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This is where my coffee grows. Photo taken at Mountain Thunder Coffee, February 2018.
Coffee. Coffee. Blog post. Coffee. Tea drinkers, go here. This post isn’t about the history or origins of coffee, but about making one great cup each weekend when mornings suck a lot less. Denise will laugh at the entire idea of ONE cup of coffee, but we do both love it in different quantities. Coffee is great because it’s not an allergen for most people — but drinking coffee out can have its pitfalls — most coffee shops serve treats (gluten, egg, dairy) and milk and nut milks. Coffee can be processed with ingredients that cause some people issues — I haven’t hit those yet, luckily. So here’s my coffee journey.
In 2016, as regular readers of the blog know, I moved across the country to Seattle, a city well-known for its coffee culture. In part, this is climate. I learned to really drink coffee in Oregon, my first foray into the Pacific Northwest, where winters are grey and damp and only a hot beverage will get you through the days. In Eugene, you can’t go half a block without hitting coffee, at least not near the university. Seattle’s not that different, though a lot of the shops are Starbucks. I’ve seen the first espresso cart that came to the city (imported from Italy, it’s now in the collections at the Museum of History and Industry), and every time we get to try a new coffee house, I get a little excited. I’ve become a coffee snob, but that doesn’t mean I’d turn down archaeologist coffee.
For the most part, I’m a simple coffee drinker. I learned to make mochas at my sandwich shop job last century, and while I did not like coffee much, I loved complicated coffee beverages. But I truly love the taste of coffee now, and most days, I want a cup of black drip coffee or an Americano (espresso + water). Occasionally, I like a good almond milk latte, and there’s one place that makes a great cappuccino with almond milk.
But my home coffee game has definitely gotten more complicated. I’ve owned drip brew coffee makers (messy to clean a reusable filter & makes too much) and French presses (terrible to clean). I went through an instant espresso phase (and still keep that around for baking. I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but I need that cup.
I tend to only make coffee on the weekends — in the past, I’d drink coffee at work no matter how terrible it was. (Fun side note, I was banned from making coffee at a former job because I made it too strong). But work now, we have excellent amazing coffee from a local roaster, Pine Drop.
Aeropress. Star Trek mug.
After some research, I decided that an Aeropress might be the best fit for me. This tube system would travel well, and making only one cup means that you’re almost never going to drink cold coffee. Making coffee in the Aeropress feels like a game. Cleaning it is a breeze, as the coffee just pops out into the trash or compost. And the coffee itself is good.
JavaPresse coffee grinder and lovely beans.
But after I determined that Jack wasn’t suddenly going to become a coffee drinker in Seattle, I started buying whole beans because my ground coffee was getting stale. I bought a small burr hand grinder, as I hate noise in the mornings. When we went to Hawai’i, toured a Kona coffee plantation, got hyped on samples, and bought fancy coffee I adore.
My coffee set up, minus the electric kettle
So this is my hipster weekend coffee routine:
I hand-grind about 2 Tablespoons of Kona coffee from a plantation I personally toured in my burr grinder. This takes about 2 minutes. Meanwhile, I heat up water to 185 degrees in my adjustable thermostat electric kettle. I put a paper filter in my Aeropress and set it atop one of several Star Trek mugs, and I press out one shot of coffee. I then add a bit more water for an intense Americano, or occasionally I steam some almond milk for a homemade latte.
Green beans, soybeans and radishes in last years garden
So since tax day is almost here, MaryKate and I were talking about money. Besides more expensive food, you end up buying a lot of kitchen equipment, and if you have a corn allergy, you might end up buying a lot of food preservation equipment, freezers, and in my case, a house so you can grow a lot of your own spray free food (see my post on buying the house – WW: Living with Food Allergies – Making Unexpected and/or Unwanted Lifestyle Changes and my post on gardening – WW: Gardening due to Food Allergies & Planning your Garden & Starting Seedlings). These expenses have been gradual and over a period of time, and this isn’t everything, since I’m leaving out a lot of the specialty food expenses and some kitchen stuff I already owned, but I thought that talking about it may help some people.
Kitchen tools:
Crock pots – I have one of almost every size, and two of the seven quart ones. I use them to cook meals, and I use them to cook down apple butter, pear butter, tomato paste, and tomato sauce, although I did buy a Oster 20 quart roaster to use this upcoming canning season to try to cut down on extension cords and the number of Crock pots running at the same time. All of my Crock pots are manual, as I find the digital ones cook too hot.
1.5 quart – $16
3 quart – $22
4.5 quart – $30
Two 7 quart – $45 each
20 quart Oster roaster $40 (on sale)
Meat slicer – We actually got this as a wedding present because my husband wanted one because he used to work at a deli, and we already had a lot of stuff because we were older when we got married and we were already living together. I use it when I cure pork belly into bacon, and when I cure brisket into pastrami to slice things evenly. We didn’t use it much before food allergies but we use it quite a bit now.
Stand Mixer and attachments – I’ve posted about my KitchenAid mixer in the past (WW Kitchen Stories: Denise’s KitchenAid Mixer) but it predates my food allergies. I use the Food Grinder attachment in conjunction with the KitchenAid Fruit and Vegetable Strainer attachment to make vats of home canned applesauce and tomato sauce. I also use it in baking muffins, cookies, cakes, and pie dough. I use it to make Aquafaba whipped cream, and I use it to make pasta. I really want the KitchenAid KSMPEXTA Gourmet Pasta Press Attachment with 6 Interchangeable Pasta Plates and I may buy the KitchenAid KSM2APC Spiralizer Plus Attachment with Peel, Core and Slice, Silver, to process my apples, so that I don’t have to use a hand crank apple peeler for my apple harvest (I have 18 trees), but I have not yet purchased them. I’m trying to be restrained here, even though I’m a kitchen gadget junkie.
KitchenAid Mixer Kit 4.5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer – $200
KitchenAid Food grinder attachment $40
KitchenAid FVSP Fruit and Vegetable Strainer Parts for Food Grinder $23
High Performance Blender – I waited three years to buy my Vitamix blender because I’m wicked cheap and the price tag was killing me. I got the Vitamix 5200 Blender Super Package from Costco which has the dry container for grinding grains, beans, rice and soybeans into fresh flour and the regular wet blender container. It’s the the one thing that honestly I probably should have bought from day one. I use it to make cashew milk and rice milk without having to strain it. I use it to make salad dressings. I use it to grind my own chili powder, curry powder, garam masala and other spice blends from whole spices in large quantities, as well as grind whole spices into powder. (Powdered spices are often cross contaminated or have anti-caking agents which are a problem.) I use it to make my own flours from dry beans and rice. I use it to make fruity drinks from my safe vodka or rum, my homemade jams, and ice. I use it to puree the peppers I ferment to make hot sauces. I use this thing almost every day.
Vitamix 5200 Blender Super Package $500
Spice Grinder – Sometimes you need to just grind a small amount of something for a recipe. When you only need to process a tablespoon of something, the Vitamix is the wrong tool because you need a larger amount for it to work well. I had a spice grinder before I had the Vitamix and I still use it after the Vitamix.
Cuisinart SG-10 Electric Spice-and-Nut Grinder $36.00
Meat Grinder – I can hear you now. Why does Denise need a meat grinder if she has the grinder attachment for the KitchenAid? My answer is that the KitchenAid Food Grinder works great for once in a while grinding of meat in small amounts. However, I’m sort of beyond that level at this point. I need to grind tallow and leaf lard to render down my own tallow and lard for cooking and to make my own margarine. Fats are tough products to grind, and I needed more muscle since I cracked the plastic housing on the Food Grinder last time I ground tallow (still works for now, ugh), and my KitchenAid motor really struggles with grinding the tallow and leaf lard and overheats. With the meat grinder, I can grind 5 pounds of frozen leaf lard in about a quarter of the time that I took me with the KitchenAid.
STX-4000-TB2 Turboforce II “Quad Air Cooled” White Electric Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer $240
Dehydrator – I bought a dehydrator during the year of the great pepper harvest. My friend Mary S. agreed to grow peppers for me before we had the house, and well, she harvested 11 pounds of various chilies. I couldn’t manage to can or ferment all that before it went to waste and we didn’t have freezer space at that time, so I ordered a dehydrator to preserve the harvest. Now I use the dehydrator to make fruit leather using left over apple pulp when I steam juice apples to get juice to make jelly or apple juice. I dry herbs, peppers, and kale from the garden to use during the winter. I also use it to dry peanuts and cashews after soaking them so that I can make my own nut butters. I use it to make raisins, dried apples, and other dried fruits. It’s getting quite a lot of use for a spur of the moment, desperation purchase.
Food processor – I had a smaller food processor, but I sort of melted the container when I left it too close to a burner on the stove, so I now use it to shred soap to make my laundry detergent. I replaced it with a 14 cup model. I use it for slicing vegetables to make pickles and shredding vegetables to make pickles and relishes, and dicing vegetables to make salsas. This gets a workout during canning season. I also use it to make larger batches of nut butters.
Cuisinart DFP-14BCNY 14-Cup Food Processor $150
Juicer – I use a cheapo juicer to juice apples to make hard cider. Remember that I have 18 apple trees and I need to get rid of a lot of apples. I really want a cider press, but that will run me about $500, so the small juicer is working fine for now, if time consuming. Please remember that almost every commercial juice will be corny in some way, so if you need fruit juices it’s best to juice your own.
Hamilton Beach Juice Extractor, Big Mouth, Metallic $60
Pressure Cooker – I have big pressure canners that I can use to cook in, but they are way too large to deal with on a day to day basis. I use this to make yogurt from cashew milk, make rice, steam vegetables, and I make a lot of soups, stews, and other dishes in it quickly, without having to stir or babysit them. I like it better for weekday use than a slow cooker because I don’t have to plan ahead or leave things on a timer. We use it enough that I ordered an extra pot for it so that we can make things back to back without having to empty the pot and wash it right away.
Instant Pot DUO60 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Steamer, Sauté, Yogurt Maker and Warmer $70 (on sale)
Extra pot $30
Knife Sharpener – Sharp knives work better and you’re less likely to get hurt, allegedly. For a long time, I kept thinking I would take my knives in to be sharpened at a local kitchen place, but the reality is, I don’t feel like I can be without my knives that long, so I don’t. I cook every single day and I need the knives. I know that electric knife sharpeners are not as good as professional knife sharpening, but sometimes something is better than nothing.
Presto Professional Electric Knife Sharpener $36
Cast iron wok – I use this primarily for deep frying. When MaryKate and I originally learned to deep fry, we used stainless steel pots, but the wok uses so much less oil and you have much less splatter everywhere. I have a big Lodge wok and a smaller Utopia Kitchen wok. I use the larger one when I am frying a lot of food in quantity to freeze for later, and the smaller when I just have a yen for a little something. I also use both for stir frying as well. You don’t need both, and neither do I, but I like the flexibility.
Lodge Pro-Logic Cast Iron Wok, Black, 14-inch $45-50 (on sale)
Utopia Kitchen Cast Iron Shallow Concave Wok, Black, 12 Inch $18.00
Digital Kitchen scale – If you’re doing any sort of gluten free baking, a digital kitchen scale is helpful. I also use it quite frequently in canning, as recipes will call for so many pounds of an ingredient. I prefer to have one that measures at least up to 10 pounds and reads in pounds, ounces and grams. Mine is a cheap one I ordered online.
Etekcity 15lb/7kg Digital Kitchen Food Scale, 0.01oz Resolution $12
Digital Meat Thermometer – This made a real difference in our cooking. Since every meal is at home, we want our food to be done right. I can now cook a steak that compares with a restaurant cooked steak, and we don’t have overdone dry pork chops any more (unless someone isn’t paying attention).
ThermoWorks ThermoPop Super-Fast Thermometer with Backlit Rotating Display (Purple) $30
Canning stuff:
After my corn allergy diagnosis, when I realized that I would literally have to make everything from scratch, and we were living in an apartment and did not have freezer space to freeze everything and we were having winter power outages that lasted 4-5 days every other winter, canning looked really attractive because it’s shelf stable. If you have a corn allergy and decide to can, be aware that some of us react to the Ball canning lids, and the Tattler canning lids. Don’t invest in a lot of stuff until you know whether you react or not. Luckily, I’m still doing okay.
Pressure Canners: Pressure canners allow you to can low acid food safely without getting botulism. If you take up canning, you need to do a lot of research and follow safe recipes in order to be safe. I originally ordered the smaller pressure canner, but realized that it was costing me a ton of time to do two batches, and I ended up ordering the larger one. I can do 10 pints in the smaller canner, but 19 in the larger canner. Now sometimes I run both of them at the same time, particularly when I’m canning quarts, as I can do 14 quarts at once between the two of them. I also use the larger canner as a cooker to make bone broth and vegetable stock in a very short period of time. You can buy cheaper pressure canners in the range of $80, but then you have to buy a new gasket every season which runs about $50. The All Americans have a metal to metal seal, and you just need to get a new rubber over-pressure safety plug every year which is about $7. The All Americans are very heavy cast aluminum and they will last forever. If I were to do it over, I’d have ordered the larger one first, and probably not have two.
All-American 15-1/2-Quart Pressure Cooker/Canner $175 (on sale)
All American 921 21-1/2-Quart Pressure Cooker/Canner $210 (on sale)
Water Bath Canning Pots – Water bath canning is for high acid foods like jams, jellies, pickles and salsa. I was using a Granite Ware 21.5-Quart canning pot, which are only about $20, but I literally wore two of them out because they are so flimsy. You can use any large stock pot (10 quarts or larger) to do water bath canning, but I like to do large batches so I have a 20 quart and a 32 quart pot.
20 quart stainless steel pot $61
32 quart stainless steel pot $91
Canning Element Kit for electric stoves – This replaces your electric burner element to have more heavy duty support (canning pots are freaking heavy) and a higher wattage burner. I’m on my third. Because of the volume I do, I keep wearing them out.
Canning element kit $37
Extra burner – I often need an extra burner because if I have two pressure canners going, I wouldn’t have room to cook the thing I’m canning on the stove. This burner is high enough wattage to run a canner on it.
Cadco PCR-1S Professional Cast Iron Range $130
Steamer Juicer – This is the easiest way to juice fruit to make jams and jellies and can fruit juice. It’s an expensive toy, but the time and hassle it saves makes it worth it for me.
Cook N Home NC-00256 11-Quart Stainless-Steel Juicer Steamer $95
Canning tools – You’ll need some canning tools, a canning funnel, bubble remover, jar lifter, and so on.
Presto 7 Function Canning Kit $15
NORPRO 591 Bubble Popper/Measurer $5
Canning books – You’ll need some canning books to learn safe canning techniques and safe recipes. My canning book collection is about $200 at this point.
Canning Jars – Depending on the size, canning jars range from $8 to $12 a case retail. Because I can in high volume and I store spices, rice, beans, and flours in jars, I probably have close to 2,000 jars in the house, as there were nearly 1,500 in canned goods alone at the end of the canning season last year. I didn’t pay for them all, as I’ve been gifted jars when people stop canning and downsize, and I got quite a few cases on very deep discount during sales, but it’s an expense when you start.
Ball Canning Lids – Canning lids can only be used to can food once. I reuse lids for dry storage, but you can’t reuse them for canning. I generally spend about $50 to $100 a season on lids. The cheapest I can find them is sadly Walmart where I’m able to get a pack of 12 for between $1.79 to $1.97 depending on the sale. I generally buy a 24 pack case at a time if I get a good price.
Fermenting stuff:
I learned how to ferment because when I lost corn I wasn’t going to go without Sriracha and my other hot sauces. It just wasn’t going to happen. Once I got my feet wet with hot sauces, I started making sauerkraut and kimchee, and then progressed to hard cider, my own really bad wine, and my own apple cider and wine vinegar.
I primarily ferment in quart mason jars and half gallon jars depending on the volume of what I’m making. You can buy fermenting caps for jars online. When I first started, I bought some premade stuff, and then later I made my own as it was cheaper, when I needed to have more caps available as I fermented more stuff. I also found having a tamper for packing vegetables in jars to be helpful. When I make cider, I ferment in a three gallon carboy and a 1 gallon carboy I got from a wine kit, and when the cider is done fermenting I store in it in 32 ounce swing top bottles.
STARTER KIT 6 Mason Jar Fermentation Lids with Food Grade Grommets, Airtight Seals, and Stoppers AND 2 3-Piece Airlocks (REGULAR MOUTH) $30
Kraut Kaps 3 Pack – Platinum $30
Small Wooden Cabbage Tamper for sauerkraut $10
airlocks $6
3 Piece Econo-Lock with Carboy Bung (Set of 2) $6
1 Gallon Wine from Fruit Kit $40
3 Gallon Glass Carboy $30
Cobalt Blue 32 oz. EZ Cap Beer Bottles, CASE OF 12 $43
Stuff to make cleaning and personal care products:
So when you’re allergic to corn and coconut, and their derivatives are in everything, you make your own everything (bar soap, liquid soap, dishwasher detergent, lotions, makeup, etc.) I’m not going to list every ingredient I use to make stuff (a lot of this stuff is on the blog if you search), but suffice it to say, there’s an awful lot of essential oils, various oils, beeswax, shea butter, borax, washing soda, and so on in this house. Frankly, I’m feeling like this post is going on forever, and I’m too lazy to go look up what I paid for all that. So here’s what I think are the hard equipment items that you’d need to have around to make this stuff.
fabric and snaps to make monthly feminine supplies (see post here) $70
Two 7 quart crock pots for soap (get them from garage sales as you won’t use them for food ever again) $10-20
2 cheap immersion blenders I got at Ocean State Job Lots (again you can’t use these for food ever again) $20
old pyrex casserole dishes to use as molds $10 (bought from an estate sale)
Playtex Gloves Living – Large – 3 Pairs – $10
Crews 2230R Chemical Splash Goggle w/ Indirect Ventilation and Adjustable Strap, Clear $4
Rooto No. 4 Household Drain Opener 100% Lye $2
6 lb Potassium Hydroxide Meets Food Chemical Codex High Grade Red Hot Devil Caustic Potash Flakes $35
A garage sale blender to make lotions $15
A garage sale coffee grinder to mix mineral makeup $5
Garden stuff:
So now we have the big one, haha! First, I bought a house to have land. Luckily for me, the land came with 18 apple trees, a cherry tree, 3 pear trees, blueberry bushes and grapevines already on the property, and a garden space already established. Of course, I’ve felt the need to expand and improve the garden, so there’s been some costs. Also to start seeds inside I needed lights, and I’ve added some plants here and there.
House and land – $170,000
Rototilling services $300 (I’m generally using no till, but I’ve tilled garden expansions to get started)
Garden dirt 10 yards $470
150 cement blocks for raised beds $200
Garden fencing $233
Two sets of Vegetable Drip Tape Kit for up to 25 Rows each 20 ft. Long $220
12 x 16 foot Greenhouse courtesy of my sister $1,500
Concrete pavers, bricks and landscape fabric to put the floor in the greenhouse $280
5 pound bag of cayenne pepper to dust plants to deter voles $27
Mouse/Vole traps – they break frequently so I spend $30-40 a year
Three five gallon buckets to make mouse/vole traps $9
Annual garden seeds, transplants, additional fruit bushes, trees, and vines, and perennial vegetables and flowers $120-500 a year (depending on what I decide to add, and what seeds I have left from the previous year)
Straw bales as mulch $200 a year
Black cow compost 50 lb bags about $50 a year
So there you have it. Money I spend/spent because of my food allergies. Let us know if you have kitchen tools you can’t live with out, or if you have great gardening ideas.
One of the raised garden beds made with cement blocks
Okay, I’ve been telling MaryKate that I was going to do this post for a Whatever Wednesday since we bought the house. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. But better late never, and I’m currently trying to ignore the blizzard raging outside while writing this post and dreaming of spring.
Depending on your cocktail of allergies (corn, I’m looking at you), growing some of your own food may become something that you want or need to try, based on your local food resources, your sensitivities, and the failures of the food industry to properly label ALL food ingredients. I won’t get into my diatribes about the food industry and regulatory concerns as they are unlikely to be addressed in the near future. Instead, let’s get to playing in the dirt, and planning to play in the dirt.
Here’s the original post about us deciding to buy the house – WW: Living with Food Allergies & Making Unexpected and/or Unwanted Lifestyle Changes. To summarize, due to the amount of food preservation I needed to do, the costs of purchasing vegetables, having to make my own personal care products, and our storage needs, we needed to buy a house so I had room to do all that and garden. We were lucky enough to be able to buy a house that has three acres of land, an established set of fruit trees (18 apple, 4 pear, 1 cherry), grapevines, blueberry bushes, and Nankin cherry bushes, as well as an established garden plot. Since we bought the house, we’ve expanded the garden plot from its original foot print, added a side garden with a perennial herb garden and a perennial garlic bed, established an asparagus bed, planted 150 strawberry plants, planted a bed of perennial Egyptian walking onions, added two more grapevines, and installed some drip irrigation.
Main garden and expansionSide garden
This year, I’ll be adding another 100 asparagus plants, another 150 strawberry plants, 5 raspberry bushes, and 5 blackberry bushes. I’d like to add more blueberry bushes and a couple of fruit trees, but it depends on the budget – it may have to wait until next year.
If you’re thinking about starting a garden, your local cooperative extension may have great information for you. New Hampshire has great resources, and I’ve gone to a couple of their classes to learn how to prune my fruit trees, blueberry bushes and grapevines, and to learn about Integrative Pest Management. Your local cooperative extension may also have fact sheets and online resources that are helpful.
Unless you are container gardening, you should probably get your soil tested, so you know how to help your soil for particular crops. New Hampshire provides that service for a small fee, and your local cooperative extension may too. They give you recommendations for what to add to your soil for your particular crop. They also have fact sheets about growing various fruit and vegetable crops.
Guessing at how much to plant of what to get decent yields to preserve through canning, freezing or dehydrating is another whole ball of wax, and is something I don’t have a good handle on yet, given the turnip and daikon incidents. The weather will also play a key role. You can plan all you want, but some years you’re going to get a great harvest, and some years you’re going to get nothing of a particular crop. My first apple crop here was amazing, apples were coming out of my ears and I gave bushels away. Due to a killer frost last February, I lost nearly all of the second crop, and had enough from 18 trees to do an apple cranberry crisp. Based on the up and down temperatures this year, I’m guessing I’m likely to lose most of this coming year’s apple crop as well. Gardening is the closest natural thing you can do to gambling, I think. Here are some articles that may help though:
Once you’ve decided what you want to grow, and roughly how much of it, you need to decide when to plant and when to start seedlings. As New Hampshire has a short growing season, many vegetable plants must be started inside in order to get a harvest. You need to determine what zone you are in to determine when to start your seedlings and when to plant outside. I am in zone 5b. Once you know your zone, you can check out the Old Farmer’s Almanac Frost Calculator to determine your last spring frost. Although the last spring frost is listed as May 20th with a 50% probability, I use May 31st. And because I’m me, I plug that information into a spreadsheet and using cultivation information on the seed packet or the website where I got my seeds, and make a plan. I’m in the process of revamping my spreadsheet for this year, as I plan to consolidate some of my raised beds and I still have to plan where some of my plants are going. Since that’s not done, I’ll provide you with a copy of last year’s sheet here.
You’ll note that there are lots of pages to the spreadsheet. The first sheet is the Planting Schedule. The first column heading “Plant” is the name of the vegetable, fruit, herb or flower that I’m planting. The second column heading “When to Start Inside” has two sub columns, the “Earliest Date” and the “Latest Date”. Starting too early can be just as bad as starting too late, as plants may get spindly and root bound. The third column “Safe time to set out plants relative to frost free date” based on the information on the seed packet. This information is then translated to the actual dates for my growing area based on the frost free date, as contained in column 4 “Setting out dates”. Column 5, “Actual Planting Date” is the date I started my seeds. I tend to keep records to try to see what worked and what didn’t each year, which I might also note in the Column 9, “Notes”. Column 6 contains the number of seedlings planted, which we’ll discuss further later. I use a modified version of the square foot gardening method, and in Column 7, I’ve added the number of plants per square foot to help me plan the beds. Column 8 is the date I actually set out or transplanted the plants in my garden. As you go down the list of plants, you’ll also see that there’s some that say direct seed. That means I am not transplanting, but sowing directly into the soil, on the earliest date in Column 4, “Setting out dates”. All of the dates are based on the frost date for my area, and the information on the seed packet. You would need to change this information based on the frost free date for your zone.
The second sheet, titled “Bed Plan Numbers” is a place for me to calculate the total number of seedlings for each thing I’m growing so I know how many seedlings to plant. This is the place that I aggregate the number of plants, once I’ve completed the plans for the garden and the raised beds.
The next three sheets contain the plans for each garden (one square is a foot) area showing the larger plants that spread, and place holders for the raised beds. The following eleven sheets contain the plan for each raised bed. For example, if you look at the main garden plot plan, a blue hubbard squash plant requires a 3 foot by 3 foot area (9 square feet) and I have a big blue square denoting that in the upper left corner. In fact, the plan shows that I would plant 6 plants, although these are planted directly in the garden and are not started inside. If you looked at the following eleven raised bed plans, each contains a map of what I intend to plant in that bed that year. So if you looked at the first line of the Bed Plan Numbers sheet for Basil, Aroma variety, it shows that I intend to plant 10 in Bed 1, 5 each in Bed 6 and 7, and 10 in Bed 10, which means I need to start 30 plants inside as seedlings. I might add a few extra to account for seedlings that don’t make it, or don’t germinate, or to account for the damned voles that keep eating my seedlings. But this is basically how I get a place to start. I then enter the total number into Column 6, # of seedlings planted, of the Planting Schedule so I know how many I planted.
Each year I have to revamp the plans, because I rotate my crops. You don’t want to plant the same plants or family of plants in the same area each year because it can allow encourage plant diseases and pests. In addition, I use companion planting principles as much as I can to help deter pests and disease as well. Which is why I use a new spreadsheet each year and save the last so I can review what I had and where in determining where things will go the following year.
I buy my seeds and plants from a few sources, depending on what I’m looking for. The vast majority of my seeds and plants come from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They also have a great grower’s library reference on their site. I also like Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, for rare and interesting stuff. Occasionally I may pick up a thing or two from Burpee, but only if it looks interesting and I can’t get it from Johnny’s. I will also occasionally buy flower bulbs from various places, but we’re focusing on food here. Although I have my eye on some saffron crocuses…
It’s really important that you follow the hardening off directions in the NH Cooperative Extension guide for growing plants from seed, otherwise you may do a lot of work for plants that wilt and die once you get them in the ground, or suffer so much transplant shock that you never get anything from them. Here’s a nice guide on transplanting as well. You can also get plants from the nursery, but that gets really expensive for the number of plants I’m growing.
I’m not an expert gardener by any means, but I hope this helps a bit if you’re thinking about starting to growing more of your own food. Of course, there’s no reason that you have to be this crazy to start, you can just start with a couple of tomato plants and see how you do.
This started out to be a different post. Denise and I had gone to a public lecture at one of the big medical facilities in our area to hear an immunologist talk about food allergies. I don’t think either of us held out hope that we would be enlightened, but given our conversations after, I think we’d both hoped to learn something.
We didn’t.
The questions from the audience showed a hunger for knowledge, for answers. About half the audience seemed to be there because they have children with allergies. The other half seemed to be adults with unexplained chronic health issues or actual diagnosed adult-onset food allergies, looking for information and answers. We did not really get answers. There was an implied dismissal of patients who have anything less than full anaphylactic shock (and, again, that was not all that clearly defined other than “can lead to death.” If the actual definition is applied — any reaction involving more than one bodily system reacting — all of us in the food allergy and most in the food intolerance worlds have been in anaphylaxis way more often than we’d believed.). There was also very polite scoffing at anyone searching for answers who believes that food allergy or food intolerance might be the problem.
Denise and I have both encountered this in our fun exciting journeys through western medicine and the US health insurance and health care systems.
Here’s the rub: For some of us really unlucky people in the world, our bodies have decided that foods, some foods, are enemies worse than viruses. This food fight can take a variety of forms. Food allergy is an IgE-mediated allergic response to a food. Food intolerance can be a lack of digestibility (e.g. lactose intolerance) or something more vague than that. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease. The only one of these things that has a clear clinical diagnosis protocol is celiac. In all of these cases, though, the prescription is the same: Avoid eating the things that make you sick. This is generally just good life advice, but when the fight in you takes days, weeks, (or a trip to the ER) to resolve, it’s a little more serious.
So without clear diagnostic protocols, and with a pretty basic (if really time-consuming, life-altering, and fucking annoying) treatment plan — avoid the food — how do you, a sick person, get actionable information about what to do to improve your own health? How many of you have asked your medical professional about certain tests, certain diagnoses, or certain studies that they hadn’t ever heard of? How many of you have relayed information about how you experience symptoms in your body, whether in relation to food or not, and had a doctor ignore that information because they don’t know what it means diagnostically? How many have been told that food has nothing to do with your issues, even if your issues are digestive? How many have waited months to see a specialist who spends 5 minutes listening, shrugs off everything you’ve told them, and then prescribes a drug without explaining anything about it?
I think this is common for those of us with adult-onset food issues — allergies, intolerances, and the like. I know that I read more than my primary care practitioner on the research about food allergies. She has admitted that. She has suggested tests and diagnoses and let me go off to research them and see if I think the descriptions of symptoms fit with my experience. At first I was not on board with this, but now? Who knows better what I feel in my body than me? I’m the only one living here! Besides, she has maybe hundreds of patients. I have only myself and my own symptoms to read up on.
When I research, however, how do I find valid information? Who do you trust, how do you vet your information, and how do you avoid bad data? How do you tune out the really bad advice?
I trust that most of the research being done by federal health agencies (NIH, CDC, FDA) is based on solid scientific methods, that they will be properly cited, and that the authors will be clearly identified. I trust research being done or promoted by FARE is the same. I trust that data provided by major hospital and research groups (Mayo, Dartmouth, Mass General, Kaiser) is also scientifically valid. But bear in mind — scientifically valid and useful are two different things. Like many other people with food allergies, I think I’ve learned as much if not more from other food allergy sufferers as I have from “proper” scientific research. I’m not a scientist, and neither are most of the other food allergy bloggers. Nor are most of us dieticians, doctors, pharmacists, or other medical professionals. But we live it, this food allergy life.
So this is how I try to weed out useful information from randomness. Writers I trust relate their own personal experiences of symptoms, suspected causes, trials and missteps in figuring things out, methods of “research” on themselves, any helpful or non-helpful information from medical professionals, tests, and outcomes or results. They do not try to generalize this to everyone. Most food allergy writers know how idiosyncratic allergy and intolerance presentation is, and they write with that in mind. Writers who generalize that their personal story must be everyone else’s, writers who purposely or knowingly relay “health information” that has been debunked or disproved, writers using anything that sounds like a “health information headline” in a major news outlet (i.e. alarmist and click-baiting), or anyone promoting a magic cure, I do not trust and generally drop from my reading list. Writers who do their research and cite it, I am more inclined to trust and keep reading. This includes anyone whose research is “I tried this and here’s what happened.” Sometimes, we learn best by doing.
Anyone who dismisses all alternative treatment methods outright, I don’t trust. It’s one thing to share studies that show efficacy or lack thereof of different alternative treatments. It’s also great when, again, people share their personal experiences and even their theories. Most of us who are in this boat are or have been desperate at one point or another, and if you try some supplement or massage therapy or anything else in hope, how can I blame you? I understand. Doesn’t mean I’ll follow you, but I’ve done my own experimenting.
The wealth of information available to us is a benefit and a pitfall, I think. Anyone who has had a long bout of ill health with no good answers from their doctors has probably tried the sugar water, and I don’t fault them for that. This is one of the reasons that the gluten-free trend doesn’t bother me that much. People don’t feel great and they are searching for answers. But too many “health” blogs and “health” companies out there promote magic cures that do nothing or, at worst, cause additional harm. I do not believe in magic cures.
You are the only person who has to live in your body and deal with whatever is wrong with it. If you can learn to pay attention to what it’s telling you, I think that is generally your best chance for achieving your own optimal health. This one I feel okay making a generalization on — what better primary source of information do you have than your own bodily experience? With the information you get from paying attention, you can evaluate health information and treatment options from the internet, from well-meaning friends and family, and from your health care professionals.
We don’t have a magic cure. If we did, honestly, I’m not sure I would trust it. I guess the closest thing we’ve come up with as “magic” is being able to make and eat good food that doesn’t want to kill us. That is why we write this blog. I hope at least one or two of our recipes has made you forget you’re being “deprived” of “normal” foods.
So, food allergies can change your life plan a bit. When I (Denise) was young, my witnessing and participation in family dysfunction and associated drama made me decide that I pretty much never wanted to own real estate. I viewed it as a trap, because if you rented, you could bug out at any time, and there were no strings other than some financial penalties for getting out of a lease early. In addition, it was limited responsibility, as it was the landlord’s problem to fix the sink, or whatever else came up, and plow and mow lawns and all that stuff I had very little interest in doing. Also, as a younger adult who owed $100,000 (which later ended up being $130,000 due to hardship forbearance interest capitalization) on my student loans, it’s not like anyone was going to loan me any money to buy a house. The only thing I missed about living in a single family house was being able to have a garden, but it wasn’t a priority at the time. Gardening was something I had done as a kid and a teenager for fun, but when I was still a practicing attorney, it’s not like I had time to spend in the garden when I was working 60 to 80 hour weeks.
When I was diagnosed with food allergies, I wasn’t thinking that my living space needed to change. Most of the first round of foods I lost after testing positive and failing food allergy challenges just necessitated a change in cooking style. When the second round hit, yeah, I needed to make my own lotions, toothpaste, laundry detergent, shampoo, and so on, but it still wasn’t that bad. And then corn reared its golden, pointy head, and said, “Oh yeah? Watch this.” Because I love my condiments and because a corn allergy means no more processed food basically, and because I didn’t have tons of time to make stuff up from scratch each time I needed it, and there was limited freezer space in the apartment (not to mention the 4-5 day power losses we were experiencing every other winter), I elected to learn to water bath and pressure can. Picture over 500 jars of canned food in a two bedroom apartment. Also, picture processing 60 pounds of tomatoes into whole canned tomatoes that you paid a crap ton of money for at your local CSA farmer’s in a small two bedroom apartment kitchen with no windows. And then corn said “Oh, and hey? That Kiss My Face Soap you’re using that’s safe for your coconut allergy? I’ve managed to get myself in that too, although I’m not on the label.” So I started making my own soap, using lye and potassium hydroxide to make my own soap, bar and liquid respectively, to use for soap, shampoo, and laundry detergent. We did it in Mary Kate’s parking lot, and I made a couple of batches on my second floor balcony, with a board under the crock pot so as not to spill caustic lye solution on the downstairs neighbors. Hilarious right?
I had known in the back of my mind since just after the corn diagnosis (about a year and a half before we started looking) that we needed to buy a house. But I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be a grown up and deal with all that responsibility, because I had enough stupid food allergy food prep and making-my-own-everything crap to do. So I ignored it for a really long time. But before Stitches East 2014 in October (huge yarn and knitting convention for the non-knitterly), just after picking up a microwave I was borrowing so that I could nuke all the safe food I had canned, wrapping the glass jars in towels in a suitcase because corn totally rules out restaurant eating, I saw a for sale sign and started thinking about it. Maybe because I was sick as a dog with a head cold, the strength of my denial as to the reality of the situation became weak. And then when I got back to the apartment, I went on some real estate sites, and two hours later called my Mom and asked if she thought I was crazy to even think about it. And when she said that she had been thinking that it was probably something I need to do, when she is also fairly anti-real estate, it was really annoying. Because I’d hoped she’d talk me out of it, and if she wasn’t, it was probably fairly obvious that that’s what I needed to do.
So after getting referred to a mortgage company by a friend (if anyone in NH needs a mortgage guy, seriously, Frank is the man), and finding out that there were first time home buyer programs that I could take advantage of and I’d have to put very little money down, it appeared I could buy a house. Which was again, somewhat annoying, because I’d kind of secretly hoped that I couldn’t get financing. But the fact of the matter was, I just couldn’t continue doing what I was doing in my apartment space, spending what I was spending on safe vegetables, and hoping that the neighbors didn’t call the cops on me thinking I was making meth while I made soap on the balcony.
So we signed a purchase and sale in November, negotiating a closing date at the end of January (my lease wasn’t up until the end of March and we were trying to mitigate the financial hit). The big draw on the house was that it has three acres, a good bit of it is cleared, and there are already apple, pear and cherry trees and grape vines, and there was already a fenced in garden area (the photos are from the real estate listing, it’s not close enough to spring yet):
Garden photosGarden photos
We had to paint the whole interior except the walls on one bathroom. These are the before pictures:
Red Wine Vinaigrette Using the Salad Dressing Recipe Theory
Red Wine Vinaigrette Using the Salad Dressing Recipe Theory
Red Wine Vinaigrette Using the Salad Dressing Recipe Theory
Red Wine Vinaigrette Using the Salad Dressing Recipe Theory
Garden photos
Garden photos
dining-room-1
dining-room-2
dining-room-3
entryway-1
entryway-2
entryway-3
entryway-4
family-room-1
family-room-2
first-bedroom-1
first-bedroom-2
first-bedroom-3
first-floor-bath-2
first-floor-bath-3
garage-1
garage-2
garage-3
kitchen-1
kitchen-2
master-bedroom-1
master-bedroom-2
master-bedroom-3
second-bedroom-3
second-bedroom-4
second-floor-bath-1
These are in progress and finished painting pictures. Seriously, I never want to pick up a paint brush again. And if I ever tell anyone that I’m going to paint the entire interior of a house, including ceilings again, slap me. Even with vast amounts of help we got from our friends, for whom we will be forever grateful, it was a crazy undertaking.
stairs
stairs-2
stairs-3
dining room
stairs
kiwi’s room
master bedroom
kitchen
kitchen
kitchen
kitchen
dining room
dining room
hall way
master bedroom
office
kiwi’s room
family room
family room
entry way
dining room
dining room
kitchen
second bathroom
second bathroom
second bathroom
second bathroom
We moved in at the end of February. We unpacked for three weeks, and I got hives from the boxes again (thanks corn!). Here are the unpacked photos, except for the bedroom because I apparently forgot that, and I don’t feel like picking it up and making the bed now so that I can take a picture to put in the slide show:
office
office
office
family room
family room
family room
family room
kitchen
kitchen
kitchen
dining room
dining room
dining room
family room
family room
family room
We’ve had to fix the insulation and ventilation in the roof, which we knew about, and we’ve fixed the furnace twice, which we didn’t know about, and we’re about to replace a water heater, which we didn’t know about either, and a tub and surround because the valve that goes between the shower and faucet decided to let go after we moved in (it’s stuck on the shower setting, so that’s good). And since the plumber’s going to be here, and the double sink in the kitchen is awful for canning, we’re replacing the sink and faucet in the kitchen as well. So, regular new homeowner stuff, except that’s kind of why I never really wanted to buy a house in the first place.
But we’re settled, we have room to move and work now, I’m able to store my canning equipment and food in the garage, and we’ve been able to start our garden some of our seedlings, and we’ve been gifted a few by a friend (Thanks Mary R!):
office
Kiwi’s room
Rainbow peppers from Mary R
Tomatoes from Mary R
Basil from Mary R
Okay, so maybe the Homer Simpson Chia Head isn’t for the garden, but now I have a place that gets enough light that I can have house plants that don’t die. Not that I’m sure that a Homer Simpson Chia Head counts as a house plant.
Eventually, once the snow clears and I’m able to get the garden started in earnest, and I start working on projects again, as I’m low on my homemade liquid soap, and most of my canned food, I’m sure I’ll be much happier about the change. I’m think I’m still in the shell-shocked and exhausted phase, but I think this was the right move for us. I just wish that our street name was different – we now live on Corn Hill Road. Given that my corn allergy was the impetuous for buying this house, I really think I need to get a sign for the house to hang over the door. I want to call it “The House of Irony.”
I know, you’re thinking that maybe a pre-holiday post should be cheerful or full of cookies or booze or something, yes? Well, instead we’re thinking more “tragedy prevention” and “preparedness.” We did name our blog “apocalypse,” after all. Being prepared lets me enjoy things.
As great as the holidays can be, they are also potentially dangerous for those of us with food allergies. Potlucks, family dinners, travel, eating out … so many places we don’t fully control our own food. As much as we work to mitigate our own risks, accidents happen. So while we hate to pull this gloom cloud into your holidays, wouldn’t you rather discuss what to do IF something happens than deal with the tragedy of being unprepared?
What is your plan for an accidental food allergy exposure? Do you have one? If you do, do the people around you know what it is and how to work it or help you? Do you AND the people around you know all the possible symptoms of an allergy exposure? It’s not just throat-closing sensations.
DON’T ASSUME. MAKE SURE. HAVE THE CONVERSATIONS.
FARE has an action plan you can use. Make sure your friends and family a) know your allergens, b) know your plan, and c) know where you keep your epinephrine injectors and/or your antihistamines. Make sure they know how to stab you if they need to, make sure they know what to do next. Don’t rely on the ER. You know you’re the only one who can properly advocate for your own care, but remember to do it before you need people to read your mind.
I guess I always feel that if I’m prepared for the worst (you know, like anaphylaxsis) then you can relax and enjoy everything else.
Note from Mary Kate: Ann is a good friend of mine from college (during which, no, no one including me used my first name) who who is an artist and chef. In one of our conversations, she mentioned that food allergies were a hot topic in the restaurant world. Of course — that makes complete sense. But rather than hostility, she expressed that accommodation was part of her job as a chef, in the hospitality industry. I invited her to write us a guest post, as I thought it might be useful for those of us with food allergies to hear from the kitchen directly. Ann writes at Winslow’s Bread Shop in her “spare” time, and I know she’s been working on a gluten-free pizza crust. The picture at the top is Ann’s work.
Pending approval, this post will appear both at Winslow’s Bread Shop and at Surviving the Food Allergy Apocalypse, which is the website of Kate, my college friend from Agnes Scott, and her friend Denise. Thanks, Kate, for inviting me to be your guest blogger of the hour!
To give a little context to readers of Kate’s & Denise’s blog, I am a chef at a well-known international luxury hotel chain. My experience comes not so much from culinary school as it comes from almost ten years of gut crushing, mind blowing, maddeningly awesome work. Food allergies were mentioned in school as a reason to avoid cross contaminating foods, but ten years ago, it was not nearly as big a deal in my work as it is now. Cheerfully being able to accommodate food allergies has now become par with knowing how to make hollandaise without a recipe or measuring tools.
I’ll admit that it’s easy for me to be irritable about the food allergy epidemic because I have been blessed for my entire life with only one food allergy: fuji apples make my lips itch. Recently I discovered that I can eat fuji apples if I peel them. Heck, maybe I’m not even allergic to them any more. Minor as it is, the fuji apple allergy was a simple and direct conclusion. My mouth only itches when I eat fuji apples, so I eat other kinds, and I also try to avoid eating things like poison ivy. That worked well until one day at work when I was hungry, and the only available food was a half case of fuji apples. Really. (We had just reopened the hotel after ski season, and that case of apples, 2 weeks old, was all the food we had.) How, then, do people come up with complicated food allergies, which require months of trials and eliminations and multiple doctor visits? I mean I have seen some things that seem downright made-up in comparison with something obvious, such as lactose intolerance, hives or passing out dead on the floor from a severe shellfish allergy. I understand that those who do make up ailments make those with genuine ailments look bad. I just don’t have the ability to decide who is fibbing, nor do I feel like risking my entire career by taking that chance.
Just for kicks I’ll invite you to consider food phobia fanatics as a rising minority among the allergic crowd. As an example, I’ll mention the pregnant lady who called the operator to ask her to call me to ask if our sliced turkey was cooked in our ovens or if it was prepackaged, i.e. full of chemicals. News flash: turkeys nowadays are born full of chemicals, antibiotics and gmos (genetically modified organisms/feed)…at least the ones that hotels like the one where I work are able to buy more than one bird at a time. Furthermore, those daily prenatal vitamins, whose ingredient panels are probably more than four words long, if in English, may be more harmful to an unborn child than a few slices of deli turkey at one meal. We do, in fact, roast turkeys for sandwiches and other preparations. We also have “extra chemicals” turkeys, just in case an emergency strikes the ovens, or there is a turkey sandwich convention for which we are unable to roast turkeys fast enough. If we had been unable to meet that guest’s requirements in the turkey department, I would have asked her personally what she would like as an alternative because that’s the kind of service we provide. I would have been more than happy to put all other important projects aside to make sure that one person is satisfied. Lesser organizations probably would not have been as accommodating.
By now I’m sure you may be choking on my sarcasm, and I apologize. I do not view any segment of society as the source of my difficulties in life, and I do not wish to alienate anyone. The purpose of this blurb is not to spout my frustrations in a new outlet. To the contrary, I actually experience much less frustration than I used to about life in general and people with food allergies in particular. You might say I have turned over a new leaf and adopted the asi es attitude of the friendly Mexican workers of the stewarding department, which supports me every day. It’s the way it is, and I find that suffering abates dramatically if I surrender. After all my hearty constitution seems to be a rarity in today’s world. I might go so far as to call myself an endangered animal in a rapidly changing species. Here’s why:
I work in a specialized department called the club lounge. Some of you already know what that is. For those who don’t spend much time staying in hotels, the club lounge is basically a room, usually in the middle or upper floor of a hotel, where guests of that entire floor pay a premium rate to have exclusive access to their own concierge as well as private meals prepared by a chef who cooks only for them and nobody else in the hotel. This means that nobody in the rest of the hotel gets to eat what the club guests eat. When the chef is very good, this is truly a special experience worth extra money. These guests also get a free bar, tv, computers and big, fluffy chairs.
From week-to-week, I get a report about what’s going on with guests in the club lounge. This list often has super V.I.P. guests, including the owners of the hotel, company employees at the top of the food chain, other various persons whose toes I do not want to step on and, yes, guests with food allergies. I can’t remember the last time I had a report that did not have or was not updated to add guests with food allergies. Some are boring food allergies. Most are gluten or nut allergies. Occasionally there will be an entire family.
If you are a reader with a food allergy, I beg you to make your allergy known each time you dine in public. Earlier this year we almost lost a guest who had not spoken up and ate something fatal to him. Miraculously he was saved, though I still don’t know exactly how, since the incident occurred when I was not there. I came in the next day to a memo asking us to exclude indefinitely the offensive ingredient from all future preparations. This is one very extreme and very scary example of the way in which the food allergy epidemic is transforming the food and beverage/hospitality industry. Reputable chefs will change entire menus if that’s what’s needed to avoid this kind of thing happening.
Believe me, folks, you have got real power. Nobody, at least nobody in my company, is interested in messing around to find out whether or not you’re just pulling our chain. This is why Kate and people like her are right to avoid chain restaurants and places of mediocre quality. (Could the dining experience be in for a global upgrade?) Sure some of us chefs may grumble, some of us may even get genuinely angry about having to change a menu that is very special and dear to us into a menu that doesn’t make much culinary sense. But when it comes down to risking a life or causing some medical trauma or even being the source of an unpleasant experience, we don’t have the guts to stand our ground forever. That’s just silly, and it’s bad business. I hope that the chefs who refuse to budge will gracefully find work in metallurgy or concrete, where being hard is valued.
As a passionate member of culinary society, I say “yes!” to evolution, whatever that means. May the fittest survive in this insanely rapidly changing environment, and may the food industry grow ever better for everyone.
Full disclosure: Denise and I both work for government. So, yes, sometimes, we’re “the man.” And, yes, we understand the jokes (we really are here to help), and we fully understand the limitations of working within institutional guidelines. I like to think we inspire trust through competence and, at least in my case, admitting that I don’t know things and will need to look them up.
There are a lot of trust issues that come with having food allergies. You have a lot to learn, and a lot to remember, and a lot to cover in your own advocacy for yourself. You have to place your trust in other people — your friends, family, and co-workers — to help keep you safe, to learn along with you, and to put themselves out to help keep you safe. You have to trust your doctors and other healthcare professionals. You have to trust waitstaff and kitchen staff every time you decide to eat out. In these situations, you are face-to-face with at least some of the people you’re placing your trust in.
But we also have to place trust in nameless, faceless corporations, who aren’t really people, and who we don’t see. We can call them or e-mail or tweet in their general directions, but the amount of faith it takes to trust that entity to be honest on their labels and not to have screwed up? Or to know anything about allergies? Or to, honestly, care? It’s epic. And there is not a lot that builds faith and trust in corporate care for our personal health.
I’m guessing that most of our readers who are also allergic (I know some of you just come for the recipes!) are already receiving FARE recall notices. This is an e-mail service that will alert you of all the voluntary recalls for mislabeled or cross-contaminated or otherwise potentially deadly food products for people who have allergies. This is a really amazing service, as there is no other central place to find out if your favorite chicken and rice soup has accidentally been replaced with chicken noodle soup, but labeled chicken and rice, so you might need an alternate plan for lunch. Great as it is to know these things, it’s also scary to see how often these glitches happen.
Why? Why do they happen? Sometimes there is a mix up with labeling machines. Sometimes certain allergens are left off the label accidentally, or a recipe is changed and the label isn’t, or a line was improperly cleaned, or an allergen was accidentally added to a product, or the product got labeled with another product’s label entirely. If you don’t have allergies, this would be, at worst, kind of annoying. When you do have allergies, it’s more than a little scary to see how often our industrial food systems fail us. All these provisions for labeling, for allergy labeling, for cross-contamination prevention best practices? They fail sometimes.
And there is the fact that what needs to be labeled isn’t as comprehensive as we’d like — a topic which we’re planning to tackle, but has involved more research than either Denise or I thought. Allergen labeling is partly mandatory, partly voluntary, and just generally inconsistent. It doesn’t cover anything involved in “processing,” doesn’t cover allergens that are considered to be denatured by the removal of the protein (e.g. soybean oil need not necessarily be called out as “soy”) and other things that, if you’re lucky enough to not have allergies, you have never needed to know.
You very likely occasionally need medication, produced by massive pharmaceutical companies who use all sorts of random and wonky “inactive” ingredients. Want to experience frustration? Try finding out what is in your drugs. Then try finding drugs that do not contain your allergens — even the pharmacists do not know. They can likely tell you what is IN your drugs, but not give you other options that do not contain your allergens. There is no database for this, and inactive ingredients can change at any time.
Other times, it’s a failure of knowledge. It’s a small place that bakes gluten-containing and gluten-free breads in the same kitchen, using the same mixers and tools and pans. It’s the local cafe that doesn’t understand that toasting the gluten-free bun in the same toaster as the gluten-containing buns in the same toaster equals cross-contamination. It’s the doughnut shop that uses the same tongs for the nut-covered doughnuts as for the plain doughnuts. Some of these things you can see happening, some you can’t, and can you remember to ask all those questions each time? As I think we’ve said before about restaurants — if you can honestly tell me you cannot safely feed me, I respect that. That’s why I’ve usually got a snack in my bag.
Maybe you think you can avoid it and just never buy any prepared foods anywhere, or any kind. You can eat entirely raw or vegetables only or become a fruititarian. And maybe those are options for a few of us. Frankly, my list of allergens makes it hard enough to feed myself without any other restrictions I’d choose to impose upon my diet; my rule is “if I can eat it, and I want to eat it, I eat it.”
And anyway, that won’t necessarily protect you. We all buy ingredients. When there was a story last year about some of Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flours in Canada having been cross-contaminated with gluten, I was frankly terrified. If you buy gluten-free flours, you’ve bought Bob’s, as they are the only company who sells single-ingredient gluten-free flours (not just blends) at most major grocery chains. If we can’t trust them, can we trust anyone or anything?
It isn’t that these companies are bad. In fact, many of them have great, socially responsible business practices, and many of them seek to do right by their customers as well as their employees. But safety for food allergens sometimes goes far beyond basic good food safety. Finding the balance comes differently to each company.
Trust is a really difficult issue for people with allergies. It is definitely more difficult when you aren’t able to see your food produced, know the people who produce it, or trust the companies who make it and the agencies that are supposed to monitor them.
I’m just going to be upfront and say that a combination of my life and work experiences (having experienced a fairly dysfunctional childhood and having previously spent ten years as a divorce lawyer) have resulted in me having a pretty pessimistic view of humanity as a whole. I thought I was suspicious, hardened cynic before the food allergy apocalypse hit. Now I’ve hit new heights of paranoia and contempt for corporations (especially those in the food industry), some regulatory agencies particularly those regulating food and the environment, our political institutions, and our medical institutions, that I didn’t think were possible. Yay me, way to overachieve! I’ve always been a bit Type-A.
Trust. With what I’ve been dealing with on the corn issue, I don’t have any left. Using Bob’s Red Mill as an example since Mary Kate brought it up, their products are rife with corn cross-contamination because corn is run on the same lines. So I could be fine with one package and not fine with another package, which means I’m going to avoid Bob’s Red Mill products because it’s like playing Russian Roulette. Bob’s Red Mill isn’t doing anything wrong because corn is not a top 8 allergen so they are not required to label it, it’s just for me cross contamination can cause a major problem. There’s nothing on the label to tell me there might a problem, and without someone contacting the company, I wouldn’t have had enough information to make an informed decision about whether or not to use the product. I’m bummed about the whole thing because I really liked their products before the whole corn thing went down.
One of the people in the Corn Allergy & Intolerance Group on Facebook tells a story about how her mom found some English muffins that didn’t have corn on the ingredient list, and when she opened them, there was corn meal all over the bottom of them. When she called to complain, she was told that was just part of the manufacturing process and they weren’t required to label it.
The other thing that cracks me up are the companies that state their product is corn free, and then it turns out that half the ingredients are derived or grown on corn, but allegedly “all the protein” is processed out of it. I am no longer an adherent to the “protein processed out of it” theory. Because there’s a whole crap ton of corn ingredients that should be “safe” for me, and they aren’t. I’m pretty damn sure that I can’t make myself get psychosomatic blisters all over one foot from an exposure, or make my face and body blow up like a balloon, or get cystic acne. Of course, those are just the symptoms that I’m pretty sure the medical community couldn’t blame on a hysterical or emotional response, not counting the other nasty digestive and insomnia reactions.
Now on to the FDA and labeling. Basically, I’m screwed. Even if I assume that a product has not been contaminated in the “manufacturing process”, there are currently 336 items that I have to look for to make sure I’m avoiding all my allergens. Because corn is not a top 8 allergen, that means I have to speifically look for the 185 corn derivatives. I have a spreadsheet on Google Docs that I can get to with my phone, but practically speaking this means that any food product with more than two or three ingredients doesn’t make it into my shopping cart. If I don’t recognize it and can’t search for it on my phone, I don’t buy it. Even meat and fresh fruits and vegetables are corn contaminated with the cleansers and the waxes and polishes they put on them. And if I buy organic fruits and vegetables, that just means the waxes and polishes are made with organic corn. Even if you contact some of the companies, the people that work there don’t really know how stuff is made and you have to exchange a bunch of emails to find out that you probably shouldn’t eat it anyway, or be told that they can’t give you the information because it’s “proprietary.” You know what? I think I should have a right to know what’s in my food and personal care products. Period. No matter what it is, no matter how it gets there, whether it’s just part of the “manufacturing process”, whether it’s “proprietary”, or whether it’s a GMO or not. But I’m pretty sure that the lobbyists will make sure that that doesn’t happen, because when you’re really forced to take a long hard look at what’s actually in your food, you stop buying a lot of processed stuff because you (a) can’t and/or (b) get sort of grossed out. This means that the processed food put out by really large corporations have a lot of market share to lose, and won’t make as many campaign contributions, so the system doesn’t work to help those of us eating the products. And given human nature, unless you’re really forced to deal with this because of your health, most of us take the path of least resistance and just throw stuff in our carts that looks like it tastes good.
Although I was not terribly trusting of the medical establishment before the food allergy apocalypse hit, now I just don’t trust the system at all. If you do not fit into the mold of the “normal” patient with “normal” illnesses, you can pretty much forget having your medical professionals look for anything outside their comfort zones. I’ll go, but I have little faith now that they will actually figure out what the problem is and know how to treat it, if it’s anything outside the norm. I’m now prepared for doctors to discount or dismiss my symptoms if they can’t make it fit into what they think they know about food allergies. And if you need specially compounded medicine, your health insurer will make it really expensive and difficult to get because they don’t want to pay for it. You are pretty much on your own to do your own research because you can’t trust a poor primary care physician or nurse practitioner to find time to research patient issues when they have to see as many patients as they can to make the organization they work for as much money as possible.
So after that thoroughly depressing elucidation of my lack of trust in everything, what’s the point of it all other than getting to whine about it in a blog post to you guys? The point is you have to take control and do your own homework and do what makes you healthy. Because you can’t trust anyone else to do it for you. I’m not sure if this is an empowerment pep talk, or just the cold hard reality.
What are your experiences in contacting companies to ask questions about your personal health needs? Does anyone have good news to share? Anyone got a favorite company they deal with or buy from?
Full disclosure: Denise and I both work for government. So, yes, sometimes, we’re “the man.” And, yes, we understand the jokes (we really are here to help), and we fully understand the limitations of working within institutional guidelines. I like to think we inspire trust through competence and, at least in my case, admitting that I don’t know things and will need to look them up.