Hi! Welcome to my blog for allergen friendly recipes!
Let me start off my saying that my son has milk, nut, and egg allergies so those will be the only allergens that I avoid. If you or your child is allergic to shellfish, gluten, soy or anything else, my recipes might not work for you.
I will also be posting foods that I have found are safe (in my area, it will always depend on where you live and what production factories that your foods come from, so always, ALWAYS, remember to check labels), allergen friendly companies that you can contact for coupons, and restaurants that I have found to be safe.
However, please, please, please remember, everything is always based off of your location, companies have different factories that ship to different areas, some of which may be cross contaminated, and some that may not be. The same goes for restaurants, one location may use dairy in their chicken or fries while the same restaurant in a different area may not. Always be sure to read the labels and speak with staff at the location in which you will be dining. If you are still unsure about a product, contact the company.
Now, my story. In early 2014, we were snowed in and my son, 14 months old at the time, was getting a bit frustrated with being kept inside all winter. I had fed him everything except fish before this day (dairy including milk and cheese, peanuts/peanut butter, baked goods with egg, scrambled eggs, etc). I decided to give him some apples with peanut butter and chocolate milk as a sweet treat. He ate a bit of the apples and peanut butter and drank a few sips of the milk and shortly after his bottom lip started to swell a bit. We quickly called a nurses hotline and they told us to give him some Benadryl since his breathing was not being affected. We immediately gave the antihistamine to him and the swelling went down. He had a pretty nasty rash on his body after that so we took him to the doctor and they gave us topical and oral steroids to help flush his system and get rid of the rash. After that, we decided to avoid peanuts, thinking it was the only possible allergen, which was extremely difficult because one of his favorite snacks was peanut butter trail mix.
A few weeks after this, we went out to eat. I got macaroni and cheese, bread and a soda. My husband got clam chowder, bread, a cookie and soda. We shared all of our food with him not thinking anything of it. He started to get fussy and antsy like he does when he’s been sitting too long. We finished up our meal and went to the car to head home. I buckled him in his car seat, shut his door, walked around the car to the passenger seat and when I sat down in my seat, he let out a terrible scream so I quickly turned around to see why. His lips were 3-4 times their normal size and he was scratching at them terribly so we rushed him to the ER. They gave him medication and it started to calm down but we had to stay in the hospital overnight to make sure there were no respiratory problems.
After telling several people the story. No one knew what he was allergic to, milk or peanuts so we just continued to keep peanuts out of his diet, thinking there may have been some in the cookie. After a week or so his rash from the reaction was still horrible so we bumped up our appointment at the allergy specialist. After running skin tests we were able to determine that not only was peanut a culprit , so were dairy, eggs. Because of the peanut allergy, we were also advised to avoid all tree nuts.
We had blood work done and the results stated that he was allergic to all parts of the egg, so he could not even have cooked egg, he was allergic to all parts of milk so no substituting for goats milk or any other animal milk, and because he was allergic to peanuts, we were also advised to stay away from almond milk.
Now he is 2 1/2 months and it’s been a bit of a struggle. There are milk and eggs in things you would never imagine. So, I’ve learned to get a bit creative with meals and recipes and now I will share them so maybe I can help out another distressed parent of a child with these allergies!