find out if the items are manufactured in the same facility.  Unfortunately, it was after business hours and I wasn't able to get an answer.  Needless to say, I didn't use the sesame oil with our salmon that night.

The next morning I gave them another call, only to have my suspicions confirmed.  The sesame oil is indeed being processed on the same line as the peanut sauce.  The person I spoke to initially defended the label, saying that it only had to include the ingredients inside the bottle, not ingredients from other items in the facility, but became very sympathetic when I explained the severity of The Kid's peanut allergy.  Although I take corporate assurances that feedback is being passed up the food chain with a grain of salt, the woman I spoke to seemed genuinely concerned.  I explained that those of us managing food allergies read labels extremely closely and look for facilities and equipment warnings, so that the way that the label was worded was, well, somewhat misleading.

It's hard enough reading every label without having to suspiciously search for inaccuracies or unlabeled cross-contamination.  One of these days I'm going to put Mad Eye Moody's words, "Constant Vigilance!" up on my kitchen wall.  In the meantime, I'll be squinting at labels and gritting my teeth at my cell phone in the grocery store.

This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days.

What I Ate Wednesday: Wish Fulfillment

Baked corn puppies, plus a couple full sized dogs.

Sunday is the only day when The Kid and I are both free of school and work.  So that's the day when we have big family dinners, baking gets done and I do some prep for packed lunches and other meals.  (It's also the day I usually pick for What I Ate Wednesday, since I do separate lunchbox posts.)  This weekend's meals turned into a series of my son's favorites.  He didn't mind a bit.

I managed to sleep through breakfast, thanks to the time change and my husband's indulgence.  We are allowing The Kid a little more self sufficiency in the kitchen, though still supervised, and he made himself breakfast of a bagel and soy milk.  Unfortunately when he's left to his own devices, nutrition takes a beating, and he "spread" the bagel with non-dairy margarine (it's more of an enthusiastic flail with the butter knife) rather than the usual Sunbutter.  The bowl of fruit on the counter also became completely invisible.  Just like magic.

Darth Vader is no match for...KETCHUP!

For lunch I baked up a tray of corn dogs and puppies with both turkey dogs and turkey sausages wrapped up in a corn biscuit dough.  The Kid snarfed up a corn dog and a half plus grapes and apple juice.  (I barely managed to snag the other half of the second dog for myself!)  The small sausages I baked with little wooden cocktail forks in them to pack for his lunch a couple days this week.  One quick baking session made for three days of lunch happiness.

Vegan pizza with spinach lurking under the "cheese".

The night before I had mixed up a batch of pizza dough and tossed it into the fridge, where it developed a lovely sourdough flavor.  The Kid's enthusiasm for the new Daiya vegan cheese continues, and I made his individual pizza with the mozzarella shreds with a pile of baby spinach leaves carefully concealed underneath them.  (I don't usually hide veggies, but it was a last ditch effort to salvage the day's meals.)  Despite their general awesomeness, the Daiya shreds don't brown particularly well, so I've started giving the pizza a quick spritz of olive oil to encourage it, and my son's pizza is now almost indistinguishable from one with full on dairy cheese.  He ate the whole thing.

This blog post is joining up with:

• What I Ate Wednesday hosted by Peas and Crayons and
• National Health Blog Posting Month – 30 blog posts in 30 days organized by Wego Health.

Food Allergy Family Tree: A Century of Allergic Reactions

Swedish immigrants John Hendrickson Lake and Anna Erickson Lake with their 10 children, including 2 sets of twins, circa 1903/04 outside Hoffman, Minnesota.  My great-grandmother, Amanda Elizabeth Lake is standing in front of the door on the right.

The percentage of kids with food allergies has risen sharply and abruptly from almost none to one in every classroom in under a decade.  Food allergies used to be extraordinarily rare, but they did exist, including in my family.

My son is a fourth generation food allergy sufferer.

The first member of my family that we can confirm had a food allergy was my Ama, Harriet Amanda Horton, who supposedly as a toddler was peeking out of the window at her mother, Amanda Lake Horton, when the picture above was taken.  Harriet was violently allergic to shellfish her entire life.

Harry Davenport Horton and Amanda Elizabeth Lake.

I don't know if either of my Ama's parents had a food allergy.  Her mother, Amanda died when Harriet was 14 months old.  She was raised by her grandmother, and went on to marry and have four children, including my father, who was also extremely allergic to shellfish and less so to eggs.  He eventually outgrew the egg allergy, but remained allergic to shellfish for his entire lifetime.

Harriet Amanda Horton,  food allergy kid circa 1910/15. 

In my generation, my brother followed the same pattern as my father, outgrowing an egg allergy, but remaining so allergic to shellfish, that to this day he cannot walk into a seafood restaurant without having difficulty breathing.  I do not have any known food allergies, but have clearly carried the legacy on to my son, who is allergic to seven different foods.

Another generation of food allergies:  my dad, lower left, and his older siblings.

Growing up around food allergies profoundly shaped my response to my son's initial diagnosis.  When my four month old, mostly breastfed preemie had his first allergic reaction to a milk based formula, we went to the emergency room to have him treated, picked up some Benadryl on the way home and simply carried on.  Quite frankly he had other medical issues that were of greater concern to us at the time, and a food allergy we knew how to manage.

That's the other part of my family's legacy, a stoic Scandinavian attitude that a food allergy is something that is managed by careful avoidance, rather than by medical intervention.  It's just something that we live with.  In three generations of food allergies, not one of my family members sought out an allergist.

As my son approached a year in age and had more reactions as he was exposed to more foods, we simply treated them with Benadryl.  If I suspected he was sensitive to a food, I'd dab some of it on his back to see if he reacted, then avoid it if he did.  (I do not recommend doing this to test for food allergies, please see a medical professional!)  I avoided giving him peanuts on his pediatrician's advice and stayed well away from shellfish, because of our family history.

At three years of age, I allowed my son to eat peanut butter, since he had accidentally been given it once before without any kind of reaction.  He got a few bites down before projectile vomiting and sprouting hives.  I gave him Benadryl once again, then finally made an appointment to see an allergist.

At the first appointment, the allergist grilled me fairly unmercifully about how I'd managed my son's food allergies.  I had the impression that he either thought I was overreacting and my son didn't really have them, or that I had been extremely reckless in managing them the way I had.  I was pretty sure he was leaning toward the latter by the end of the conversation, as I described the violent responses to various foods.

Then the results of both the IgE and scratch testing confirmed every food allergy I'd reported.  Shellfish, which I had never exposed him to, was highest on the scale, 4+ out of 5, closely followed by peanut.  The doctor prescribed a 2 pack of Epi-Pens.

After the visit I started researching food allergies online and discovered that they are not just my family's genetic quirk, but a new epidemic faced by an amazing community of families determined to overcome this unexpected threat to their children.  As I read each report about new research and medical advances, I've almost allowed myself to begin to start thinking about a cure.  Almost.

My very own allergic kid.

Please consider joining me and other members of my community at the Tampa FAAN Walk for Food Allergy on November 12.  I'd be absolutely thrilled if you would consider joining my team, starting one of your own or making a donation.

This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days.

Confessions of a Blogger

My grubby, overloaded cookbook shelf.  I deliberately kept the resolution high, so that the titles can be viewed by  clicking on the photo to open it in a new tab.

A list of daily suggested blog topics for National Health Blog Posting Month or #NHBPM (November if you're feeling old-fashioned) from WEGO Health is weighing heavily on my inbox.  The reason for the list is to help health bloggers overcome burnout and write a daily post.  I'm not sure if I'm a health blogger, but I am definitely in a drought.

The list of topics is mostly self referential, a way to describe and engender bloggers' own patient advocacy or self empowerment, treating blogging as a process.  Writing about writing, though, feels strangely self-indulgent to me.  I like to serve up a finished product when I post, whether it be the perfect muffin or a full on food allergy mama rant about an injustice our vulnerable children face.

I love my blog.  I love this little spot on the internet that I've staked out and made my own, where I share recipes I've created that accommodate my son's food allergies and write about how this very special need has shaped our lives.  I keep my focus as tight as I can, so that if you are willing to take the time to read my blog, you will find something useful here.

Still, I cannot disregard the list or simply decide to continue posting at my own pace, because the very first topic is simply too tempting for me to ignore.

The first blog post prompt is to describe the book I would write, to pick a title and jot down a synopsis for the book jacket.  So it's time for a confession of sorts.  My not-so-secret goal is to write a cookbook.

One of the reasons I've held off on pursuing this is that I discovered the thrill of the recipe contest.  I've even avoided advertising on my blog, so as not to inadvertently become a (badly) paid food writer and lose my amateur status.

This year, though, I've become less interested in creating the perfect recipe to showcase someone else's product, and started to work a little more earnestly toward chasing my own dream:  I want to write the food allergy cookbook I wish I had been given when my son was diagnosed.  When a parent gets the terrible news that food is no longer safe, and kitchen habits and family traditions must be upended, I want to have an answer to hand to them, to say, it's OK.  You really can do this, meals don't have to be hard, and they can taste really, really good.

I've thought a great deal about format and what types of recipes to include, not to mention whether (and how) to bridge the great gluten-free divide, between most food allergies and celiac disease.  I finally concluded I want to write a cookbook that has both standard (i.e. wheat based) and gluten free versions of the recipes.

I haven't written a proposal or approached a publisher, but I've started writing and testing recipes.  So I've been withholding the best ones from the blog.  I feel horribly guilty about it, too.

So I'm treating this month as a chance to catch up on the posting that's been backlogged by real life and recipe stinginess.  There's a couple of product and book reviews, plus half finished posts clogging my Blogger account.  I'll do my very best to make all of it worth your time.

Despite my slacker tendencies, I'm happy to announce that I've been nominated for the Circle of Moms list of Top 25 Food Allergy Mom Blogs.  If you are so inclined, you may vote for me once daily through November (or #NHBPM) 16th by simply clicking here.  Even if you're not, please check out the full list of food allergy blogs.  Some of my old favorites are there, as well as some great new blogs to discover.  It's definitely time to update my blogroll!

Finally, I will be at the Tampa FAAN Walk for Food Allergy on November 12 as the honorary chair again this year.  I'd be thrilled if you'd like to join my team, start your own or make a donation.  Hope to see you there!


This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days.