Another round of “stuff” around here, including some nasty migraines (weather-related) and a couple of bugs. It’s been a rainy summer so far: we must need to get more vitamin D!
Regardless of what life throws at me (or you), we have to find a way to respect our dietary requirements. We have to follow an avoidance diet here – no longer for food allergies (because NAET helped us with that) but because of other reasons. Nevertheless, avoidance diets are for your health and your sanity. If you have allergies, avoidance diets can be a life or death activity – especially if you have anaphylaxis.
But for some of us, allergies are not life-threatening. The problem is that we can then decide to not worry. This can be detrimental in a whole host of ways – not the least of which is that each additional exposure to our allergen can increase the severity of the allergy!
In my case, I simply must stick to my avoidance diet. I follow a low oxalate diet. While I am not suffering from anaphylaxis, if I get too much oxalate, I get quite sick. So, it’s not an option to “take a diet holiday” and simply eat whatever comes to mind.
This is where it is essential that you’ve put the right disciplines in place to help yourself do the right thing even if you don’t feel like it. It’s all about planning what is in your freezer, your cupboards and your fridge, so that you don’t fall off the wagon and eat that one piece of something that does you more harm than good.
- Make sure you always have allergy-friendly dry goods on hand. If you can’t get out to shop, you need to have something handy to cook or eat. For instance, we always have canned salmon in our cupboards. We always have dried split peas – both green and yellow. We also keep a variety of flours and baking ingredients so that we can make our own bread. We keep evaporated or condensed milk on hand (because we don’t have any dairy allergies.) Even if I haven’t shopped in a week, I can make a full meal right out of our cupboards.
- Our freezer is full of healthy, allergen-free food too. We don’t buy processed meals: we buy single ingredient frozen items including meat, fish, veggies and fruit. In combination with things in my cupboards, I can use my freezer to make a soup that will be both healthy and filling. (This is essential with a family to feed!)
- Can you eat soup? If so, make sure to keep broth on hand so that you can make a pot of nourishing soup at a moment’s notice. I regularly use the carcass of a roasted chicken or turkey to make broth – I boil the bones (and whatever meat remains on them) and make a big pot of broth that I then freeze in containers of various sizes. I always strip the rest of the meat and put that in the broth too. As a result, I can have soup on the table with frozen and dried ingredients in as little as 45 minutes.
- Foods which are not allowed on any one person’s avoidance diet are marked and kept separately. So, all “safe” foods are on the regularly used shelves in the fridge or cupboard. All the “exception” foods that can only be consumed by a limited subset of the family are banished to the highest / most inaccessible locations. The key to ensuring that your diet is healthful, even if someone who doesn’t know your restrictions is making you food in your home, is to only have the safe ingredients handy!
- We keep a large file folder of “safe” and easy recipes in our cupboard! After all, if grandma has to come by and help out because mom is too sick to handle supper, a set of easy recipes that are already revised to use the right ingredients make everyone’s life simpler.
Do you have great tips to keep your allergic family happy and healthy even in times of crisis? Share them!
