Inaugural Post...

It seems fitting.  I've been wanting to start this blog for about 5 months now, but just didn't have the energy.  Or I didn't really know *where* to start.  Now I'm starting it, finally, almost a year to the day when we realized that our little guy is more than likely allergic to dairy.  He was just over 10 months old and took a sip from a sippy cup with milk.  I thought "No biggie... he's almost 1."  But then his face swelled.  And swelled some more.  Then his eye pretty well swelled shut (as I was frantically searching for the Benadryl).  When I finally found and administered it, the Benadryl kicked in and the swelling slowly went down.  But a lot of things suddenly made sense.  The weight loss.  The rashes after eating yogurt and cheese.  The reaction to what we thought was brown rice infant cereal, but was actually to the whey in the cereal.

An allergy test confirmed what we already knew.  Charlie has a severe, anaphylactic allergy to dairy.  This means milk, casein and whey.  Right there my whole life changed and my whole family's life changed.  I was still breastfeeding full time, which meant my diet had to become dairy-free, too.  And because I refused to cook two meals for my family, our while diet changed.

Having a child with a severe, anaphylactic dairy allergy can be stressful.  A peanut or tree nut allergy would be a million times easier - the world is 'designed' for those allergies.  But dairy is everywhere.  The sippy of formula left on the floor, the kids' play-place where they ban nuts, but allow Goldfish crackers.  The child with a cheesestring at the mall wanting to share.  It's all my worst nightmare...

With this blog, I want to bring you some of the recipes I've come across, some of the recipes I've modified (dairy-free has forced me to be pretty creative!), and some of the dairy-free products I've come across.  My goal is to not spend too much at specialty food stores.  I've found that more often than not, I can't find much at these stores anyhow because they're all about gluten-free, but not dairy free.

I'll finish today's inaugural post with a product I recently found thanks to a good friend - milk-free chocolate chips!  Chocolate is something Charlie has never had because most times, even the semi-sweet chocolate which should be dairy-free, is not. But...  the President's Choice Semi-Sweet Decadent Chocolate Chips ARE dairy-free!!!

I did make some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  I modified a butter-filled recipe.  That'll be next time's post.  But for now, maybe some dairy-free people missing chocolate can enjoy some :)

Enjoy your dairy-free life :)

Monica