Blog

Our family deals with anaphylactic reactions on a regular basis. When you have two highly allergic kids (my son has 18 severe anaphylactic food allergies and my daughter has 6), you come to realize that many individuals know the words anaphylactic and anaphylaxis but don’t fully understand what they mean. For many, an anaphylactic reaction conjures up images of a patient going into shock: blood pressure drops, breathing becomes difficult, there may even be a loss of consciousness. It’s certainly scary. And while that image is true, it’s just one form of anaphylaxis. What is an anaphylactic reaction? To begin...

There’s that moment in the allergist’s office just before you receive the allergy test results: You draw a breath in and play out all the scenarios in your mind, leaning in to the fervent hope that this will all turn out to be nothing. And then the doctor gives you the news. Your child is, in fact, allergic to the foods you suspected. Now what?

An allergy safe seven layer cake that we call our version of death by chocolate. The kids heard about my famous 24 hour New Years 7 Layer Cake and wanted to make their own safe version. Next round will be a vanilla cake version. This was fun and easy and the kids gave it the thumbs up. By the way, there are vegetables in that cake so it is healthy and allergy safe.  The cake filling layers are made with homemade pudding and the outer layer is homemade chocolate ganache poured over the top and on the sides. The trick...

Our son is taking French this Semester and he brought home the dreaded permission slip for a Mardi Gras party.  Every child was asked to bring in something from the list and a party would be held in the classroom.  My first response was not something I could repeat out loud.  I took a deep breath and asked my son what he wanted to do.  He wanted to participate, so true to form, I sent an email to the teacher asking for some recipes for King's Cake and asking for details of how she planned to manage the day with...