Cooking for allergies

[faretheewell]

The dreaded allergy. Suddenly you are unable to eat anything connected with it, or perhaps you have been avoiding the food all your life. Either way, an allergy makes cooking into even more of an adventure than it already is.

Here we can discuss:

Diet changes
Allergy challenges and restrictions
Recipes and advice
Stories of challenges faced and overcome.



Personally, I have recently developed an allergy to wheat. This means that almost everything on a "normal" diet is denied me. This includes anything with Monosodium glutimate (MSG) and anything with "modified corn starch" in it. It has been, to put it mildly, challenging. Going out to eat is often next to impossible. Suddenly food is not enjoyable to me, it is a chore and great inconvenience. I'm still trying to find meals to eat that are easy, fast and enjoyable under my new dietary restrictions.  

[faretheewell]

I'm having trouble believing that I'm the only one on here with a food allergy.  

[broken_bleeding_angel]

I'm allergic to pineapple and when I drink a lot of milk I get sick for a week. -_- Also when I eat anything with gluten I get super bloated. -_-

So to help with this. I don't eat pineapple or anything with it in it. I drink vanilla soy milk, which is yummy when you add chocolate syrup. <3 And I eat gluten free breads and cakes now. <3

I wanna make banana muffins now. <3

.: heart :.~b_b_a~.: heart :.  

[faretheewell]

I'm still trying to find a flour or mix of flours that works on a 1:1 (or close thereabouts) substitution with wheat flour. Do you have any suggestions?

I find for muffins the Glutino brand has a fantastic muffin mix. I've used it for plain, cheese, banana chocolate chip, and blueberry muffins so far.  

[Hester Peche]

Ugh! I know the feeling! I'm allergic to corn! Can you believe that? Corn, it's in everything...I can't eat anything. So I feel your pain.

Lately I've been using a lot of soy and rice products they work pretty well and the taste isn't affected much.  

[faretheewell]

That's exactly how I feel about the wheat. Can't eat anything. Why is it that we as a culture seem unable to produce food without chemically modifying and adding either corn or wheat?

We even overlap. "Modified corn starch" is "modified" by adding wheat.  

[Hester Peche]

Yeah we do! Because the wheat flour I bought was "modified" with cornstarch! Lol.

I guess because it makes things cheaper? I don't know but it drives me crazy but at least with your allergy the FDA will put "contains wheat" on products I have to search the labels for corn, because corn isn't a common enough allergy (yet) they aren't required to put it on the labels.

Screw corn, just give me rice and soy!  

[faretheewell]

Ya, the dumbest thing of this whole thing is: I've never really liked rice.  

[Hester Peche]

That really sucks, I've recently found cooking with potato works really well. A lot better than any other sort of flour or thickening agent I've tried.  

[faretheewell]

Indeed, potato starch is a fairly wondrous thing. Have you played with xanthan gum at all? I have some, but I haven't tried making anything with it yet.  

[Hester Peche]

No I haven't, tell me how it goes when you do try it.

But I've been wanting to try agar agar though...I hear it's good for some stuff, like making jellies.  

[faretheewell]

I've only ever played with agar in biology classes. Makes a good jelly. Grows amazing microorganism colonies. Last time I played with it was for an evolutionary biology lab in which we made a strain of e-coli bacteria resistant to a common antibiotic.

I really don't think I could eat the stuff after that. Absolutely no desire to use it in my food.  

[Hester Peche]

Lol. I could see why, I think it's different for culinary uses but...I do see your point.  

[faretheewell]

And suddenly it's a good thing that I've never really liked Jello.

It's probably different when cooked for eating purposes, but I'm pretty sure that I would be entirely turned off by the smell alone.  

[Hester Peche]

Neither have I...gelatinous textures...bother me...

Does it smell that bad?