Welcome to foodallergyscout.com!
My name is Nadia, and I’m the momma behind this blog. Back in 2010, when my firstborn daughter was about 9 months old, she was diagnosed with multiple food allergies. When I say multiple, I mean multiple…like six of the top seven food allergies! My oldest is allergic to wheat, soy, milk, egg, peanuts, and tree nuts. Right away our pediatrician referred us to a great allergist in the area, and I expected to get a lot of guidance from him.
Well, we did get a lot of guidance: medical guidance about how food allergies work and explanations of epi-pens, discussions about whether we really had to ban peanut butter from the house, and guidance about the different forms an allergic reaction could take. And…a whopping recommendation for two websites to review for additional information. Two! We really didn’t get much help with figuring out the day-to-day questions, like:
- What are we going to use for bread if we can’t use traditional bread made from wheat flour?
- What in the world can we substitute for cheese, milk, butter, etc?
- Where in the heck do we find any of this stuff, anyway?
So we began the journey of researching the practical side of living with food allergies, trying to find books, cookbooks, websites, products, ANYTHING that would help us figure out what to feed our child!
Fast forward four years later, and my youngest daughter was also diagnosed with food allergies at 9 months of age: egg and peanut.
Long story short, we have found many resources that have helped with our day to day living and questions, but we’ve had to search high and low, and as our children get older, we find we still have more questions. Other issues arise that just weren’t there during the infant or toddler stage. Not only that, but I personally began to feel like we had information, recipes, books, bookmarks to websites, tip sheets, etc. scattered helter-skelter. I just had to have one place where I could organize everything we’ve found (as a resource for our immediate and extended families), document my trials and errors with different products, and hopefully connect with others to find more answers and resources.
This blog is my attempt to scout out the world of food allergies. This is where I test run products and recipes, share experiences, organize reliable and favorite resources, and just plain vent. 🙂 Whether you are new to living with multiple food allergies or have been living with them for years, I’d love to have you join me and my family as we grow together and figure this food allergy thing out!