I hope you have had a Happy Halloween. This holiday is a minefield for people with corn allergic kids, because of all the candy and trick or treating. Since Brittany is now a young adult, that isn't such an issue for us. It is her favorite holiday, though, and so usually she has a party with friends. I have been so impressed with the things I see young moms on the corn allergy forums doing to make it a fun holiday for their allergic kids. One mom posted and said that she had made homemade corn-free gummies for her child to trade his trick-or-treating candy in for. I thought that was a great idea!
One thing this allergy makes you do is think outside the box when it comes to holidays, birthdays and other occasions. Before figuring out what we we were dealing with, our family was one of those that relied on eating out and going to movies for fun family time. Typically parties with our kids' friends happened at our house when they were teenagers, and let's face it, the default food for teens is usually pizza. Sooooo easy to pull off when you can grab Little Caesar's for $5.00 a pizza.
When we got wise to the allergies and realizing just how bad they were, I was quite proud of myself for pulling off some decent food for Brittany's Halloween party. I can't remember everything we had, but I made sure that the food was either stuff that everyone could eat, or if there was something Brittany couldn't have, I provided a comparable alternative for her. One of my favorite websites for recipes is The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen--these people are brilliant and the recipes she comes up with are pure genius. I made these pumpkin cupcakes, along with the "frosting":
I didn't say anything to anyone about them being healthy (Brittany knew but didn't know the ingredients) and I was really gratified to see people going back for seconds and thirds. I just chuckled to myself. LOL Not sure they would have been as excited if they knew the body of the frosting was mashed potatoes!
This year Brittany came up with ideas for a pirate-themed party, including ideas for a feast. She researched food found on pirate ships, including the fact that when stocking the ship before sailing it included livestock for eggs and milk and then later for fresh meat. Sleep patterns flipped just before last weekend and in trying to flip them back was running on 4 hours of sleep in the past two days. She started baking last night and realized midday today that she wasn't going to make it. We have a lot of the food done, so we are being flexible and having our pirate feast tomorrow night instead.
Flexibility and taking care of yourself. Those are two of the things you are forced to learn with these kinds of extremities. So, in what has become a family tradition called Birthday Week, we are having Halloween Week. :)
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