attn woeisme: finally read your dairy free post

[ChefChris]

Hi,

I finally read your post looking to talk more about allergy issues. I am happy to discuss as I am an unfortunate "expert" My 3 1/2 year old still has not grown out of the dairy allergy as far as I can tell. She can tolerate the veggie slices with caesin in them (no hives) but if I give her regular dairy yogurt, she gets hives within minutes. She also can eat goldfish crackers that have cheese in them, go figure! So I will just continue to go slow. She is very picky and has no interest in eating what we eat so it's really just a way of life for us for her to eat differently. As far as peanuts that scares me the most particularly with her in preschool. I make her almond butter sandwiches which she seems to like better than soynut butter. I learned a lot from the food allergy network and my allergist. As an ironic aside my other daughter is allergic to soy, she throws up if she gets any ... and I have discovered that soy protein is added to a lot of food!

Hope I can help you
Chris

[This message has been edited by ChefChris (edited 02-05-2001).]

[cookingmonkey]

Unfortunatley I suffer from the same allergies. I switched to soy when I would get sick from milk only to be sick from soy as well. Rice milk in my opinion is not the greatest of things but I have tried something called Almmond Breeze and it really isn't bad. I can also tolerate cheese in small doses. I am in my mid 20's and am now discovering a large number of things I am allergic to...dairy, eggs, soy, citrus, bell peppers,...the list goes on. If you find any interesting sites that deal with food allergies please share. I am always looking for things the read and learn about them.

[woeisme]

I can't believe I searched for food allergy and found your reply. It has been literally years since I looked under the CLBB for food allergy. Since then I have learned alot about the subject through my two sons who both have food allergies. For reference, my first son (3.5years old) is allergic to eggs, cows milk, peanuts, garbanzo beans, lentils, and possibly clams. My second son (16months) is allergic to cows milk, soy, strawberries, peanuts, peas, but has never been exposed to eggs or shellfish. Although the following seems like a diatribe on the subject, I am always looking for more information.

1) Resources : Food allergy network puts out some recipe books, there is one book in paperback that is the same as their two volumes and less expensive. Unfortunately, most are desserts. Desserts were not as important when my child's diet was completely under my control, now that he's aware of birthday parties, etc, dessert options are more important.
Allrecipes.com has a searchable database for eggless. I have tried many of their desserts and they are good.
What's to eat? a book, I have not tried most recipes but the pancake one is a repeater
EnerG egg replace is pretty good for most baked goods and they have recipes on the box and others that you can purchase through them.
Various vegan cookbooks and web sites might have suitable desserts and tofu substitutes.
Mostly I have just been collecting recipes over the last 3 years.
3) Substitutions. I found that soy milk is a pretty good substitute for milk and one can add vinegar or lemon juice in it in proportion to create "buttermilk." However, my second son is allergic to soy and I have switched to rice milk which is not so good. My pancakes come out flatter. There is an enzyme in it that digests the starches which I think is the reason one can't make puddings with rice milk, and it probably affects its texture. I have not used almond milk because of my son's severe nut allergies that my allergist has advised me to avoid all nuts. There is also the danger of cross contamination, even though he tested neg to almond.
There has not been an adequate casein free substitute for cheese however. My son reacted to the ones with Casein and also to goat cheese, I was told they could cross react. I think that Tofu mixed with a little olive oil and spices does pretty well for ricotta in lasagna. I've also tried some weird recipes for cheese substitutes in vegan cookbooks (like the Uncheese cookbook) with nutritional yeast flakes but they just don't taste very good. Even I wouldn't eat it.
In baking breads, 1/4 c water can be substituted for one egg but at the expense of the moistness that stays with the bread a day later, and some flavor.
4) Some Convenience foods:
Trader Joes Soy Nut butter -
Chicken Dinos (in Costco)
Chicken Taquitos (in Costco)with guacamole
Beef hotdogs -sometimes wrapped in low fat pillsbury crescent roll dough.
orowheat whole wheat, cracked wheat or wheatberry bread
trader joes cat cookies, teddy grahams (honey and cinnamon only),other graham crackers
cereals (plain cheerios, frosted shredded miniwheats, life cereal)
Pillsbury vanilla and chocolate frosting.
Some pop tarts.
Vege booties, pretzels, fritos, tortilla chips, plain potato chips
There's probably alot more I don't know about.

5) Restaurants. We pretty much eat at home. At Mc Donald's there's plain burgers, fries, nuggets (have whey but never seemed to be a problem). Spaghetti factory has plain spaghetti with marinara or meat sauce. Chevy's will serve a chicken burrito with no cheese or sour cream. Chinese/Thai are a problem for possible nut contamination. When in doubt, I bring my own. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. We've had too many accidents just asking the chef. People don't think butter is dairy- "oh yeah," for example.

5) Psychosocial - my older child has developed an awareness of his allergies and recalls the bad feelings he's had during accidents and is very careful to ask adults if he is allergic to any of what has been offered to him, especially on foods he's never had. He has his own set of snacks in preschool and it does not seem to bother him. We have been told to avoid the optional lunch hour because of the prevalence of peanut butter. Unfortunately he's a picky eater and I used to get so frustrated cooking that "special" food for him only to have him reject it as only a toddler would. But now I cook things that I would eat and so things pretty much get finished. Other than some icecream I keep for DH and myself, our whole family has switched to eating their diet. It's just easier than fixing something different for each person and easier than explaining to the kids why mommy and daddy can have it, but they can't. Over time family and friends have become more educated which has helped tremendously.

I know that this is a really lengthy email, but if you are like me, finding what to feed your kid has become a part-time job. I just had to write knowing that there's others out there who share this burden which slowly has been whittled down to an inconvenience. I only regret that it took me a while to reply. I hope this has been helpful to some people and I welcome any further discussion/suggestions on this topic.

[Kayla]

Hiya :)

Wow, several years until just now, eh? It's wonderful to read that you've gotten a handle more or less on your childrens food allergies.

What's more, you've provided everyone with such wonderful advice, and I'm sure there are several people on these boards who deal with similar issues who will also appreciate knowing this.

Best wishes,
Kayla

[allergycook]

Woeisme, have you tried the chreese brand cheeses? It's not something I have tried personally, but I am apart of the FAST (food allergy survivers together) mailing list and a while back people were talking about it. The website is mainly for emotional support, and recipes. Here is a link to the site http://www.fastonline.org

Another good place to look for recipes (depending on your allergies) are the pagan food sites. They do use eggs but nothing that has to be processed in anyway at all. It's an interesting theory behind why they eat what they do and some are into it enough that they don't even cook their meat--after all our cavemen ancestors didn't cook theirs.

Are you putting your son in pre-school? Mike is 3 and we've been thinking about it, but I just can't bare to send him away under the care of someone else who might think food allergies make you sneeze. Or so I was informed by an RN who was working the ER. *sigh* I wish I would have asked if his epi-pen would help with the sneezing too :rolleyes:

~Heather