Ever wanted friend ice cream but didn’t want to mess with actually having to deep-fry something? Well look no further! Here is a super easy 5 minute recipe! Added bonus – you can even make this vegan!
Ingredients:
Vanilla ice cream of your choosing (I used a vegan ice cream to keep it allergy friendly!)
Corn flakes (or you can substitute Frosted Flakes or Honey Nut Frosted Flakes)
Sugar
Margarine or butter (again, I used a vegan margarine to keep it allergy friendly)
Honey and/or chocolate syrup
Directions:
Scoop out your ice cream and put it in the freezer.
Add margarine, corn flakes, and a bit of sugar to a small pan and sauté the corn flakes for a few minutes. If you choose to use Frosted Flakes or Honey Nut Frosted Flakes (like I did here!) you can skip the extra sugar.
Lay the corn flakes onto a plate and gently roll your ice cream in the corn flake mixture. You can use your hands to add extra of the corn flake mixture into your ice cream.
Drizzle with honey (pictured), chocolate syrup, or any topping of your choice. You could also add whipped cream and a cherry if you want to get extra fancy. 😉
If you’re like us and have an egg allergy in your house, you may be looking for safe alternatives to dyeing eggs for Easter.
We all know that you can buy plastic eggs for candy, but dyeing eggs was always half the fun when I was growing up. It was something I wanted to do with my kids too, and with my oldest, I didn’t think twice about it. Then my second daughter was diagnosed with an egg allergy and I began wondering what I could do with her to continue the tradition of dyeing eggs. This year I found two great alternatives!
First, I found these fun craft eggs at Target. These can’t be dyed, but they can be decorated with crayons and stickers! They even come with some stickers in the package. Best part, these can be found in their Bullseye spot for only $3!
Second, my husband found these DIY eggs at Walmart and these can be dyed! So cool! They look just like real eggs and can be dyed without having to worry about an egg allergy!
Hope these help you include your food allergy kiddos in the traditions that we’ve all enjoyed throughout the years! Happy dyeing!
*Please note that you can find a lot of things like this online for delivery as well so no need to leave your house during this time! Stay safe everyone!
If you’ve ever read my blog before, you can probably tell that I’m a fan of banana breads and finding new ways to spruce them up! I stumbled across a banana crumb cake on Pinterest and adapted it to be vegan and allergy-friendly! It’s perfect for anyone with milk, egg, peanut, or tree nut allergies!
Ingredients for Bread:
2-3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup vegan butter softened (We love Country Crock Plant Based Butter or Earth Balance vegan butter)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer (or another egg replacement of your choosing) – need the equivalent of 2 eggs
Ingredients for Crumb Cake Topping:
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp cinnamon
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and lightly spray a 9×13 pan
Combine the softened butter (for the bread) and sugar in a bowl and beat until well blended (I just used a fork to do this but you can also use a mixer.) Add in mashed banana, egg replacer, and vanilla, and mix to combine.
Add flour, baking powder, salt and stir until combined. You will have a thick mixture – don’t let that scare you!
Pour into the bottom of the greased pan.
In another bowl, combine all ingredients for the crumb cake topping. Work the mixture together using a fork to form crumbs. You don’t need to overdo this – picture a typical crumb cake – the lumps are a good thing!
Sprinkle the crumbs evenly over the entire bread mixture. This will be a pretty thick layer of crumby yumminess!
Bake for 35-40 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean).
My son turned 6 months old about a week ago. He’s the final piece of the puzzle to our little family and has been such an amazing blessing! He’s rolling, laughing, and sleeping in his own crib in his own room. He’s growing up and it’s so fun to watch. Every milestone he hits makes me proud and emotional. But there’s one milestone that I’ve been secretly dreading…
I’m terrified of starting to try foods. Up until this point he’s been solely breastfed. As we begin to try solids, my nerves about food allergies start to rear their ugly heads.
We didn’t discover his big sister’s food allergies until she was almost a year old. (To see how we discovered her allergies, click here.) She had also been exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months and she had a hard time learning to eat solids at the beginning. She was a little behind physically for awhile which made eating harder for her. (We got PT for that and it was AMAZING! But that’s a different story…) Because of that, we didn’t introduce allergens super early on. I also had basically no understanding of food allergies at the time so I had no idea about the research about how introducing early can help prevent allergies.
This time, I’m a little more well-informed. There is a lot of research about the benefits to introducing top allergens like peanut and egg earlier rather than later. (For some great links and articles, check out this page of the Food Allergy Research and Education’s website.) When we took Ezra to his 6 month appointment this week, his doctor recommended that we try peanut butter soon.
On one hand, I’m thankful for a progressive doctor that is trying to watch out for him! On the other hand, I’m terrified. I know that we need to do it. And in some ways, I feel more prepared this time around, but I can’t shake the anxiety and fear that comes with it. I’ve wondered since I was pregnant if he would end up with food allergies just like his sister. I’ve wondered what it would be like to have to worry about BOTH of them daily. I’ve wondered what we would do if he ended up with different allergens than Asa and we had to change our lifestyles once again.
Food allergies are one of those things that you don’t really understand until you’re faced with them. As least, I know I didn’t. I knew about them, but only in a hypothetical way. I didn’t know the reality of them. And the reality is plagued with lots of fear, frustration, inconvenience, and sometimes even anger. You wonder why this is happening to your child. You deal with the fact that not many people will understand the daily struggles you face. You pray that one day your child with grow out of their allergies or that a cure will be found.
I will most definitely update after we begin to try foods with him, but in the meantime, please be praying for us as we face a fear!
People often think that cooking with food allergies is daunting. But it doesn’t have to be! I have a super yummy banana bread muffin recipe that I love to spruce up with things like chocolate chips or blueberries! Today I’m going to share the chocolate chip banana bread muffin recipe that is totally vegan! (So it’s perfect for dairy and egg allergies!)
Ingredients:
3 ripe bananas (mashed)
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup vegetable or olive oil
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup dairy-free chocolate chips (I used Nestle Simply Delicious semi-sweet morsels this time!)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately (minus the chocolate chips)
Combine the two bowls together
Add in chocolate chips
Put batter into baking cups in a muffin/cupcake pan. Bake for 23-25 minutes. (You can also make as a banana bread loaf for 55-60 minutes, but I think the muffins cook a little more evenly!)
Like I mentioned above, I love to make these with blueberries as well (this is how my husband prefers them), but my oldest daughter and I LOVE the chocolate ones for a sweet treat 🙂
I wanted to highlight the vegan chocolate chips we used! They are Nestle Simply Delicious Semi-Sweet Morsels. We bought these at Target. There are a wide variety of dairy-free chocolates out there now so I encourage you to go seek them out! I highlighted another one of them on a different blog here. You seriously can’t tell the difference between “real” chocolate chips and these!
If you try this recipe, let me know how you like it!
The past two weeks have been rough. We spent a week in the hospital with my son who had RSV. Thankfully, he is all better now, but that week was hard. There’s not much worse than watching your child in the hospital and feeling like you have no control. The day after we got home from the hospital, I got a call that my grandpa (PawPaw) was in the hospital. It quickly progressed to a critical situation. I was able to visit him in the hospital just hours before he passed away. Our new year was off to a really rocky start.
Right after learning that he had passed, we had to take the kids to the doctor so that my son could have his follow-up appointment from the hospital stay. I didn’t want to miss it, so we sucked it up and went even though I wasn’t in the best place mentally. After we returned home, I loaded up my arms and unbuckled my two-year-old daughter like I always do since she sits on the passenger side of the van like me. I had her in my left arm while I also tried to balance my purse, her diaper bag, and my coffee cup from that morning. All of the sudden I heard her say, “I take a drink of Mommy’s cup!” I looked over, and she was sipping from my straw!
I immediately jumped into panic mode. I had coffee in the cup but I also had creamer in it – creamer that contains traces of milk – milk that she is allergic to…
I yanked the cup away as fast as I could and started talking loudly… “No! Asa you can’t drink that! Oh crap! Ryan, help me! She drank from my cup! No!” I ran up the stairs and into the house as fast I could while still balancing everything in my hands. I threw everything down and started examining Asa immediately. I knew that I had finished my coffee already before the appointment, but it was iced coffee, so the ice had melted leaving some watery-coffee at the bottom of the cup. I asked Asa if she actually took a drink. She said yes. I asked her is she actually tasted it in her mouth (trying to clarify is she REALLY took a drink). She said yes. My husband ran for the Benadryl as I stripped off her clothes so I could keep an eye out for hives. I started asking if she felt itchy and she said no. Then I started lecturing her. “Asa, you can’t drink out of people’s cups, baby! Remember that you have allergies? Remember? Like the BugaBees?” (see my previous blog post to understand what this is…) She could sense my fear and tension and she started crying. She didn’t understand what she had done. Why was I lecturing her? While I did want to explain and help her understand why she can’t just grab someone’s drink, I shouldn’t have acted mad at her. It was myself I was mad at…
After we gave the Benadryl, I held her close to me. I felt bad that she was crying and then went into Mama Bear protective mode. I wanted to comfort her. I held her close and apologized for scaring her. I kept asking if she felt ok and she said yes. I kept watching her skin but it stayed clear. I asked if her throat felt ok and she said yes. Once I started to settle down, I began crying…
How could I let that happen? How was I so stupid? Why did I have that cup anywhere near her? How could I have put it right by her face without thinking? Why wasn’t I more careful? Why was I so irresponsible? How could I do this to my baby? I couldn’t even think about another hospital visit – not after the week we had just had. Two hospital visits were enough. The thought of another one was enough to make me cry. But the thought that I would have been the one to send her there was so much worse. The thought that she could need an epipen because of me was horrible. And the thought that she could die… well… I couldn’t even let myself go there.
After the shock and severity wore off and after I knew she was ok, I had time to think. I was still beating myself up pretty hard. The anxiety and fear that parents of kids with food allergies face is so real. It’s hard to explain to anyone that’s never had to deal with it. The pressure that a parent feels when they have a little one with food allergies is so intense. Your child relies on you for everything. They rely on you to feed them, and they rely on you to keep them safe. One small mistake can be catastrophic to a kid with food allergies. You have to be vigilant at all times, and that can lead to constant anxiety. The fear is tangible all the time. It never goes away. Even those of us that are really cautious, and yes – even those of us that run food allergy blogs and long to help educate others – even we make mistakes. The problem is, it only takes one mistake to possibly end in tragedy.
We were lucky this time, but not everyone is.
To those of you that navigate this food allergy world like we do, I see you. I feel your pain. I know your anxiety. I feel your fear. And I’m here if you need to talk, vent, cry, or complain.
To those of you that have never had to worry about this before, I hope this helps you get a glimpse of the pressure and anxiety that we feel every single day. We aren’t crazy. We are just scared – and you probably would be too if faced with the reality that we are daily.
When we found out that Asa had allergies, the first one we discovered was dairy. My initial thought was, “Well I guess she can’t have milk or ice cream or yogurt.” But the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized dairy was in everything! It’s hard enough to navigate food items, but I had never even thought about the non-food items that dairy could also be hiding in. I still find out new things every day. So where are some of these milk ingredients hidden, you may ask? Well… let’s look at a few!
First, it’s important to note that dairy can come in multiple forms so it’s imperative to know all the words you are looking for. Milk, lactose, Recaldent, casein, whey, and lactalbumin are all dairy ingredients, so it’s not just as simple as looking for “milk” on a label. Also, “lactose free” and “dairy free” are two VERY different things. A lactose intolerance is NOT the same as a dairy allergy and the two should never be confused. And just because something is “lactose free” does not mean it doesn’t still contain dairy/milk!
But if a label says “dairy free” it should be safe, right? Not quite. This is crazy to me, but some things can be labeled “dairy free” and still contain milk ingredients. Take coffee creamers for example. Many of them say they are dairy free but still actually contain milk. See the pictures below of this Coffeemate French Vanilla Creamer:
The first picture shows the “Non-dairy” claim while the second picture shows that it contains casein, “a milk derivative”. The one shows the importance of checking the ENTIRE label, no matter what!
So what about those non-food related things? A friend actually sent me this one the other day and I was appalled to find I had this one in my house! Thankfully I had never used it with Asa, but our older daughter has used them multiples times. She doesn’t have food allergies so we were safe there, but the thought that I could have used these with Asa without thinking terrified me. Crayola Color Bath Dropz contain lactose! Again, this label is super tricky. The ingredients do not list lactose. They legally don’t have to since this is not a food product. (Don’t get me started on the laws here. I’m saving that whole topic for another blog.) But a closer inspection of the box shows that it does, indeed, contain lactose. *It’s important to note that I have the box but most of these come in a tub so be on the lookout regardless of the packaging!
I read a story once of a girl dying from using a medicated toothpaste that her dentist had prescribed to her. This dentist knew about her milk allergy but still prescribed it anyway. Several whitening and medicated toothpastes contain an ingredient called Recaldent. This is made of a milk derivative. If you have a food allergy, it’s important to not only talk to your dentist about any allergies you may have, but ask them to see the ingredients before you begin using any new products!
Recaldent is not only found in these toothpastes, however. It’s also found in a very popular gum brand – Trident! It is not in every version, but it is definitely found in Trident White and Trident XtraCare.
Sources: recaldent.com and drugs.com
Another weird place to find a milk ingredient is in dust-free chalk. Many of the name brands do not contain the dairy ingredient, casein, but some off-brands do. This can be scary because, again, they do not have to list this on the package since chalk is not a food product. You can always contact the manufacturer to get specific ingredient information, but this isn’t always an easy or quick task. Casein can also be found in glues, paints, and inks.
I hope this blog is as eye-opening to you as it was for me when I learned about these things. I only scratched the surface here, as dairy can also be found in daily things like cosmetics and lotions where, once again, they don’t have to be labeled. Navigating a dairy allergy is a lot more than simply avoiding that 2% gallon of milk most people have in their fridge. It’s something that requires you to be be vigilant daily to avoid a major catastrophe!
On November 27, 2018, we found out that my 11-month-old daughter was allergic to dairy. I suspected she might be after two strange incidents. The first incident involved vomiting violently after eating a new baby puree. When I checked the ingredients of the tub of baby food, I saw that it had pineapple and milk – two things she had never had before. I wondered if that could be a cause but I quickly dismissed the thought and returned to life as normal. A month or so later while eating out at a restaurant, my daughter got ahold of a butter packet on the table. She chewed on it, busted it open, and made a mess. I didn’t think much of it – after all, my kids have done much worse before. But about 10 minuted later, I noticed that she had a swollen upper lip.
At first I thought she must have hit it when the packet exploded. Then my mom brain kicked in – what if this was the milk in the butter? Could she be having an allergic reaction? Again, I sort of dismissed my thought but her lip was only getting worse so we decided to be safe and head to urgent care.
The doctor said that it did, indeed, look like an allergic reaction. My head started spinning. There’s no way she’s allergic to milk, right? Not my kid. We made a follow up with our pediatrician who referred us to an allergist just in case. Two weeks before my daughter’s first birthday (you know… the one where they are start drinking whole cow’s milk…) we found out that she had a dairy allergy. What did this mean??? They ordered us an epipen, quickly taught us how to use it, gave us about 20 sheets of information about allergies, asked if we had any questions and sent us on our way. Did I have any questions? Um… yeah… about a thousand. I couldn’t even wrap my head around this food allergy. No one else in my family or my husband’s family had ever had a food allergy. I had no idea what it really meant. But boy, was I about to find out.
Within a couple months, our allergist had us try a few other foods – soy, egg, peanut. Soy didn’t produce an allergy. Thank God! One down! When my husband tried peanut butter one day while I was at work, he thought we had made it through that one as well. She was acting fine. But the moment I walked in the front door after work, I saw a tiny spot on her skin. We started checking her and the hives literally started spreading before our eyes. We called 911. I had to give the epipen. My daughter was crying hysterically. I was putting on a brave face but inside I was terrified. We went to the hospital to be monitored. Thankfully, the epipen worked and we were discharged within a few hours.
Another month went by and we introduced egg. This time, we were both home when we did it – we were scared to do it alone. Her reaction to the egg was scarier than anything we had ever experienced. She broke out in hives. BAD hives. So bad that they spread to every inch of her body. I called 911 to be safe. I wanted them to check her lungs. While on the phone with them, my daughter started wheezing. My husband and I looked at each other and knew that the epipen was needed. I once again slammed the needle into my daughter’s leg. She once again cried. We were once again terrified. We went to the hospital, as you always should after administering an epipen. But this time was worse.
The hives started spreading again. She was crying and lethargic. She was laying on me and not letting go. I was praying – literally. The doctor said they were going to have to do another round of epi. They went to place the order. I was filled with fear. Why wasn’t this working? Why was she so lethargic? Was she going to be ok? I prayed again – literally. Right before the doctor came back in the room, her hives started subsiding. She started acting more like herself. Thankfully, we escaped having to administer more medicine, but the fear remained.
My husband and I went home that day more scared than ever. It was the first time we had REALLY seen the potential danger of her food allergies. This was more than hives. This had effected her breathing, and that’s something you never want to see your child go through. From that moment on, we became more vigilant than ever. Throughout the past year, we’ve learned a ton. We still mess up. Food allergies are really difficult to navigate. And out of that, this blog/site was born. My goal is help provide support, educate others, and share some tips and tricks along the way! Like it or not, I’m a food allergies mom. I hope this will help some others out there like me!
Food Allergies Mom 