Eating / Allergy Update

I keep forgetting that I haven't posted an eating/allergy update at all since I broke the news of Harper's allergies and Ash's giving up gluten a few months ago.

Turns out Harper is highly allergic to nuts (specifically almonds, cashews and peanuts) and moderately allergic to eggs.  It's more likely he'll grow out of the egg allergy than the nut ones.  But, we'll see.  It will be interesting to see if and when we reintroduce things what his actual reactions are.  You know, when he can tell us more than "itchy" and "yucky" and throw a plate across the room.

We've been doing well so far.  LOTS of eating at home, which is good for us and our bank account.  And I'm glad that me staying home for now means I'm totally in control of his diet for the most part.  The hardest thing is going to a party/potluck/eating at someone else's house, to be honest.  Ash can usually deal by pre-eating or just not eating, but other times I take food for Harper just in case.  We were at a breakfast potluck the other day and Ash & Harper shared some fruit while Helena and I ate muffins and egg casserole.  Harper had a hard time understanding why he couldn't share the chocolate chip muffin (there were tears).  Poor guy! 

Christmas meal planning with our entire family was fun....we tried some new things and there were several 'conference calls' about menu planning and who couldn't eat what and what the hell is gluten exactly anyway?!?

The hardest meal is breakfast -- no eggs in anything for breakfast is hard.  So oftentimes I'll make eggs/toast/sausage and Harper will just have the sausage and toast and Ash will have his GF bread.  Another example is the other night I made chicken fingers using crushed up tortilla chips as the 'breading' (with eggs as the 'sticky stuff').  So me, Helena, and Ash ate the tortilla chicken fingers, while I cooked Harper a plain piece of chicken without the eggy stuff.  Kind of a pain, but such is life.  We all rarely eat the exact same version of things at meals where we're all together. 

It's also hard to bake without gluten or eggs.  There are good substitutes for eggs and gluten, but when you eliminate both it sometimes gets a little hairy -- things tend to just not stick together as well.  Oftentimes substitutes for gluten contain nuts as well.  This has resulted in me pretty much not baking for the most part.  Or, I'll just bake something for the kids and I.  I've had some success with a banana bread recipe that was egg/gluten/nut free.  And I also found an awesome sugar cookie recipe so Harper can decorate cookies for holidays (a popular afternoon activity for us around here).

So, there you have it, the food allergy update.  I'm still feeling my way through it and trying new things and looking up new resources.  Thank goodness there are readily available substitutes nowadays.  I can't imagine having all of these allergy issues 50 years ago!  And I'll try to be better about posting recipes I've been trying along the way. :)

-Emily :)