the holy grail...

This, my friends, is the holy grail....LACTOSE-FREE cheese. I've waited two solid weeks to post about this, because I wanted to do a real food test. See that yellow label on the package picture below? It states, "naturally lactose free." Over the years I've found that with lactose food tests, you need to try it not only more than once, but multiple times over consecutive days. That "lactose-free" cottage cheese made by Lactaid doesn't upset my stomach on day 1, but by day 2 I'm sicker than I'd like to explain. It isn't naturally lactose-free, but treated with the enzyme to help digestion.

Everyday for the past two weeks, I've been eating this! I'm fine, and it's INCREDIBLE, and healthy (hooray for calcium!). I've purchased the Gouda as well, and it's even tastier than the Muenster.

Before I understood what the upset stomach meant, I was the kid who came home from school, opened the fridge, and broke out a block of Cracker Barrel. Not the world's greatest idea, mind you, but there you have it. Now I have my favorite food in the world back!

To cheese!

Allergic Diner

A great article, and a child whose parents should be proud

Good evening!
I found this quite interesting and wanted to share....

"Boy Pushes Congress for Food Allergy Deadlines" - CNN.com

Next? I've found lactose-free cheese. Real cheese, not the lactaid cheese that's treated with enzymes. I don't miss ice cream, I don't miss sour cream, but I miss cheese terribly. Now I have it back!

Yours in the pursuit of allergy-free eating,
Allergic Diner

Happy Rosh Hashanah

So when I say I'm off to enjoy the rest of my summer, I really did enjoy the rest of my summer. More outdoors, less computer. However, as fall is upon us, I am now indoors more, and NAH has kindly made me wireless (oh, the places I'll go). For starters, back to blogging I go. Allergy stories and travels coming soon, but for now, as tomorrow evening marks the start of the Jewish New Year, I wish a l'shana tovah to my Jewish readers.

Sincerely,

Your Allergic Diner

Trust in Food.

Yesterday I ran out to the local ACME to take advantage of a few choice sales. While I was there, I picked up two items I've been interested in food testing: nectarines and chocolate eclairs.
Desserts are hard for me. I never order one in a restaurant, but I've found that supermarkets, with the ingredients used by the bakery printed right on the label, tend to bring me good luck. Yesterday afternoon, I went to take the eclairs out of the fridge. I had purchased them pre-packaged by the bakery, so I could read the ingredients and determine the proper number of Lactaid pills. I stopped cold when I saw what appeared to be one label over the other on the package. When I peeled up the top label, with an expiration date of August 20th, underneath was a label with the date August 16th. I checked the calendar, to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. It was August 17th. I was really, really upset.

This morning I drove to ACME right after I took my shower b/c I wanted this out of the way. I asked to speak to a store manager, and showed her what I had found. She was appalled (good start!). Then she summoned the bakery via the intercom, and asked someone to come to the front of the store. Except - when the woman arrived - it was grandma. Not my grandma, mind you, but everybody's grandma. How am I supposed to argue with grandma?

Grandma took a look at the package and stated that the price should've been lower because it was past its date (OH BROTHER - food poisoning, on sale!). The store manager just shook her head and very calmly explained, "No. This is expired. We don't repackage expired products, we get rid of them." "Right," grandma said, "but what I'm saying is that one of the kids accidentally put a label over this one instead of pulling it to be dumped. Without being able to see the correct date, this never would've been pulled." Then she turns to me, patted me on the arm and said, "Am I explaining this correctly so that you understand what I'm saying, honey?" (OY).
I looked at grandma and very, very calmly said "Let me see if I understand this. You expect me to believe that this was a mistake, not some lazy kid who forgot to take the expired label off first before placing a later one on it? That the other packages of eclairs on sale aren't past their expiration date and that's why they were placed on sale? I don't think so. I also don't think I'll be purchasing a baked good at this store again." And then I turned to the manager and asked for my money back. She handed it to me with a sincere apology.
Now, you might think I was being too tough on grandma, but you need to understand this from a food allergy perspective. Say I had done that food test yesterday, and had gotten violently ill. I never would've known the product was expired, and I would've assumed that there was something in the eclair to which I was allergic, or it was too rich for me, etc. I never would've eaten one again, and I never would've known why.

The ONLY thing I need in terms of food is to be able to trust the places in which I buy the food I eat, and the restaurants in which I dine. What ACME did, honest mistake or not (methinks not based on Grandma's first response - it's expired, let's discount it more!), makes me very, very nervous.

So, I food-tested the nectarine yesterday. That did NOT go well. Good grief.
Today will be a better day,
TAD

Sorry for the impromptu hiatus, folks. Believe it or not, its been a pretty busy summer!

Two happy food tests to report:
A bosc pear. I will be doing the second part of this food test today. (for some reason, I often find that I need to eat things more than once to get a real result.)
Chicken Marsala. I kid you not. One of my goals this year is to find more "safe" dishes at restaurants, so NAH has kindly agreed to bring in some take-out. Had this one in two parts, and not even a blip in my stomach! Now to try it from other restaurants...

One sad food test:
Plum. Not so much this year. Ah well, I can live with it...

One fun item to report? I received what I think is one of the neatest presents ever from a good friend (thank you K!). I get to create my own cookbook, complete with photos, on a website titled aptly, "Create My Cookbook." I'm toying with titles. Perhaps something along the lines of "101 ways not to kill the Allergic Diner?" Her rationale was that I work so hard to tweak conventional recipes in order to be able to eat them, why not put them all in one place (and she's never even seen the multiple shelves that host my cookbook collection!)? I cannot wait to try this and I promise to blog about the experience!

Off to enjoy the rest of my summer,
Your Allergic Diner

All's well that ends well, right?

I'd like to start this post by saying, "Yippee!"

I heard from Dr. Rutledge of Wellsphere, and he kindly agreed to remove both my content and feed, and to discontinue my association with Wellsphere. According to the comment he left on my last post, I'm to infer that I (and a whole lot of other bloggers) just have it all completely wrong (HAH). Perhaps the agreement was changed? Ah, well. This concerns me no longer.
I appreciate that this was handled swiftly and professionally, and that there was no need to resort to any of the horrible tactics of which I had read.

Moving on with life.....
Your Allergic Diner

WELLSPHERE SCAM

So I'm a little disheartened. For quite awhile now, I've been a patient expert and a health maven over at Wellsphere. I allowed them to use my content, as I got a fabulously flattering letter from Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge promising me a bump in readership and yet another vehicle through which to disseminate my information.
I tried answering questions on the site, I really did, but when I received questions daily such as, "Do peanut M&Ms still count as junk food if peanuts are good for you?" (OH MY GOODNESS, PLEASE, I JUST NEED A GUN) or better yet, "My infant has a rash in his mouth that looks like an allergic reaction, what should I do" (TURN OFF THE F*#^ING COMPUTER AND TAKE HIM TO A DOCTOR??!!), I got a little unhappy. I stopped signing into the site, I certainly stopped posting to the site, and I just sort of left well enough alone, content to advertise their site on my blog while they used my RSS feed on theirs.
Then the layoff happened, and with a little more time on my hands, I decided I should give the site another try. I googled "wellsphere," (because that was the original name of the site, though I received notification several months back it had been sold to Health Central). You know how google gives you a list of things you might be looking for as you type? Well, up pops "Wellsphere Scam."
UH OH.
Apparently I was one of thousands of health bloggers fooled by that so-called flattering letter. Dr. Rutledge had several versions that were sent out to us blog folk, all with the hopes of signing us on to his network. That's fine. Not even a problem, really. As far as a form letter goes, it was a damn good one.
The problem? Apparently there was something in the fine print that most of us missed. I have yet to clear up whether this was original to the agreement with Wellsphere, or if this is under the new Health Central rules, but they are claiming intellectual property rights to our content! They can use our material any which way they want, and there ain't a darn thing we can do about it (!). This does not sit well with me. Nor would I ever have agreed to it if I had seen it in the beginning.
I read webpage after webpage of health bloggers, some of whom were doctors and nurses, as to how these writers dissolved their partnership with Wellsphere. Scare tactics, lawsuits, vulgar postings, etc. I couldn't believe my eyes. I wrote to Dr. Rutledge yesterday, asking that he discontinue the RSS feed and remove my content from his site, and sent the same email to their general support. And so it begins....if it is necessary, I will remove this site and start anew. It's just so darn irritating. Here's hoping for an amicable solution.