Amy, the early bed time is one of my favorite things to do. I actually appreciate when people send me to be early, probably because I know they care for me and know that I especially need sleep at that time.

It also used to be impossible to find foods like canned soups, or things like chicken broth without MSG in it…which sort of forces you to cook from scratch…but it’s not always convenient.

Food allergies run in my family, though: My father is allergic to hazelnuts (he probably should carry an epipen since his reaction affects his breathing but he refuses). My mother is allergic to wheat. My sister is allergic to MSG (she has an epipen), and my neice is allergic to eggs (my sister is trying to get an epipen for my neice as she has risk factors for anaphylaxis). My sister’s always getting hit by MSG… you’d be surprised at all the stuff it’s in! Luckily, she has yet to have a life-threatening reaction, but she does have a lot of risk factors for one, so she has to be careful.

Incidentally, if anyone has any good egg-free recipes to recommend, I’d like them so that I can cook stuff for my neice the next time my sister visits!

My favorite fa website is allergicchild.com. They also have a monthly newsletter with fa info, research links, advocacy, and personal experiences on how they manage.

I’ve looked around, and it’s not that hard to find other stuff if you google. Finding blogs about just one fa isn’t that difficult, it’s when you have multiple food allergies that makes it harder. They are out there, but much harder to find. Out of frustration that I couldn’t find recipes for stuff that I could eat, I started my own fa blog and started playing with ingredients and creating my own recipes (including muffin pie). foodallergyfroggie.wordpress.com I keep forgetting to post the latest recipes, but they’re written down, so as I have time, I slowly add to them. I do talk about fa on my main blog, but not all the time.

And remember that you still can live with fa… AND still eat stuff that tastes good. The rest of my family likes most of the recipes I’ve been coming up with recently.

However, I’ve known I had a wheat intolerance since the age of about 16 when I was covered in eczema and the hospital specialist I was under suggested giving up wheat. Then about 5 years ago when I was having the worst severe asthma spell of my life, I was tested for Coeliac disease, and found out my wheat intolerance was full blown allergy to Gliadin-the wheat protein.

I also have a few crazy oral allergies-Paprika, red food colouring, apple skin, sweet and sour sauce, and have random lip tingling/swelling/itching type moments almost every week, but who knows what from.
I’m just an allergic person-sometimes I get hives on my face if I blow my nose on certain brands of kleenex-it’s a bit bizarre, but I make sure I always have both the liquid and tablet form anti histamines with me, and I carry an Epipen.

Thankfully I am not stil amongst the nut avoidance brigade. I’m just careful. Nuts make me cough/gag anyway so I’ happy to not eat them!

But good to know – thanks!