Tag Archives: milk allergy

Cheeze Looeeze

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Cheesies

I have a love/hate relationship with cheezies aka cheese pleesers, Cheetos, cheese puffs, etc.  Love because they were a rare treat when I was little.  On a Saturday night that my parents were going out, my sister and I would get to choose a bottle of pop (usually Swiss Cream Soda) and a bag of cheesies from the local corner store.  We savoured the salty, cheesy corn puff treats making them last as long as possible, letting them melt in our mouths.  The best part was licking the Day-Glo orange powder off our fingers.

It’s that same orange powder that feeds my hate.  This powder is insidious!  The treat of it sticking to my fingers when I was a kid is now my nightmare.  The darned powder gets everywhere.  Believe it or not this unnatural looking orange powder actually contains a milk product.  For a family with dairy allergy this stuff has to stay out of oor hoose.

We have milk in our house, we have real cheese, yoghurt, ice cream and other delicious dairy products, but this powdered cheese product used to make corn puffs cheesy and taco chips nachoie is not allowed past our front door.  We’ve hosted many parties and BBQs over the years and we always ask that people not bring snacks containing powdered cheese.  We explain about our son’s allergy to dairy products and about how the powdered cheese gets everywhere; our guests have always understood.  I know you would understand too, eat a handful of Cheetos and I challenge you not to be wearing an orange bib when you finish !
Oh no! I’m totally craving some cheezies…

PS To take the picture I broke the rule and brought the evil cheesy corn puffs into the house and I (carefully!) gave in to temptation.

Yam Protein Power Muffins

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Yam Protein Muffin

Including a protein with breakfast is challenging when the standards: eggs, cheese and yoghurt are out.  G’s dad came up with this muffin recipe through a lot of trial and error, but even the errors got eaten because they contained chocolate chips!  These muffins are a yummy start to the day even if you do not have allergies.  So, today we have a guest baker.  I did not write this recipe, or bake the food or take the photos.  Full credit goes to my husband.  Here we go …

INGREDIENTS

Dry mix:

1/2 cup dried soy protein
1-1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 handful dairy-free dark chocolate chips

Wet Mix :

1 med size yam
1/4 cup vegetable oil (canola)
1/3 cup white sugar (brown optional)
2 tsp vanilla
Splash orange juice

DIRECTIONS

Oven 350 F ; prep time 15 minutes ; bake time 20 minutes ; yields 12 muffins

1. Wash yam and perforate skin all around with end of sharp knife. Place on microwave-safe dish and cook 6 minutes on 60% power. Yam should be soft through to centre when done. Remove from microwave and cut in half lengthwise. Let cool. When cool enough to handle, remove skin and slice halves into smaller sections and allow to cool to room temperature.

Cooked YamCooked Yam Cut
2. While yam is cooking and cooling, add all dry ingredients except chocolate chips into cuisinart with sharp blade attachment (or hand mix with whisk). Run Cuisinart until soy protein chunks are fully chopped into powder and all dry ingredients are well blended (approx 3 minutes). Place into large mixing bowl and sprinkle chocolate chips on top. Set aside.

Yam Muffin Dry Ingredients

3. In same Cuisinart with blade attachment add all wet ingredients including yam – make sure yam is room temp or slightly warm but not hot. Blend until well mixed and slightly runny ( use the splash of OJ to make the mixture flow better). Mixture should flow but still require spatula to get it out of the bowl. Set aside.

Yam Muffin Wet Ingredients

4. Line a muffin tin with paper muffin/cupcake cups.

5. Using a large spatula, add the wet mix to the dry by folding and gently stirring, but do not whip or vigorously mix the batter. Add OJ in small quantities until the batter is well consolidated. The batter should be stiff but not dry. Spoon into the muffin cups using all of the batter for 12 muffins.

Yam Muffin BatterYam Muffins Raw
Place in the pre-heated oven on the lower or middle rack. Bake 20 minutes, no peeking. Check if done using toothpick into centre of muffin – if it comes out clean they are cooked through. Remove when done and place on wire rack to cool.

Enjoy!

Yam Muffins

Allergy test results

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Allergy testing hives

Ever have an itch you can't scratch...

So, after the allergy testing yesterday, the platter of Quality Street Chocolates for G is out as is the hunk of blue cheese.  If you look at the photo above… those four nice round welts along the bottom are the milk tests.  This wasn’t much of a surprise.  Having spilled milk on G when he was a baby, I know first hand what evil milk had wrought (once again, SO sorry G).  I was actually hoping that egg would be reduced, but see that big amorphous welt in the crook of his arm… that’s the egg white test.  Guess it’s not reduced!

If you’re not familiar with allergy testing, here’s a quick primer.  Pen marks indicate where a small drop of serum containing the allergen is put on the skin.  A tiny scratch is made on the skin where the serum is and then you wait to see what happens.  Sometimes it’s quite spectacular, but what you’d rather see is nothing.  I must say, G displayed incredible self control.  Just looking at his arm made me itchy.  Poor guy was going out of his mind wanting to scratch!

There is actually something positive that came from the testing, I mean the test was negative which was positive….Oh what ever, it was good news. G requested to be tested for pistachio nuts and to his delight it was negative.  Forget the Quality Street and blue cheese, on our way home we stopped for a slushy and a small bag of pistachios (with a Benadryl chaser).

 

Pancakes – dairy-free, egg-free

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Pancakes - dairy-free. egg-free

This pancake recipe is the one that G was supposed to have followed when making me my Mother’s Day breakfast.  It is very simple (if you read the ingredients correctly – right G?) and they taste like regular pancakes (see caveat above).  We often have pancakes for breakfast with butter (dairy free stuff) and maple syrup.  While in Scotland we often have smaller sized ones, cold, for tea (or a snack) with “butter” and jam.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 heaping teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 cup soy milk

DIRECTIONS

Mix together dry ingredients.  Add soy milk all at once a beat well. If batter is very thick add a bit more soy milk.  You should be able to pour batter without it being runny.

Pancake Batter

You can use a frying pan on the stove or an electric pan to cook pancakes.  These pancakes stick easily so a bit of oil in the pan for the first batch is recommended even if using a nonstick pan. Set to medium heat.

Pour batter onto pan to form pancakes the size you would like and when bubbles forming on top begin to burst, they are ready for turning.

Pancakes cooking

Give about the same amount of time to cook the second side.

Pancakes cooking

** If you can tolerate eggs, cut the soy milk to 1 1/4 cups and add two beaten eggs.  Pancakes will be more tender.
Pancakes - dairy-free, egg-free

In The Beginning

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G was an easy newborn.  The only thing that I didn’t expect was that he refused a bottle and boy do I mean REFUSE.  Oh well, breast is best as they say and cheaper! Talk about shocking when one morning I accidentally spilled milk on G and where the milk touched his skin big welts arose.   As I rushed him to the bath to rinse it off I was thinking, surely this must be a one off thing.  Milk can’t be harmful, didn’t Cleopatra bathe in it?!  Was it my lack of coordination or fate that caused me to once again spill milk on G a few weeks later.  Why was I eating milk laced cereal while balancing G on my lap after what had happened the first time?  Stupid, stupid, stupid!  Nothing like doing an unplanned allergy test right in your own home!  By the way, we don’t do this any more – we try to keep G away from falling milk and allergy tests are saved for the doctor’s office.  He was only a month old when I first spilled milk on him and by the time he was a year and a half, he had been properly tested and shown to be allergic to eggs and dairy. Since then he has developed a peanut allergy too.  No wonder he refused a bottle!  That hysterical screaming (from him not me) was his plea for me to stop.  What a learning curve – and the knuckle balls keep on coming!