Month: February 2011

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Nice to be mentioned…

Anu Rao

Blogs continue to disseminate relevant information in large part when other good websites and bloggers cite them. I owe the sustenance of my blog due to mentions by many fellow bloggers both in the field of food allergies and related fields…thank you!
 

1) Enjoy Life Foods Blog: It is a privilege to be a part of the blog roll of one of the foremost companies, making great food products for those suffering from all the top 8 food allergies, ‘Enjoy Life Foods’.

2) BeAllergyWise.com: Thank you Monique for a mention in your article ‘Multiple Food Allergies Complicate Life’. She has this to say about my blog… Another site that I like for those of us with multiple allergies is Allergy Foodie. Anu Rao writes about her journey with her son, who was also diagnosed with multiple food allergies. Her son is allergic to all 8 common food allergens! Her passion for good food that is fun means that her blog is full of discussions of ingredients, allergy free eating and good nutrition. (This is a woman after my own heart!)

Be Allergy Wise editor Monique Attinger is someone whose footsteps I am trying to follow – she is a former management consultant and researcher who has abandoned the rat race for the joys of childrearing and writing. Her two children are her inspiration to keep learning as much as possible about allergies – both hers and theirs.

3) Healthcare Technicians: Thank you Heather Trotter for mentioning my blog in your article ‘Who needs wheat anyways? The Top 50 Celiac Blogs’. Heather has this to say about my blog…‘Allergy Foodie – What are the top eight food allergies? Find out through the blog, but more importantly, it includes tips on how to live with each. Gluten free is just one of them.’

Heather Trotter’s blog is a gold mine of information for healthcare technicians and those aspiring to be one.

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Rare Allergies: ‘Mustard’…yes, really!

Anu Rao

On occasion, I have been accused of ‘helicopter parenting’ and even ‘apache’ helicopter parenting by my husband 🙂 However, I met my match a few years back in a Gymboree class where doting moms across the United States try to lay the foundation for ‘awesome’ adults in clueless toddlers! She had a little one who was allergic to peanuts – the lengths she would go to, to ensure that a food item was safe was scary for someone like me who had a child with far more food allergies. Yes – it did make me wonder if I was being a tad careless. However, the difference was probably – she let her anxiety show! That in my book, as a mom to a child with food allergies is a definite no-no. We have to be careful at all times, but cannot let that paralyze our lives by living in constant fear! But, I digress…one day, she told us that her child was severely allergic to ‘mustard’ – yes that very same condiment that is used across the world in various forms – in sandwiches, curries, soups and so much more. It is a hidden element in many dishes and may not even be listed on the ingredient chart because it is one of the many spices and condiments used in minute quantities in dishes. Initially, even someone as aware as me did not believe her and put it down to her being over-cautious. Then, when she told me that her son broke into hives within seconds of a small splatter on his arm – I knew it was very serious and she was fully justified in her caution. Years later I came across Kytriya through my blog who talked about the very same allergy.

Continue reading “Rare Allergies: ‘Mustard’…yes, really!” →

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Gluten-Free ‘Play Dough’ – yeah!

Anu Rao

Aaah – the joy of getting tiny fists into a mass of play dough and punching it into any shape their young hearts desire – priceless! Alas – a forbidden pleasure for children severely allergic to wheat/gluten. When my little one reached the age that he could enjoy play dough, it would break my heart to see him look longingly at other kids in Gymboree play with ‘Play Doh’ in Art class. Equally important was the fine motor skill development that play doh helps with. That’s when I started researching alternative ways of making play dough and one of the recipes that worked was this one…

Gluten-Free Wonder Playdough recipe:

1/2 cup rice flour

1/2 cup corn starch

1/2 cup salt

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup hot water

1 tsp. cooking oil

food coloring

1) Mix all ingredients together in saucepan, cook on low heat, stirring occassionally for at least 5 minutes or until it forms a ball.

2) Remove from heat, let cool for 10 minutes. Scoop into a large bowl, add at least 1/2 cup more rice flour, and 1/2 cup more corn starch, knead until well mixed and no longer sticky. Store in airtight container.

3) If it gets to dry, add a few drops of water, If it’s too sticky add more rice flour and corn starch in equal amounts.

If making gluten-free play dough is not your cup of tea, try ‘Coloration Wheat & Gluten-Free Dough’

Gluten-Free Play Dough (picture taken from http://www.discountschoolsupply.com)

Enjoy seeing your little ones discover the joys of pliant dough 🙂

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Birthday Cakes – a pictoblog :-)

Anu Rao

Arjun’s birthday celebrations have transformed my kitchen into a fun cake bake lab – more power to all us moms who have taken on food allergies as a way to explore alterntives! As his 6th birthday draws close, I reflected on the many hits and misses with his birthday cakes through the years…from rock solid, hard to eat cakes to pretty darn amazing 🙂
 
1 Month old: Wonder why exhausted, severely sleep-deprived first time moms find intense pleasure in celebrating  the birth of their angel every month?! That I dint know the first thing about bakinig and even less about cake decorating did not deter me – go figure! A pretty decent regular yellow cake resulted the first month of which a month old Arjun could obviously not take a bite. My monthly celebrations soon came to a grinding halt because Arjun was diagnosed with multiple food allergies and I was yet to figure out alternatives.
 
 
 
1st Month Birthday – a regular yellow cake!
 
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1st Birthday: A cake that he could not eat but surrounded by the love of his grandparents and cousins in India. Lucky for me – he still thought his fingers tasted infinitely better 😛
 
 
Regular White Cake with vanilla frosting and Winnie the Pooh 🙂
 
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2nd Birthday: Now my little one was old enough to want a bite of his own birthday cake 🙂 An “Allergy friendly Chocolate cake with strawberry filling and vanilla frosting” resulted.  It was CherryBrook Kitchen  that came to the rescue with their range of dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, gluten-free cake mixes! 2 layers of gluten free chocolate cake with a layer of strawberry jam in the center. Talk about taking the easy route but hey – it works! Now for the icing on the cake – frost it with store bought vanilla frosting like Duncan Hines vanilla frosting or Cherrybrook Kitchen vanilla frosting or an allergy-friendly home-grown recipe! For the extra touch to personalize the cake with your little one’s favorite theme – balls, cars, trains…fondant is the way to go! Fondant is essentially sugar and coloring hence, allergy friendly with a professional touch. I used readymade fondant made by Kitchen Krafts.
Remember: Even if you bake the cake a day earlier, do not refrigerate else the cake made from this mix becomes scarily hard and crumbly – eww!  Something that our guests and I discovered as we tried hard to cut through the cake 😉
 
 
 
 Beautiful looking chocolate cake but tad too hard to slice through 🙂
 
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3rd Birthday:  “Allergy friendly Chocolate Brownie Train cake decorated with gummy bears and rolled fondant”. Thanks to The Cravings Place  Ooey Gooey Chocolatey Chewy Brownie Mix. Yummilcious and yes…dairy, egg, nut, soy and gluten-free 🙂 Make it your own and very fancy by using an appropriate cake pan that your child loves – at 3, Arjun was all about freight trains. His birthday cake was complete with gummy bear freight and fondant tracks 😀 Allergies does not mean that food should look unappetizing!
 
Chocolate Brownie Train cake… 
 
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 4th Birthday:  Vanilla and Chocolate Brownie sandwich cake with fresh strawberries and vanilla frosting – ‘Cars’. Yet again The Cravings Place create-your-own cake mix and Cherry Brook Kitchen gluten-free chocolate cake mix came to the rescue. Sprinkles and my little’s one’s favorite ‘Cars’ movie characters, McQueen and Sheriff completed the effect 🙂

Vanilla and Chcolate sandwich cake with fresh strawberries in the center!

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5th Birthday: This year wheat was included in his diet so he got to have a customized dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, soy-free but made from regular wheat flour! Was he excited to have his very first store made birthday cake  just like other kids or what?! So much for homemade!!! All kids want is what other kids seem to be getting and not something unique 😀 So, it was a vanilla sponge cake with Spongebob plonked right in the center for good effect…



eggless, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free sponge cake

With his 6th birthday right around the corner wonder what surprises this year will bring…but, we are sure of one thing – it will be tasty, fun and exciting!

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Countdown to Valentine’s Day – recipes galore!

Anu Rao

Love, love, love this time of the year – the cute Valentine’s day parties at school, clumsy but affectionate attempts by beaus to fix a romantic dinner or breakfast in bed – delicious ;-). So, here is an allergy friendly recipe countdown to this most loving time of the year. Best of all, we will also make it nutritious…

1) Savory high protein waffles: Kicking off Valentine’s Day celebrations on a high note…met an amazing woman over this weekend who has this uncanny gift of making food super fun. Her larger than life approach to all things culinary is captured in an informative and humorous food blog, ‘Iyer n’ Chef Wannabe‘. Her rendition of savory waffles is not just packed with proteins but also allergy friendly…the only ingredient being dehusked matpe beans (also known as black gram, urad, udad). This ingredient is most easily available in most South Asian grocery stores and more specifically in Indian stores. So, here is Niv Mani, ‘Waffling around’. Thanks Niv – my son loved your allergy friendly waffles and am sure there will be many who will fall in love with it 🙂

Options: Up the nutrition quotient by adding finely shredded cabbage or thinly sliced spinach or grated carrots or let your creativity go wild and share the happy results with us…

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Latest on Vegan Rella

Anu Rao

Why oh why is it so hard to get our hands on a block of Vegan rella – as far as I know, it is the only cheese out there that is dairy and soy free but still manages to taste pretty decent. Vegan Rella is one of the many products manufactured by Panos Brands and should be available at these store locations  according to their customer service people. ‘Should’ being the operative word here 😉

In recent times, I have always found it at Wegman’s, but have been unable to get my hands on the cheddar flavor Vegan Rella. Panos Brands customer service guys were unable to tell me when and where I could find them!!

For further details:

Parent Company: http://www.wessanen.com/

Address: 160 Pehle Avenue, Park 80 East,  Saddle Brook, NJ 07663, USA

Telephone number: +1 201 843 8900;  Fax number: +1 201 368 3575

Website: www.panosbrands.com;  Email: info@panosbrands.com

Good luck finding Vegan Rella…