Sixteen years ago, our lives changed forever. We brought a sweet little bundle home from the hospital. No, that wasn't it. That sweet little bundle turned into the kid from the Exorcist! She screamed, she cried, she never slept, and she could vomit across the room! I kept waiting for her head to spin around! Eventually, we figured out that she had food intolerances and if I didn't feed her those things, life was good.
OK, we can do this. Then came bundle number two. But we knew what to look for this time and the things that bothered him were much quicker to sort out. But in addition to all the things big sis had issues with, there were more things....sigh.... For as much as kids change your lives, food allergic kids change the way you view the very fabric of your life. That most basic of needs - eating - will never be the same. Ever!
I struggled a lot in those early years trying to come up with food that was tasty, appealing, and most importantly wouldn't make my kids sick! And while I was breastfeeding, I had to eat it too. At one point, I decided I was no longer going to settle for inferior food. We had no idea if or when the kids would outgrow these food allergies, so time to hunker down and realize this is the for the long haul. It was in that moment that I realized that I needed to "Cook Different". I remembered that early Apple add from the year my daughter was born - Think Different. Making our favorite foods with all sorts of substitutions was not working. I needed to come up with foods where we had no preconceived notion of what it was supposed to taste like. Only then could it be judged on it's own merits instead of being the inferior knockoff of the real thing.
In sorting out their issues, I learned a lot about what foods my own body didn't like so much. The symptoms were not hives and swelling, but more subtle. Our set of food avoids have changed and morphed over the years. The kids have outgrown their original food intolerance, my daughter grew into food allergies to pistachios and mung beans, and I realized that I'm intolerant to dairy, eggs, and gluten. While the selection of gluten free foods out there continues to grow as the quality and taste improve, they are still extremely expensive. And, most of the "good" stuff had dairy and/or egg in it which I need to avoid. So, I will continue to Cook Different!
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