Need Help Coping With Yet More Food Allergies

[pocoloco]

I was diagnosed with celiac 8 years ago and also cannot tolerate onion, garlic, green pepper, etc. - anything remotely spicy. After 8 years on a g.f. diet, I felt like I'd adjusted fairly well and food was not the main focus of my life. A couple of weeks ago, allergy testing showed that in addition to celiac I am allergic to dairy, corn, egg, soy, apple, peach, and peanuts. It's pretty overwhelming and I feel like my life once again revolves around food. I can deal with things at home, even though it makes for a fairly bland/limited diet. Not sure how I will handle travel which requires eating in restaurants or being in other people's homes. I don't know of any packaged foods ("granola bar" type things) that I can travel with since I haven't found anything that is free of all the things I've listed. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Also, does anyone know of any type of butter substitute that does not contain either soy or corn?

Thanks!

[Skylark]

Hi there and welcome. I'm curious why you got the allergy testing? Were you still having GI symptoms? Your doctor should have explained that food allergy testing is quite unreliable and set you up with a program to eliminate and challenge your possible allergy foods from the test.

As far as snacking, you'll need to make up baggies of "trail mix" tailored to your needs rather than granola bars. It sounds like you could mix nuts, raisins, and other dried fruit. The little honey and sesame sticks are nice if you want something sweet.

[pocoloco]

I'm curious why you got the allergy testing? Were you still having GI symptoms?

It sounds like you could mix nuts, raisins, and other dried fruit. The little honey and sesame sticks are nice if you want something sweet.

Thanks for the suggestions of making my own "trail mix" and the sesame sticks.

I was allergy tested at the recommendation of an ENT, trying to find source of severe headaches with symptoms similar to sinus infection, but no infection. Also because of symptoms like a "foggy" mind, fatigue and others that are recent. The allergist has me eliminating foods with a positive reaction for 6 months, then trying each, one at a time, to see if I react. I'm trying to learn how to eat without all those things now but also long term if I react when reintroduced into my diet. I think I'm stressing out in part because of Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc that will involve travel and extended time at other people's homes.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[Skylark]

I'm glad to hear your allergist is going to have you challenge. The testing is unreliable. I totally understand the stress of a restrictive diet because I'm trying GAPS. I'm not sure what I'm going to do over the holidays but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Also remember fruits when you are traveling. It's pretty easy to toss a banana or an apple in your purse. I love bananas because they even have a built-in "wrapper".

You may have to do things like microwave potatoes and eat a lot of salad when you're visiting family. Nuts and avocado are good foods to add fat and fill you up, and you can ask for them to cook a piece of plain meat for you if they're doing something fancy. My sister in law just turns me loose in the kitchen when I go visit her, and she makes sure she has rice, frozen chicken breasts, and plenty of veggies. The kids are picky and most of the foods they like have gluten (pizza, pasta, chicken nuggets) so I cook myself some rice and a frozen chicken breast, and toss a salad for the family.

[missy'smom]

I was diagnosed with celiac 8 years ago and also cannot tolerate onion, garlic, green pepper, etc. - anything remotely spicy. After 8 years on a g.f. diet, I felt like I'd adjusted fairly well and food was not the main focus of my life. A couple of weeks ago, allergy testing showed that in addition to celiac I am allergic to dairy, corn, egg, soy, apple, peach, and peanuts. It's pretty overwhelming and I feel like my life once again revolves around food. I can deal with things at home, even though it makes for a fairly bland/limited diet. Not sure how I will handle travel which requires eating in restaurants or being in other people's homes. I don't know of any packaged foods ("granola bar" type things) that I can travel with since I haven't found anything that is free of all the things I've listed. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Also, does anyone know of any type of butter substitute that does not contain either soy or corn?

Thanks!

I found the skin testing to be very accurate and helpful and I was shocked at how wonderfully I felt after eliminating all 26 that I tested pos. to. I hope you get equally good benefit from this.

For "butter" are you needing something to spread on bread? or to bake with? I am quite challenged with fat/oils these days and have a few more restrictions than you do so here are some that are in that category that I use, please check them yourself. We don't avoid corn syrup or oil.

Bacon fat. I take the fat from the pan, out a coffee filter over an open jar and pour the fat in. What comes out is nice clean fat. Store in the fridge. Use it instead of butter on green beans, even a little spread on bread etc.(I've been pretty desperate LOL) It might be ok in some baked goods like pancakes. Earthbalance is dairy-free and they have a soy-free version. They also make a coconut oil spread. Coconut oil is another fat that can be useful. I am using Spectrum Organic buttery shortening these days for baking. My local healthfood stores didn't carry it but were kind enough to order it at no extra charge.

If you didn't already know, you can use flax meal as an egg replacer.

[T.H.]

Just wondering if you've checked out any corn allergy websites? If not, I'd highly recommend them. When we had to eliminate corn, I don't think I would have found it all without the aid of these sites, especially some of the corn-used-in-production issues, although some of this likely depends on how careful you have to be. Some paper plates put corn starch between the plates to keep them from sticking, for example.

These sites can also have a lot of recipes, because just with corn alone, you're looking at pretty much making almost everything from scratch. :-/ There are few processed foods in our food supply that are completely corn free, sadly.

Food ideas that might work to take with you on trips.

Roasted chickpeas - this is a crunchy snack that will last about 4-5 days in a ziploc bag, out of the fridge. Tastes kind of like corn nuts. Lots of different recipes on the web, and you can make the same thing with beans, too.

falafel, homemade - Easy falafel: soaked (not cooked) chickpeas, salt, parsley, and as you can't have onion, I'd add zucchini or eggplant for moisture plus some other spices for flavor. Blend these into a doughy paste in a food processor. If the dough is too wet, add more chickpeas. If it's too dry, add more veggie. Drop small, golf-ball sized rounds, slightly flattened, into 1-2 inches of hot oil. Fry for 1-2 minutes a side, 'til crispy and golden brown. They'll last a day or so out of the fridge, too, maybe more. Bready like a hush puppy, kind of. When making, you need to make sure you get the chickpeas nice and ground up, very small pieces, or it doesn't cook right, though. We'd done this with zucchini before and rather than going with greek food, like originally intended, we went with an italian theme and used a homemade, spicy tomato sauce as a dip.

Homemade hummus - soaked(not cooked) chickpeas, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice. Again, food process this until smooth. Get the chickpeas chopped first before adding the other ingredients. Nice for dipping falafel in, or goes well with meat, or nice in a lettuce wrap on its own or with meat.

A mild olive oil is what we substituted for butter, although coconut oil is good in some situations if you can find one you trust.

We had to make our own nut milks/rice milk to get one without corn, but there were tons of recipes on the web, and it was surprisingly easy. There's even things called soy milk makers that will do this sort of thing for you automatically, usually can find for $100 or less, on the web or in an asian grocery store that also sells equipment. And you can use the left over nut pulp in veggie burgers.

Soaked chia seeds will also work as a thickener other than egg, as can pureed fruit. We kind if gave up on coatings that use egg.

We upped our potato and sweet potato intake with the diet change, and that helped deal with lower levels of calories from no dairy (With all of us together, my family now has to avoid dairy, soy, egg, corn, gluten, onion, apple, peach, and nightshades, too. So lots of dietary similarities. :-) ) Easy to take some of these with you, or buy there, and just bake in the microwave. Add toppings to them afterward.

whole grain sorghum is great - you can pop it like popcorn in a microwave popper and it tastes pretty much exactly like popcorn, only half the size. We put olive oil and salt on ours, or mix a little honey with our olive oil, heat it, then pour that over the popped sorghum with salt. We had to hunt around to find it whole grain, though. Eventually got ours from a farm called Twin Valley Mills and ordered on-line. You have to get like 30 pounds at a time, but it's a very good price. Even with shipping included, it's comes out to less than $2 a pound.

[pocoloco]

Wow! Thanks to each of you for your suggestions. I'm not much of a cook (just ask my husband!) and being overwhelmed seems to have frozen my brain, so I would not have come up with even simple things like sweet potatoes, which I love. It never occured to me that there are web sites for corn free diets, so will check into those right away. The ideas for substituting for butter are great - I was especially interested in something to put on plain veggies to add a little flavor and the things suggested look like good possibilities. All the ideas for travelling are very helpful. Reading about others who deal with similar or even more restrictions has helped to shake me out of my pity party and motivated me. I live in a rural community so no health food store but I should be able to find products online.

Thank you all so much both for your suggestions and for making me feel less isolated.

[domesticactivist]

It might help to make a list of things you CAN eat and focus on what you can do with those, rather than having to think of how to modify dishes.

An aside... we travel on GAPS regularly (and are very strict about gluten cc as well, of course) and go share meals with people who don't get it at all on a regular basis. We bring our own food and basic cooking and serving utensils.

If we are going to share the food we bring, we dish out the portion to be shared first, into a separate serving dish.

[Di2011]

I have started to keep what is left in the frypan/saucepan for future use, usually straight to the freezer if I don't have a plan for it for tomorrows snack/meal.

Leftover (rice) pasta water is a great soup/stew thickener

I have been getting better at cooking steak (I was never a big red-meat eater, am now) but has taken some practice (the cooking and the eating!). The juices/jus that is left over (beef, lamb etc) is a great base for stirfry, most rice dishes etc

Try lots of fresh herbs (basil, parsley, etc) and green veg (brocolli, spinach - I prefer English spinach and any chinese greens). Throw the greens in with your steak, in a good sized frypan, while it is cooking and you get an automatic flavour base and no oil required.

I am training myself to like potato but I find microwave/steamed to "overcooked" and then thrown into the dish with the meat and greens makes it kinda fall apart and makes it more appealing to me.

I'm still learning to leave home and eat so hope we both learn some lessons here.