Author: Anu Rao

Useful Links & Articles

Annual FAAN walk – walk to save a life!

Anu Rao

FAAN – Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network is ‘the world leader in information, resources, and programs for food allergy, a potentially life-threatening medical condition that afflicts as many as 15 million Americans, including approximately 6 million children.  FAAN provides information and educational resources about food allergy to patients, their families, schools, health professionals, pharmaceutical companies, the food industry, and government officials.’ Their mission is ‘to raise public awareness, to provide advocacy and education, and to advance research on behalf of all those affected by food allergies and anaphylaxis.’ – www.FoodAllergy.org

Every year they hold the annual FAAN walk in different cities across the United States starting in May and going on till the end of year – http://www.foodallergywalk.org. The funds they raise is used to fund food allergy awareness, advocacy, education, and research programs. As they aptly put it, ‘We walk to save a life!’

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Dining Out

Cocoa V, decadence & bonhomie!

Anu Rao

Happy Pumpkin Pie Day! 🙂

‘I want to be a part of it; New York, New York…

My little town blues; they are melting away…’                 

Aah, as Elvis prances around singing New York, New York, my heart races with anticipation! Psst – if you haven’s already guessed, I am a total city girl at heart 🙂 And, New York City is undoubtedly my favorite city in the world – museums, skyscrapers, eclectic stores, jazz bars, theater and for a foodie like me – the incredible smorgasbord of restaurants! Dining out in New York City with one of my favorite people in the world, my dearest friend, Bindu…’a perfect evening’ !

Happy Birthday girl! To many more gastronomic adventures...

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Recipes

AF Oat Pancakes – yummy!

Anu Rao

 This post is dedicated to a friend who embraces a healthy lifestyle with a gusto. Naturally, nutritious food is a key element of a healthy lifestyle! Since my dear pal specially loves oats in  its pure glory and all its popular forms – granola, meuseli, oat bread and more – the main ingredient of this recipe is ‘oats’ 🙂

This recipe is completely ‘Anu-grown’ – it popped into my head today, amidst my random musings of a happier, healthier world.  And since then, I have been walking around with a goofy, pleased smile all day which became goofier once it passed the ultimate taste test – the taste buds of a 6-year old 😉

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Product Review

I am in ‘love’…with Tempt Hemp Ice Cream :-)

Anu Rao

It is a good time for those with multiple food allergies in the quest for dairy alternatives. There are more substitutes available than ever before – Rice Milk, Oat Milk, and more recently Hemp Milk.  Personally, I find Hemp Milk by far the most nutritious because it has a much higher fat and protein content than the either Oat or Rice milk. That is a definite plus when giving it as a dairy alternative to children – especially the balanced quantities of fatty and amino acids. Living Harvest – a company with its roots in Canada and presently headquartered in Portland, Oregon (surprise, surprise 🙂 )  is the force behind Tempt Hemp Milk and other Hemp Milk products. Hemp Milk is definitely a very creamy dairy substitute and works quite well in cooking too. I have used it to make rice pudding, soups, pasta sauce etc. but as a drink my little one din’t quite like it. However, if you like the taste and are not allergic to Hemp seed – Hemp Milk is definitely one of the most nutritious dairy alternative drinks to try. Living Harvest has a great short write-up about Hemp which is definitely worth a read and titled ‘Why hemp?‘

Courtesy: Picture taken from Living Harvest, Tempt website.

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Parents' nuggets of wisdom

Allergic Living – be careful ‘each time, every time’!

Anu Rao

We have come a long way from the days when my little one’s diet consisted entirely of rice and Neocate. Awesome!!! 🙂 However, that also means -mommy has to be extra careful. So often, it seems like he can almost have everything and yet ‘not quite’! This is the stage when food-allergy sufferers/ caregivers cannot let their guard down. We cannot afford to forget that an anaphylactic shock brought on by a food allergy needs emergency care within 5 minutes. And that shock is equally severe whether the person is allergic to one thing or a whole host of things. So, even though one might have overcome a host of food allergies – just one severe allergy is enough to kill them. This fact assumes greater significance when we are not within easy access of emergency care – air travel being one of them. Add International air travel to the mix and it assumes scary proportions – imagine going into an anaphylactic shock when  flying over countries the plane cannot land in or over the vast oceans and mountains – whoa! Sorry to sound apocalyptic but if that’s what it takes for us to be on our guard – so be it!

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Recipes

Empathy, Friends & AF Coconut Delite…

Anu Rao

At the risk of sounding like a glib motivational speaker…there is an upside to being put in tough situations! Though I would tear up when watching a sad movie or reading a book with the gravitas of John Steinbeck’s, ‘Grapes of Wrath’, I was definitely not an empathetic girl in my earlier years. Then, I became mom to a child with multiple food allergies and a heretofore unknown element became a part my personality, empathy – go figure!!!

Read on for the recipe of a delectable AF (Allergy Friendly) dessert…

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Recipes

AF Veggie Poha (Flaked Rice with veggies) – yum!

Anu Rao

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

When  you sing you begin with Do Re Me, Do Re me; when you cook you begin with the ingredients… 😉

Music and cooking – a tapestry of creative instinct!! I was listening to this melodious Julie Andrews song as I wrote this blog post today… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_hcXiGb6_s 

Read on for delecious, nutritious, AF (allergy-friendly) 1-dish dinner recipe…

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Useful Links & Articles

Is an Epinephrine auto injector safe in the car?

Anu Rao

As a policy, my approach to handling food allergies is – ‘Take a deep breath…it is not the end of life! All it requires is a slightly modified lifestyle.’ I rarely let my paranoia show in social/ public situations. This attitude has reaped rich dividends in a couple of very important ways:

1) My son has learnt to be careful without feeling that he has a severe disability. He has a very matter of fact attitude towards his food allergies though he is just 6 🙂

2) Other parents do not feel that their child’s enjoyment has been compromised because of my son’s allergies.

However, this does not mean that I am ever careless. I keep an epinephrine auto-injector everywhere – at home, my pocket book, at school, my husband’s laptop bag and more! My son though very young already knows all about it and how it will be used if he ever needs it! The reason is simple – an epinephrine auto-injector (brand names: EpiPen, EpiPen Jr., Adrenaclick, Twinject, Adrenaline, Epi E-Z Pen, Primatene) can reverse the severe side effects of a massive food allergy attack – most importantly anaphylaxis and save a person’s life!

Storing the epinephrine auto-injector carefully plays a big role in ensuring that it is effective when needed. it is very tempting to keep the injector in the car because we are most likely to be closest to it when needed and yet we should not. Loved a CNN blog post on this issue so, sharing the same…

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/04/can-i-store-an-allergy-auto-injector-in-my-car/?hpt=Sbin

Product Review

Allergy Friendly “Daiya Vegan Cheese”

Anu Rao

Where does an ardent foodie like me hang out for fun?! No points for guessing that one of my favorite haunts is any kind of food market 🙂 – American, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, European (yes – on a trip to Switzerland, it was not the glaciers but a local organic food market that was my first stop – go figure!). All in the quest of yet another elusive food item that will make the mouth burst with flavors and the tummy do a little jig even if a person has food allergies! The allergy friendly food market has been making great strides in the recent past so it is a fun-packed adventure…

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Product Review

DariFree: a dairy-free milk alternative!

Anu Rao

Yes – I am still around and working furiously on getting fun and unique input for AllergyFoodie 🙂  Am presently on a 2 month culinary journey in India. The objective – ferret out forgotten old family recipes from the deep recesses of my aunts’ memories! As we talk by the kitchen fire – long-forgotten memories of granny (whom I fondly called avva) surface, the flavors of some of the wholesome, simple and allergy-friendly dishes she used to make waft through and tantalize our mind’s nasal passages. The salient feature of avva’s dishes was how they had remained unchanged through generations – handed down from mom to daughter over the kitchen hearth. Unfortunately, many of these gems have gotten buried under the onslaught of modern quick cooking methods and new cuisines.  So, very soon you will see a series resulting from this food adventure but for now I have to share information about an exciting new product that I chanced upon…DariFree

Courtesy: Pictures taken from Vance Foods website

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