Robert Hruzek of Middle Zone Musings has challenged his fellow bloggers to showcase their best of 2009.

Here’s mine!

This year has been quite a journey for me and my family. It was a rough winter: someone was sick in our house for every week between late October and early March. So, the start of the year had me thinking about healthy food made at home – which lead to the inclusion of interesting allergy-friendly recipes being added to the site! My first (and possibly best) recipe is for homemade pumpkin pie. I include an egg-free version, which I had to develop for my mother – who at age 70 developed an egg allergy. In fact, our family favorite has become the egg-free version: we never make the other now!

In fact, how to feed the allergic family became a bit of a theme. One question which is on the mind of every parent of an infant who could have allergies is when to introduce solids to the family’s newest member? While the debate rages, most experts say exclusive breastfeeding (in other words, breastmilk and nothing else) for at least the first 6 months is one of the best things you can do to help babies avoid allergies. In addition, consider longer term nursing – until age 2 or longer, as recommended by the World Health Organization.

We also covered the order to introduce foods. Think it has to be cereal first? Think again.

Have a toddler with environmental or seasonal allergies? Here’s a blog with 12 tips on helping them to reduce their symptoms. (I learned many of these the hard way when my son was little.)

With seasonal allergies, no matter how well you clean, you often have symptoms anyway. We didn’t want to feed our child antihistamines as if they were a food group. As a result, we went hunting for a natural alternative. We found a product called Pascallerg. I can’t recommend this product enough: it worked so well, we stopped carrying antihistamine with us for the first time in several years.

Perhaps the most important topic we tackled this year was the issue of plastics and allergies. Science is now pointing the finger at many plastics as potentially hazardous. We went hunting for the science linking plastics to allergies and our immune system. We found that phthalates were one of the worst offenders. Because these plastics are so common, we covered some information on where these plastics are used and how they get into our bodies. At the same time, BPA – another plasticizer – became big news: we found out that it’s not just bad for babies, it’s also related to food allergies.

H1N1 also reared its ugly – if somewhat less lethal than expected – head. Check out the two part series, The Pandemic That Wasn’t.

I’m sure there will be more excitement on the topic of allergies next year. If you are looking for information, tips and tricks or just some pointers, be sure to drop in and see what we are up to! Better yet, you can always subscribe to us and never miss a post.