The Holiday Season-How I Survived

Hi everyone, and Happy Holidays! Another Christmas past, and a new year is practically upon us! I hope you all had an enjoyable, fun and safe holiday. A break from school and/or work to see family and friends is always a great way to spend our holiday, but it's important to always keep safety in mind, especially during this time of year. I'm not just talking about those traveling on the roads, or those adults that like to have a spirited drink or two on Christmas Eve, but those with food allergies as well! This post will tell you about my experiences I had this year during Christmastime and how I kept myself safe. Alright, let's get started!

This year was a beautiful Christmas for my family and me, and luckily, there were zilch trips to the emergency room. Hallelujah! The little things that I did, that my family did, and that my friends did were the reasons I was safe this year. I'm extremely grateful to have such an amazing, wonderful family that helped make this Christmas special. I'm also very grateful to have amazing, protective friends that look out for me at school when candy is exchanged at lunch, on the bus, and in between classes. Before I launch into the details of what they did to help me, I want to thank my family and all of my friends for helping me stay safe this holiday season. I couldn't have had the special Christmas I had without you, so thanks a bunch!

I first and foremost want you all to know that the holidays are never all about the food! Experiences aren't about the food, especially holiday experiences! I think the most important thing during the holidays is reaching out to those you love, not about eating. I always keep this in mind when Christmas rolls around, and you should too!

Every year, my mom, sister and I team up to help make Christmas cookies, Christmas Eve dinner, and Christmas dinner. I love to help in the kitchen, and I've become better at reading food labels and using substitutes for different foods because of all my work in the kitchen, although I think I still need to improve on not making a huge mess in the process of baking ;). Like all families, my family has Christmas cookie favorites, so we end up making a lot of the same cookies each year, but they're all old favorites, so I'm never regretful when I eat some :). The ones we made this year are chocolate crinkles, which are made using cocoa powder (dairy free) and soy margarine instead of butter; reindeer poop cookies (a peanut butter cookie with soy margarine)  that has chocolate chunks on top made by Enjoy Life (Enjoy life makes a variety of products for people with food allergies, all of which are free of the eight main allergens and more); raspberry lemon thumbprint cookies , made with soy margarine instead of butter, and spritz cookies, which just use soy milk instead of regular milk (I can't remember if the recipe called for butter, but if it did, then we used soy margarine like with all the other cookies). For Christmas dessert, we made apple and pumpkin pie using soy milk and soy margarine substitutions, and for Christmas Eve dessert, we made chocolate mousse, which would normally need real cream, but instead we used, believe it or not, avocado because avocado doesn't have a strong taste and it worked just as well as cream would have. (at least the mousse wasn't green!) We also used coconut milk instead of using regular milk.

My mom recently found a product called Coco-Whip, which is similar to regular whipped cream, only it's dairy free and has a slight taste of coconut! We used this product on Thanksgiving and we used it again when we ate pie on Christmas. My whole family loves this product, and we introduced it to my grandparents too, who declared it a very smart and delicious substitution.

For the actual dinners, we had lasagna on Christmas Eve and the classic ham dinner on Christmas. I won't go into the details of Christmas dinner, as there was a lot to it, but I will briefly talk about Christmas Eve. As I said before, we had a delicious lasagna dinner on Christmas Eve, along with garlic bread and a salad. To make sure there weren't any risks, my mom and I made my own personal little pan of lasagna before my mom and my sister made the regular lasagnas. To make my lasagna free of regular cheese, we used dairy free shredded cheese (can't remember the brand name), dairy free ricotta by Tofutti, and dairy free Parmesan cheese by Go Veggie! These can all found in your local grocery store. When my mom shopped for the supplies for my lasagna, she was also careful to get a safe sauce. Some sauces contain traces of milk or cheese, so just be sure to read the ingredient labels. One last thing we did to make sure I stayed safe was that when my mom and dad served us, there was a cheese free knife and spatula for my lasagna and a cheesy knife and spatula for the other lasagnas so there wasn't any cross contamination.

Thank you for reading My Food Allergy Life. I hope you all had a very merry Christmas, and I wish you all a fun and safe new year! Talk to you in 2016!