Cheryl Marks Young
Holiday Spotlight: How to Have a Happy, Allergy-Friendly Hanukkah
Welcome to the holiday season. As much as we enjoy the opportunity to celebrate with family and friends, this stretch of time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day can be a minefield for allergic families. Dinners, cookie exchanges, edible gifts, classroom parties – and that’s just the beginning. It can be hard to relax and enjoy the festivities when you’re worrying over what dish is safe and which is not. Here’s the good news: You can relax and enjoy by adapting some of the holidays’ traditional fare to meet your allergy needs. Volunteer to contribute a dish to the family...
Cheryl Marks Young
Thanksgiving 101: Cooking an Allergen-Free Meal You Can Be Grateful For
Next week, families across the US will pull up their chairs to their tables and dig into delectable Thanksgiving feasts. There will be turkey, potatoes, cranberry-something-or-other, and a variety of other fixings. Gorging on all that goodness is a holiday right, or so it seems. For an allergic individual, however, the Thanksgiving table can a minefield of potential reaction-inducing challenges. The dairy-allergic person doesn’t see creamy, scrumptious mashed potatoes, he sees milk and butter hiding in potato. The wheat-allergic person doesn’t see warm rolls to melt butter across, she sees a reason to make sure her auto-injector is easily accessible....
Cheryl Marks Young
Allergy Friendly Cranberry, Sweet Potato, Quinoa Cakes
Do you experience the Thanksgiving leftover frenzy that occurs the following week? You know, the sudden flood of turkey sandwiches and turkey salad and turkey soup and turkey casserole and well, you get it, right? A funny thing happened following our son’s Bar Mitzvah this past month. We had so much allergy safe food left over that we kept making new recipes out of the leftovers. We had this delicious allergy safe cranberry quinoa salad and as I stared at the mounds of leftovers, I thought about some quinoa cakes we had seen at our local Whole Foods last year,...
Cheryl Marks Young
Essential Resources for Parents of Food-Allergic Children
Parents of children with food allergies know that it takes a heap of time and effort to keep your children safe. If you have a food-allergic child, you know that just one slip-up can result in severe consequences, and no parent or child should have to experience this. If your child recently has been diagnosed with food allergies, you may be feeling overwhelmed and wondering where to look. In addition to consulting with medical and nutritional professionals, there are many resources available to help you along on this new and often stressful journey. Here is a list of some valuable...