Month: August 2014

Beck’s chicken allergy has been a tough one because we ate A LOT of chicken pre-diagnosis and we had to quickly change our eating habits. It’s been particularly tough with daycare because chicken is always on the menu at some point during the week. So we are always looking for easy substitutes.

• Lunch meat is an obvious and Beck loves his turkey and ham (we just tried Hillshire Farm Naturals – no preservatives or artificial flavors = win!).
• Beck loves plain tuna. It’s an easy lunch alternative to chicken salad.
• Veggie burgers (we love black bean burgers!) are great for days they serve chicken patties or chicken nuggets which let’s be honest is quite often.

Same goes for dinner. We keep these staples on hand for days we eat our chicken dinners. Easy peasy substitutey.

And thanks to Hillshire Farm for sending us some sample of their new Naturals line. The only thing missing is the stuff that you don’t want your kids eating! Love the flavors – especially the ham. Check them out!

A few months ago I was alerted by my son’s daycare teachers that he had a massive blowout. When I picked him up, I found him in an outfit that wsn’t exactly expected. Pink. Ruffles. Bright colored tucan animal on the front. B looked like a girl.

Don’t worry, I shortly restocked his clothing awaiting the next blowout — I didn’t expect it would be that week though. This went on for about a month. Three weeks after the blowout episodes started, he broke out in hives all over. The odd thing was he hadn’t eaten anything new or come into contact with anything new. After speaking to the pediatrician we were referred to an allergist and B was tested using the scratch test.

My toddler had some odd allergies. Chicken. Egg. Milk. Oats. This made everything fall into place. He had been allergic to milk and eggs since he was a wee little baby, but we thought he outgrew it. He had chicken nuggets right before the hives. Oats? Yeah. No idea there.

I used to fly by the seat of my pants for meals, now I’m a planner and a connoisseur (woah. just kidding) on allergen substitutes when it comes to the daycare’s menu.

The first step: Stop serving milk and switch to soy-product dairy substitutes like this here Silk Yogurt.