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Hey! Guess who’s going to be official bloggers at the Gluten- and Allergen-free Expo in Springfield, Mass? Us! The weekend of October 25-26, 2014, come on out and find us there. Or, if you’re not local, follow our adventures on our Facebook page. I’d love to say we’ll tweet the experience, but Denise has a law degree and Mary Kate has an art history degree; we’re not succinct.
This will be a chance to talk to a lot of manufacturers about their products and their commitment to providing allergy-friendly foods, meet some interesting people working in the food allergy world, and maybe meet some other bloggers. I’m guessing there will be plenty of food to try, though depending on your allergens and comfort level, your mileage may vary on that. Along with vendors from the major allergy-friendly brands you likely know — Enjoy Life, Earth Balance, and So Delicious popped out to me (Mary Kate) — there are also speakers and classes. I think the class list is the most exciting part, and look forward to checking out the classes on gluten sensitivity and gluten-free flours.
Because of my (Denise’s) other allergies besides wheat, I’m a bit limited in vendors that would have safe products for me. One of the things I’m interested in seeing is Collette Martin’s new book, The Allergy-Free Pantry: Make Your Own Staples, Snacks, and More Without Wheat, Gluten, Dairy, Eggs, Soy or Nuts. I liked her first book, and I’m interested in the second, although the titles irk me a little. (I just need to say that just because something doesn’t have any of the top 8 allergens, it doesn’t mean it’s allergy free.) I’d also like to talk to the people at Pascha about their chocolate chips and how the vanilla is added, to see if it’s something I could safely trial. San-J will be there. I can use their gluten-free tamari because it uses cane sugar alcohol (I don’t have soy issues), and it looks like I might be able to trial their new Mongolian Sauce. I’m also very much interested in some of the classes.
If you want tickets, you can save $8 a ticket ($3 for kids’ tickets) by buying early. If you click the image link below, you’ll buy tickets “from” us, which nets us a tiny cut for referring you.
Stay tuned, we’ll also have some ticket giveaways in the coming weeks!
In early July, on vacation, Denise and Mary Kate took a day to head west to Gilsum, New Hampshire, home of the Badger factory. Badger is a skin care products company based here in New Hampshire. In the interests of “shop local,” we figured we could head out and get to know one of our local companies. We’ve waited this long to tell you about it so we could post some reviews, too.
About Badger:
Badger started with one product: Badger Balm, an intensive hand moisturizer designed by carpenter Bill Whyte for his fellow carpenters and their winter-dry skin. Formulated in the Whyte home, Badger has grown from that single product and home production in 1995 to a product line of more than 70 items and a factory/office building of its own in 2014. This building is open for tours (which are short and fun — and the place smells amazing).
Badger formulates all its products in the Gilsum factory. Their focus on “natural” ingredients and herbal and traditional medicines is great for those of us with allergies — NOT because “natural” means anything at all these days, and anyway, most of what we are both allergic to is natural. But the small size of the company and their attention to detail means that a) they can tell you where their ingredients are sourced, how they are processed, and how they are used in each product, and b) because this attention extends to detailed labeling that cites much of this information right on the label. Need to know how the extracts are produced? The label tells you: most of them are carbon dioxide extracts. Need to know the source of the vitamin E? The label tells you: all their vitamin E today is sunflower-based, rather than soy-based (bad for Denise, good for Mary Kate).
In our tour, we asked specific questions about processing and cross-contamination and cleaning procedures. In the production facility on site, most of Badger’s equipment is cleaned with detergent, alcohol (yes, corn-based), and a hot olive oil flush. All of the tinned products, as well as the oils and bug spray, are made on site. The lip balms and sunscreens are made in other production facilities, with ingredients sourced and supplied by Badger, that follow Good Manufacturing Practices.
A display of Badger products at the factory
On specific allergens:
No wheat or peanuts are used in any of the products produced in Gilsum, though the facility is not certified free of either. Your comfort level with this may vary, but if you want to ask questions, customer service is knowledgeable and friendly.
The soaps, lip balms, and sunscreens are produced off-site, and on lines that may have processed these ingredients.
Soy is used in a few Badger products, as well as used on lines in the off-site facilities. Tree nuts, including coconut, are used in Badger products and may have been used on any of the lines. In all cases, good manufacturing processes are followed, but your comfort level with these may vary.
Corn is not used in Badger products, but corn alcohol is used, at high heat, as part of the cleaning process (but not the final step, which is a hot olive oil flush).
The company does recommend patch testing if you are sensitive to any of these things.
Products made before 2012 may have different ingredients than today’s. Read the labels.
On our tour:
We wish we’d been able to take pictures, but when we asked, the tour guide regretfully explained that photos weren’t allowed because some of the things we were shown were actually somewhat secret. Which makes sense. But we really wish we’d been able to take pictures of the gleaming machines filling the balm tins because that was really awesome. The factory itself was spotless, clean and airy, in direct contrast to other factories Denise has worked in the past. On the production floor, they had the biggest olive oil containers we’ve ever seen. We could have gone for a swim in them if the containers didn’t have a top. The company works directly with a family estate in Spain called Soler Romero. The factory store also sells the olive oil which is USDA certified organic. Denise is still kicking herself for not buying any.
The headquarters has a cafeteria which serves employees a free daily organic lunch during their paid 30-minute break, which includes fresh, in-season produce from the Badger gardens. The tour guide told us about their Babies at Work program where on a case-by-case basis a parent may be allowed to bring their new baby to work for the first 6 months. The company also has opened its own full-day child care center for children of Badger employees at reasonable prices in the former Badger Company facility. Employees get a quarterly stipend for products from the Badger lines. It seems like it’d be a pretty cool place to work.
We also got to see The Secret Badger Lab, where they design and formulate new products. The Secret Badger Lab had big picture windows in it, which seemed somewhat antithetical to the secret part (no one was in the Secret Lab that day). It was impressive to see the whole process, from idea to production, all in one building.
Our tour guide was wonderful and because we had emailed in advance, discussing our food allergy issues, she had prepared a handout for us to review, and was ready to discuss the manufacturing processes, the cleaning protocols and their cross-contamination processes with us. If you are local and you want to go on a tour yourself, they are available Tuesdays through Fridays from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. by appointment. And if you buy products at the factory, there is a discount.
Mary Kate’s Badger haul
So far, I’ve really enjoyed trying out the stuff I bought on our Badger visit. Overall, the products smell great and are very moisturizing. Going more or less clockwise:
I’ve been a regular user of the Headache Balm for years, so I thought I’d give the Stress Soother stick a try. I really like the delivery system (it’s basically a giant chapstick — in fact, Denise has a chapstick that size), but while I do find it nice mid-afternoon or during conference calls at work, I will buy the headache balm in stick form next time. I prefer the smell and, for me, it’s slightly more effective.
The dual color Lip Tint lipbalm (top, in Copper) is a little bit of a mixed bag for me. I rarely wear lipstick because I can’t remember to reapply it all day and I generally can taste (and don’t like) the flavor of the pigment. That’s true here, too, though I’ll say that the color is subtle and nice when I do wear it. I think I’m just destined to be a lip balm kind of woman forever.
The Mustache Wax was a gift, and while I haven’t personally used it, I do like the results. It’s not stick or greasy, but it definitely adds a final touch to facial hair grooming. The Arnica Sore Joint Rub wasn’t particularly effective for me, but mostly I get muscle aches, not joint aches, so I might not be the right user for the product. It smells pretty good, though.
The Anti-Bug Sunscreen I’ve only gotten to use once so far. The zinc oxide might, I think, make it difficult to use every day, under makeup, and it does make it harder to rub in (but, conversely, you have to rub it in and therefore probably apply it more thoroughly and effectively). I think that will be true for all zinc oxide sunscreens, though. I was out for a few hours, and the sun went in after a bit, so I might not have gotten burned anyway. Not the best test for the sunscreen part. BUT. It was hot and humid and buggy. The bugs left me alone and I did not sweat off the sunscreen. This would be excellent for hiking, I’d think.
I’ve kind of saved my favorites for last. The Nutmeg and Shea moisturizer is amazing. The smell, which is nutmeg-forward, is different in a really good way, and the moisturizer is rich. It takes a bit of time to soak in properly, yes, but the results are definitely worth it. This will be a product I’ll use for a long time. I can’t wait to use it on my hands and feet in the winter. This is definitely my favorite product of the entire haul. The last thing up there is the Highland Mint lip balm. This is also a keeper, with a good mint flavor and a really nice smooth texture. There are about a thousand flavors, though, and I might need a different flavor next time. Though mint really is nice.
Badger, as a company, is a place I’d like to support. Luckily for me, I enjoy their products, which makes it pretty easy to do.
With the coconut and corn allergies, I have a really freaking tough time finding personal care products that are safe for me, and you’ve all seen me put recipes for lotions, lotion bars, and lip balms on our blog. That being said, when we were looking into places to visit Badger seemed promising because there might be a sunscreen I could actually purchase and not have to make myself. And I really did not want to order zinc oxide to experiment with making my own sunscreen until I got a recipe right. Here’s my haul from left to right: Cayenne & Ginger Sore Muscle Rub, Badger Anti-Bug Shake & Spray, Lime Rocket Cocoa Butter Lip Balm, Pink Grapefruit Lip Balm, Sweet Orange Cocoa Butter Lip Balm, Badger SPF34 Anti-Bug Sunscreen and Eucalyptus & Mint Aromatic Chest Rub.
Denise’s Badger Balm haul
I know that you’re going to ask, Denise, why buy lip balms when you’ve made them before and you have the stuff to make them? I’m going to make this really simple. Because I CAN. The fact that I don’t have to spend half an hour making lip balms the next time I run out is worth gold in and of itself. It’s nice to just be able to buy a product for once JUST LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. (Oh, was I yelling? Sorry about that.) The Pink Grapefruit lip balm, which has a olive oil, castor oil, and beeswax base instead of the cocoa butter, seemed a bit more moisturizing to me than the cocoa butter oil ones, but I liked all three. For those with corn allergies, I did not seem to have any issues with cross contamination either from the corn alcohol equipment cleaning or from potential cross contamination from the beeswax (depending on what the beekeeper fed the bees), but I’m not super-sensitive either. They all smelled pleasantly fruity, and I’d buy them again.
The Eucalyptus & Mint Aromatic Chest Rub smells wonderful. It’s intended for use as a soothing chest rub, or as a steam inhalant when added to a humidifier or pot of hot water, but I really haven’t had a cold, a cough or a stuffy nose since I bought it, so I haven’t been able to give it a good test. But the aroma is pretty awesome.
The Cayenne & Ginger Sore Muscle Rub smells amazing. Because with ginger and cayenne spicy goodness, how could it not? I concur with Mary Kate’s review in that it didn’t seem that effective for sore muscles, but it’s got some great moisturizing ingredients so I’m happy using it as a balm.
The Badger Anti-Bug Shake & Spray works well. It has the aroma of Citronella, Rosemary, and Wintergreen essential oils. You’re really going to smell like citronella, but it kept the bugs away. I didn’t mind the feel of it and the spray is a convenient application method. Just a quick disclaimer, I am generally pretty accident prone and if it’s possible to break something, I’ll probably break it. However, I didn’t expect to put a significant dent in the spray bottle by tossing it a couple of feet. I was aiming for a tote bag but I missed by a couple of inches and it landed on the floor. I’m not saying that I’m disappointed in the package or that it’s a problem, because again, bug spray that works that I don’t have to make is gold, but just be aware that you may not want to repeat my mistakes if you wish your bug spray to remain pristine and without big dents in the bottle.
The only safe for me sunscreen that Badger had was the Badger SPF34 Anti-Bug Sunscreen. I’d echo Mary Kate’s review in that it is harder to rub in than other sunscreens. I did like the dual sunscreen/bug repellent properties. I do wish that it had a higher SPF, as I used to use an SPF 100 before coconut, but according to WebMD, that might not be as big a deal as I had previously thought. And again, I didn’t have to make it! (Cue heavenly choir).
I wish more of their products didn’t contain sunflower so that I could try them, but I’m happy Badger has some products I can use and make my life easier.
Overall, the Badger visit was a rousing success. If you are looking for personal care products, check out Badger’s website and see if they might have something you’d like to try. This post is all the opinions of Denise and Mary Kate, was not sponsored, and we were in no way compensated for any of this review.
If you are gluten-free, you might find that rice becomes an even more important staple in your diet. I actually discovered the variety of rices out there when I tried out eating vegan for a while right after I cut out dairy (and as far as I know, my friend Cathy may still be eating all the random bits of rice I passed on to her when I moved, many years ago). With the right rice to pair with the right foods, rice becomes more than just a base for Chinese takeout. I still really do not like brown rice with “traditional” Chinese(American) style food; white rice tastes right. But brown rice with roasted veggies is fantastic, sushi rice with saucy foods, jasmine rice with delicate flavors. Rice is amazing. I can see why it’s a staple food in many parts of the world.
But you may have noticed that, while I make a lot of rice dishes, my instructions for rice usually boil down to “cook it. However you can.” That’s because despite being reasonably adept in the kitchen, my sad truth is that I cannot cook rice on the stovetop. In a pot, with water, like a normal person.
Or, as my college roommate put it in the birthday card that came with the rice cooker, “I don’t know why you can bake a 10-layer cake but not cook rice, but here, this should fix it.” That’s not verbatim. I may have the card somewhere, in a box, but it was along those lines (but possibly with more profanity. This is the same person who sent me Geritol for my 30th birthday.)
This is true. My first baking “experiment” was a concoction called the “Heaven and Hell Cake.” Go ahead and Google it. I found it in a USA Today while my family was on vacation in Florida, along with a story about a chef whose parents ran a diner, and his childhood conundrum: angel food cake? Or devil’s food cake? So he combined them into an 8-layer cake, alternating angel food and devil’s food, with peanut butter mousse between and a chocolate ganache over it all. Ridiculous. And also full of so very many things that I cannot now eat, so I’m glad I got a chance to try it.
But standard rice? Even of the Uncle Ben’s variety in the nice orange box with very specific cooking instructions on the side? Stymied me. It was always mushy or partly cooked, or otherwise barely edible.
A rice cooker fixes that pretty solidly. You still need to measure the rice and the water. In my rice cooker, a spritz of oil on the bottom is necessary or it sticks pretty badly. But after that, you turn it on and let it go. It turns down to warm when it is done. Easy, right? Yeah, it still took me 6 months to get it right regularly.
Rice cookers come in super-basic models which basically turn on when you plug them in, to super-fancy models that should be able to know when you’re getting home from work and have a 5-star meal on the table. When I took a Chinese cooking class from a local Chinese restauranteur in Bismarck, our instructor told us that spending a lot of money on a rice cooker was pointless (or at least unnecesary). His advice was to buy a basic cheap one, use it until it died, and then buy another. I think I’ve had this one 10 years and as long as I measure the water right, it has never failed me.
I’m mostly in agreement with Alton Brown’s rants against the evils of single-use kitchen devices, but this one solves a very great need. My rice cooker not only fixes one of my basic culinary inadequacies, but it also frees me up to concentrate on the vat of stir-fry I’m making or the sushi salad veg I’m working on, or whatever else I am doing. In theory, I could also steam veggies in the basket that came with the rice cooker, but I’m not sure which box it’s in. This appliance may be a one-trick pony, but it’s a really good trick.
My name is Denise and I have an addiction to spices and some sort of spacial evaluation dysfunction where I am unable to translate how much a quantity of spice I am ordering will actually be in real life. I have a free standing wooden cabinet that is five feet tall and about a foot wide and a foot deep in which I keep all the spices. Except that I ran out of room, so I now also have a banker’s box which is full of spices, and a plastic file folder box full of chilies, which are both kept next to the spice cabinet, circled below. Oh, and looking at the picture, I forgot about jars on top of the spice cabinet, and the string of chilies hanging on the side. Oops.
My Spice Cabinet and Annexes
I also have a spreadsheet on my Google Drive which has my spice inventory on it, so that I can keep track of what I have, and can access it on my phone so that I do not buy something I already have while I am out and about. The spreadsheet has 169 items on it.
Screenshot of my Spice Inventory
One day, I believed that I was out of rosemary, which was annoying since I had just received a massive order from Penzey’s Spices not a month before. But since I had just ordered from Penzey’s, I did not have enough items to order to get free shipping. So I looked for other sources with shipping and ending up deciding that it was a good idea to order a pound of rosemary because it was such a good price.
What a one pound bag of rosemary looks like.
The picture you see above, note the helpful measure tape to show you how big it is in real life, depicts a pound of rosemary. I’m not sure how I’m going to use this much rosemary in my lifetime. What is even more ironic, is that I had forgotten that my friend Mary, the kale whisperer, had put in an order with Penzey’s a couple of weeks after I did, and I had purchased a four ounce bag of rosemary in her order. However, I had forgotten to note it on my spreadsheet and forgotten to mark it off on my to-do list. So I ordered a pound of rosemary, because I thought I didn’t have any, even though I did. So now in addition to the behemoth bag of rosemary above, I also have a four ounce bag kicking around.
We will not speak of the three pounds each of yellow and brown mustard seeds that may have been purchased before the rosemary incident and the two pounds of fennel seed that may have been purchased after. However, if anyone has some ideas for using massive quantities of fennel seed, I’d love to hear them.
Back in June, Mary Kate and Denise met up at the far side of Mary Kate’s apartment complex parking lot, with a super-long outdoor extension cord, a garage sale crock pot, a can of olive oil, some devil lye, and safety googles.
Denise and Mary Kate put safety first.
We were there to make soap. Safely outdoors, away from cars and buildings and enclosed spaces, lye and water were mixed, added to olive oil, and cooked in the crock pot until done. Or until it sorta kinda maybe looked a little bit like the pictures Denise got off the internet. Then we dumped it in a baking dish, and Denise took it to her in-laws — because soap needs to tour — before taking it home to cool completely.
Why make soap? Well, if you are Denise, there may be two soaps on the market that you might be able to use because the majority of soap is coconut oil-based. Add avoiding palm oil (because of cross-reaction possibilities with coconut allergies) and corn-derived ingredients, and good luck to you. If you’re Mary Kate, anything that involves mostly sitting around but also the possibility of destruction is good. Plus, there were safety googles.
The other reason is cost. Denise did the math when we were done: Her soap costs $26.78 for 64 oz (8 bars @ 8 oz each) which works out to 41 cents an ounce. The supplies for making this soap (not counting the equipment, which is reusable, and ran approximately $30 or so) cost $13.87 for 74.73 oz, which works out to 19 cents an ounce. It was also a few hours of fun.
Denise uses the soap for laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, and shampoo, as well as for actual soap. This represents a significant cost savings. The olive oil soap is maybe not as pretty as commercial soap, but it works great and is gentle.
This soap is a “hot process” soap, meaning it uses heat to help the lye saponify (make into soap) the oil. There is also “cold process” soap, where time alone completes that reaction, and we do want to try that soon. The internet is full of recipes for soap, but this is the one we followed.
We made you a video. It’s really an automatic slide show of the photos we took set to music, and it runs about a minute. Enjoy (and be kind?).
Toothpaste has been a challenge because the commercial versions have corn or coconut or both in them. For a while, I was just using a baking soda and hydrogen peroxide paste, and it was gross. It worked to some extent, but I hated the taste every morning, and sometimes I cheated and used my husband’s toothpaste (which is a bad idea, don’t do that). Then I came up with the bright idea to put peppermint essential oil in my mix to see if it helped the taste. It tasted better, but the peroxide seemed to evaporate off quickly and/or the baking soda all settled to the bottom in a cement like layer. So then after playing on Pinterest and Google, I decided to try a batch with some bentonite clay in it, and I’d read something about clove essential oil being good for dental health, so I added them to the mix. This may be too much information, but you know how your teeth get sort of fuzzy with plaque as you go through the day? Well, I saw a drastic reduction in fuzzy buildup when using this toothpaste. At this writing, I brushed my teeth 8 hours ago and my teeth pretty much feel like I just had a cleaning at the dentist. I know that the toothpaste looks gross in the picture, but it seems to be working well. Let me know what you think.
Toothpaste (Corn-Free and Coconut-Free)
Makes about a 4 ounce jar.
2 Tablespoons baking soda (use a safe-for-you brand, some are corn-contaminated, watch out)
2 Tablespoons bentonite clay (I used Living Clay, the Detox Clay Power)
3 Tablespoons hydrogen peroxide
3-4 drops of peppermint essential oil
3-4 drops of clove essential oil
Put your baking soda and clay in your jar. Add the peroxide and mix it with the clay and baking soda until it is smooth. I used a Popsicle stick, but you could use a chopstick or a barbecue skewer or a fork, whatever will fit in the jar. Your mixture is going to want to bubble up and rise a bit from the reaction between the baking soda and peroxide. Mix it back down. Add the peppermint and clove essential oil and mix well. Cover your jar with a lid. I dip my toothbrush in the jar to get the toothpaste, but I’m fairly comfortable with being uncouth, and I’m not sharing my jar with anyone else. (If that bothers you, they have empty toothpaste tubes on Amazon, no affiliation, yada, yada, etc.) If the baking soda has not finished reacting to the peroxide, you might find that it has bubbled up again when you open it and it will look a bit dried. It isn’t, just mix it up again.
So in Mary Kate’s inaugural kitchen story post she asked what the workhorse pieces in your kitchen are and if they had a history. My workhorse piece is my KitchenAid mixer. And it does have a bit of a story.
When I was a kid (there’s some debate over the exact age, I thought it was around 15, but my mother claims it was before that, maybe 12 or 13), my father decided to buy a KitchenAid mixer for my mother for Christmas. Now, this was mostly because my dad’s friend had bought one for his wife, and my father was a “Keep up with the Joneses” kind of guy. Keep in mind that my mother was working 10 or 12 hours a day, she wasn’t all that interested in cooking anyway, and I was basically responsible for getting dinner on the table at that age already. To complete the picture, my mom has often said that she made a pie once before I was born, just to say that she could do it, and that was enough. So a KitchenAid mixer wasn’t an appropriate gift for my mom in any stretch of the imagination.
I tried to explain this to my father while we were shopping. He didn’t listen, because that was not his thing anyway, and I have to admit that I didn’t try as hard as I could have to convince him that it was a stupid gift for my mother because. . . it was a KitchenAid mixer! (Cue heavenly chorus.) I knew that the use of the said KitchenAid mixer would default to me, as the main cook in the family. So sue me, I let appliance lust sway me from the straight and narrow path of insisting that my father pick a Christmas gift that my mom would actually like.
The KitchenAid mixer was purchased, and as predicted by me, my mother wanted nothing to do with it. So I used it during the years before I left for college. I didn’t take it with me because there really wasn’t a place you could stash a KitchenAid mixer in the dorm rooms at Wellesley, although I did have a food processor for making strawberry daiquiris. During my second year of law school, my mother finally decided to get a divorce. Let’s just say it was not a shock to anyone, and it was certainly about freaking time. When she told me she was moving out of the house, I told her that she needed to take the KitchenAid mixer. She was puzzled and said that she didn’t want it. I said, “I know you don’t, but I do.” She took the KitchenAid mixer, and since I was living in an apartment at that time, the KitchenAid mixer and I have been happily together since. I’m now 42 and my relationship with the KitchenAid mixer since its purchase has lasted either 27 or 30 years depending on who’s memory is accurate (maybe my sister will weigh in for a tie-breaker).
Last year I noticed that the KitchenAid mixer had developed an oil leak. I was devastated, but I did my Google-Fu and figured out what was probably wrong with it. And then I found out that the nearest service center was in another state and I might have to mail it. I couldn’t imagine mailing it, let alone the cost of mailing it, and the cost of the repair seemed excessive. So I did my Google-Fu again and found a video that showed you how to repair what was most likely the problem. I decided to take the risk. If I killed it, it’d had a good long run, and if I didn’t, I’d put the money I didn’t spend on the repair towards a new one. (They have purple ones now, just saying.)
So I ordered the materials and waited for them to arrive. When they did, I spread newspaper out on my kitchen floor, and got my Kindle Fire out so I could watch the video over and over again as I did the repair. It took me about an hour, just because I was working so carefully and slow to make sure I did it right, and I wanted to remove as much of the decades old grease as I could. When I got it back together, it worked like a charm. No leaks, no drips, no nothing. To celebrate, and to make up for contemplating replacing it for a younger, hotter, and purple model, I got it a purple dragon decal (go here on etsy, but she’s on vacation until July 5) to match my dragon tattoo. Here’s hoping for another thirty or so happy years!
Pretty purple dragon decal on Denise’s KitchenAid Mixer
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.
