Happy Tealoween!

 

Halloween is pretty low on my list of favorite holidays. The stress of deciding on a costume takes away most of the joy. What you choose says a lot about you, you know? Do you go with a tried and true classic that everyone will know? Do you pick something obscure that you love that nobody else has ever heard of? I mean it'll make you happy but then you'll have to explain it to everybody which ruins the whole deal. It just seems so silly to buy a costume to wear for a few hours and then never wear again. Plus, these days, I don’t just have to worry about what I wear, now I have two kids to outfit. *sigh* Call me when it’s November 1^st.

The only redeeming part of Halloween is the candy. And I’m not talking about the lame fruit candy. I’m talking about the good chocolate stuff. Snickers and Milky Way and Reese’s and KitKat and I’ll even take just a plain Hersey’s milk chocolate bar. The bigger, the better. Creamy, chocolatey goodness.

Now my kid’s allergies have taken away even that.

Let’s look at the "Top 10 Halloween Candies" (in the US… and I say Top10 supposedly) and see what kind of allergens they have:

10. Candy Corn: egg

So disgusting, how did they make the top 10?

9. Tootsie Pops: milk and soy

If I’m going to have anaphylaxis from milk, a tootsie pop is definitely not worth it

8. Snickers: peanut, milk, egg, soy

So many allergens. So delicious.

7. Hersey kisses: milk and soy

The best thing about Hershey Kisses? A serving size is NINE. That’s the serving size I want of all chocolate candy.

6. Sour Patch Kids: NONE!

My kids LOVE these things. I looked everywhere at the grocery store for Halloween packs to give out and couldn’t find them.

5. Hot Tamales: NONE!

No allergens! But, what’s the point? I can’t think of a worse candy experience than getting blasted by cinnamon. At least sour things make your face turn inside out. Hot tamales just sear off some taste buds.

4. Starburst: NONE!

The name “starburst” definitely sets up your expectations for some delicious explosion of flavor. Mostly they are chewy. But I guess you can only do so much without the top 9 allergens.

3. M&Ms: milk and soy (may contain peanuts)

Though you know the best kind of M&Ms definitely contain peanuts.

2. Skittles: NONE!

The fact that a fruit candy beat all of these chocolate candies is a farce. There are so many other things I’d rather taste than the rainbow.

1. Reese’s Cups: peanut, milk, soy  

You knew it was coming. It’s 100% the best and 100% never going to happen in this household.

So, what’s the pattern? All of the delicious chocolate candies have at least milk in them, if not soy and eggs and nuts and peanuts and even wheat. All the crappy fruit candies are ok allergy wise but just bluck you know? (Here's a rundown of more candies, including some completely allergen friendly kinds like sunbutter cups!)

Because of the problems with Halloween for people with food allergies, Kids With Food Allergies is trying to spread the word about #tealoween. They are encouraging people to have treats that aren’t candy (WHAT?! Treats that you can’t eat?!??! That is NONSENSE) and then to paint a pumpkin teal to let other families know it’s a safe house with some treat alternatives. 

Well, we got ours all painted last week and my son and I picked out the only bag of Halloween candy that didn’t have allergens in it (Skittles) from the store, as well as some non food treats (glow bracelets!). Other ideas for non anaphylaxis inducing treats?

• stickers
• bouncy balls
• tiny cars
• crayons
• stamps
• yo-yos
• pencil erasers
• bubbles

So, if you want to attract some poor folks with food allergies in your neighborhood, get some teal paint and buy some non edible treats… worst case scenario nobody wants to come to your house because you only have the crappy candy and bouncy balls. That's ok, it'll save until next year!

Taking a Toddler to the Allergist

 

My toddler just had her first trip back to the allergist in almost a year after rescheduled and rescheduled and rescheduled appointments. This was her first time back as an official toddler- quite a different experience from that last testing she got as a baby. They’ve always had good toys at the allergist office (she came home with a stuffed animal as big as her when she had anaphylaxis), but they really stepped up their game for toddlers.

Right when we got in the room, the nurse got her a talking computer toy, with lights, songs, and plenty of buttons to push. When she left the room, she played Elmo songs on full blast. My kid didn’t know what was happening, was a little over stimulated, but all in all she was feeling great. If the allergy office was trying to get on her good side, they were definitely doing it. I mean, not a lot of fun things happen at the allergist office, so if they want kids to come back, they probably rely on bribes. Let’s take a quick look at what wonders await kids:

• Skin tests: not the worst, but certainly not fun. Scratches on your back and then waiting 15 minutes as your back slowly breaks out in hives. Wow! Sign me up!
• Blood draws: Always a winner. At least I got to hold her in my lap this time instead of strapping her down to the table. No singing of “Old McDonald Had A Farm” is going to get them through that without crying.
• Food challenges: potentially could be fine- get to eat a muffin and yay it’s delicious (though you are still going to be stuck there 2 to 4 to 8 hours). OR could have anaphylaxis and need epinephrine. Wow! Almost dying is fun?!

I’m not sure how much she actually understands now, but I tried to give her warnings about what was going on. For the skin tests, the nurse warned her she was going to feel little pricks. But the actual scratch part was done fairly quickly. The worst was waiting around for the 15 minutes as she kept telling me “Itchy! Itchy!” and trying to scratch her back. I know buddy. I know. I just tried to keep her eye on the prize (getting to watch TV! Without her older brother picking!)

Then because she’s had a false negative on the skin tests, we had to scoot over to the blood draw lab. You could not pay me enough money to be a pediatric phlebotomist. I am having trouble thinking of a worse job. It took two of them and all of me to keep all of my kid’s limbs under control while they got the vials they needed. The good news? There was an extra treat box afterwards. She got to rifle through it all herself and picked out some sparkly beads in a long necklace. Oh! Strangle AND choking hazard. Good job baby girl!

All in all, it wasn’t torture, but it did wear me out. It was a long two hours. (Did I just say 2 hours? Yes. Yes, I did. Do you know why? Because all appointments at the allergist exist in an alternate plane where the passage of time is not measured in minutes but rather Sesame Street songs and tears and no matter how short a visit you think you are going to have YOU WILL BE THERE FOR THE ENTIRE DAY so pack a lunch and a snack and a pillow and all of your favorite toys and get somebody else to pick up your other kid from daycare. This also explains why there is such a long wait to get in. If each 20-minute appointment slot takes approximately 1 work day, I can see how they have a hard time scheduling everyone.) I was tired when I got home. My kid was tired when we got home. And after everything, we still don’t know that much more about her allergies. We have more points on her graphs of hive diameter on skin tests and IgEs from blood tests. But none of that actually tells us if she’s allergic. It just gives her doctors more information to decide if we should try any new food challenges. So- cashews here we come! Gotta go to the store and get some cashews! And cashew butter! Oh wait, it’s scheduled for over 3 months from now? Never mind.

Next week- get out your teal paint and get ready for #tealoween!

Was It Worth It: Ice Cream Maker Edition

One of the first things our allergist told us to avoid was ice cream shops. This was the good old days when we thought my kid was only allergic to peanuts. Why should we avoid ice cream shops? Well, there’s usually at least one flavor with peanuts (because as stated previously, peanuts and peanut butter are God’s gift to the culinary world) and while usually the scoop is cleaned (“cleaned” is a bit of stretch, “dunked into murky water” would be a more appropriate description) between customers, do we really trust the teenager behind the counter with not contaminating every flavor with deadly delicious peanut protein? No. The answer is clearly no.

Okay, so no ice cream shops. At the grocery store, if you check the ingredient labels of most ice creams, in addition to the allergens included in it, there is almost always a warning that they may contain tree nuts and peanuts, or are at least processed near them if not on some of the same equipment. With ice cream shops off the list and pints of ice cream from the store off the list, making my own ice cream at home was on my horizon even before she had anaphylaxis to milk. So, this week, our last week on ridiculously expensive kitchen appliances that I’ve bought since my kid was diagnosed with food allergies is:

ICE CREAM MAKERS

There’s a wide variety of ice cream makers- from rock salt manual ones to mixer attachments that you pop in your freezer to ones that chill and churn at the push of a button. We decided to go all in and get the real deal after our mixer attachment sprung a leak and bled blue liquid in our cabinet. It never worked all that well anyways. It wasn’t able to cool down the ice cream enough before the bowl melted, so by the time it froze the rest of the way in the freezer we were left with icy cream… instead the creamy ice cream dream. It tasted ok, but it was impossible to scoop without defrosting each time. When I realized we would be making nondairy ice cream at home, I thought the only chance we had at something creamy delicious was to get the Rolls Royce of ice cream machines. 

So shiny!

Is it helpful in the kitchen?

If you are making ice cream: Yes.

If you are not making ice cream: No.

The manual suggested making frozen drinks and other nonsense. But really, other than making ice cream or sorbet what are you actually going to use your ice cream maker for? Nothing. It’s going to sit in your cabinet and wait to churn some vegan milk.

I think it does produce better ice cream than the stand mixer did. It’s able to get the temperature lower than the frozen bowl did, but the end result still turns out icy. I think there’s just not enough fat in my nondairy milks to make something as creamy as the real deal ice cream.

Downsides?

It’s giant. 

The kind that we got, that electronically freezes the ice cream as it churns, is enormous. It is literally a tiny freezer. The quart of ice cream that is makes is about 1/8 of the total volume of the box. It is *slightly* smaller than the box it came in. But it wins the award for the biggest countertop appliance.

It’s heavy.

After all, it is a tiny freezer. You may not have to churn the ice cream yourself, but you will burn some calories lugging it around.

It takes a while to churn.

Because it has to go from room temperature to Antarctica, it takes 45 min to 1 hour to churn most of our ice creams.

What allergies is it good for?

• Milk- obviously.
• Egg- yep, clearly.
• Peanuts and tree nuts- those guys have weaseled there way into possibly contaminating pretty much all ice creams, so the safest bet seems to make it at home. Plus, where else are you going to find sun butter ice cream?

SO: IS IT WORTH IT?

I don’t know guys. Maybe I just haven’t found the best vegan ice cream recipe, but even the recipes from my favorite nondairy cookbook have been a little bit of a bust. On the ice/cream spectrum, they have fallen heavily on the ice side. The taste has been good (it’s non dairy milk and sugar, what’s not to like?) but I have literally had to use a knife to jab at the frozen block to dislodge a little scoop of shaved ice out. Plus, I just found Oatly nondairy ice cream that doesn’t use tree nuts or peanuts or milk or eggs in any of its flavors and it was smooth and amazing and now my wife wants to buy stock in the company. So, I’ll continue to test out new vegan ice cream recipes in search of one that tastes like the real thing, but at least there’s a backup that we will soon be part owners of.

Was It Worth It: Instant Pot Edition

 Alright team, we are back again with WAS IT WORTH IT?! This time…

The one, the only, the INSTANT POT

so many buttons, so many ways to explode

I'm a little late to the craze- the Instant Pot (or "Instapot" as we mistakenly referred to it for a few weeks) has been around for a while, but it hit frenzy status about 5 years ago. But, 5 years ago, I wasn’t interested in another kitchen gadget. I was happily crockpotting dinners on busy weekdays, using whatever “superfast” Cooking Light recipes looked good (without a care about what foods were inside), and pretty uninterested in learning how to pressure cook. The cookbooks that promised authentic Indian cuisine, easy at home, were very intriguing, but not intriguing enough to invest in one. But my crockpot puttered out and food allergies marched in and I found myself the proud, new owner of a fancy multipurpose pressure cooker (despite the hoards of people I know that own one still in a box).

Is it helpful in the kitchen?

Definitely. From yogurt to beans to falling apart chicken thighs to giant pots of rice, we love almost everything we’ve made in the Instant Pot. You can 100% make homemade yogurt with out it, but with it- it keeps the yogurt at the magical 110 degrees for a full 8 hours without absolutely no wrapping in towels, no trying to keep it insulated, and no worrying about it overnight. (The “boil” function of the yogurt setting is another story. It has never worked on my pot. Sometimes it warms up the soy/coconut milk to a balmy room temperature, sometimes it gets it closer to bathtub temp, but it has never, ever reached boil without me using the sauté function.)

It makes delicious beans, grains, chickpeas in record time, no overnight soaking required. Black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas- they are all more tender and cheaper making them at home instead of buying them in a can. And it can make braised meats in a matter of minutes. My kid loves all slow cooked meat and the Instant Pot is great at delivering meats that you barely need to chew.

Downsides?

Despite all the presets, it’s hard to just jump right into cooking with a pressure cooker. You can’t check on the food while it’s cooking so you have to have specific instructions for the amount of time cooking and how to let the pressure release. If you are making a recipe on the stove, you can stir and taste and adjust and decide it’s done cooking whenever you want. In the Instant Pot, you lock it up, set the timer, and say a little prayer. Because I was too scared to try anything in it, I had to buy a specific Instant Pot cookbook.

The “cook” times are a little deceiving. Sure, you can cook pork shoulder in 0 min on high pressure. But it’s going to take a few minutes for the Instant Pot to reach the high pressure. And if you need to let the pressure release naturally, that can tack on another 20 minutes. Even though cooking on high pressure decreases the cooking time, it's definitely not quick enough to use in the Chopped Kitchen.

It's also a little finicky to use and I’ve gotten the dreaded “burnt” error message twice. If you brown anything with the sauté function before pressure cooking, you need to make sure you scrape up the bottom of the pot completely or it’s just not going to work out. And once you have the burnt error, it’s really unclear how to proceed. Dump the contents of the pot into another bowl, clean the stuck on crispy food off the bottom of the pot, and try again? Cook it the rest of the way on the stove top? Just give up all together and order take out? It really shook my pressure cooking confidence.

What allergies is it good for?

• Garlic- this is probably the biggest thing in our house. Because I have to make all sauces from scratch, this is a real time saver. Usually, I can just leave out the cloves of garlic from the recipe and I don’t have to adjust anything else.
• Milk- dairy free yogurt is an art and the Instant Pot takes away all of the stress during the incubation period. It’s going to keep that milk at 110 deg for however long you want and you are going to have yogurt afterwards. You still have to add sugar and a thickener and pick what kind of non dairy milk you want to use, but at least you know part of the battle is taken care of.
• Sesame- restaurant hummus is so delicious and home-made hummus with chickpeas from a can just isn’t the same. The texture is wrong. No matter how high powered your blender is, if you just pop open a can of chickpeas, it’s not going to be creamy. But, if you cook some dried chickpeas in the Instant Pot (for a few minutes with baking soda on high pressure, drain, rinse, and then longer in normal water) those bad boys are going to puree into the smoothest, creamiest hummus of your dreams. What to use in place of the tahini? I’m not sure. But at least the texture will be good!

SO! IS IT WORTH IT?!

Yes! I love my Instant Pot. Not enough to start a Facebook group, become a “pothead”, and make up my own recipes, but definitely enough to write this post about it.

Was It Worth It: Fancy Blender Edition

This week we are starting a new series on kitchen appliances I’ve bought since my kid was diagnosed with allergies and trying to decide WAS IT WORTH IT?!

Today:

Ridiculously Expensive, Professional BLENDERS

 

Oh-la-la, she's a fancy lady

Is it helpful in the kitchen?

Why, yes, yes, it is. My kids love smoothies and my old small blender really had trouble breaking down frozen fruit. If you turn this guy up to full speed, it sounds like a jet engine and eviscerates that frozen banana into creamy goodness. It’s made the smoothest hummus I’ve ever made at home (though, let’s be honest, without garlic, is it really “hummus”?). It’s helped me make salsas and pasta sauces. It’s a must for mixing up a vegan ice cream base. And, while I haven’t made any tree nut butters yet, if that’s in my future I know this guy is the way to go.

Go Dairy Free claims that while blenders are necessary for making things creamy without milk, you don’t actually need an expensive professional one. But you can’t deny it’s fun seeing your blender on Food Network and thinking “Hey! Now I can make that 5-star restaurant cauliflower puree…. I just need a tub of butter and some real cream.”

Downsides?

It’s giant.

I don’t mean like oh, wow, that’s bigger than my tiny, cheap blender. I mean, we got out of the box and laughed, literally laughed, because we didn’t know how it was going to fit in our cabinet. We had to reorganize our entire kitchen, but there was no way we could just leave it out on the counter! There would be no room to make a sandwich much less prep a meal.

It's also loud.

You also cannot use it if anybody is sleeping. Or watching TV. Or in the same room as you. I always give a warning “It’s going to be loud!” before cranking it up. A warning mitigates at least some of the surprise of an airplane in your kitchen; though nothing can save the tears from streaming when it’s on full blast. It doesn’t help my older kid loves to run around screaming, “Ahhhhh!” whenever it’s on which gets the dog barking and the toddler crying.

What allergies is it helpful for?

• Milk- It’s extremely helpful if you are allergic to milk. As stated previously, you need it for vegan ice cream bases and if you are going to try to make some “cheese” products on your own. You can also make your own almond and rice milk with it??? That’s not necessarily on my to do list as I have another job that doesn’t involve milking dry goods, but I guess it’s good that that’s an option.
• Eggs- it helps get the consistency of vegan ice cream bases and aioli/mayo sauces
• Peanuts- If you are allergic to peanuts, but can have tree nuts, it’s much cheaper to make nut butters at home.
• Tree nuts- I guess the inverse is true as well? If you are allergic to tree nuts but can have peanuts, homemade peanut butter is pretty amazing.
• Wheat- You can make oat flour out of oat meal for pancakes, waffles, and more.
• Garlic (not one of the top 9, but important to this household)- I have used it for making my own salsa, pasta sauce, curry paste, hummus, black bean dip, vinaigrettes…. Honestly it makes making things from scratch a lot more fun.

SO: IS IT WORTH IT?

Yes? It was expensive. But according to the propaganda, I mean introduction manual, that came with it, it’s going to last forever. And, now that I have it, I do use it a lot. Not daily but a few times a week. I guess, if your blender just isn’t cutting it and you want to alert the neighborhood whenever it’s smoothie time, a "high performance" blender is definitely the way to go.