Soup Is My Legacy

souppotI hear my daughter Sammi’s steps on the stairs before her voice calls out to me. Still, I don’t run to unlock the door; she has keys, and my hands are covered in a sticky mass of egg and flakes of matzo meal. When I hear the key turn in the lock, I know what I’ll hear next and, still, it thrills me every time.

“Mommy!,” is the beginning and then, barely as that first word ends, the deep inhale begins, followed by, “Oooohhh! Really?!! Matzo ball soup!!! YES!!!”

This is my legacy, every bit of it, from the key in the door to the recognition of home to the smell of what’s cooking and what it means. This is how I want to be remembered.


Sammi has always loved soup. As a toddler, struggling to gain weight after her first cardiac surgery, she deigned to take tiny sips of a soup whose recipe I’d found in an old magazine and adapted. Chickpea soup became our savior, keeping her weight from dropping to the magically low number that would mean feeding tube. We spiked it with extra virgin coconut oil and kept a batch in the fridge at all times. It got so that I could not eat it myself, but never mind that — Sammi ate and did not wither, sipped and did not die.

When Sammi was only two, I brought a batch of that soup — a recipe I could make in my sleep and, half-crazed with insomnia in those years, often nearly did — to the home of parents who had just accepted two little boys as foster children. Sammi sat in her car seat as I hoisted the pot up the stairs and handed it over. There was, of course, another pot at home for her. These days, when I run into that other mother, she often mentions that soup, usually with the two words we use: “I made The Soup. Your soup. You know? The Soup.”

And I know. Of course I know. It’s powerful soup. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

How Have You Never Had KUGEL?

bakingtogether

My older daughter, Ronni, ran out of the door of the elementary school one day many years ago with her eyes wide and a story bubbling to the surface even as I crouched down to receive her in my arms.

“Mommy!,” she gasped, flinging her lunchbox into the basket under the stroller where her little sister sat, “I ate all the kugel in my lunch today — but no one at my table even knew what kugel was!

I hugged her and laughed. “Kugel isn’t a food most people have tried, sweetie, unless they’re Jewish or have lots of Jewish friends.”

She nodded. “I know, but MOMMY. How can they LIVE without trying KUGEL?!” Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Your Strange Diet, Day One

There are hundreds of articles on the internet and in parenting and health magazines about what it’s like to deal with food allergies. From the relatively minor challenges of mild lactose intolerance to the devastating effects of an anaphylactic reaction, there’s advice on avoidance and labeling, special medical alert bracelets and school safety plans. There are lists of substitutions for these newly dangerous foods, recipes for making things “(fill-in-the-blank) free,” and products popping up on shelves to replace the foods you used to love before they became a danger to you or someone you love.

kitchen cabinetIt’s easy to find those articles. What I felt was missing was an article to help families in those first few days. The day after a child is first raced to the emergency room with a swelling throat, or after the gastroenterologist hands over the celiac diagnosis, or after an oncologist tells someone to follow an anti-cancer diet, they stand in their kitchens and stare down their former life  — and their kitchen cabinets — without knowing what to do first.  Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

6 Things Not to Say to a Family on a Medically Restrictive Diet

talkingBetween my daughter Sammi’s birth and her ninth birthday, she spent nearly all of her life on some kind of medically-restrictive diet. Whether it was being forbidden to eat grains as a baby, following an acid-free diet as a refluxing toddler, using the six-food-elimination diet to uncover the cause of her (incorrectly-diagnosed) eosinophilic esophagitis as a little girl, or choking down the unpleasant fat-free food that kept her safe from chylothorax after her cardiac surgery, we often had to define what our whole family ate by the things that Sammi had to avoid.

During all those years, I heard a number of unhelpful comments about what I fed my child, ranging from the well-meaning but insensitive to the downright offensive. If someone in your world is eating a diet that their doctor has prescribed, the following comments should never, ever come out of your mouth. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Practicalities of the Chylothorax Diet

fatfreeThe best thing about being forced to eat a fat-free diet for chylothorax is that it is always temporary.

The worst thing about being forced to eat a fat-free diet for chylothorax is everything else.

If you are coming to this page from a web search for “chylothorax diet,” then you already know that you — or the person you’re caring for – has a leaking thoracic duct in the chest leaking a fluid called chyle, largely made up of dietary fat. If left untreated, chyle could fill the chest cavity and make it very hard to breathe. Because thoracic ducts usually heal on their own, simply waiting for that to happen is often enough treatment. While you wait, your diet has to be fat-free.

When my 8 year old daughter had to follow this diet after cardiac surgery, we were flummoxed. So many foods have a gram of fat in them — too little to be bothersome to almost any other diet, but twice as much as was allowable for her at the time. As we had before with other difficult, medically-required restrictive diets, we dug deep and did a lot of research. Here are some tips that I hope will help others manage this crummy, unpleasant, high-stakes diet. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather