Traveling for the Holidays and Eating Out

On one of my support groups recently there was a discussion about the possibilities of eating out with severe milk allergies. One member reminded us that when we go to restaurants and advocate for our child we are setting an example. Showing them how to manage their own food allergies and that we should continue to make that effort and not be afraid to walk out of a restaurant if we feel uncomfortable with the restaurant's ability to keep our child safe.

And she is right. Yet, I gave up eating out with our kids long ago because I hate the eye-rolling, the impatience, the way I am made to feel as if I am a terrible inconvenience for just asking questions.

Case in point, we were at the St. Louis Zoo the day after Thanksgiving. It was a cold day in Missouri and the zoo was not exactly packed. I stopped at a hot dog stand to get a diet coke. Max was by my side.

"I'm hungry" he said "What do they sell here?"
"Well," I answered "Hot dogs and pretzels."
"Are they safe for me?"
"I'll have to ask. Are you really hungry?"
"Yes"

So I begin to question the cashier. And let me set the scene. It is a cold day. The zoo is not busy. There is NO ONE else in line at this hot dog stand staffed by at least 6 people.

I ask what brand of hot dogs they are. Everyone keeps replying they are all beef hotdogs. I have to repeat myself several times to get the brand name. Farmland. I have never heard of it. I ask to read the label. One of the cashiers runs in the back to get the box. Max asks me about the pretzels. I look down at him and say it is most likely coated with egg or butter so it probably isn't safe.

I look up in time to see the cashier roll his eyes at me. He then turns and says something to the women behind him that I can't make out. They all laugh. Maybe I'm being paranoid but honestly why do people in the service industry think they can be rude to customers.

The other cashier returns with the box. I read the label and order two hot dogs without buns. Max wolfs his down and asks for another. In all he ate two and the half of Owen's he didn't want. He loves situations where he can feel like a normal kid.

And, though this is getting long, here is another example. Last summer we stopped at a hotel on our long vacation drive. We always choose hotels with indoor pools that allow dogs. This one also served breakfast. Traditional breakfasts are not exactly the safest of meals for us. But at this hotel they had out dry cereal in glass jars labeled Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops and Honey Nut Cherrios. We can eat Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops yet there were only two scoops on the table. Since I (nor would anyone) be able to tell which scoop had been used in which cereal, I went to the kitchen to ask if I could get Max's cereal directly from the box. The lady in the kitchen asked why so I started to explain about cross-contamination. She rolled her eyes, looked away, thrust the bag at me and said "Whatever." Later a woman at the table next to us stopped the lady from the kitchen and asked about my request. They talked in hushed tones and glanced over at me. I felt ashamed. Like I had made an unreasonable request. I know they are small instances and I shouldn't take it so personally but here in lies one of my own weaknesses. I hate conflict.

So, perhaps I should keep trying. For Max and Owen. For them to learn to stand up for themselves which I obviously have a hard time doing. Perhaps it will be a good lesson for me as well.

Traveling for the Holidays and McDonalds French Fries

It has been a month since I blogged. I don't think I've even logged in since then. Partly I needed a break and partly I have just been darn busy.

We traveled for Thanksgiving and we will travel for Christmas. Eating while traveling can be tricky. I have in general given up eating out with the kids. It is too complicated and too risky but sometimes, well, everyone is hungry. What do you do?

We eat at McDonalds generally. And honestly it makes my stomach turn. I used to love McDonalds now I can barely choke down my bland salad there. BUT we have never had an issue there. The kids eat hamburgers and french fires. I know, I know, there are those out there now protesting "But McDonalds fries contain dairy!" So here's my story and take on McDonald's fries. I think it was 3 or 4 years ago that McDonalds changed the labeling on the fries, not the recipe, the labeling. They discovered after FALCPA went through that the flavoring they were using was dairy "derived". So they changed the labeling to reflect this. People protested, wrote letters. There are long threads on POFAK (Parents of Food Allergy Kids) regarding this. McDonalds did testing and found that the dairy derived flavoring did not contain milk proteins. I think Max was 2 or 3 and we had been safely eating McDonalds fries for a couple years. I decided that since it was one of the few "treats" he gets I would continue to let him have them. I know other parents of milk allergic kids who came to the same conclusion.

We have had nary a hive at McDonalds.

If I was a newly diagnosed family or diagnosed since the whole fries brouhaha, I would probably see the labeling and conclude McDonalds fries are not safe. For this reason I don't go around touting our McDonalds consumption to other food allergic families because sometimes when you tell someone you do something that they consider risky behavior they get that tight lipped look like you just told them you let your children smoke crack.

Anyway, this post took a whole side track that I didn't mean it too. I will have to write what I REALLY wanted to say about travel in the next post.

(I used the word McDonalds 9 times in this post. Anyone googling it may get this instead. Hee hee)

Camping With Food Allergies

PK (pre-kids) David and I car camped up and down Western Washington state. From Orcas Island to the Cascades to the Olympic Pennisula. We prided ourselves on being minimalist in our car camping as well. We cooked over the open fire. However, our meals were often elaborate. Cashew Chicken Stir-fry, Brown sugar crusted salmon with pasta and snow peas, one pot chicken with vegetables. Scrambled mess for breakfast (eggs, potatoes and bacon.) We'd come back to camp from a long day hike to some high peak and spend lots of time chopping and drinking wine and relaxing around the camp fire. Okay, David was chopping and I was drinking. PK David was the chef and did a majority of the cooking. Now I do most of the cooking, however, I am more of a short-order cook.

This weekend we took both kids car camping for the first time. Meals are quite different with two food allergy kids. We had hot dogs roasted over the fire. We purchased a camp stove for making bacon and pancakes (recipe from "What's To Eat"). One night we had hobo dinners (hamburger, potatoes, carrots and onions cooked in tin foil on a grate over the fire). And of course a camping trip wouldn't be complete without s'mores. Chocolate bars prove to be the most complicated. I had to melt down safe chocolate chips into candy bar molds before we left. But allergy wise all went fine.

Owen-wise was more difficult. The kid was way too interested in the campfire so we spent most of the time getting in between him and the flames.

So our first excursion was less relaxing and less gourmet but in the end we want to create memories for our children that will take them into their adulthood and hopefully out into the woods.

(PS We packed four Epi-pens for the excursion. Two for each child. And Benedryl.)

Do You Trust Your Husband?

Last week my husband was talking about taking Max on a camping trip with other fathers and kids. A daddy and kid only trip. I must have been looking at him funny because he stopped and said "That's okay, isn't it." I hestitated. "Yes..." I answered. "What are you worried about?" he asked. "I'm worried about you managing Max's allergies on this camping trip." "Oh." he replied, "I promise I'll really pay attention to it."

It's not that I don't think he can do it. He just doesn't always think like I do. Assesing every risk. Checking out everyone else's food. Playing out emergency situation in my head. Reading every label. Just last week he came home with a new brand of hot dog. "Did you read the label?" I asked. "Doh!" he replied, "I didn't even think about it." Sure enough the hot dogs contained a lactic acid starter culture. I've tried to contact the company to find out if the starter culture is dairy derived but the haven't called back.

And up until recently he couldn't even remember that Max was allergic to tree nuts. I have heard more than once, "Cashews? Really? He's allergic to cashews? And pistachios? Since when?" Grrrrrr. I believe he does finally have that down as he was looking at new recipes last week and shouted from the other room "Cashews aren't allowed in the house, right?"

I will let him take Max on the camping trip. It would be fun for them. But Daddy will need some allergy boot camp before hand and I'll probably worry the whole time.

How is your significant other at manage your child's food allergies?

Eating Abroad

I have been wanting to write about our food experiences in Spain (neither my husband or I have food allergies and we didn't take the kids) but re-entry into the real world has been rough and has left little time for blogging. My memories of cafe con leche on a sun filled plaza are slipping away. I want to escape back there if only for a moment...

Ordering food in a language you don't know if difficult. With our handful of Spanish and the waiters' handful of English, we did for the most part end up with food we wanted to eat.

The Spanish have an odd eating schedule. Breakfast consists mainly of coffee of which I drank con leche (with milk) and David drank his solo (self-explanatory) with a bollo (pastry) or small sandwich of jamon (ham) or queso y pimienta (cheese and pepper). I love cafe con leche. The drink is smaller than the lattes served in coffee shops here and the taste stronger. And even though breakfast was a no nonsense affair, never was coffee served in a paper cup. It was expected that you were going to sit down at a table right there and enjoy your pastry and coffee, if only for 10 minutes. The result is you don't see people wandering around nursing a double tall skinny latte with extra foam. I also realized I drink way too much caffeine.

The other great thing about Spanish breakfast was the fresh squeezed orange juice or zuma de naranja. The cool thing was the way it is squeezed. Every restaurant seemed to have this machine that the server fed oranges into the top. The oranges dropped down were sliced in half and then squeezed on this turning wheel and out flowed delicious fresh squeezed juice. I told David I want an espresso machine to make my own cafe con leche and an orange juice machine to entertain the kids in the morning.

The hard part about eating in Spain was waiting for lunch which is taken between 2pm and 4pm. My blood sugar levels had a hard time with this. Restaurants didn't even open for lunch until 1pm at the earliest. Seriously, how do people do this? The interesting part was watching things really shut down for this siesta time. In small places we visited like Segovia and Toledo, shops closed and people headed home to have meals with their families. Things reopen around 4 pm or later and I guess people work til like 8pm. And that's okay because dinner isn't served til 9, 10, 11pm!

The food itself was pretty simple. We ate a lot of jamon y queso served with el pan (bread). You can probably find the jamon we ate in Spain at a specialty deli. It might be labeled Serrano Ham. It is thin sliced, chewier and fattier than the ham we know. Kind of like prosciutto but not as salty. The queso was always Manchego, which I already loved.

Toward the middle of the week it became my quest to figure vegetables into my diet. They just seemed kind of scant on menus but I did find them. The language barrier often kept me from knowing exactly what I was getting or how it would be cooked but since I'm not a picky eater, I really didn't mind. I did ask at one restaurant what the deep fried seemingly tasteless vegetable was with my mixed otherwise grilled vegetables. The waitress said she had to check. She came back to our table and said she knew what it was in Spanish but didn't know the English word for it. She wrote it down for me. Acelgas, which translates to chard. Deep fried chard.

The day we visited Segovia it was freezing. We even got snowed on. The wind whipping through the narrow streets had us numb to the bone so we ducked into a little Lonely Planet recommended restaurant. I really wanted soup but couldn't find the soup on our menu listed in my menu reader book. It was called sopa castellana. Did you look at it? Yes, that is a huevo (egg). It was basically broth with breakfast in it. Not vegetable soup but it hit the spot anyway. Good thing I'm not allergic to eggs.

I would love to take my kids to Spain someday or any other foreign country but it occurred to me how difficult it would be to do this if you had food allergies. I don't take them to restaurants here in the states, how would I safely feed them in a country where I didn't speak the language? I guess we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. In the meantime, I'll be dreaming of cafe con leche.

Traveling WITHOUT Children

You can find lots of advice from various online support groups about traveling with your FA kids. However, what about when you travel without them? Meaning what do you need to prepare when leave you them with Grandma and escape with that stranger of a spouse. I hear you laughing now. How often does that really happen? Well, it is happening to me this week, we are going to Spain! Grandma has arrived, our flight is this afternoon and my five year old is running a slight temperature and is complaining his ear hurts. But that's another story.

I know many of you have trouble with family members understanding and taking your childrens' food allegies seriously. I am lucky to be blest with parents and in-laws that understand the severity my kids allergies and want to do everything they can to insure their safety.

Here is what we have been working on the past week so that Grandma can take over:

1. I have always believed my house is the safest place for my food allergic kids. However, I went through all the cupboards to make sure all unsafe food was either tossed or clearly labeled. This was actually a request by my Mom. She doesn't want to make any mistakes. (I told her she could get cow's milk yogurt and milk for herself but she doesn't want to take any risks so even she is going soy for the week). So out went the crackers my husband bought for him and I but contain sunflower oil. Labeled was the box of Ms. Grass's soup which I bought when I was sick and wanted some comfort food. I was actually surprised how little in our house was unsafe. We keep a pretty clean home!

2. I pointed out the pan which I had been using for eggs. "Well, put it somewhere where I won't use it. I don't even want it in the cupboard." as my Mom's reply.

3. Provide lists of routines, meal ideas, things to do and of course emergency contacts and numbers and instructions. We went other where the almost half a dozen epi-pens are, how to recoginize anaphalaxis and how of course to use them.

4. But most importantly we filled out and had notarized a medical release form. A friend of mine told me a story about how she was in the ER with one of her children this past year and a man came in with his nephew. The child's mother was in labor at another hospital but the child was running a high fever and needed medical attention. The hospital refused to treat the child because the uncle wasn't the legal guardian and didn't have a medical release. So whenever you leave your children, food allergic or otherwise, always leave a notarized medical release form.

So we are off! I'm nervous but I know my kids are in good hands.

Addendum: Red Dog wanted me to add the medical release form. Here is where I printed a free form

Traveling

Driving a long distance with children is difficult. Driving long distance with food allergic children requires extra packing. We went to have Thanksgiving with our in-laws. We packed everything we were going to cook right down to the margarine. No stopping at restaurants; had to pack everything we were going to eat on the road as well.

We stopped at the same hotel we did last time we traveled to Alabama. Last time though we got McDonald's to eat in the hotel room and on a whim got Chicken Selects which appeared safe instead of our usual plain hamburger. Max threw up in the middle of the night.

Of course this is what he remembers from our last hotel stop. He requested that we bring our food and not buy anything "because, remember, I threw up last time."