Busy Saturday

I've spent the day doing all sorts of chores. Suffice it to say I feel the need to reward myself.

With these.

Vermont Nut Free Skippers.

Like m&m's except a little bigger. So good*.
"leave on the top shelf so high you need a stepladder to get them" good.

Have you guys had any other VNF chocolates? What's your favorite? I think I might need to order some more safe treats for the holidays.

*and no, they didn't send them to me or ask me to review them. i ordered some from peanut free planet a few weeks ago. they are so good.

Can you go vegetarian when you've got peanut/nut allergies?

I'm what you might call a vegan voyeur (boy am I asking for trouble from Google searches with that phrase). What I mean is that my Google Reader is filled with the feeds of countless vegan and vegetarian bloggers. I love reading about tasty vegan and vegetarian meals (and I even like reading the rants of hardcore vegan, non breeders - they are so in your face!).

But with a peanut allergy in our house, I never really thought that going vegetarian was an option for us. B isn't allergic to soy, so we can definitely have that, which is great, but a suggested protein in vegetarian diets is often nuts (like peanut or almond butter) or a main ingredient in dishes (like this delicious looking dairy free pasta - cashews make up a part of the sauce). At this point I would say that 60% of our meals are vegetarian. After reading the recent article about ground beef contamination in the New York Times, I can't even bring myself to eat red meat, much less feed it to my daughter. So we are leaning more and more towards eliminating meat from our diet. Could we eliminate it completely from our diets? Possibly. But honestly, I thought it would be too difficult and that a chicken wing would have to make an appearance now and then.

But then Kathy from Healthy.Happy.Life waltzed in to my reader today with this:

Ask Kathy: Can I go 'Veg' with my food allergies?

Kathy gives some great, realistic ideas for dishes you can make, and given that we only have the peanut/nut allergy to deal with, we can add her suggestions to all the soy/egg options as well.

Take a look and let me know what you think - it was great to see this issue addressed without having someone say "you can't eat peanut butter? eat almond butter instead!". I HATE seeing that - folks just don't realize that most peanut allergic folks are told to avoid all nuts due to cross contamination issues. Gah.

So thank you Kathy for the great advice!!!

Divvies

Note: I want to preface this by saying that I have zero affiliation with this company. This is just my personal experience with this product. They have not compensated me or given me free products in exchange for this post.

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So, have you tried Divvies yet?

I was lucky enough to get a few free samples at the Food Allergy Walk in September. I couldn't believe how good they were! I was actually sold after the first bite.

I placed an order for a few items with them not long after and we've decided on two favorite flavors in our household: Molasses Ginger and Oatmeal Raisin.

These cookies are so good that the only way I can describe them is that you would honestly never know they were allergen free if you didn't read the label. Soft, not too sugary, flavorful with a wonderful texture (and I can't say that for Enjoy Life: I know, I know I shouldn't say that, but their cookies are, well, taste challenged and look funny - but I love the Chocoboom, so no nasty comments please).

But the taste of Divvies is amazing. If you go to Whole Foods, you may have seen the Dancing Deer brand, which are delish, but sadly not allergy friendly (they have a " Produced in a bakery that processes peanuts and tree nuts." warning). The Divvies molasses cookies taste just like the DD ginger cookies. They are that good.

I ordered a box of prepackaged cookies called the Divvies Doubles. Twelve packages of two cookies. Perfect with a cup of tea (ok, busted! i've been eating them too) or a glass of cold milk. So good!

The only so-so Divvies product for me? Jelly Beans. They look exactly like Jelly Belly's, but they just don't have the same oomph (something's just missing). But if your child has never had Jelly Belly's they'd never know what they are missing. And they don't come with a flavor guide so you don't know what flavor you are eating until it is in your mouth (which can be blech).

I highly recommend that you try Divvies out. You can order on their website, but I had a nice chat with a woman there when I called in my order. Their site has a bunch of cute sampler baskets (did I mention that in addition to cookies and jelly beans, they have chocolate bars, chips, gumballs, popcorn, and cupcakes?!?) and if you don't think the chocolate snowman on their site isn't the cutest, then something is really wrong with you :)

Now if they would just open a stand in my local mall, I'd be the happiest woman in the world.

Site to Check Out: Rocks in My Dryer

Rocks in my Dryer has a great guest post today from Jane Anne at Gravity of Motion.

Here's a snippet:

"I had an eventful morning at church this past Sunday. Our church has a “Children’s Time” where the children go down front and are presented with a quick lesson. After the lesson, they go to another room for a children’s program. This week the pastor decided to use a Trick-or-Treat illustration to talk about sharing. He began by handing out paper bags to the kids. Then he pulled out a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups. That’s the moment I stopped paying attention to the story. "

If that didn't get your heart pumping then I don't know what will! Read the rest here.

Thanks to Jane Anne for a great guest post and to Shannon for hosting and helping us get the word out about living with food allergies!

Peanut Free Product Shout Out: Nonna Lena's Nut Free Pesto

Prepared pesto is one of those great convenience foods. But with a peanut allergy (and our avoidance of tree nuts as a precaution) pesto, unless it's homemade, is off limits.

Until now.

I shop at Piazza's in Palo Alto, CA at least 3x a week for my lunch and for perishable groceries for dinner (veggies, bread, etc.). I was buying fresh pasta one day and thought I'd take a look at the prepared pestos to see if any were safe. Lo and behold, I found one.

I present to you: Nonna Lena's All Natural Pesto.
Ingredients: Organic Basil, Olive Oil, Fresh Garlic, Fresh Creamy Butter, Parmesan Cheese.

I took it home and tossed it with some fresh fettuccine noodles. It is so delicious - not too garlicky, just enough basil. It's basically pesto without pine nuts. It's a little on the buttery side - or maybe I should say olive oily side - so if you wanted to use it on crostini, for instance, you would have to let it sit for a little bit at room temperature so it can soften a bit.

So for Bella's lunch tomorrow, she's getting some penne pasta with pesto and veggies. All I needed to do was cook the pasta and add the pesto - it says right on the label that no heating is necessary. Nonna Lena (if she exists) is a woman after my own heart.

Maybe you can find it where you live? Looks like they have distributors in California, Washington, and Oregon.

p.s. After looking through the site, I noticed that some of her other sauces have walnuts and/or pine nuts in them. This falls in my safety zone - Bella's doctor has ok'd "may contain" or "manufactured on equipment" when it comes to tree nuts due to her negative RAST and skin tests. We've chosen to avoid actual ingestion of whole tree nuts for the time being due to cross contamination/confusion for Bella issues.

How We Spent Our Holiday Weekend

I tell you, we're in summer mode at Casa Peanut Free. Bella's still in preschool and I'm still working, but we're making the most of the weather and any excuse for a get together and/or party when we're not stuck inside learning our ABC's or working for the man. :->

Last weekend was no exception. We made our way down to LA to visit family and catch some spectacular fireworks in Marina Del Rey.

I'm happy to say that it was another reaction-free holiday (I could really get used to this!). Our only foray out to eat was at Jerry's Famous Deli and, per usual, they were REALLY accomodating with Bella's allergy. I highly recommend them - but beware of the HUMONGOUS portions. It is definitely NOT a place for a diet.

I did want to share a neat find of mine. Before we left, I wanted to find a few activities to occupy Bella on the drive down and while we were at my parent's place. I'm not anti-tv, but I didn't want her watching tv while we were there.

I bought the obligatory crayons and packed the portable DVD player for the car. But one of my finds was a great book from the Klutz company (a girlfriend of mine used to work for them - I wish I would have taken advantage of her employee discount more back then!) called Hand Art. Basically you trace your hand and then make a picture out of the resulting shape (I've scanned a page from the book at the left - please don't sue me Klutz!).

This book was such a HUGE hit with Bella. We literally made every drawing in the book. And it comes with these little fuzzballs for the nose and tails and little googlie-eyes you can glue on. Her 6 year old cousin thought it was pretty great too. Needless to say, Nana and Grandpa had quite an 'art' collection when we left. And they could tell what each animal was, which was a bonus.

But I also saw something in this book that just made me smile so wide. Bella was doing the dog picture. In the bottom corner of each page, they show the child how to hold their hand when making the drawing. Can you see what's on that little wrist? I've blown it up so you can tell a little better.

It's a medic alert bracelet! I thought it was so neat that they included that in the photo, when they obviously could have photoshopped it out. Kudos to Klutz for keeping it in!

All in all the weekend was great. We made it down to LA on one tank of gas (and the same back up home) and that's something else to smile about. We ate way too much, I read gobs of magazines and cookbooks, and Bella wore herself out each and every night from swimming, running around, and playing all sorts of imaginary games with her grandpa.

I hope your 4th was just as good.

Thanks

Thanks so much to all of you who shared your story with me and my readers - reading them brings me back to that morning two years ago, when everything changed.

I'm placing a link to the post on my right hand side bar soon so new visitors to the site can read your stories and see they are definitely not alone in all of this.

What a great little village we are.

Thanks again,

G

American Girl Store Here We Come!

Bella's cousin is turning 6 on Saturday, so we're heading down to LA to celebrate with her.

The venue?

The American Girl Store at the The Grove in LA.* If you've never been to one of these stores, they are HUGE and have shopping, a cafe (more on that later), a salon so your doll can get their hair done, and the Chicago one even has a theater if I'm not mistaken.

Now you may be asking - isn't little Bella a bit young for those dolls? And I would say "heck yes!", but it's a special occasion so we're making an exception. The memory will be so great for her, so we're just going with it.

My biggest concern, as I'm sure you can imagine, is the cafe. I wasn't sure what to think, so I went to their website and found their menu. Looked good - no nuts (at least none that were evident). So I called them. And I spoke to the nicest woman named Irina (I'm sure I butchered that spelling). She told me that they removed all nuts from their menu due to the rise in allergies (yay!). She then said that she would confirm with the manager and chef just in case there was anything that might have the risk of cross contamination (her words, not mine, could you just die????) and she took my number.

I honestly didn't think I would hear back from her, but lo and behold, on my machine when I got home was a nice message from her telling me that yes, everything on the menu was peanut free and made in a peanut free kitchen EXCEPT for one thing. They put Oreo crumbles on their desserts - those could have possibly be made in a facility that processes peanuts. So they could just not put those on the dessert at our request. Or we could have sorbet instead and skip the chocolate dessert altogether. Luckily, my niece doesn't like Oreos so we can just get the desserts without, and both will be happy to have the same thing.

My jaw just hit the floor due to the 1) incredible customer service I just witnessed and 2) that Bella could enjoy a 'normal' birthday experience without limitations.

I can't tell you how pleased I am that I wont have to give Bella the "there are things on the menu that you can't have speech".

I'll let you all know how it goes, but by the looks of it, we've come across a company that really gets it.

Yay American Girl!

*So the Grove is the mall that you usually see photos of stars shopping at in magazines like People and US Weekly. Maybe I'll be starstruck there!

CherryBrook Kitchens Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was in the local upscale grocery near my office (boy I'm in there alot) and I found this mix:

Cherrybrook Kitchen Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

I have heard such good things on the boards about their products, but I always took it with a grain of salt. Did people like it because it was the only thing their child could have, or was it really good?

I thought - what the heck- and tossed it in my cart. They obviously are aware of peanut allergy (look - it says Peanut Free! right on the box in big letters), so I'll give it a shot.

I have to say - this mix could not be easier to make. It was a great activity for an adult and a 3 year old. Just enough mixing and rolling into balls. And there's no eggs, so you can eat the batter without worrying if you are going to get salmonella.

Pop them in the oven and in about 10 minutes they're done. They baked up a little strange though - these are not Tollhouse Cookies mind you - but they come out a nice golden brown. After a minute of cooling, the true test was with Bella, the queen of all dessert (well, at least among the local 3 year old set).

She declared them 'delicious!' and proceeded to eat 3 of them.

The only thing that struck me was that they were a little cakey in texture, and you can definitely tell that you are eating a mock chocolate chip of sorts.

Later on we fed them to my brother, who is a major foodie and he thought they were 'rich' and 'fabulous'. I chuckled a little bit and told my sister in law that I would love to give her the recipe (but I never told her they were from a mix so my secret's still safe). If she only knew :)

But overall, I will definitely be trying more of these mixes in the future. Especially with one of Bella's good pals at daycare having a milk allergy. He'll love these.

Way to go Cherrybrook Kitchen!

Broken Record

Lots of allergy-free bloggers out there have posted about this already, but I'm going to be a broken record just to get the word out again!

Martha Stewart is holding a Big Idea contest on her site to choose the focus of a new publication, and one of the choices is a publication for Allergies and Intolerances. Go vote now so we have another publication (with the backing of a big name like Martha Stewart behind it) out there geared towards our needs as an allergic individual or family members.

Vote today (and often!) Here's the ground rules from her blog:

You can vote as many times as you'd like (once per day) over the next week. On Thursday, February 7, we'll close the poll, and Martha will later announce the big winner!

Again, check out her post and vote today. As of this morning, the allergy publication is in the lead, but don't let that stop you from voting. Let's win by a landslide!

Jeffrey's Hamburgers - Menlo Park, CA

Mark and I had a 'date afternoon' last week and decided to try a new hamburger place near us in Menlo Park, CA. It's called Jeffrey's Hamburgers - a diner kind of place with burgers, shakes, fries, etc.

It was delicious. Tasty burgers. Good fries. Good onion rings. Great shakes. Clean and friendly. And not too spendy.

The best part? We can take Bella there. There are no peanut products AT ALL on the menu (and the staff confirmed that there are no 'hidden' peanut products in the food), just pecans on a salad they have there. At this point it's highly unlikely she'll be ordering a salad as an entree being 3 and all :).

Are they the best burgers in the universe? No, but they are good. But I can let my little girl have a shake there and not worry that she'll have a reaction. I can also let her order anything off the menu and not worry (I hate being the downer that tells her what she can and can't have when we go out).

Catalogs Carrying Food Warnings?

I was flipping through the latest Red Envelope catalog and came across two interesting things. The first is this awesome gingerbread house! When I was a teenager (a long, long time ago) I used to make gingerbread houses (think Martha Stewart), complete with windows made from melted sugar - the works! So I just love gingerbread houses. But I hate the super kitschy ones (sue me, I'm a gingerbread house snob :>).

But this one blew me away because it's modern! I love it. I am on a bit of a modern kick at home. So much so that I am trying to convince Mark that when we renovate, we do a midcentury style ala atomic ranch.

And what does this have to do with food allergies? Well, that's the second interesting thing I came across. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see this included in the description:

modern gingerbread house

Every bit as edible as the original, this isn't your grandma's gingerbread house. We gave the classic holiday treat a mid-century makeover, complete with garage and rock garden. An unique gift and sure-fire conversation piece, it comes assembled and ready to enjoy. Once unwrapped, it should be eaten within 30 days. Left as decoration, it will keep for up to 12 months. Candies used for embellishment may contain nuts.

A may contain warning!!! Can you believe it?!?!

I don't recall seeing anything like this in the Harry & David catalog, or Dean & Deluca, or heck, even Williams-Sonoma (can you tell I am a foodie at heart or what?). Maybe this is the start of a great trend?

Even though the rock candy may contain nuts, I still may order this for my mantel. There's no way Bella could get to it there. Maybe I could shellac it?

NEW Product: Batter Blaster

I thought you'd all get a kick out this product that I heard about via Daily Candy.

It's Organic Batter Blaster! Pancake batter in a can. Ready at a moment's notice for when you are REALLY craving pancakes. It's like whipped cream, but it's pancake batter. Actually, if you watch the demo (click the link at the bottom left of the home page), it looks kinda gross - put it this way, it isn't all fluffy and tasty looking like whipped cream.

Nutritional Information Here. Looks like it contains wheat, eggs, and soy. I am tempted to buy it just to see what it tastes like. Bella loves pancakes, but part of me keeps saying "just make the darn batter yourself and stick it in a squeeze bottle!". But, boy would this be handy on a Sunday morning...

I didn't forget!

Allergic Girl tagged me for a meme. I was out of town with the hubby for a few days. I'll get this posted soon, I promise!

Southwest Airlines - Shout out!

My husband flew to Santa Ana for business this week. He flew Southwest (aka the peanuttiest airline around - check out their header image - blech).

When they were boarding the stewardess notified the passengers that there was a peanut allergic person on the flight and that they wouldn't be serving peanuts on the flight (and if you wouldn't mind, please do not eat any peanuts you may have brought on board?). Mark was shocked (and appreciative). How cool was that?

I've only flown peanut free airlines with Bella (United, American), and wouldn't fly SWA because of the nuttiness factor (e.g. left on the floor, etc), but things like this may slowly make me come around. Upon further inspection, I found their policy online. Pretty good (I like the tip about flying early in the day). They included all the CYA stuff too about not being able to control what other people bring, blah blah blah, but it's nice to see them addressing it.

With something like 1 in 17 children having some sort of food allergy (just saw that figure somewhere recently - probably on the peanutallergy discussion board), it's smart for them to accomodate travelers (young and old) - it's just good business.

How Do You Say "no nuts!" in Spanish?

I was doing some research for my job (in scientific publishing) and I came across this site.

"Food-Info.net and EFFoST offer on this page free dictionaries for people with a food allergy or intolerance. We aim to make this list of over 200 allergy-related words available in all European national languages, as well as the main world languages. Dictionaries can be downloaded as pdf files from the following languages: English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Finnish French German Greek Indonesian Italian Japanese Lithuanian Macedonian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Slovenian Slowak Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian."

This will definitely come in handy the next time we're in the Ukraine (or more realistically Mexico).

The Things You Notice: Counter Burger, Palo Alto, CA

On my lunch hour yesterday, my coworkers and I decided to check out a new(er) place in Palo Alto, CA called Counter Burger. We ended up sitting at the counter (har har - no pun intended) and proceeded to have an amazing meal - great fries (sweet potato fries and regular potato fries), onion rings, burgers. Yum!

So what does this have to do with Peanuts? Well, this is definitely not the place to take Bella as they serve Peanut Sauce on their burgers (ick - but it's an option). I do, however, want to give them a shout out on their attempts at avoiding cross contamination. One of their other menu options is a milkshake - chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, or (drum roll please) Peanut Butter! I recoiled even seeing it on the menu! But as I was eating, I looked over at the milkshake machine. It was one of those that has the stick beaters and you put the metal canister over it to blend the milkshake - there were something like 6 of them on the machine.

But over the one on the farthest right was a label indicating that the last mixer was for peanut butter shakes only.

Now, would I let Bella have a milkshake there? Realistically I probably wouldn't, but I was touched by and appreciative of the attempt at making it a safer place for PA folks.

If you're in Palo Alto, CA on California Avenue and LOVE burgers - stop by. Mighty tasty.