Food Allergies Don't Slow Us Down

When Brennan was first diagnosed with food allergies, we made the decision not to let his food allergies slow us down. It often takes more preparation, but we've rarely found anything that we can't do.

Birthday parties mean that my child brings a safe cupcake (and sometimes a safe meal substitute). Now that Brennan has gotten older, he sometimes chooses to bring something other than a cupcake or to just do without. He knows that he can probably talk me into a safe treat at a later time to make up for the slice of bakery cake that he didn't get to have at the party.

On Wednesday nights, our church has a meal before our evening classes. I used to stay at home so that Lauren could go to bed on time, but I've recently started packing our dinners and joining the rest of the family. Our Easy Lunchboxes make packing so much easier. The meal below was loosely modeled after Chipotle's Burrito bowls. Lauren's (on the right) has shredded dairy-free cheese, pinto beans, rice, and shredded pork in the muffin cups. I went ahead and mixed my burrito bowl ingredients together and added salsa on the top. If I remember correctly, Lauren ate all of her avocado slices and some of mine. The container at the top was our shared dessert container.

It's been a while since our family has taken day long field trips, but when we did, I became pretty proficient at packing a picnic. I will admit that I sometimes cheated and just bought Lunchables for the ones that could eat them. It was still easier than finding a safe fast food meal that we'd all agree on. This picture is pretty old, but here we are picnicking at Gettysburg. Almost all of our pictures of Civil War Battlefields include snapshots of us with our picnic lunch.

Finally, food allergies have not meant that we've completely given up eating out. Later this week, I'll share a few stories about those adventures.