Scouring the Books

After leaving the allergists I had a prescription for an Epipen Jr. in one hand and a folder in the other. The folder contained a page on each of his allergies and a name of one and only one organization: The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). That's it. My son was just diagnosed positively with life threatening allergies to the point that we have to carry around an injection of life saving medication and we got a folder.

I was excited of course to check out the network and although it's really useful for many things, more on that later, the reality is that for a parent that just found out about the allergy it leaves much to be desired. I wanted information: what is the likelihood he would out grow his allergies, what are the chances of him getting other ones, what support groups are out there, what do I feed him, are there any good recipe books out there, what research is being done, how did other people cope, and most important how did it effect our daily lives and my sons childhood?

My husband and I started at the library and just read book after book on allergies. Most of them are general to all food allergies and spend honestly more time usually on peanuts and wheat. I found the egg and milk sections lacking and honestly looking back not so useful for helping me adjust my life and learn what I needed to to protect my son. I did learn somethings of course such as how much stuff in our house and in other places contain eggs and milk. Nonetheless, I felt almost more helpless after reading many of the books. This is not to say that I wouldn't read them all again and I would recommend to check them out. At the bottom of this post I have included a list of books out their on the subject.

I also began to read a lot of recipe books because having a son with these allergies means that almost every restaurant would be off limits to him as well as many already made or almost made foods. For me I didn't find these books as useful as I'm really attached to my recipes and I found that many of the foods weren't what we usually ate. Food is big in our family and I wanted my son to experience the same foods I had as a child and adult. Nonetheless, these books can be very helpful to many families. I've also included a list of cookbooks below. In addition there is a great link to the Post Punk Kitchen which has great vegan recipes for faux eggs and other great ideas. In the future I will be posting my own recipes that I've converted to be both dairy and egg free.

Books

Cookbooks

These are a great place to start. For more suggestions check out the FAAN website www.foodallergy.org, check out your local library, or visit www.amazon.com.