Things for Bubble Boy to Eat

As I've mentioned, I do have a toddler (we call him "Bubble Boy" because he would have to live in a bubble to avoid all of his allergies) who has many food and environmental allergies. Feeding him can be a challenge. I've found that the more homemade a meal is, the easier it is to make it allergy-free. In that respect it has been easy to make allergy-free meals for him, because I've always tried to avoid pre-packaged or heavily processed foods. Homemade is cheaper, people! However, every mom needs a short cut night. So, I do serve good old macaroni and cheese out of the box. I just scoop out a little macaroni for him before I put the cheese sauce on the rest of it. Easy.

What's hard is making two sets of cookies, or finding store-bought snacks or junk food without dairy, nuts, or soy. We've been at this for three and a half years now, and have learned it can be done. Here are some dairy-free, nut-free store-bought snack/junk foods we have bought for Bubble Boy (our third son). Soy is too hard to avoid, but we avoid it when we can. Mostly we just make sure it's not one of the main ingredients.

*Newman's Own Alphabet cookies
*Oreo cookies
*Bunny Grahams or Teddy Grahams (any flavor)
*most graham crackers
*Austin Choco, Vanilla, or Lemon Cremes
*most animal crackers
*most pretzels (NOT Goldfish pretzels!)
*"natural flavor" microwave popcorn
*Immaculate Baking Co.'s Vanilla Sugar, Chocolate Chunk, or Oatmeal Raisin cookies
*plain rice cakes
*Rice Dream Frozen Dairy Dessert
*Starkiss bars from DairyQueen
*most Italian ice or sorbet
*Sunbutter
*Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread
*Roman Meal bread (basically the only wheat bread I've found without soy!)

Note: Bubble Boy can tolerate small amounts of soy. He only has a reaction to food allergens if he ingests them or gets them on his skin. He has no reaction if he breathes them. Some kids can't even breathe the peanut molecules! Also, I have found that foods warning of cross-contamination or "made in the same facility" as nuts, etc. don't seem to bother him. I call these "CYA" warnings. They are maddening. In any case, if you are searching for allergy-ree foods, try above suggestions at your own risk.

Another maddening thing is that companies change their ingredients all the time. I discovered that angel food cake mixes were dairy-free (and some other cake mixes as well). I was so excited because my from-scratch allergy-free cakes usually get spit out by unsuspecting party goers just wanting a yummy chocolate cupcake. Anyway, I had bought the angel food cake by Duncan Hines and Pillsbury. Both reaction-free. Next time I went to buy one, both brands had dairy! Beware.

Sunbutter and Earth Balance are great for making cookies and deserts for Bubble Boy. Sunbutter, made from sunflower seeds, can be used in place of peanut butter. Hello, no-bake cookies! Earth Balance is used in place of butter, but we don't use it much because of its soy.

Dairy-free chocolate? Yes, some chocolate can be dairy free if it's not milk-chocolate. Cocoa does not have dairy in it. Immaculate Baking Co. doesn't use milk-chocolate, so that's how Bubble Boy gets to eat chocolate chunk cookies. Finding out he could have chocolate almost made me cry tears of joy. Seriously, I ripped up the letter to Oprah about the poor kid who couldn't eat chocolate.