MomOfLittleFoodies

I make something like nutella by melting equal amounts of chocolate morsels and a nut or seed butter together in the microwave. I use a sunflower seed butter that is already sweetened. It's not exactly but it's the closest I can get using things that I can bring into the house.

Believe it or not, you can be allergic to sugar. Most granulated sugar comes from sugar cane or beets, and if you're allergic to one of those, you can have problems with sugar coming from that source. Oh, I know how that goes... I just live a bit Southeast from you and there are a lot of folks with that same kind of mentality... actually it's the extremes here... the people who feed their kids tons of junk, and the ones who are the militant granola crunchers. Xantham gum kind of makes up for the lack of gluten in gluten free recipes. I've seen recipes using guar gum or gelatin instead. Gluten free baking is a lot more like a chemistry experiment than making with wheat flour.

How about a cobbler or a fruit crumble? http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/featured_recipe2.php The same gal has peach crumble recipe that looks pretty easy too... it calls for canned fruit, but you could probably substitute frozen fruit for it. I could pull it from the database and e-mail it to you if you'd like. AlanaMoana- I'm not sure what to make of the comment about the girls parents, seeing that I have kids with food allergies. I know I wouldn't appreciate a comment like that made about me by someone who is clueless about our situation. I don't like having to deal with the food allergies... wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.

Another option for immediate use would be baby wipes. Unless they're sealed in something they dry out after a couple of hours. ← Baby wipes will stay moist for months in zip top plastic bags. Generic zip top sandwich baggies are really cheap, and baby wipes are a lot more "skin friendly" than wet naps. When the "Little Foodies" go on field trips at school that require a sack lunch, I include a baggie with a couple of baby wipes in it for clean up afterwards. Works like a charm to get BBQ sauce off my 3 year old. With her, eating BBQ is a whole body experience.

As long as it's outdoor seating and the pet owners clean up after their critters, I don't see what the problem is. Indoors, I would have a problem, mostly because I usually dine with severely dog dander allergic people who would rather not have hives because someone wanted to have dinner with Fido.

The Pom teas are pretty good. I love the Pomegranate Black and Lychee Green. The Blackberry one isn't very good IMO. I've been buying about them 2 at a time at the local safeway, where they're buy one get one free right now, which works out to about $1.50 ea before tax and crv

If you can get the kosher-for-passover Dr. Browns Black Cherry soda, it's really good stuff. It uses sugar rather than the usual HFCS.

We went to a Pho restaurant on Thursday night, where I ordered what they called a "watermelon milkshake". There was no milk in the shake so it was more a smoothie. It was very good though.

I'm in a similar situation. My mother's family is of Japanese ancestry (Her father is a second generation American, and her mother emigrated from Japan in the early 50s), my father's family is Caucasian and has been in the US (and Canada) since the late 1600s. I don't look particularly Asian, but living in California I'm often pegged as a very pale Hispanic. My husband's family is of Japanese ancestry (he's 4th generation) so my not particularly Asian looking kids are 3/4ths Japanese. I get a lot of the same questions. Really, my geneaologicial history on my dad's side of the family is a much more interesting story.

Trader Joe's Party Size Meatballs, Aidells Meatballs (I use both because it's hard to make egg and dairy free meatballs from scratch and have them hold together). The carnitas from Costco (don't remember the brand name off hand). Frozen edamame. Pilsbury Crescent Rolls. I have 4 kids under 9... I often don't have the time or energy to make everything from scratch.

I can handle dirty produce and dusty cans, but when I smell sour dairy, fishy smelling fish or insects flying around, I high tail it out of there.

While RR is in no way a culinary giant, I can't see why hard core foodies indulge in these hate-fests. I know people whose ideas of cooking from scratch are more along the lines of Sandra Lee. People who don't have the foggiest idea of how to prepare fresh vegetables and who consider velveeta and easy cheeze to be real cheese. Sure, RR is annoying. Sure, she's not a real chef... but she's not our there to teach serious culinary folks. I'm a busy woman with 4 kids... I take the cheats like chicken stock from a box and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I like both actually. Cake is my spring and summer choice, pie for fall and winter.

I'm about to comment on H. du Bois's comment about baby poop... if you've got a weak stomach, avert your eyes. We first suspected a dairy allergy with my now 3 year old daughter when she was just weeks old. She was breastfed and would have mucousy stools after any time I consumed dairy products. When I removed dairy products from my diet, the symptoms disappeared. She's still dairy allergic to this day. That particular symptom is a fairly common one in food allergic infants. And yes, you can tell the difference between a loose baby poop and one with mucous in it. Proteins from a food a nursing mother has eaten do carry over into breastmilk, the same way that medications a nursing mother has taken can.

I'm coming to this late, but kosher-for-passover products are in fairly high demand among people who are allergic to corn, soy and to a lesser extent, dairy products. I've talked to people who spend hundreds of dollars stocking up on everything from hot dogs to candy to get through the year. The pictures of your business would have some people drooling. Maybe I should plan a vacation to Winnipeg.

I'll agree that Culinista is making some sweeping generalizations. My older kids don't eat like that at all. I was very conservative introducing solids at first due to a family history of food allergies, but once the initial introductions were over, they were eating table food most of the time. My kids don't get a lot of juice and soda. Of course they like the stuff, but more often they get milk (or soy milk in my daughters case) or water to drink. My kids are 8, 6, 3 and 3 months old. The 8 and 3 year olds have food allergies, and the 3 month old isn't on solids yet. My kids have fairly adventurous palates. My 8 year old loves sushi (dinner last night for him was an order of maguro nigiri, an order of kappa maki and a bowl of miso shiru), aged cheeses, asparagus, artichokes and brocolli, my 6 year old loves fruit, Vietnamese style BBQ and sausages, and my 3 year old daughter adores spicy food. The 3 of them love fish. These are kids that don't know what bologna is, who think those Kraft cheese slices aren't worth eating, and who prefer roast chicken over a chicken nugget any day.

When I was at Nijiya this morning, I found Suntory Bubble Man Golden Delicious soda in a bottle can. I really like it, and I'm kicking myself for only getting one.

Emeril wears a white Emeril Live t-shirt under his suit coat, not chef's whites. In the right lighting/angle, you can see the logos on the shirt at the neckline of the suit coat or through the back of his whites.

My 8 year old would vehemently disagree with you. He loves artichokes. My contribution to this thread. shirataki (konnyaku) noodles, especially after seeing my sister floss her nostrils with them.

Not exactly true. Some are allergic to different chemicals within the peanut, which are also present in peas themselves. I know there are unrelated botanically, but there are at least similar substances in both. It can be enough to cause a reaction. ← FistFullaRoux is right... People can be allergic to peas... legumes in general are pretty allergenic. Of the top 10 food allergies, 2 are legumes (peanuts and soy). Being allergic to either or both puts you at much higher risk of developing allergies to other legumes. Generally one is allergic to a protein in the food they're allergic to. Two of my 4 kids have food allergies. Both have had extensive allergy testing done. My oldest son at one point was allergic to milk, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, tuna, cod, sesame, coconut, soy, oats, egg, shellfish, white potato, rice and peaches. My daughter is allergic to milk and has some suspected veggie and fruit allergies (she gets hives when she eats certain fruits and veggies). My oldest son has since outgrown half of those allergies (still peanut, tree nut, shellfish, coconut, sesame and egg allergic) and the first 4 are life-threatening in nature. Some maroon on another food related bulletin board tried to tell me that you can't be allergic to soy because it's a common milk substitute, nevermind the fact that the AAP says that a large percentage of milk allergic children are also allergic to soy at some point. I got accused of having Munchausens by Proxy and was told that my kids allergist was a quack. The woman's claim to expertise was that she did a paper on food allergies for culinary school. I do want to add a note about fruit allergies... some people who are allergic to fruit (including tomato) in their raw state can tolerate them when cooked. I don't know how or why it works, but both the allergists I've seen with my kids say that the cooking process somehow denatures the protein to the point where the body no longer recognizes it. There is a similar theory going about eggs and baked goods but I'm not willing to test that one. How I cope with eating out with these food allergies is that we avoid certain cuisine styles and tend to stick to chain restaurants when dining with our children. With chain restaurants, there is a bit more uniformity of suppliers and ingredients. There are some family own restaurants we take them to, but these are carefully screened first. The "glucose" intolerance thing may have been a goof when someone meant to say that they were gluten intolerant (like Celiac Disease).

Thanks! Here's a link to a picture of the horde... the littlest guy is Ryan, who is in the lap of Jason (my oldest), my daughter is Allison and my middle son is Joey http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b386/str...ax3/thekids.jpg I gave up buying rice at the grocery stores here a while ago. Not much of a selection, and what they do have costs a lot more. I can get a 25 lb bag of Nishiki at the Asian market for $14... a 10 lb bag at the grocery store is $11.

I've seen koshihikari rice (imported) locally before. It was something like $25 for a 5ish lb bag... I think it was a 2 kilo bag. It was at a shop that catered to Japanese expats and the Japanese-American communities in the area. There is a website that sells organic koshihikari rice from Niigata that will ship to the US for $20 for a 2k bag, but that's before shipping and any taxes. I suspect that shipping would be kind of high. The cost of living here in California is kind of high compared to most of the rest of the US, and the SF area higher still, but nowhere near as high as Japan. I spend roughly $600/month on food for a family of 6 (me, husband, kids ages 8,6,3 and 2 months) and that includes specialty foods for my oldest son and my daughter. Fruit and veggies are relatively cheap here when in season because we're so close to where it's grown.

I'm stitting here with my mouth wide open. I buy Nishiki rice in 20 pound bags for about $13.00 . ← Me too. We eat a lot of rice because it's cheap, not to mention the kids love it. Generally a 20 lb bag of Nishiki or Botan and two 1 lb bags of Jasmine rice (about $2/lb at Trader Joes) lasts us at least a month.

At the SF Bay Area Costco I frequent, they have pizza, chicken bakes, chicken caesar salad, churros, hot dogs, polish sausages, frozen yogurt, berry sundaes, tropical smoothies and latte freezes.

I found Cafe Au Lait flavored Milky candies at the local Asian market yesterday. I'm a sucker for coffee flavored anything, so I picked some up and was pleasantly surprised.