Flourless Fudge Cookies

Flourless Fudge Cookies : King Arthur Flour

I'd love to say that allergy free cooking has been totally easy for me but really the truth is, I've had some epic fails. Although we are not gluten free around our house, I decided to try out this recipe after seeing it on Pinterest.  For some reason we had like 5 cans of cocoa powder in the pantry and this sounded like an easy way to use it up. The recipe has no dairy and so I didn't even have to find dairy substitutes so I thought it would be worth a try.  It was totally worth it.  The texture came out strange but good.  It was very similar to the texture of the dark chocolate cheapy ice cream sandwiches we ate as kids.  I think next time I'm going to spread them out a bit and make them thinner and make some ice cream sandwiches.  I just used the regular old Hershey's cocoa and I had to cook them a few minutes longer but they are good.  After the kids go to bed, I think I'll smother a few with some vanilla bean ice cream!

Pizza

Can't say enough how much we love Daiya cheese!  We can finally make pizza at home and Kaylin isn't left out.

APFED Conference 2012

The APFED conference is back in San Diego this year!  It's been 3 1/2 years since our last conference and our lives have changed so much since then.   The last time, I was 8 months pregnant with our 3rd child and worried about the likelihood he would have to deal with Eos.  At that point, Kaylin had been on meds for EoE for a year but things were still not right but we had still not removed any foods at all.  We learned so much and realized we were definitely not alone.  Less than a year later, Kaylin had to start removing removing foods and thanks to all the information we got at the conference, we weren't completely overwhelmed.

http://apfed.org/drupal/drupal/annual_conference

Eos on Anderson Cooper

Set your DVR's.  This Thursday, March 22nd an amazing family is on the Anderson Cooper show (daytime show, not CNN) to raise awareness on Eosinophilic Disease.


Here's the info from the AC website.  Check out the link below to view the preview and to find out when it's on in your area.
"What if your child were deathly allergic to food? Anderson speaks with a desperate mom, Cara, whose son, Joshua, suffers from a rare genetic condition that makes even the smell of certain foods potentially fatal. Cara's husband, Brant, and older son, Jacob, join Anderson to discuss how the family copes with this rare condition... and the hope they have for a cure."

http://www.andersoncooper.com/episodes/kathy-bates-the-boy-who-can-not-eat/

Why Meds?

It's funny when we tell friends or new acquaintance about Kaylin having EoE, the first response is usually, "Is there medication you can give her?"  But on the opposite side, when we explain she's on meds to friends in the EoE community, they ask "why?"  We also get a lot of questions from patients going down the road to using meds and ask if they really work and all the fun details.  Each kid is so different and at different states of this disease that it really varies whether it's a good option but for us, it was the only option.

Kaylin was always a fussy baby, fussy eater, fussy sleeper but she was healthy and happy for the most part.  Looking back, we now know how much the "fussy" part had to do with the EoE but at the time, so many of those things had just been explained away as "normal kid stuff."  When we got her diagnosis, we were given the 3 options of treatment.  First she was tested for allergies via skin prick testing and they asked us a million questions about foods and everything lead no absolutely no hint of having food triggers or food allergies.  The three treatment options were Medication, Top 8 Elimination and Formula.  Well immediately formula was off the table.  She had been on a full diet and growing and the symptoms we knew about would come and go and she'd seem fine for weeks.  Kaylin was starting preschool so the thought of having to completely change her diet and remove Wheat, Soy, Dairy, Egg, Fish, Shellfish, Peanuts and Treenuts seemed not only ridiculous but cruel.  She was already picky and never seemed to eat enough, we thought there would be NOTHING left for her to eat that she actually would eat.  When I've said it seemed cruel before, I get so many of the EoE parents in an uproar but for our daughter at age 4, it would have been.  As far as she was concerned, there was nothing wrong with her.  We also worried about her complying.  As we've since had to remove foods from her diet, we know now that we were right because even now that she correlates certain foods with pain, she still struggles with staying away from those foods.  Knowing absolutely nothing about food allergies or top 8 diets, they were basically telling us we could give her a medication that is working in most kids or turn our entire lives upside down with diet changes.  It was pretty simple.

The medication worked within weeks.  We noticed she stopped spitting up almost immediately, this was her major symptom we knew about at the time.  We didn't see any symptoms from the medication and the scopes proved it was working.