Chicken, Chicken everywhere! (And maybe some jam)

Things recently have been a whirlwind of being in one state one day, a different bed another day and all sorts of other things that I shall not bore you with. Bottom line, been too busy to really cook anything interesting or experiment with anything other than fast food.

I did go to a restaurant that was worth noting though.  It was called “Benuenutos” and it was somewhere between the IL and WI borders on the IL side I think. We went there and a tip I’ve learned is to pick a few things on the menu and then ask about them when the waiter/waitress comes to ask about drinks. That way they have time to go ask and you can change your order before everyone else is ready and it saves time (and kitchen trips).

I asked if they would make a cheese-less calzone and she said they would. I also asked if since I wasn’t getting cheese if I could add bacon to the 3 meat calzone I’d ordered and she didn’t see why not. So tip two folks, always ask and barter a little to make up for foods lost to allergies. She sent the order back to the chef and I was excited.

When it came out there was a momentary moment of ‘oops’ when I quickly discovered the chef, out of habit, had thrown Parmesan cheese all over the top. They quickly whisked it back and within 10 minutes I had a new calzone that was completely allergy safe. They were quick to fix it and apologized for the little oops which I was fine with since they fixed it fast and it was an honest mistake. It was a really big, good calzone too so kudos to them.

A few weeks before though I had gone to a Greek family owned family style restaurant just outside Chicago on my way to catch a flight. I don’t remember the name but mostly I’m just happy I’m not local there. We went and they had dairy and eggs in everything. And I mean everything. The waitress suggested this chicken over rice with vegetables meal and said that didn’t have milk or eggs in it and that I’d love it.

So I accepted and waited for the meal to come. It was good but about half way through the rice I quickly began to get sicker and sicker. I waved the waitress over and asked her if there happened to be butter in the rice (it had tasted suspicious but she’d said it was olive oil and salt). She said no a few times before I asked her again to ask the chef and she went back.

Turns out there was butter all over the rice and instead of fixing it or apologizing or offering to give me half off my meal or something nice like that, they just scooped the chicken and veggies onto another place and whisked the rice away and avoided us until it was time for us to pay. That, ladies and gentlemen, is not service.  Lucky for them my milk allergy is only mild-moderate and I just throw up and feel very sick for the next few days. Had I had a very sever allergy to milk I would have been dead or they would have had a very nasty ER and airline ticket re-fund to pay.

Thankfully there were some antihistamines in the car and I took them immediately, drank tons of water and slept the rest of the way to the  airport. I was wiped out the next day and not happy to spend the first day of my trip feeling quite miserable and with no customer service to show for it.

So moral of the story if you’re not sure or the service looks sketchy you are allowed to leave a restaurant. If the food seems wrong be adamant about asking what is for sure in it and you are allowed to ask if you can be refunded for any mistakes if they don’t try to fix them.

So that’s the tale of two restaurants.

On to cooking! Today I made some homemade soup which I am very much enjoying.

It’s just chicken broth, half a pack of noodles, green beans, a boiled (then cut up) chicken breast and some spiced salt. Its really good for being so simple and probably tasting better than this poor chopped up and murdered chicken will:

It’s really hard to saute chicken in just water and salt mixes, okay? There was no oil or anything else to use so it took forever and ever and ever… I’ll probably chop that up and use it in something else tomorrow.

Lastly… Jam!

We made this with a blender and some simple jelly and canning supplies. I had no idea jelly was so easy to make. We just had fresh blackberries and black raspberries we’d picked the day before. Thanks to some pectin and an unholy amount of sugar as well as some boiling water and pretty jars we now have fresh canned jam. Its so delicious and rich. I also had no idea canning was so easy… I should probably like to try it myself in the future.

And with that I bid you goodnight!

A.J.

Fortune cookies are not your friend…

… if you have egg allergies. Just found that one out the hard way with a little brain blip in a restaurant today. Whoopsie!

 

A.J.

Nasty Brownies, college eating, hospital food and other ‘adventures’

It’s been a while since there’s been an update here. Unfortunately nothing I have to add is necessarily interesting to you but I do have some food pictures!

First up is some tofu-shorting-yuck brownies I tried to make. When mixing, I quickly found out shortening does not dissolve sugar. At all. My other discovery was that you can make brown sugar out of maple syrup if you’re out of molasses (or don’t have any to begin with). It just makes a much lighter ‘brown’ sugar and it actually tastes quite a bit better in my opinion. Although the syrup is much runnier so you need to add a little extra. Anyways… they didn’t look very promising going into the oven…

They didn’t look much better out…

Once you threw tons of powered sugar on top they actually looked (and tasted ok).

So that was my great brownie adventure. Next up was the college food. I was at a conference and they paid for us to eat all we wanted from the school’s food court. Here’s just a few of the choices I ended up with (just for random food picture’s sake.)

The first 2/4 of the days the food choices were great. By day 4… the only breakfast choices were a bacon ring (for on a egg sandwich and it tasted like plastic…) and honey nut cheerios. They got ruder and less friendly and unfortunately I ended up in the hospital thanks to their service with a food born liver infection.

I’m sure most everyone knows what hospital food is like. Gross, not that filling, kinda plasticy but hey at least it’s food, right? Didn’t take pictures of that because it wasn’t all that interesting and by the time they let me actually eat full meals… I was leaving. Although I do have to say it was kind of nice. I told them my food allergies and they told me if I could or couldn’t eat something. So that helped save the guessing game on my part. That and I got soy milk with my breakfast. So kudos to them.

All in all this last week and a half has been an interesting set of adventures that have kept me from properly blogging (or cooking at that rate) so forgive the lack of sarcastic and (hopefully) humorous food posts.

A.J.

A few more restaurant reviews

So this weekend I was traveling some more. (Seriously you’d think I was traveling all the time but this is really weird for me to be one place one week and another place the next.) During these trips we stopped at a couple of restaurants and I thought I’d review them for all of you fellow food allergy people.

The first one was a place I’d never been to or heard of before called California Pizza Kitchen. I don’t know if it’s just a local place or if it’s a chain or anything like that but it wasn’t in California and it actually was very nice if not a little pricey.

At first I was a little afraid I’d never find something to eat because every salad on the menu had one random thing in it that was a random thing I couldn’t have. (Seriously who wants bananas, avocado, beets, cranberries, onion greens and sesame seeds all in one go on a salad?).  So I did the best thing you can do; ask the server. He was a nice guy who helped me sort through my allergies and he pointed out stuff I could eat if I took this or that off and was very helpful.

In the end I ended up with a really nice salad and he even put in a request that the people in the back switch gloves so there was no nut contamination (even though my allergies aren’t that sever) without me asking. I don’t know I think this salad seems very successful (and tasty), don’t you?

It had bacon on it so of course it’s a win. Add a little apple cider vinegar and some oil and viola a very satisfying salad. Oh and by the way, that’s a half salad.

The restaurant also had a ‘if you don’t like it we’ll pay for it’ policy. So if you tried one of their more exotic pizzas or foods you could say you hated it and get a normal, say peperoni pizza, and just pay for that instead of 2 pizzas. Pretty cool, most places don’t say and offer that right up front.

All in all I think they were awesome and the server we had was super nice. I’d recommend it for food allergy friendliness.

Next up my family headed to The Cheesecake Factory with me in tow. (No really, they don’t hate me or anything.) I was a little sad because I know this place has the best cheesecake ever. But I was determined to show my steel-like will power and not even try a crumb.

To my surprise they actually had a tiny section of about 4 things I could actually eat and enjoy desert wise. They had ‘smoothies’ that were just crushed ice with different juices thrown on top. They had a peach/raspberry tea one and a tropical flavor one etc. I tried the tropical because it had coconut and pineapple in it. Unfortunately I forgot to try to take a picture until I was halfway done with it so no photo folks.

It was tasty but it was one of those deals where the ice wasn’t crushed enough so you could hardly drink it until it melted a bunch which left you the only one eating 10 minutes after the rest of the table was done. All in all the server there was very nice too. So even if you go somewhere like that and think there’s no hope, check the menu just encase to see if there’s something you can enjoy too.

A.J.

The days you should stop cooking before you even start…

Today was one of those days. Nothing I cooked today turned out very well. For example, these delicious crepes I made:

At least they turned out slightly better fully cooked and completely drowned in as much maple syrup as I felt was healthy to add.

So of course I tried to make more of those heavily cookies. Well not only were we out of brown sugar I somehow screwed something else up and while they look fine… they taste like water, flower, shorting, sugar and chocolate chips slapped together.  Yum.

A little while ago I saw this beautiful recipe on facebook for a Wendy’s frosty and since it didn’t take milk I decided to try it. Yeah…

I don’t really think that this and a frosty have anything in common.

It’s like a root beer float decided it wanted to be a slushy… then somehow ended up tasting like a chocolate health shake. Again, yum.

Hopefully tomorrow is much better cooking wise. And hey I do have some cookies that are at least edible so overall somewhat a success for cooking. Who can say no to mostly decent cookies, eh?

A.J.

Survival!

I survived the weekend with some of my food still left over. Also, chocolate almond milk over cheerios tastes like coco puffs.

That is all.

A.J.

Cooking for a weekend away… and its adventures!

Wow if that’s how much energy it takes to cook 3 days worth of meals ahead of time? I’m going to be eating just to have enough energy to cook some more. So right now the state of my kitchen is pretty bad disarray and I’m taking a break to update this blog before cleaning it. 4 hours straight of cooking and trying (key word, trying) to clean as I go has left me ready for a little nap.  Here is what it was at its best:

At it’s cleanest guys.

Anyways, first up on my cooking adventures, as any good person would do… I made cookies. I was a little skeptical how they’d turn out but man they are really good. I even made an obligatory huge cookie.

The recipe for those is:

1 cup of shorting with another 1/4 teaspoon of salt mixed into that

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup of granulated sugar

1/2 cup of silken tofu chopped up a little

1 Tablespoon of vanilla

2 cups of baking or all purpose flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 bag of dairy free semisweet chocolate chips

Next up on my list was some regular meals to mix up. I found a recipe for Basil Chicken with rice noodles… and barely followed it. It turned out awesome.  Here’s some pictures of that by itself and with some rice pasta.

The improve recipe I came up with as I worked:

About what looks like too much  (or 2 thighs/breast fillets) Chopped up bite sized chicken

4 Tablespoons of soy sauce

1 Tablespoon of vinigar

1 spoonful of already minced garlic (or 3 cloves)

1/2 package of rice noodles

1/2 a big red pepper

1/2 cup of match stick cut carrots

2 Tablespoons packed brown sugar

1/2 cup of cut up dried basil leafs

1 Tablespoons of lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

1) Place chicken, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic in a bowl. Mix it up and let it sit 30 minutes on the counter or 2 hours in the fridge.

2) Cut up peppers, mix with carrots, lemon juice, basil leaf and brown sugar.

3) Cook chicken until not pink, add in veggies and mix and stir fry while your noodles cook. Brown until veggies are brown/mushy and then you can leave it on low for a while to get rid of excess liquid and keep it warm.

4) Enjoy!

My mom made some awesome fried chicken. I think its just a mixture of flour, cornmeal and some salt/seasoning fried in vegetable oil. I made some chicken strips out of my extra chicken from the Basil Chicken meals. Those turned out pretty good too.

 The next little meal I made was some pasta salad. Basically I used the other half of the rice pasta I boiled up and added half a chopped cucumber, a chopped tomato and some Italian dressing on top. It’s really yummy and you just have to stir it up every few bites to keep the dressing on top.

And then my least appetizing looking creation: Feta cheese made out of tofu and other random things. The recipe was kinda complicated so I won’t write that one up, you can find your own. But it tastes fairly decent and it’s in the fridge right now firming up to be added to a good salad sometime this weekend.

After that I chopped up a cantaloupe and an avocado to add to salads later as well. (Secret tip, keep the avocado seed in with your avocado and a little splash of lemon juice to keep it from turning black and looking nice.) So all in all I ended up with about 5-8ish meals. ( 1) Pasta salad and chicken strips, 2) Basil chicken lunch 1, 3) Basil chicken lunch 2,  4) Fried chicken 5) Random veggies, 6) Random fruits.)

I’ll be making blueberry pancakes tonight to eat tomorrow and one other morning. I’ll also be taking along my soy milk (which says on the back “Allergy warning, contains soy!”…) and cheerios.  I’ll be trying to tackle eating out at least 1-2 times and seeing what I can eat while at random restaurants. I have some sunflower seeds and cookies to snack on. I’ll probably make a vat of homemade lemonade for fun too. All in all it should be a successful weekend!

Enjoy this photo and recipe laden post!

A.J.

Experiments with travel

Well if you’d told me that I’d be tackling travel and food allergies together for 2 out of the 3 first weeks finding out about allergies I would have called you crazy and told you to go try it first. So far it hasn’t been so bad, I did get my first 2 full meals this week all within 2 days of each other. One was a lovely pork loin roast, plain Brussels sprouts and plain potato meal. The other was this delightful chicken fajitas prepared by a fellow milk allergy friend so it was dairy free, yay!

I’ve also been experimenting with fast food restaurants. I’ve found a few resources online but they just rate the restaurant in friendliness, not eat-ability.  Here’s my findings at the 2 favorites with Americans and a newer one; McDonald, Subway and Jimmy Johns.

McDonald’s I visited 2 times in a 4 days span. The first time I was there I found out that they have delicious fruit ‘slushies’ i guess you could compare them to. No egg or dairy additives. (Cherry Berry chiller? Mmm…). The nice lady also informed me that they could hold the yogurt in all of their fruit smoothies and make those dairy free as well.

The next time I visited I stated I had egg and dairy allergies and asked if they used egg or dairy in their frying batter in any of their food and the manager informed me at the time they do not. So I got some fries and no problems yet. Be sure to check regular, one day they won’t be the next they could be and I’d be wary of their fried chicken patties and nuggets because those probably have egg fillers. I’ll find out about that next time I go to one.

The subway people were very nice where I was at. I asked if I got a salad, as long as I carefully chose what went on it there wouldn’t be any dairy or egg additives or hidden contamination and the lady said no. Even better I got to watch her make it and see exactly what went in. She was very helpful and if it had been a normal restaurant I would have tipped her nicely. Although I do have to admit… their chopped salads are not very pretty to look at but they are quite tasty depending what you get on it. I got a turkey one with lettuces, spinach, avocado, tomato, green pepper, black olive and cucumbers along with some yummy red wine vinegar dressing.

Like I said… not too tasty looking but it was good.

Lastly Jimmy Johns with their freaky fast subs of awesome. I loved going there Pre Allergies and ordering their JJBLT like it was the coolest word ever to say. They have a beautiful ‘Un-witch’ where they wrap your sandwich fillers in lettuces instead of bread. (This is great for the glutton-free allergy people.)

I usual get a BLT but figured that wouldn’t be very filling so I tried the turkey tom. Bad idea. The turkey was drippy wet and the lettuces was drippy wet and it lead to a very stomach churning wet crunch mess of salty water and just pretty much nasty. That was just poor sandwich choice on my part, not their fault. I love their sandwiches so I’m going to try their BLT wrapped in lettuce next time (and hope I don’t get soggy bacon.)

So far all three get a thumbs up for friendliness and helpfulness. Although I’m still suspicious of the McDonald… I still sorta doubt there’s no nasty eggsies hiding somewhere in their frier mixes… But for now I shall take their word for it and ask around at different locations to make sure this is true.

I also spent all yesterday morning making sure that cheerios 100% had no eggs. I had them with soy milk and it tasted like a very normal breakfast. It was a nice breath of fresh air after the crazy week that’s been going on with the allergy stuff. I’ve also been reading a lot of books on the subject and it’s very enlightening.

Anyways here’s my slightly more serious post for now.

Next time on traveling 3 states from home and trying to survive…

A.J.

So a plum, a strawberry and a apple all walk into a bar…

Pretty much just realizing that all the fruits I had to get fast so I actually had something to eat are the start of a bad joke.

Alright, this post is brought to you by starving first week allergy people everywhere. Are you still almost eating forbidden foods? Is your stomach rumbling, missing all the delicious meals you used to eat? Do your big bountiful feasts look like this?

If your new idea of a ‘fancy’ entree is now cucumber stuffed pepper… then you need a handy-dandy allergy free cookbook. Yes, a cookbook.

And suppose you’ve been living off nothing but turkey and ham for  a week and really want to find an alternative protein source now that eggs and peanuts are no longer on the menu? Look no further than the alternative meat section! It offers delicious options like frog, turtle, alligator, rattlesnake, ostrich, emu, pigeon, kangaroo, bear, lion, caribou, antelope, yack, American bison…  Wait a second…

I have food allergies NOT exotic meat cravings! What kind of a cookbook is this?! I’m pretty sure half of that is illegal or protected or endangered. Not to mention over the top expensive. Goodbye super old cookbook of weird.

Lesson of the day, make sure to get a cookbook from this century that actually has foods you can eat. Like one with a pretty blue cover and nice photos on the front. Yes, I think that is the cookbook for me.

A.J.

Entrée

Captains Log, Day 4 into uncharted territory…

I don’t know about you but I didn’t find out about my food allergies until I was 18.

I’d gotten 18 years of glorious food, eating what I wanted and pretending to be a food connoisseur  anywhere I went. For over a year I’d felt sluggish, sore and downright miserable no matter how much I exercised, how ‘healthy’ I ate or  what I did. I always felt like I should just stay in bed all day, have a few tylenol and hope tomorrow was better. (Never got to do that more than once a month but hey, a girl can wish right?)

Finally my mom got a hold of a blood allergy test kit. After waiting 2 months finally the results were in. First up, the dairy category. While everything else had nice little green blips of ‘no reactions’ the entire milk category was in the orange and red. That was pretty obviously something I should avoid, eh?

Next up meats. Let me tell you, I’d be vegetarian but… I just can’t give up my chicken, turkey and pork. Beef could go take a hike but the rest of it… mmmm. At first glance the meats looked good then I saw two huge lines all the way into the furthest deep red category.

Eggs were no longer on the menu ever.

Outside of that I just had to avoid bananas, cranberries, peanuts, pecans, sesame seeds, spelt (do we even eat that herein America?) . No more omelets or ice cream, easy-peasy.

Until you realize that eggs are in every baked product, most wheat has egg additives in it and you can cook just about 0 deserts without egg. Then find a list informing you that root beer, (whats the point of soda if you can’t have root beer, amiright?),  donuts, pasta, salad dressings (dry salads? Nuuuuu…), most soups and chocolates were completely off the  menu.

Cue thunder, lightning and a little sob time in the corner.

The idea was then to figure out what I could eat. I could still eat bacon, hot dogs, chicken broth, all the veggies, most fruits, my beloved turkey, chicken and pork as well as anything else I could find didn’t have nasty little eggsies (“Gollum, Gollum! My preesssioussss”) or milk in them. My list of ‘good’ foods that I could eat slowly grew and I looked up egg substitutes online.

Number 1 egg substitute? Bananas. The one of the two fruits I couldn’t have. Things were off to a great start.

After a couple of days of eating cucumbers, plums and sliced turkey (and wishing I could just eat something else) I finally got a lovely allergy free cookbook. I skimmed through it, finding foods I could add to my list of things to eat and finding really good looking recipes.

Yesterday morning I tried my first one:

I was so happy, the pancakes actually looked like actual pancakes and they didn’t taste too bad. I modified the recipe a good deal because it still called for eggs  and I wanted to make it ‘buttermilk’ by adding a little lemon juice to my coconut milk (I deemed cooking only, plain non flavored coconut milks is nasty according to my taste buds.). Day one cooking: Success.

Day two…

My strawberry pancake decided it was too beautiful to live due to a nonstick iron… sticking. (There’s no IRONy in that at all). But hey I got chocolate coconut milk and bacon! Can’t go wrong with bacon.

I do have to say though… cookbook pictures are quite misleading, are they not? I’m pretty sure these two look nothing alike:

(regurgitated bird food vrs. mmmmmmmmm…)

One of my big discoveries is that labels are required by law to put an allergy statement somewhere on the product. I’m finding a lot that don’t so I still have to look like an over zealous granny squinting at tiny labels wishing I had a magnifying glass. But I think here’s an example of a allergy statement… that might not be necessary:

If anyone with allergies to coconuts is dumb enough to buy coconut milk… I’ll let you finish that sentence on your own.

Anyways while I slowly figure out where some companies hide the pesky notices on labels and deal with ones that put up such painfully obvious notices, things should get interesting.

Lastly here’s the pancake recipe (my modified version) for anyone who’s interested:

1 cup of all purpose flour (check for egg fillers in your flower!)

 2 Tablespoons of sugar (1 if you use applesauce for eggs)

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of salt

3/4 cup of (insert favorite milk replacement here) coconut milk

1 teaspoon of lemon juice (in milk before adding)

1/2 cup of applesauce

1 Tablespoon of dairy-free butter replacement or vegetable shorting or vegetable oil

Optional – 1/2 cup of fruit (blueberries, strawberries, etc)

Until next time…

A.J.