Category Archives: gluten free

If You Love Your Family, Feed Them

dinner

 

I’ve written ad nauseum about food allergies and sensitivities on this blog. Every time I think I’ve perhaps written too much about those topics, I take a peek at my web traffic statistics and note that the most popular posts on the site, week after week, are the practical ones with guides for either the six-food elimination diet (avoiding dairy, soy, egg, nuts, wheat, and fish) or the chylothorax diet (avoiding fat). I imagine that these posts are most commonly read by people struggling to feed themselves or someone they love. In my heart, I wrote them for a past version of myself, up in the night searching the web for information that, quite simply, didn’t exist.

At the holidays — these winter ones or others throughout all four seasons — it is hardest to be someone with food restrictions. Whether it is my daughter, who had to be on those two diets (among several others!) over the first nine years of her life, or me — dairy intolerant and severely allergic to fish — our family is incredibly aware of the limitations imposed on our social life by these restrictions. In my wider family, I love people who are allergic to nuts, who are on anti-inflammatory diets for auto-immune diseases, who are recovering from eating disorders, and who are diabetic. In all likelihood, there are others in my family with dietary needs that they keep to themselves. Yet somehow, we all manage to eat together, in each other’s homes and at restaurants, without too much disruption.

This happens because we love each other. Continue Reading…

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10 Foods That Saved My Soul

10-foods-that-saved-my-soul

In 2010, my youngest daughter, Sammi, was diagnosed with a disease called eosinophilic esophagitis. Though it turned out that this diagnosis was incorrect, we didn’t learn that for three more years. During the first year of her diagnosis, we had to eliminate dairy, soy, eggs, nuts, and wheat from her already-vegetarian diet. During that time, these ten foods became the most important staples in my kitchen, making me grateful beyond anything I had ever known before. If you or someone you love is following the “six food elimination diet,”  these foods might be just the things you need, too. Continue Reading…

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What You Brought Home

swallow-my-sunshine-brought-home

Dear Sammi Sunshine,

On the day that we brought you home from the hospital, we were nearly out of the parking garage when I remembered the milk — my milk, your milk, stored in the infant intensive care unit freezer. I’d been waking up every three hours for over a week to pump it and bring it in a little cooler to you each morning. I sprung out of the car, wincing from the cesarean section scar still healing on my abdomen, and went back into the hospital for it. It was the first thing you brought into our home — you, your tiny perfect self, and twenty-six ounces of expressed breast milk. Continue Reading…

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What I Was (Not) Thinking

In the fall of 2010, my younger daughter began kindergarten on a dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, wheat-free, nut-free, vegetarian diet.

In late October, she got to add eggs back into her diet on a trial basis, and I learned how incredibly, incredibly useful eggs can be in managing a diet as challenging as hers. When we added back eggs, it made it possible for us to make these ridiculous — and I mean ridiculous — “pizzas:”

everything-free-pizza

Continue Reading…

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Forget It, Or Don’t, Or Hold It Lightly

swallow-my-sunshine-chairIt was December, 2013, when we had that awful conversation, the doctor and my husband and I.

It was cold out, and my body wasn’t ready for it yet. That’s why my chin was quivering as I sat in the upholstered chair next to the window, cradling one phone while my husband stood alert in the next room with another extension in his hand. It was cold outside, and I didn’t have my winter metabolism running by then, so my hand shook. It shook so much that the paper in front of me was blank the whole time. I never wrote anything. At the end of the conversation, when the doctor’s excitement oozed through the phone because the missing piece might really fit in the puzzle this time, my paper was blank and my toes were tucked under my bottom in the chair, holding me tightly into the space where I was curled now, so cold, so cold because I was near the window, the winter window, on a frigid day. That’s why I shook. That’s why I shivered.

But actually, it turns out, it was November. Continue Reading…

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