I seriously love Halloween, but I want it to be all treats (no tricks) for my youngest with peanut, dairy & egg allergies. If you’re also managing kid food allergies, here are some ideas for you. The best things we did was getting a Halloween treasure box and Halloween rubber ducks from Oriental Trading Company….
It’s Bananas: Managing Contamination while Baking
When you manage food allergies as the CCO of the household (Chief Cooking Officer), cross contamination is a real risk. Did you double-dip the measuring spoon in an allergen previously? Are there traces left from the last thing you baked, on your bakeware? The list goes on and on. Now that my children have passed…
Sticker time: Kitchen organizing for toddler allergy management
If you have a hungry toddler with food allergies, you know managing allergens in the kitchen is important. Here’s how we tackled it: Stickers! Etsy is so helpful in this regard. Safe and Not Safe stickers can be applied to food products themselves or to containers where you put snacks in easy reach. My little…
Allergy testing is no fun
My father, now in his upper 60s, remembers scratch testing from when he was a kid in the 1950s. He was allergic to most environmental and many food allergies, some of which he later outgrew. Some he didn’t – bee venom – and he still has an Epi pen. The tests really haven’t changed much…
Allergen testing kits
This is interesting: a gluten allergic woman has invented a portable allergen testing kit that calculates the presence of an allergen in food down to 20 ppm, the standard for cross contamination labeling. She’s working on a peanut and dairy version. Woo hoo!
Labor Day weekend: Baking catch up
Time to get ready for the school year, which officially kicks off for my oldest on Tuesday. So far: Cookie bars, chocolate donuts and a first for me: Apple cinnamon donuts. The cookie bars are a family favs, as are the chocolate donuts for my little one, who can’t eat at Dunkin Donuts. Will…
Allergic family summer fun: Prescriptions and being prepared
This is the time of year when I renew the kids’ epinephrine auto injectors and line up new allergy action plans for camps and the next school year. In my quest to get everything lined up I realized this was the perfect topic for this blog. I started recently using the CVS Caremark app…
Allergists’ perspective on bread contamination risks
Over the last few weeks, as I’ve made sandwiches for my kids for school almost every day, I realized I needed to consult my allergist. I’ve found out more than I expected about cross contamination risks and the limits of our current FDA Food Allergy Labeling guidelines. See the manufacturer conversations I’ve had (see Part 1: Bimbo…
Part 2: Finding Sesame-free bread: A consumer hotline odyssey
Since my last installment in this series, we’ve gone through several loaves of bread and I haven’t had a chance to update the blog. Here’s what I can report. 1.) Finding bread that is manufactured in a way that minimizes potential cross contamination with Sesame is really hard! 2.) Allergen labeling between brands really stinks. For…
Kneading up something new
Ever since my post on the problem with bread manufacturing, I’ve bought a few more loaves from different manufacturing plants and I tested the waters making my own. I am happy to report that making allergen free bread by hand is not particularly difficult, it’s just time consuming. I made a Whole Wheat bread that…
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