Little Miss has the most restricted diet because she is the only one with actual food allergies. When she was about 8 or 9 months old, we gave her a bite of french toast, and she became very sick to her stomach, broke out in a red rash all over her body, and started shivering involuntarily. SCARY! We took her to the emergency room, and later followed up with an allergy doctor. The allergy doctor did the skin scratch test on her back and she reacted to Egg and Peanut. Then they did a blood test to determine how severe her allergies are. There is a scale that has "No Allergy" on the left side and "Fatal Allergy" on the right side. Thankfully, neither of them are all the way to the right side of the scale, but they are both right of center, so we don't give her anything with eggs or peanuts in it anymore, just to be safe. They'll test her on an annual basis from now on (doesn't that sound super fun??) to evaluate whether or not she has outgrown the allergies.
Super B., Little Miss, and Myself all have a lactose sensitivity. This is not the same thing as an allergy, and it effects us all differently. Super B and I have varying degrees of stomach upset when we drink milk, and Little Miss gets eczema breakouts from drinking it. The kiddos drink Rice Milk, and I drink Lactose-Free milk (well, I use it in my cereal. I don't ever drink a glass of milk because that's gross). All three of us can still have yogurt and cheese though, and Super B. eats ice cream occasionally. Little Miss and I stick to frozen yogurt.
Mr. M can eat anything without any kind of reaction...the weirdo. He's also one of those people who can just wake up in the morning and see properly, without corrective lenses. I've always wondered what that must be like.
There are foods that we avoid as a family, though, simply for health reasons:
-We do not buy any foods that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup or Partially Hydrogenated Oils (except Girl Scout cookies, I just realized), and we also try to avoid artificial colors in our foods as much as possible.
-If it's something I can make from scratch fairly easily (biscuits, cookie dough, cake mix, pancake mix, muffin mix, pizza dough), I usually don't buy it pre-made. I like being able to control the ingredients as much as possible. The one exception to this is pie crust. Boy do I ever hate making my own pie crust! I buy the refrigerated kind, that you unroll and stick in a pie plate. Anyone have an easy-to-make pie crust recipe? That won't break apart the minute you touch it? And still tastes delicious? Please share!
-We very rarely (like maybe 2-3 times a year) purchase and cook red meat. I just don't see the point when white meat is so much lower in fat and calories. Also, I'm just not a big fan.
There are also foods that we don't eat because we just don't like them, but that list is pretty short:
-Mayonnaise. EW. EW. EW I don't think Mr. M feels quite as strongly about this as I do, but I make the menus, so he goes along with it. Also, it's made from eggs, so Little Miss wouldn't be able to eat it anyway.
-Olives. Maybe this is because I didn't ever try one until I was in High School, and my palette was already set in its ways, but to me, olives taste like something that should not be eaten. We do, however, use EVOO all the time! Like almost daily!
-Raw Onions. I cook with onions several times a week, but anything that has raw crunchy onions on or in it gets passed up by us.
How about you, readers? What foods do you keep out of your houses and why?
Your blog is hilarious. That is all.
ReplyDelete