About Me

We discovered that our daughter had food allergies when she was 3 months old.  She broke out into hives after touching sour cream while sitting in my husband's lap at a restaurant.  She had always been a colicky baby with extensive eczema who would cry for hours and scratch herself until she bled.  We were referred to a dermatologist who launched into a lecture about how common eczema was and recommended moisturizers and steroids.  When asked about food allergies, he replied that life was too short to worry about things like that. 

 

Fortunately, we were also referred to an allergist who obtained blood tests which revealed that she was allergic to dairy, egg, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, seafood and shellfish.  Over the years, we discovered that she is also allergic to mustard and sesame.  Her typical reaction is rapid development of nausea, vomiting, whole-body hives, and difficulty breathing.  We are lucky that she is not asthmatic so we have never had to use her epinephrine injector, although we have come close on several occasions.  While she was in high school we realized that corn, which she had been eating since she started solid foods, was the cause of her life-long nasal congestion.  After stopping corn, her symptoms resolved and she was able to finally breathe and sleep better.  The only allergies to which she has outgrown are soy and baked eggs.  A couple of small victories perhaps, but ones we will gladly take.

 

As parents, we are all optimists.  We have to be in order to bring a new life into this world.  So after three years of dealing with our daughter’s allergies, my husband and I decided that we should move on to round two.  Our son was born allergic to the entire world.  If we breathed on him, he would turn red and puffy.  By the time he was old enough to get blood tests, we discovered that he had the same allergies as our daughter, as well as allergies to beef and rice.  It was at this time we decided that expanding the human population was no longer our calling in life.  Strangely, despite his rocky start to life, our son has actually outgrown more allergies than our daughter.  He is no longer allergic to beef, rice and soy.  He is also able to eat seafood and has tested negative to peanut and tree nut allergies, although we have not been courageous enough to try them yet, despite the fact that he is now over 21 years old.

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I look back at my two decades living with extensive food allergies and am amazed at how far our family has come.  I am blessed to have two beautiful and amazing grown young adults who reward me with every breath they take.  But there are also days that I wonder how we got here.  Being a parent and a full-time professional trying to build a career are challenges enough.  Raising children with food allergies was an unexpected added stress in life. Some days, it felt like we were the only ones running a marathon while carrying a 60 pound anvil on our backs.  Fortunately my husband has been a full partner in helping raise and care for our children.

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With our children now out of the house, I decided to write a cookbook and then start this website, to provide recipes to anyone dealing with food allergies. I hope in some small way this helps ease the burden a little…so that you are carrying only a 40 pound anvil perhaps.  Living with multiple food allergies is a huge challenge, without a doubt.  But like many challenges that are overcome, it has made our family bonds stronger and has made our children more resilient.  I hope and expect that your family will rise to the challenge as well.