So today we had Jaden tested for the fresh fruits on his list of allergens and pine nuts.  All I can say is wow.  He had NO reaction to pineapple, avocado, peach nor the pine nut.  However he did have a pretty severe reaction to Cantelope / Rockmelon.  The doctor was quite amazed at the Cantelope. He said, “Of the one I figured would have been the safest he is reacting to.” I agreed. Going into the tests I would have bet that Jaden would have reacted to the Pineapple and to none of the others.  So over the next few weeks we will be introducing one of these fortnightly on a very rigid way. We will start by placing the food on his lower lip the first day and waiting ~24 hours before giving him the first rice grain size piece. Then we will double each day until he is eating a full serve for his size.

We did this with pecans after the last test before today and he had NO reactions! So this is a very encouraging time….at least allergy wise. A note that he started having some reactions when we tried the walnuts, but we are tending to believe the reaction was from something else. We will restart the walnut as soon as his present cold has passed, then on to pineapple, peach, almond and pine nuts.  Avocado will be much delayed since it is what put him in the hospital twice. Plus avocado was a delayed reaction so it may not have shown on the skin tests. We will take it very cautiously with this one.

Jaden and I went shopping today. I was determined to buy some Cocoa Butter in an attempt to make chocolate from scratch so that my son could have some chocolate candies for Easter like nearly every other person in this country.

While in the Health Food store which we have shopped before which has many foods for those with allergies and food sensitivities, the twenty something sales lady asked Jaden if he knew what he was allergic to. Jaden immediately replied. “Wheat, soy dairy, eggs, avocado, peanuts, nuts, avocado, pineapple and rockmelon and sometimes cherries….”  The lady had a common reaction which I have heard many times with a twist. This was the first time I heard someone ask Jaden directly, “What can you eat then?!?!” Jaden with his cute smile without missing a beat answered “Anything that doesn’t have those things in it.” As if the lady should already know it. I was not only impressed that he rattled off most of his list of allergens quite well even if he repeated avocado and left off the rest of the glutens but also with his nonchalant  answer.

Jaden is handling his life with allergies quite remarkably and makes his father proud.

Well, I first read about this not long after I got to Australia with the first research being published in the UK. I wondered then after I read the research how long before I heard about “alternative” health providers jumping on this and promoting it as a cure. In general good research takes time, but many have jumped on the initial theories and have started selling the cure. Well those alternative health people have been experimenting and now nearly 3 years later they are starting to pop up in the news.
Basically the theory is not that we lead a too clean lifestyle from dirt as was theorized a few years ago when we first had kids, but that we live a life devoid of parasites. Those parasites help the body keep from getting allergies. Here are two articles that I found recently on the subject:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/10/04/parasitic-worms-cure-autoimmune-diseases/
http://www.besthealthmag.ca/get-healthy/health/can-hookworms-cure-allergies
I am not quite ready to go and infect our family yet, but I must think that these natural existing entities should be much easier to come by than $3000 for the infection. I will be watching this kind of research and wondering.

Thanks to mutual friends that I went to Purdue with, we have made some new friends in Australia. We took them to the snow on Saturday for a great day of playing in the snow. Such a novelty for us Americans to play in snow in August while all of our friends in the USA are baking in the heat. You can check out their pictures at: http://wilkincr.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/sledding-in-a-rainforest.html

This season in Australia as far as food is concerned seems to be all about Chocolate  with the occasional hot cross buns. The stores are loaded with lots and lots of Chocolate. And NONE of it is safe for Jaden. The only one that attempts to be Allergy Friendly has Soy in it. Anyway the girls went to Church yesterday and made Hot Cross Buns and Chocolate molds. Well we did the Jaden-safe Hot Cross Buns yesterday. Today I attempted to make some Jaden-safe Allergy Friendly “milk” Chocolate.  Unfortunately I don’t have a full recipe as I didn’t measure pretty much anything, but here is what I did.

I started out with an Artisse Dark Chocolate bar. I melted it in a double boiler (Pryex bowl over a sauce pan with water in it). I added about 3 Tablespoons of Prepared Darifree and at least 6 tablespoons of powdered sugar and another 1/2 tablespoon of Darifree powder and stirred with a small wisk. I had added a little Olive Oil but it needed something that would be solid at room temp in it like Cocoa Butter, Palm Oil, or Lard. We had the Lard in the house so I added it after the first pour turned out to be a failure.  We also dipped some gluten-free marshmallows in the chocolate to use it up. I did swipe a little Olive Oil on a paper towel and lightly swiped the oil in the mold before the successful pours. So the first pour needed more solid fat and some Olive Oil on the molds. The first pour is the “failure” pic below. Pour is a strong word, I actually spooned it in then tapped them on the counter. I would have made different shapes, but this was the only mold we had and we had borrowed it from someone else. I am considering wrapping the eggs in aluminium foil for presentation to Jaden so it looks more “normal”.

Successful Eggs

Failed to set well. Used spoon to remove which ruined the shape.

Hot Cross Buns cooling

Jaden and I baked Hot Cross Buns….We used Gluten-Free Flour and more or less followed the recipe at http://www.everydaywithallergies.com/2009/03/hot-cross-buns.html. We substituted 1/4 tsp Nutmeg for the 1 tsp Cinnamon. Best thing is that Jaden likes it.

So on Sunday evening Jaden ate his first ever Pizza.  We had bought an Orgran Pizza Crust mix several months ago. The kids were itching to make something last night for dinner instead of having leftovers so I mentioned to them that they could make a Jaden Safe Pizza.  Shay and Karlissa jumped on it.

We greased the pan with Nuttelex and sprinkled some Polenta (corn meal) on it.  Then we followed the directions to make the Pizza Crust. The kids did all of the kneading and such.  We rolled it out with a round drinking glass since we don’t have a rolling pin in Australia. Then all four helped pinch the sides, put sauce and meat on it. We used some left over roast chicken, some ham and some Green Capsicum (Green Pepper).  Wish we had had some more veggies in the house we could have put on. Of course there was no cheese put on the pizza as there is no dairy free cheese substitute that is free from Soy (at least not that we have found).

Anyway after 15 minutes in the oven Karlissa pulled out the pizza (and dropped it but we had a great save).   We carried it to the table and fed one very excited boy and an excited family.

Today we made some Allergy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies. They were great.  I got the recipe from: http://www.mothersclick.com/recipes/kid-favorites/madelines-dairy-free-nut-free-egg-free-chocolate-chip-cookies 
I had to substitute Nuttelex for the margarine, Darifree for the milk and used Gluten-Free and Soy Free flour and of course our favorite Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips as they are truly the only Jaden Safe Chocolate chips on the planet that we know. Too bad the 10oz bag costs $15 at our favorite local Allergy Food store.  I think I will try changing the sugar to all brown sugar.  When I do I think I will have varied the recipe enough to post it myself, right now just make those changes to the link and you will be good.

Summary: Normal Chocolate chip cookies would have had a food cost of $5 or less in America and these would have cost perhaps $8-$9. Here they cost us over $20 for the ingredients.  (Don’t know how often we will be able to afford these, but at least we had some good ones.)  I might try making them with some Australian made dark chocolate that is safe for Jaden to see if they still taste OK.

At AllergyBlock on Saturday, we bought some Jaden-safe Ice Cream cones made by Orgran.  Jaden had been asking for ice cream cones for some time and I just became aware of these a few weeks ago. The Gluten Free ones at the local grocery store still had some Soy in them. He has been asking for Jaden Safe Ice Cream every day since we got them. This Evening, 15 minutes before the oven incident below, I bought some Passion Fruit Sorbet made by Gelativo. After dinner I scooped some in his cone. He was so excited and happy. He ate it all up faster than I have ever seen him eat the Sorbet before.

I ate a cone too. They tasted as good as any other cake cone.  Wonderful.

We bought a real Christmas tree!!!  We always had an artificial tree in Florida. We were all excited.  At least until we put it in the van with the kids.  The difference of buying a tree in the winter (USA) and summer (Australia) at Christmas was underestimated by us. The little critters that would live on the tree in the USA would have either died in the cold or moved to warmer places to live for the winter. Here we had several spiders drop off in the van which caused a bit of panic. They were not that big compared to the ones that came off once we had the tree in our house.  I have a feeling that there are several more lurking in the lush beautiful tree.  We’ll see if we see big shadows once we put lights on the tree today.