This week is Food Allergy Awareness week, and this month is Celiac Disease Awareness month. To honor both of these, we are participating on the bi-weekly Food Allergy carnival and talking about summer camp despite food restrictions

Our family has Celiac Disease, an intolerance to dairy, and LG has a severe berry allergy. We bring our own food to birthday parties, parks, and playdates, but I never wanted the dietary restrictions to restrict the girls’ access to activities. Occasionally an event is so food-centered that we can’t participate, but as food restrictions become more well-known, we can go to more and more events without risking a reaction.

Some days, it feels like our food allergies are a complete non-issue. Kids play here or in the neighborhood and they eat popcorn, we go to the park and have some chips, we hang out at the beach with some trail mix, etcetera. Some days it is an issue - my girls take some treats when they go over to a friend’s house, or they can’t stay for dinner with a friend, or there’s an activity that looks great except that it includes cooking with flour or using play-doh, or when a friend’s been eating a sandwich then puts their hand in your chips, which means you can’t eat the chips any more. Those are the hard days, and the days that keep me on my toes, keep me from becoming complacent.

Last year BG and MG went to camp for 2 weeks (check out BG in the above photo from the camp brochure!). It’s a day camp, and they had a week off at home to rest in between the two camp sessions. Thanks to their grandparents, they were able to go to a wonderful camp on an island, taking a boat to and from the island each day. To make it even more special, it’s a camp I attended for 10 years. Is it tricky to attend camp when you can’t eat a regular sandwich and need to have kids wash up after they eat a sandwich? Yes, but it’s totally worth it. Their heads are filled with memories from those weeks, and we are happy to do the prep work so they can attend.

My mother talked to the camp and counselors about the girls’ dietary needs, and so did I. We discussed lunch and snack times, papier maché (no flour/water paste), play-doh, and the need for hand-washing. While I am saddened by the number of children with peanut allergies, their existence has really helped raise awareness about food allergies and restrictions. Everyone at the camp was comfortable with the girls dietary needs and happy to help out. This was key for me - if you find what looks like a great camp, but they seem clueless about food allergies, back away! You don’t want to risk your child’s health for summer camp - find another camp.

This year they’re attending camp for 2 consecutive weeks and it will also include a sleep-over on the island. We will continue to work in advance to help keep camp safe for the girls, and I’m sure the counselors will continue to be as helpful this summer as they were last summer! First, we asked that our girls wash hands before they eat, and have their friends wash hands after they eat. This reduces the chances of cross-contamination, and is generally a healthy idea anyhow. Food sharing is a no-no at most camps now, but a reminder about that printed on lunch bags is a great idea, too.

In advance we bought a variety of favorite snacks, and plenty of snack-size and sandwich size ziplocs. This is much more economical than buying everything in single size bags, and it gives you a greater range of snacks - not everything is sold in little bags! We also froze bottles of water so they would keep the food cold and give the girls cold water later in the day. We don’t usually do a lot of juice, so it was special to have juice boxes or pouches for their lunch!

One trick for us was to include a fair amount of protein, as camp requires a lot of energy, and low amounts of protein tend to make my kids grumpy! Peanuts and nuts are safe for us, and great for a protein kick (we all love Larabar Bars Variety Pack and KIND Bar Almond & Apricot), but they aren’t allowed in most schools or camps. Instead, we added meat sticks (such as Jack Links Super Size Beef Sticks), beef jerky (such as World Kitchens Brown Sugar Beef Jerky), and nut-free trail mix (such as Enjoy Life Trail Mix Not Nuts! Beach Bash). If you’re looking to stock up, you can get great prices on allergy-safe and gluten-free treats at Amazon.

LG has an epi-pen and is the one with the severe berry allergy. She’s still too young for the day camp on the island, and I’m grateful. I wouldn’t be comfortable with having her on an island with a potentially anaphylactic allergy. We can hope she outgrows it in the next two years! I’m still working out my comfort level with having her go on field trips with people who aren’t me, her dad, or her grandparents.

What accommodations have your kids needed for camp? Check back tomorrow for a link to the Food Allergy Carnival!

Welcome to Birthday Week! Wherein we celebrate Rachel for the whole week. Is it too much? Well, it’s my blog, so I guess I can talk about myself occasionally. I’m not a person who will tell you offhand “yeah, it was my birthday a week ago…” Nope. I like my birthday. I’m Not Happy it’s being eclipsed by Easter this year, though. Feh.

These are my last days of being 36, so each day will come with a list of 6 things having to do with me. Six days, 6 items per day = 36. And then on 3/22 I turn 37, and there is much rejoicing that my family tends to be long-lived, and so I’m still about 10 years from middle-aged. Woot! Many thanks to my Nanas!

Todays 6 things are 6 things I did for myself today:

1. Bought artichokes, my favorite vegetable of all time. Swoon

2. Bought daffodils to brighten the house. Forsythia is my favorite spring flower, but they don’t have that in the flower section of the grocery store.
3. Slept in until 9:30, then when BG offered to make breakfast, accepted her offer.
4. Chatted with a friend on the phone, just for the heck of it
5. Took the laptop away from my darling children, just to browse around looking for birthday presents.
6. Read a novel by an author I love, even though it meant reading a gasp! Harlequin Romance. It was good, too!

I took the very-helpful BG with me to the grocery store, which made everything much easier. While we were there, I bought 2 packages of cherry tomatoes so I could try making another Cherry Tomato Crisp this week. It worked pretty well last time, though the bread crumbs didn’t really brown. This was the first way my girls liked tomatoes (other than in a sauce), so we need to repeat it! We might want to actually follow the recipe this time, too. heh.

Happy Ides of March, everyone! In honor of Julius Caesar, let us eat well, and with an Italian-inspired meal! I remember making chicken with artichoke hearts in college, before I became a vegetarian. However, in the past 15 years a lot has changed and I don’t have all of my recipes from that time in my life!

This recipe was inspired by the memory of those meals eaten with friends in one of the townhouses on the Skidmore College campus. It was delicious then, and it is delicious in its current incarnation as well! Still easy, quick, and relatively inexpensive as well.

Check out the recipe

This year, Easter arrives the day after my birthday. I don’t remember it ever being this early, it is usually closer to my brother’s birthday (2 weeks after mine). I can’t quite believe that I have to prepare for Easter now, when it’s only just starting to thaw here. We could easily get snow again! gah.  I don’t feel like it’s time to celebrate spring yet.

With food allergies, food intolerances, and Celiac disease, our trick to keeping a holiday safe and fun is to plan well in advance. We buy Choclat.com chocolate treats, which are Kosher pareve and dairy, gluten, nut, and egg free; they also have Passover treats which are free of corn and soy as well. However, because we can’t just pick up a chocolate rabbit at the drug store, I have to order now, long before most parents have to worry about filling the Easter basket.  Because we are OK with corn, I can cheat a bit, I can fill in the basket with some Peeps (free of the top , some Pez (gfcf, gluten & dairy free at minimum), and the candy amounts are all set.

We tend to add stuffed animals and other treats to Easter baskets, too. We love the fabulous felt chocolate rabbits found by Cool Mom Picks! That’s a great gift for kids who can’t have a “regular” chocolate rabbit! Add some bubbles and a coloring book & crayons, and you’re all set, a mixture of good treats and good fun.

Now it’s time to deal with the visiting relatives. We go to the homes of grandparents, that way we can leave if needed: it’s harder to leave your own house! We visit one set of grandparents at a different time than they serve food, they know they don’t “get” food restrictions, so we avoid eating with them. With the other set of grandparents, we discuss food in advance, and the food served is safe for everyone. If you are eating with anyone other than your immediate family, it’s always good to have a food plan well in advance of the event!  We learned our lesson when our girls got sick because breadcrumbs dropped into their gf food as rolls and other gluten foods were passed over their plates; the only food anywhere near the girls is safe for them.

The Easter Bunny at the girls’ Nani and Vóvó’s house leaves puzzle pieces that form a map, which brings each girl to a “treasure”, in addition to the regular Easter basket with a few candies, toys, and artichokes.  Mmmm…  what Easter dinner is complete without artichokes? If you are dairy-free, Earth Balance and Soy Garden margarines taste like butter.  If you are dairy and soy free, you might be able to find Fleishmann’s Light tubs, but otherwise I’d suggest thinking outside the box for dipping - flax oil with some seasonings is very yummy, plus there are vinaigrettes and other non-butter dips.

Another “think in advance” tip is about the Easter Ham.  Most hams that come with a sauce have gluten (at minimum) in the sauce packet, so you’ll want to find a good recipe for making your own glaze.  Don’t forget to find some other wonderful, fabulous, family-tested recipes for side-dishes and dessert.  My mother always makes a bunny cake, and now it’s been adapted to be gluten, dairy, and berry-free!  The Wacky Cake recipe is easy and practically ingredient-free.

What have I forgotten?  What other plan-ahead tips do you have for holidays?

3 sisters and a skillet, working together to make Great Garlic Calamari Pasta, a meal that might have beaten dinner-speed records.

For the Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Recipe Rally - Easy Lunches

What do you eat for lunch when you’re avoiding most of the top 8 allergens? (For newcomers, our family has Celiac disease (which means no wheat, rye, oats, barley), plus we have a dairy intolerance and severe berry allergy. We spend a lot of time around kids with other allergies, so we are very careful about food allergies.)

Our quickest lunches are sliced meat or a hot dog rolled in a corn tortilla (microwave the tortillas for a few seconds to make them soft). This is a frequent staple, so we buy the better quality (fewer additives) hot dogs and ham. We love to make peanut butter & jelly (or pb & fluff) sandwiches on corn tortillas when we aren’t around friends with nut allergies.

My favorite lunches involve shrimp or crab, when we aren’t around kids with shellfish allergies. I love adding good-quality crab meat to the chick pea and avacado salad or make the Crab and Avacado pasta salad. My darling daughters prefer sandwiches, though. The girls want their shrimp and crab in sushi, their absolute favorite easy (and expensive) lunch!

On weekends, we make brunch, and one of our staples is Faux Frittadas, a combination of meat, potato, vegetables, and eggs. It’s versatile, easy, and yummy even for folks (like me) who dislike eggs. It’s a lot like a quiche without a crust. Yum!

Another eggy quick lunch is Pasta Carbonara, which we have transformed into a dairy-free, allergy-friendly meal. This makes a great brunch, too. Just serve a fruit salad next to it (no berries!), and you’re all set.
The older girls will also make eggs for lunch - fried, scrambled, or “cheese” eggs, which they make with the Tofutti soy cheese.

I joined Foodie Mama today, and have posted two articles - you can check my articles out via my GF Gaggle profile. You may, of course, leave ratings for the articles and recipes…

Today, I posted an article about raising allergy-friendly kids, and the incredibly easy kids-cooking Revolutionary Pumpkin Custard. There are some other great recipes including Vegan Chocolate Cake, which we make gluten-free and vegan, calling it Wacky Cake. I’m glad to see there are other allergy-friendly recipes there!

If you were going to read articles on healthy and allergy-friendly living, what kind of articles would you like to see?

I recently clicked over to a blog I had never read before, Believer in Balance. This mom has just discovered that her daughter has a peanut allergy. I remember feeling overwhelmed at first, so if you live with food allergies, please go offer her some support and tips!  Check out the other great information at the Food Allergy Carnival!

When you first discover a food allergy/Celiac disease, it is so hard to cope with the realization that your child is the 1 in a 1:100 possibility.

We have several of those 1:100 condition here, and each diagnosis took a lot of emotional and practical adjustment. Your heart breaks a bit for the things your child can’t do, and while we all learn to cope, it’s still hard. I can adapt almost any food so my kids can eat it, but that doesn’t always make life easier. There’s a lot of prep work that goes into living with kids who have food allergies, which can turn a simple birthday party into a challenge. Additionally, there’s so much emotion tied to food, visits with grandparents and other relatives can be difficult to navigate.

We’ve been living with food restrictions for about 9 years now. For folks who are new to food allergies, I’d suggest visiting my recipes (of course), which are all allergy friendly. I’d also suggest visiting the The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, there are wonderful books and helpful cards to carry around for checking ingredients grocery shopping. (Their focus is on the top 8 allergens, so not as great a resource for unusual allergies) For personal support, tips, tricks, resources and stories, the folks at Kids With Food Allergies are incredibly helpful and empathetic, and they have some great recipes. You might also want to download this guide to anaphylaxis, as well - keep yourself informed! If you are receiving a Celiac Disease diagnosis, the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness has a lot of information.

We have found two books especially helpful for our family and friends, in addition to the FAAN books.

• Bagels, Buddy, and Me, a wonderful book about Celiac Disease which we reviewed here.
• The Peanut-free Cafe, a great story about peanut allergy which we reviewed here.

If I could give just a few tips to a parent of a child newly diagnosed with a food allergy/intolerance/celiac disease/etc it would be:

• Don’t be shy. Be the parent who asks others to accommodate your child. They may be mildly inconvenienced for a few hours out of their day/week/year, but it’s important for your child. I’ve tried “compromises”, and they either blew up in my face, or my kids got sick. Neither one was pretty. Stick to your guns - keep your kid safe.
• Read every label. And then read it again. Perhaps one last time? Too often product ingredients change (one of the girls’ favorite potato chips now have dairy) or a store’s supplier has changed (the roasted chickens at our store are from a new company which adds dairy) or you might miss a word (when reading “cocoa butter, butter”; I’ve missed the second “butter”).
• Climb every mountain! Or, call every company. The food allergy labeling laws have made life a bit easier, but I’m still skittish about “natural flavors”, unless I know the company’s stance on labeling or if I have called the company for that item.
• Better safe than sorry. If a food’s ingredients are unclear, it’s best to pass up the treat. My kids might miss out on several treats that are labeled “naturally flavored”, but there are plenty of other treats around! They know if they can’t have something, they’ll get something great later.

(At the top left, you can see my girls eating a store-bought pizza! Amy’s Kitchen is now making a larger line of gluten-free and dairy-free products, which is wonderful. Many of their products are free of other allergens as well. More companies are making allergy-friendly foods, which is a good thing for everyone! It’s great for relatives to be able to buy something to have at the house for visiting kiddos with allergies.)

Today’s Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Photo Friday topic is Orange. In this photo we see MG eating her orange dessert with an orange spoon. MG made the dessert on her own, adapted from a recipe in her cookbook Felicity’s Cooking Studio (American Girls Collection).

Here’s a link to MG’s pumpkin custard recipe, it was delicious. MG is much more photogenic than her custard, though!

This recipe was originally posted here on our recipe site
Each week I make up a menu, and then a grocery list from it, and then cook from it, crossing things off as they are made. This works out great, unless I manage to lose the menu after shopping. I couldn’t remember what I had planned to cook, but the potatoes and sausage were calling to me, and this is what we ended up with. Very yummy, and reasonably easy. It took a little more than 30 minutes, but still qualifies as quick eats to me. I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it, though - that’ll have to wait until next time!

Remember, we eat gluten-free and allergy-safe, so you may want to adapt it a bit if you don’t have dietary restrictions.

Ingredients:

• 1 to 1 1/2 lbs uncooked sausage
• 4 medium size white potatoes
• 5 oz frozen chopped spinach (1/3 of a 16 oz bag - the blocks are impossible to work with, splurge on the bags!)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• splash cooking oil
• 1 batch dairy-free White Sauce - (if you don’t need to be dairy & gluten-free, any “cream of” soup should work fine here)
• a few shakes Tony Chacheres Cajun seasoning

Method:
Preheat oven to 400.

In a medium-large skillet, heat oil to medium heat. Add onions. Cut sausage into about 1/2″ thick rounds, and add to the onions. Stir, and continue cooking until sausage is browned on all sides.

While the sausage and onions are cooking, make the White Sauce. (Or, find your can of soup and a can opener!)

Poke the potatoes a couple times with a fork, and then put them in the microwave for 4 minutes. This will give them a head start on cooking so that they need less time in the oven to cook through.

Cut the potatoes into chunks, and add to a 9×13 pan. Add sausages and onion. Mix together gently, and add in the frozen spinach. Pour white sauce/soup over everything, and gently mix until everything is coated in sauce and the food is well distributed in the pan.

Sprinkle a little Tony Chacheres Cajun seasoning over the top.

Bake for 20 minutes in the oven and put some veggies in to roast at the same time.

Yum! There weren’t many leftovers here for my husband’s lunch!

Check out more Potato Casserole Recipes over at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas!