Holiday indulgences and food allergies

It's the most wonderful time of the year to eat delicious candies and cakes and carb-heavy meals, as long as you don't have to deal with any food allergies.

See's Candies are making their rounds in my office right now, and tempting me horribly in spite of their corn starch and vanilla extract and maltodextrin and other things that I can't digest. Popcorn has been another popular corporate gift this year, with kettle corn and Harry & David Savory Popcorn varieties floating around ad nauseam.

I've mentioned before that food is a huge part of our culture, and it seems like this is more apparent than ever from the end of November until the beginning of January - everywhere you look there is something tasty being offered in the name of holiday cheer.

I tend to spend a lot of my time during the holidays glaring at food. The buckets of popcorn and cookies at the office, the scones at my family's Christmas tea party, the puddings at restaurants, and the white chocolate mochas everywhere that coffee is served have all been subjects of my recent ire.

But, in spite of all the foods that people with allergies can't eat, there are options out there.

Seriously, purple chocolate is amazing. Photo by Alli

My wonderful husband has just returned from a trip to Washington, where he procured me a lovely box of chocolates. I've been there with him a few times before, and on one of our journeys we discovered a wonderful shop called Galaxy Chocolates. The owner, Kathryne Paz, was incredibly patient with my questions and very helpful when it came to figuring out which of the ingredients I could and couldn't eat. If you're looking for chocolate either as a gift this holiday or just to indulge your sweet-tooth it's the place to go. Stop in if you're in western Washington, and if you're anywhere else, call and ask what's available to ship to you (my personal favorite is the lavender chocolate - it's unspeakably good). Failing all of that, if you have the money to spare please make a donation to Help Save Galaxy Chocolates - it's a tough world out there for a small business, and I know of few places as deserving of help as Galaxy Chocolates.

Another option for allergy-safe holiday treats is Happily Ever After Confectionery, a SoCal baking concern that is very compliant to customer wishes. Allergy-safe food comes at a pretty steep price, with a cost of about $4.25 per gluten-free cupcake and a minimum order of a dozen but it would be well worth it for a special occasion. One of the bakers remembered my allergies when they catered a wedding for a wheat and corn allergic bride, and gave me a cookie to sample from the spares - based on the evidence, the carefully-crafted allergy-safe wedding food was a success, and a tasty one at that.

And if you are truly paranoid, as everyone with allergies has a right to be, you can always try your own hand at crafting tasty treats.

This Scissor Candy recipe makes a nice treat for parties or year-round if you replace the Karo Syrup with brown rice syrup and make sure that you're using safe powdered sugar, flavoring, and coloring.

This Fudge Recipe works well with Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips and allergy safe condensed milk.

I'm working on a grain-free dressing/stuffing recipe - if it works out well, I'll post it here for everyone else to use as well.

Eat happy, eat safe,
Cheers,
     - Alli

The joy of recombinant cooking

Looks gross but isn't - Boxed gluten-free Mac'n'Cheese and a can of split pea soup turned into 

two surprisingly tasty lunches.

“Having now lived for a few decades in parts of the United States and Canada where cooking was treated quite seriously, and having actually employed professional chefs, he was fascinated by the midwestern/middle American phenomenon of recombinant cuisine. Rice Krispie Treats being a prototypical example in that they were made by repurposing other foods that had already been prepared (to wit, breakfast cereal and marshmallows). And of course any recipe that called for a can of cream of mushroom soup fell into the same category. The unifying principle behind all recombinant cuisine seemed to be indifference, if not outright hostility, to the use of anything that a coastal foodie would define as an ingredient." - Neal Stephenson, from Reamde

Recombinant cooking is a luxury that people with food allergies often can't indulge in but it is so prevalent in the US that almost everyone has a favorite recombinant dish - green bean casserole, rice krispy treats, or something from a crock pot. My favorite used to be something that my aunt had named "Wet Dog Chicken" in a fit of pique - Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, chicken breasts, and sour cream served over Uncle Ben's chicken rice, all cooked together in a crock pot for several hours until it smells faintly but unmistakably like a wet dog. Poor man's stroganoff, basically. Recombinant cooking is so popular that allergy cookbooks include recipes for home made versions of things like condensed soup and bouillon cubes so that you can get the out-of-the-box flavor with the made-from-scratch effort (basically the worst of both worlds).

Out of sheer boredom I recently started playing with the very few pre-made foods that I can eat and was pleasantly surprised with some of the tasty combinations that I found. Boxed Mac'n'cheese mixes very well with canned split pea soup to make a creamy, salty, and filling lunch. Canned vodka sauce can be poured over frozen haricots vert to make a savory side dish. Rice cakes, sunflower seed butter, and cranberry relish can be combined to make a reasonable simulacrum of a PB&J. Rice thins can have allergy safe chocolate chips melted on them to make a terrible parody of an oreo.

There aren't a lot of breaks for the food-allergic. We get left out at parties, thwarted by restaurants, and frustrated by the grocery store. On top of all of that it's not cheap to purchase allergy safe food, especially when you're dealing with something as basic as grain; I can get Kraft Mac'n'Cheese for a dollar a box but I have yet to find Annie's Gluten Free Shells and White Cheddar for less than $3.50, five pounds of all-purpose white flour sells for around $2.00 while 1lb of rice flour has a hefty price-tag in the the neighborhood of $4.00, Campbell's condensed soups are around $1.00 apiece but I have to pay $2.00 for 16oz of watery split pea soup - it's twice the price for half the food.

Because of the ridiculous prices for my food I don't like to throw any of it out. I'll freeze 3/4 of a jar of pasta sauce so that it won't go bad before I finish it. If I have less than a cup of rice pasta shells I'll throw them into a soup or casserole that I'm making. I've been eating cranberry relish with peanut butter for weeks now because I couldn't bring myself to throw out the relish left over from Thanksgiving when it cost $5.00 for a 18oz tub.

And now, largely because of boredom with my limited food options, I've started mixing odds and ends before they become odds and ends. A whole box of expensive mac'n'cheese got mixed with a whole can of expensive soup (as illustrated in the photo at the top of the post) just so that I could have something for lunch this week that wasn't exactly the same as what I have every week.

There are no ground rules when you have food allergies. I have yet to find a definitive set of practices to cook without wheat and corn and sesame while including eggs and tree nuts and milk. A lot of allergy-safe food is constructed to be all-or-nothing when it comes to the top 10 allergens so you end up with vegan food when you aren't a vegan, or nut free when you have no nut allergies. Because of this variance, I can't tell you what to mix together in your kitchen that will work with your allergies or diet or food philosophy, but I can tell you this: playing with your food is awesome. I had no idea, until just a few months ago, that chicken tikka masala mixes perfectly with leftover mashed potatoes. Just last weekend I ate an omelet with eggs, bacon, cheese, salsa, and more of that slowly dwindling cranberry relish - it sounds terrible and tastes great.

So play with your food; mix the store bought cans and boxes that you can have just to see what you can come up with, see if you can make some kind of Frankenlunch out of two night's worth of leftovers,
and try to cobble together a recipe for cookies out of what you have in your cabinets. Not all of your experiments will be successful, but they will teach you more about the properties and flexibility of the food that you're buying and successful or not it's important to have a break in the monotony when your diet is limited by your physiology.

Eat and Experiment Happy,
Cheers,
     - Alli

Baking for people with grain allergies

Grain allergies suck because grain is such a huge part of a normal American diet. Everyone knows that it's hard to feed someone who is grain-allergic but most people stop thinking at the grain itself; they know that people with Celiac disease can't eat wheat, but they don't think about all of the peripheral baking items that contain wheat. Even worse is corn - corn is in freaking everything. So yes, of course, someone who is allergic to corn can't have corn on the cob, but that's not even close to the heart of the issue - corn allergies pop up in places that no one would expect them to, because who would know what kind of media the bacteria that produces Xantham Gum grows on (spoiler: it's corn) unless they were crazy or working for Big Xantham?

So if you have someone with one of the major grain allergies in your life, here are some things to look out for:

Corn - baking powder, vanilla extract, gluten-free flour mixes, xantham gum, powdered sugar, caramel coloring, food starch or modified food starch, dextrose, cellulose, natural flavors, generic "vegetable" (so if you see "vegetable oil" but not a list of ingredients it's probably corn), and decaf coffee or tea are common baking ingredients that contain corn. This is nowhere near a complete list, but it does cover the big ones for someone who is planning on baking for a corn-allergic friend.

Wheat/Gluten - spelt, bulgar, barley, rye, oats (unless certified gluten free), food starch or modified food starch, vanilla extract, natural flavors, maltodextrin, malt extract, malt flavoring (anything with the word "malt," really), beer, and grain alcohols are some of the more common items that contain hidden wheat.

I'm sure that list looks incredibly frustrating to a baker - I used to bake a lot so I should know. Baking or cooking for someone with a grain allergy is a gigantic headache, but there are a few ways to get past some of this stuff.

So anyway, here are some tips:

Ingredients

Alcohol - Here are the kinds of alcohol that people with grain allergies should avoid or consume only after checking for allergen ingredients:
Beer (wheat/corn unless otherwise specified)
Bourbon (wheat/gluten)
Brandy (caramel coloring in some brands)
Cordials/Liqueurs (corn syrup in many, neutral grain spirits in others)
Dark Rum (some dark rums are aged in whiskey barrels)
Fortified Wine (corn syrup)
Neutral Grain Spirits (made of grains)
Scotch (wheat/gluten)
Schnapps (corn/wheat)
Vodka (check carefully for potato vodka - some vodkas in the US are made with corn or wheat)
Whiskey (wheat/gluten)
Most wine is safe for people with wheat allergies, and some dessert wines do a good job of replacing spirits in a lot of recipes. If a recipe calls for any kind of brown alcohol, replace it with sherry. If it calls for any kind of sweet liqueur sherry or port will work depending on if you want vanilla or cherry notes. If you just need to set something on fire or burn off a high proof spirit, vodka works well.

Baking Powder - baking powder is made with baking soda and corn starch; there are potato starch baking powders available, but they can be quite expensive and are frequently out of stock. You can make a baking powder replacement by combining the following: 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda to replace 1 teaspoon baking powder

Brown Sugar - check for food coloring; some of it has caramel coloring in it and might make your friend sick. C&H light and dark brown sugar have both been effective for my baking needs.

Chocolate - if you're trying to make thumbprint cookies for your grain allergic friend, or a chocolate cake, make sure to read the ingredients on the chocolate as well as on the flours that you are buying. Most milk and bittersweet chocolate has vanilla extract in it and, barring calling the chocolate manufacturer to find out who supplies their vanilla extract and then calling the extract company and going over an ingredients list (a frustrating, time consuming, and likely useless proposition), there is no way to guarantee that the vanilla extract is safe for your friend. But there are a few kinds of chocolate that are reliably safe for corn and wheat allergies - Trader Joe's 72% Dark Chocolate Bars and Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips (can be found in the G-Free section of almost all Fresh & Easy stores) have short ingredient lists and you can always call your friend to double check before purchasing. For cocoa powder, Hershey's unsweetened is a stable option; any kind of unsweetened baker's chocolate will usually work too. 

Corn Starch - many recipes call for some kind of fine starch; potato starch or tapioca starch are widely available and can replace the allergen-based starch.

Corn Syrup - brown rice syrup can apparently work as a substitute for corn syrup; cornallergens.com also suggests this recipe to replace corn syrup: 1 cup corn syrup = 1 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup liquid (water, milk, or whatever other liquid is called for by the recipe)

Flour - Bob's Red Mill flour is available at most major grocery stores. The "gluten-free all purpose baking flour" is full of stuff that people with multiple grain allergies can't have, but oat flour, brown rice flour, and almond flour in a 2:2:1 ratio makes a palatable replacement for wheat flour or cornmeal. If you don't get almond flour (either because it is expensive or because your friend also has nut allergies) you can add 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of butter (or shortening) to any recipe you're making - the texture is going to be off one way or another so adding more protein/fat at least helps to assure you that your baked treat will hold together when it comes out of the oven.

Honey - check the label to ensure that you're not buying honey syrup or honey-flavored spread or any of the other silly things people call honey flavored corn syrup.

Maple Syrup - make sure that you're buying pure, 100%, Grade A or B maple syrup. A lot of pancake syrup out there is maple-flavored corn syrup.

Molasses - check for corn syrup, artificial flavors, and caramel coloring. "Pure" molasses is usually safe but when you're dealing with someone with food allergies, you must always read the label.

Powdered Sugar - Vons Organics and Trader Joe's both have powdered sugar made with tapioca starch instead of corn starch, and Whole Foods carries a potato starch powdered sugar.

Vanilla Extract - don't use any food extracts unless you have made them yourself. I know it completely ruins the flavor to leave out the vanilla extract in a lot of baked goods, but extracts are either made with corn alcohol or bourbon, both of which may cause a reaction in people with very sensitive allergies (if a bottle of extract says natural  or pure vanilla it is a filthy liar and I hate it - it is vanilla and alcohol, sometimes with corn syrup mixed in just to piss me off). If you want to make your own extract purchase a 750mL bottle of 35% alcohol that is safe for your friend (vodka and clear rum work nicely), add your flavoring agent - two vanilla beans or one bunch of peppermint or ten unsalted almonds, whatever flavor you want to use (don't crush it or mash it - the alcohol will do a good job of dissolving it), and set it in a cool, dark place for two months. After two months, strain out the remnants of your flavoring agent, and pour your fresh extract into small, dark glass bottles; use in the same amount that you would use store-bought extract and weep over the fact that the food allergic can't have nice things without two months of planning (hope you didn't want to have those cookies done in time for Christmas). If you don't want to go to all that work, you can grind up a quarter of a vanilla bean and add it in place of extract in most recipes (please note that vanilla beans are really expensive).

White Vinegar - usually made out of corn alcohol. You can typically replace it with apple cider vinegar.

Xantham Gum - Lots of gluten free recipes call for xantham gum because the proteins in alternative flours aren't quite right and things end up binding together oddly. Unfortunately the vast majority of xantham gum isn't safe for people who are corn allergic because it is grown in a corn solution. Anyway, Guar gum doesn't work quite as well (and is expensive) but you can use it. Another option is to play with the eggs you use. If the recipe calls for eggs, whip them before introducing them to the batter and it'll help with the texture and the binding of the flour. You can also add an extra egg white or an extra teaspoon of butter to most recipes to help with the texture.

Safe Food Handling

Cross contamination - Yes, we can literally get sick from a wooden spoon or a scored cutting board. Before you start to cook for your grain-allergic friend clean all of the surfaces in your kitchen, making sure to remove any crumbs and flour spills from your counter top. Use non-porous surfaces, utensils, and bakeware; metal bowls, metal spoons, and so on.

Flouring Surfaces - If you're working with dough, you'll need to flour the surface you're working on, your rolling pin, and your hands. Please make sure to use a non-allergen flour to do this; it's surprising the number of people who space out on using safe flours AFTER they've mixed the dough.

Greasing pans - Grease pans with safe vegetable oil, butter, or lard - most aerosol sprays contain allergens.

Storage - Put your allergy-friendly food in sealed, airtight containers. And then maybe close them with packing tape. If you've made a whole batch of allergy-safe chocolate chip cookies, stored them in one giant container, and then your brother puts a layer of regular chocolate chip cookies on top of the allergy safe ones, the entire container is no longer allergy safe. If even one crumb fell down and got lodged in another cookie it is enough to provoke a very serious allergic reaction in some people. So clean your kitchen, bake any allergy safe foods first, then store and seal them before you get to any other baking project.

General Issues

Texture - Pretty much everything will have a funky texture when you switch from wheat or corn flour to an alternative flour. Things that are supposed to be light and flaky are the worst, while foods that are supposed to be dense have fewer problems. Almost everything will also be substantially more crumbly than you expect, so plan to cut large slices or make large shapes - a thin slice of g-free pie crust will dissolve, a thick slice with a shallower layer of filling works better (as does doubling up the dough on the bottom of the pie-pan); a delicate cookie-cutter teapot will fall apart or won't bake cohesively in the first place, but a simple circle or diamond will hold together pretty well. You may also want to over-grease the bottoms and sides of any baking dishes; it will prevent you from having to fight to unstick your baking, which results in a spectacular explosion of gluten-free crumbs surprisingly frequently. It's better to start with something dense - brownies and cakes translate pretty well into allergy safe foods, they are expected to be served in large chunks, and they aren't as hand-held as a cookie so crumbliness doesn't matter as much. Don't go into baking allergy safe foods and expect things to be light and fluffy; most of the things I bake these days resemble hockey pucks much more than they resemble clouds, though they do taste significantly better than either of those things.

Refusal - Don't be offended if your allergic friend refuses to eat the food that you have made for them. Please, please, don't be offended. We don't want to hurt your feelings, and we don't think that you would intentionally hurt us, but we know that you just don't understand what it's like. It took me a year and a half of constantly living with my food allergies to figure out the stuff listed here, and in that year and a half I've gotten sick from the food that I cooked for myself several times, as well as food that others cooked for me. I have had well-meaning friends pressure me into eating and drinking things that meant I got to spend more time with my toilet than with my friends. I have had relatives brush off the thought of cross contamination as paranoia and pickiness. I have had people assure me, "no really, it's fine, I checked" and after I take a bite say "what do you mean X has corn it in?!?" And these are all wonderful, kind people who know about me and are familiar with my allergies, all of whom want me to be able to participate and have a good time.

If you really want to cook for your grain-allergic friend, talk to them about it (seriously, don't spring it on them) and give them a complete list of the ingredients you need for your recipe. Ask them if there are any ingredients they are uncertain of, ask them for good substitutions (including stores where the substitution is sold and brand names) and ask them again after you've bought all the ingredients to read through the nutrition information with you. Maybe even ask to come over and cook for them in their kitchen, and try to make a fun day of it - if your friend participates and watches you following safe food handling rules, both of you are more likely to have a good experience and a nice treat at the end of the day.

We don't want to make you feel bad, we aren't trying to be cool loners with twisted guts and special diets. We just want to hang out with our friends for the holidays and maybe not spend the night before Christmas with visions of sugarplums dancing in the toilet bowl.

Happy almost holidays, be nice to each other out there.
Cheers,
     - Alli

My medically necessary diet is not your fix-all fad diet

I got my diagnosis for wheat allergy at an interesting point in food industry history.

Gluten had been a buzzword for years by the time I had to concern myself with it, it had actually become something of a joke by the late date of 2012 (at least in Southern California where people are raving about raw, vegan, macrobiotic, superfood, gluten-free, low GI diets years before the rest of the country catches up with our super-fly soy based economy.) The hip California kiddies were joking and eye-rolling about Gluten-free foods in 2012 because by then they had made the great leap out of the health food stores and into big box stores. When your world-changing, life-improving, paradigm-shifting diet has made its way to the shelves at WalMart, the magic is gone and it's just another prosaic buzzword that cynical food manufacturers use on packaging to move a few more units a month. The diet hipsters were just like, so over it, dude. Like sodium, fat, trans-fat, and sugar, "gluten" became a word that had "no" tacked in front of it or "free" stuck behind it before being shoved in front of consumer eyeballs on every shelf of the grocery store.

One of the reasons behind the recent, extra heavy influx of g-free (a moniker so trendy and buzzworthy that I avoid saying it aloud) food onto supermarket shelves is a book. A popular book. A New York Times Bestselling book. In 2011 Dr. William Davis published Wheat Belly, a diet book furiously crusading against the evils of wheat; detailing its sinister, addictive properties; informing the common man that there is a cure for insomnia, schizophrenia, acid reflux, migraines, hay fever, PMS, arthritis, asthma, and an extensive list of other ailments - removing the wheat! Dr. Davis also promises that readers will lose a bunch of weight and stops just short of promising super powers or age reversal.

But, while wheat is evil according to Davis, you can't lose the weight or shed your chronic, debilitating disease just by cutting wheat out of your diet - you have to cut lots of things out of your diet and follow his meal plan to succeed (success is debatable: in large part the meal plan does not restrict calories enough to efficiently lose weight and many of the "cures" can be attributed to minor weight loss or the placebo effect) at Davis' "scientifically proven," "clinically shown," "well studied" wonder diet. The bigger problem is that most of Davis' "science" is based in half-truths, shoddy research, or is just plain wrong.

One of my favorite examples of false claims made in the book is Davis' claim that people who are wheat-free actually get more fiber than wheat-eaters: the average American eats 12-15g of fiber per day (25g is the recommended amount), the average wheat-restricted Celiac patient gets 3-6g; one cup of Post Shredded Wheat has 6g of fiber, whereas one cup of carrots (Davis wants you to cut rice (4g fiber per cup), oats (5g fiber per cup), and other grains) has 4g of fiber. I will let you know right now, as someone who is struggling to get enough fiber to make my gut happy, that it is a hell of a lot easier to eat two bowls of cereal than it is to eat three cups of carrots.

But in spite of all the questionable science and provably false statements, Wheat Belly has a die-hard core of fans and followers. And even before Dr. Davis and his sloppy science came along the gluten-free movement was gathering steam in a headlong rush of celebrity dieters and everyday fad-chasers, people always looking for the secret key, the magic bullet that would grant them health and slimness and long life.

The food industry is paying attention - in 2012 consumer in the US $7 billion dollars spent on gluten-free foods, a price tag that has made food manufacturers sit up, take notice, develop and market foods to soak up some of that market share. Some of this spending is attributed to an increasing number of Celiac and gluten intolerance diagnoses but at least 50% of gluten-free food is purchased by people who have no medical reason to cut gluten out of their diets.

And this is where I start getting angry.

I have to eat gluten-free food. It is not a choice for me. Even with the mad dash to put g-free foods onto store shelves there aren't a lot of options available, and that number is already shrinking. A year ago I was able to eat 4 types of Chex, Cocoa Pebbles, and 3 different kinds of rice cakes. In the last year sales dropped on Chex's gluten free line and so distribution has been reduced: I can still eat those 4 kinds of Chex, but finding them in stores has become difficult. Cocoa Pebbles has had its ingredients changed; it was never marketed as gluten free though scrutinizing the label showed that for a few months it didn't have the Malt Flavoring that is back in its ingredients list. Two of the companies that made my rice crackers went out of business, though I can still depend on Quaker Oats for my 35 calorie, 0g fiber, brown rice snack. It's disheartening to realize that I've only been dealing with this issue for a year and already my choices and options are disappearing.

Why? Why are these foods disappearing? Because $3.5 billion of the g-free market is realizing that cutting gluten out of a diet doesn't help you to lose weight if you're just replacing Cocoa Puffs with Cocoa Pebbles. Plain rice cakes are unappealing unless you have no other choices. Cinnamon and Chocolate Chex don't taste good in a party mix and are less appealing to kids than the wheat-based alternative cereals. Non-Celiac, Non-Sensitive, and Non-Allergic people are jumping off the g-free, wheat-free bandwagon and hopping onto another trend. GMO free is already overtaking us and we're still spitting out the Local and Organic bandwagon's dust. And all of this is happening because gluten is NOT A MAGIC BULLET. There are no magic bullets - weight loss fads and fantasy schemes come in and for a while foods that benefit people with medical conditions (low sodium and low fat benefited heart patients, low carb and low sugar helped diabetics) are widely available, but eventually dieters (who always make up a larger portion of the population than patients) realize that low fat yogurt hasn't helped them shed 70 pounds, that Atkins bars haven't halved their love handles, and that gluten-free biscuits haven't gotten them bikini-ready. When those fads fade the grocery stores eventually stock fewer and fewer of the diet specific food and people with medically necessary diets have to wander back to the limited options and higher prices of the local health-food store.

A gluten-free or wheat-free diet is not for everyone. It won't guarantee weight loss, it won't help you build muscle, and it won't cure the ridiculous list of ailments that Dr. Davis wants you to believe it will. Cutting gluten or wheat out of your diet will reduce your symptoms if you have Celiac disease, a gluten sensitivity, or a wheat allergy. It will also increase instances of constipation, cost more than "regular" food, and be a regular source of frustration.

Don't cut the wheat unless you have a medical reason to do so (and if you're not sure about an allergy or Celiac disease see a doctor). Don't go g-free if a friend told you about this diet and it sounded like a great idea. If you don't have a medical reason to cut ANY food out of your diet then don't cut it - non-allergics get sick of the rigor, sick of the deprivation, allow themselves cheat-days and "just-this-once"s at birthday parties or when faced with a nice bottle of scotch. And then the food industry notices the lack of sales, scale back their production of "special interest" foods, and the foods we hoped we'd be able to have again are gone. And I'm left standing in the cereal aisle, crying over a box of Cocoa Pebbles and the realizing once again that I'm on my own.

              Eat what you can, and be merry.
                      - Alli

The Importance of Being (or having) an Advocate

When we were kids we played "the floor is lava." As a person with allergies I get to play "the food is lava."

Like most people with food allergies, I have a love/hate relationship with eating out. It's wonderful to have other people cook for you, to sit in a clean, well lighted place and have a friendly face bring you food and cater to your needs. It is also a tremendous, festering pain in the butt to always worry that your food has picked up some cross contamination, or that lovely lighting is creating unexpected glare that prevents you from carefully examining a potentially unsafe sauce, or that the friendly waiter didn't hear you right and wrote down "extra sesame seeds" instead of "no sesame seeds" on his sheet.

On top of the normal fears of a food-allergic person, I worked in food service for eight years. My time in the industry has left me with a deep and abiding desire to never, ever bother or in any way irritate any server, barista, bartender, cashier, baker, busser, or dishwasher ever again. I'm not worried about my food and the possibility of intentional tampering; I'm worried that I'm the one extra question, the one "Excuse me, Miss," that means another table in the section doesn't get their drink refill on time, doesn't tip the server, complains to the manager, gets the server written up, and eventually leads to cut hours and therefore a cut in pay (if this sounds paranoid to you then I'm a little jealous that you've never had to work a service job).

I don't want to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and after getting yelled at by customers (so many of them yell) for eight years I know that sometimes all it takes is one "Excuse me, Miss" to go from a great day at work to preparing to set the kitchen on fire so you'll have a valid reason to escape.

My husband, however, has never worked in food service and so he has no problem with stopping a server (it doesn't have to be our server - he doesn't discriminate) and politely interrogating them about what kind of oil the fries are cooked in, if the chickpea flour is really only chickpeas, if the ice cream has "natural flavors" in it, and whether butter or margarine is used on the grill. Sometimes I cringe a little bit as he holds these impromptu conferences with the waitstaff, but I know it's for my sake and I know how necessary it is.

A few months ago my husband and I went out for sushi. I got a tuna hand roll and was surprised to see it delivered to our table with a garnish of sesame seeds. I wanted to just pick them out. He insisted that we send it back. The next plate came with a garnish of tempura flakes. I didn't tell him about the flakes, tried to pick them off, ate the sushi and was sick for days.

Coping with food allergies in a public setting is a unique way to feel broken. If you don't tell people you've got allergies you run the risk of contamination. If you do tell people about your allergies you're admitting vulnerability. I know it's stupid, but that's how it feels.

There's a burger joint in the Southwestern United States called In-N-Out. If you've got food allergies you can tell them to do an "allergy grill" and they'll deliver a burger that is safe to eat. This is a great idea in practice, but when you're looking at a growing line behind your vehicle, watching frustrated patrons inside, and being repeatedly told by the cashier "it'll just take another minute, it always takes a little longer to do an allergy grill" you feel like a jerk. Everyone is waiting for you to be gone so that they can eat. The employees are working harder and the line is building up because your stupid gut can't handle it if there are some crumbs on the grill or some spread on the spatula.

So when I used to go to In-N-Out by myself, I didn't usually bother to ask for any special treatment. I just got a patty and some tomato slices and hoped for the best. Sometimes I was okay, sometimes I wasn't, but at least I wasn't in anybody's way.

I'm not around a lot of people with food allergies, for the most part, and the people I do know with food allergies generally deal with foods that are easier to avoid. Everyone knows that peanuts are dangerous to some people, so there are lots of peanut-free foods and ways to ask for peanut-free foods. But it's incredibly hard to ask for corn-free foods because almost everything processed has corn in it under 30 different names that only corn-allergic people bother to learn. And I don't know any other corn-allergic people (I've heard of them, and even chatted with one online, but trying to find one to meet up with is like deciding to have tea with a unicorn) so I have no support group for this.

I didn't expect my big, strong, non-allergic husband to fill the role of a disability support group, but he did.

The conversation we had was very simple. He said to me: "You are a person. You have a right to be around other people, and you have a right to be healthy and safe when you're out of your house." I hemmed and hawed a bit, saying I didn't want to be a bother and it wasn't a big deal, and he went a little further. "If you were in a wheelchair do you think people would be bothered by the fact that you need a ramp instead of stairs? If you were blind do you think a waiter would be angry about having to describe the dessert cart to you instead of showing it to you? When you were a server did it frustrate you if a deaf customer needed you to write notes instead of speaking? Did it bother you when someone asked you to check if the sorbet had eggs because her baby was allergic?"

I didn't even remember the incident with the eggs until he asked me that question. I was working at a coffee shop, we had about eight varieties of ice cream, a sherbert, and a sorbet. A lovely couple with an adorable baby daughter came in on a busy night, immediately disregarded the ice creams and asked me what I knew about the other options. I lifted the ice cream tubs out of the freezer and checked for ingredients lists, I went to our storage freezer in the back of the shop and tried to find the box the tubs came in, I checked online, and when none of those things helped I called the manufacturer to ask over the phone; it was too late in the day and I felt awful that I couldn't get these nice people and their little girl a solid answer. I wasn't angry at them, I didn't feel like they were taking up too much time, and though the line was getting long I didn't want to shrug them off with an "I don't know" and let it be their problem. But more than all I didn't want to be the one to say "it's alright" and serve a little girl ice cream that would make her sick, and if her parents hadn't asked about the eggs that's exactly what would have happened.

Most people are not awful. They don't want to hurt others, they don't want to steal, they don't want to break things. And if most people find out that their actions could harm someone else, they'll change their actions.

I'm getting better about being my own allergy advocate. There are several places local to me where I know what is safe and what is not, and if I'm not sure I can ask. I've even been forceful when I've discovered that my requests were ignored or forgotten (which is a huge step for me; I once traded entrees with a friend rather than letting her send food back to the kitchen because it was too spicy - it was too spicy for me too, but I didn't want her to bother the waiter). When I go to a new restaurant I always let the server know that I have food allergies and will probably have a lot of questions or I call ahead of time to ask about oils and fillers and flours. I'm still not perfect, and my husband picks up a lot of slack when I'm feeling anxious, but I'm getting better. I've become an assertion pro at grocery shopping, and will ignore anyone who tries to "ahem" me for reading a label too thoroughly (on that note, here's an open request to Trader Joe's: please make your aisles wider, as I have no place to read labels that is not in someone else's way).

This is something I need to get better at, something I need to be pro at, something that no one else can do for me all of the time and is the only barrier between me feeling great and me getting sick. If I don't ask about ingredients, if I don't make my allergies known, I am the only reason that I will get sick - no one else is to blame and no one else should be. I have to be my own advocate, to take charge of my well-being, because I am the only one who should be responsible for me, and to act otherwise is a much worse way of mistreating the people I was trying so hard not to bother.