Rare recipe finds!

If you're a food allergy mama (or daddy, I suppose), then you know how rare it is to run across a recipe that you can use straight up without modifications. Especially if you're egg and dairy free and are looking at baking recipes!! Plus, fall/winter is "time of the nuts" it seems. Ugh. Honestly, I impulsively (and stupidly) bought the holiday recipe issue of one of the popular woman's magazines and a third of the recipes contained nuts (yes, I counted!).

Anyway. That said, I found this GREAT biscuit recipe in last month's Wondertime magazine. No modifications necessary if you have a vegan margarine in your "safe" list. They are totally delicious. And easy. I've made them three times this month -- once with butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes, because that was what I needed to use up. G and Hubby were both big fans too, which isn't an easy feat.

Another great, accidental find was this muffin recipe from Mothering Magazine about a year ago. It just happened to be on the front page of their website and I couldn't believe it was vegan. Yummy and healthy. What a joy to not have to find the best egg/dairy substitutions!

Book review

I am currently in love with The Joy of Vegan Baking. In love, I tell you.

I like to bake and I have had pretty good success with baking since we realized that G is fine with wheat/gluten. The main restriction is lack of egg, as it tends to be easy to work around dairy with butter and milk substitutes.

This book, however, has really improved my already decent egg/dairy-free baking. From the allergy perspective there are some definite cons: it relies heavily on wheat andsoy products (tofu, soy yogurt), plus there are plenty of recipes with nuts and seeds, of course. In our case, the soy and wheat aren't a problem, so we're basically good to go. I skip the nut/seed heavy recipes, or just omit them if they aren't a big part of the recipe. Also, you need to have a safe margarine in your repetoire (FUM*, Nucoa or Earth Balance).

The pumpkin pie and sugar cookies are great. I even think they are better than their eggy and dairy laden counterparts, actually -- but perhaps my palette is skewed nowadays. The German Apple Cake is also a huge hit in our house. It's quick, easy and relatively healthy...especially given how freakin' delicious it is.

*Fleishman's unsalted margarine (salted Fleishmans and most other brands have whey).

Happy (let's hope?!) Halloween.

This is our first Halloween with food allergies (at six months we were blissfully unaware and last year we were living in France, where they don't do trick-or-treating).

I'm lucky to have a child that doesn't like to eat much and he'll be more than happy (I think?) to let the Switch Witch (me!) take his candy and swap it out for something else (candy or toy). I like the idea of promoting more allergy friendly candy and I might hang a sign from here on our door tonight when we hand out our Skittles. It might remind just one parent out there that a lot of candy is toxic to some significant portion of the kidlet population (even if they only think of peanuts...that is a start).

Tip: don't trust any candy without a label. The ER is a nightmare any time of year...much less on Halloween!!

Egg free tip.

I have about 20 egg free tips, mostly for baking.

Today's tip: mini-muffins are your egg-free friend!

I find that about 90% of my egg free baking recipes come out on the crumbly side. In most cases muffins work better than cake. And following that line of reasoning, mini-muffins work better than muffins. Plus...every toddler likes mini-muffins better anyway. More muffin tops, which is everyone's favorite, right?

Eczema tip.

G's allergies really came to a head when he was about seven months old. His skin was suddenly a mess and we were all scratching our heads trying to figure out what could be causing this terrible rash, which was mostly on his face and belly. G was so uncomfortable and itchy and all my hypotheses were wrong. The pediatrician's take: "he's got sensitive skin". She did agree to give me a referral to an allergist after our second trip to her!

Soon thereafter we figured out G's allergies and his skin cleared up a lot, so we don't deal with severe eczema by any means. He does get patches here and there though and I have a few things that seem to help. Tip 'o the day: daily bathing, mostly without any soap. G soaks in the tub for about 20 minutes a night and we only soap him up once a week.

Product review: coconut milk yogurt.

I'm super excited about this new coconut milk yogurt from So Delicious. It looks like G might be tolerating soy, but I'm still glad that they are experimenting with non-dairy, non-soy yogurts. Riceria is the only other attempt I've seen in this genre and my local Whole Foods doesn't carry it any more. For us, the coconut milk yogurt is probably better on two fronts: taste and nutrition.

I tried the mango flavored one and was completely satisfied with the taste. Really good, in my opinion. As for nutrition, I'm wary of eating too much soy and I avoid dairy because of G. If G ends up being able to eat it then I'm thrilled too, as he needs things with a slightly higher fat content. He has lots of sources of protein, but he's reluctant to eat anything with much fat besides avocados.

Current research: Milk study.

We had G's annual allergist appointment today. I brought up recent Mt Sinai milk allergy study, which showed that about two thirds of kids with confirmed dairy allergy could tolerate milk if it was thoroughly baked, as in bread. Furthermore, the kids that regularly ate "baked-in" milk for three months showed improvement in their RAST and skin test results. In other words, it looks like it might desensitize the body to the allergen and leads me to think that it could help kids to outgrow their dairy allergy.

Our allergist didn't seem too keen on the idea of introducing G to baked-in egg. Boo. I was kind of hoping that she was give me the thumbs up. But I do know that this isn't something to be messed around with at home. Kids have died in desensitization experiments, even in hospital settings. And it's true the one third of the kids were not able to tolerate baked-in milk products in this study.

In our case, the allergist said that we will reevaluate in six months when G gets his yearly RAST testing. His numbers went down a bit from age one to age two, so she's slightly hopeful. Given that he gets hives from contact with milk I'm not going to get too excited yet.

Book review.

I love, love, love the recipes in the Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook by Cybele Pascal (no relation to the store). All the recipes are "top-8" free (but not gluten-free), however, it's clear how to substitute back milk, egg and wheat if you don't have allergies to those foods. My copy of the book is currently missing and I've been at a total loss!

Some of the recipes are a bit complicated, as they rely on using fresh "whole" foods in a healthy way, but they are really delicious and worth the small amount of extra work. If you need to feed adults, rather than just children, then this is definitely the book for you. The whole family can really enjoy the meals. Tonight we had Shepard's Pie from WFAC, one of the few dinners that can satisfy me, hubby and our food allergic toddler!

This is my number one all-around food allergy cookbook! Enjoy!