A new chapter in cooking with allergies...

We made the decision this weekend to take our 3 year old off wheat.  The pediatrician has been gently nudging me to give wheat-free a 6 week trial to see how he feels.  He had been "failure to thrive" and we have addressed two other allergies, eggs and dairy, and are now trying this out to see if he feels better.  I've seen a cycle with his eczema.  When he has large doses of wheat, he breaks out badly.  The more wheat, the more eczema.

The big challenge here is the different combination of allergies.  I have a long list of allergies as do 4 of my kids and my husband.  The biggest one is the egg allergy.  I have made most baked goods without eggs since 2009, when I had my first bad reaction to eggs.  I still make scrambled, fried and hard boiled eggs.  I will, occasionally, make other dishes with eggs when I know the 3 year old and I can have something else.  However, because of my rice allergy, cooking gluten free has really intimidated me.  Most recipes that are wheat free use rice flour in combination with some other flour...then Bob's Red Mill saves the day.  I was at the grocery store on Saturday looking through all the gluten free/wheat free items and realized most of the BRM mixes did NOT use rice flour.  Only the brownie mix had rice flour.  The rest were a combination of sorghum, tapioca, potato, garbanzo and fava bean flours.  Those are totally doable for me.  So, today is day one of our new life.  We are now cooking, in some way shape or form, without:
wheat
eggs
dairy
peanuts
treenuts
soy protein
fish
shellfish
pomegranite
rice
We're also adding sunflower seeds to the list of can't haves for the three year old for a few days.  Unlike wheat, we should see results pretty quickly.  The good news is that this leaves about a million other foods we can have.

One other very interesting thing I came across in reading up on other allergy problems was a problem we've had, but hadn't been able to identify until Sunday.  There is something called Oral Allergy Syndrome.   I've been struggling with my 12 year old's face lately. He's broken out in hives around his mouth on and off the last three weeks.  It happens every summer.  Come to find out his horrible Ragweed allergy is to blame and is causing his body to react to watermelon, cantaloupe, zucchini and cucumbers (okay, not zucchini-he won't touch that).  He lives on watermelon and cantaloupe in the summer.  Funny, the three year old is reacting similarly, too.  I knew he had allergies, but now I know he's allergic to ragweed, too.

So, I made BRM Gluten Free Wonder Bread today for the 3 year old.  He liked it.  We all tried a little and found it to be pretty good.  I'll still only be serving it to the 3 year old because it's something like $5 a mix.  I divided up the dough into mini loaf pans.  My little guy doesn't eat a very big sandwich.  So, it's just the right size for a small 3 year old.  I"ll keep you posted on the new recipes as we try them.