When Will There Be Another Peanut-Free Night?

For the first time since I started this blog, I get to write about something that combines all three of my passions: my kids, food and sports!  And it's all thanks to a very special support group called NC FACES (Food Allergic Children Excelling Safely).  This past Sunday night, the "volunteer support group that provides a social and emotional support network for families dealing with food allergies in the RTP area of North Carolina" organized a night out at the ballgame.

My wife and I had recently been discussing our realization that our younger daughter would not only never get to eat Chinese food because of her peanut allergies, but that she'd also never get to smell the fresh cut grass at a baseball game because of the abundance of peanut shells littering the pavement.  Then my wife learned about NC FACES from a co-worker of hers.  Ironically, they had just planned a Peanut-Free night at the Durham Bulls game!  Our little girl was going to get to see her first baseball game thanks to this wonderful collection of people.

Peanut-Free Signs All Around the Porch Area

The weather this past weekend was pretty crappy so for a while I didn't think the game would even happen.  Throughout the day, there were random passing downpours, but as game time approached, the clouds parted partially and some sun broke through.  Game on!  NC FACES had secured the porch area down the left field line and put up Peanut-Free signs everywhere.  The area had been cleaned thoroughly with not a shell to be found anywhere.  We were all given special stickers to show our support for the cause, and they even put out nutritional and ingredient info on the ballpark food so parents could be sure they would purchase safely for their kids.

The Famous Durham Bull and Blue Monster

We took in the sights and sounds, we eat hot dogs and nachos, we stretched during the seventh inning  and we cheered on the Bulls.  My daughter even got a tour behind the Blue Monster over which the famous bull from Bull Durham sits.  It's true, she cared much more about what was happening off the field than on, but it was a truly special night for all of us, especially for her.  It was a night that left her asking "When will there be another peanut-free night?"

So a special thanks to NC FACES for providing my daughter with an opportunity to feel like every other kid out there!  We are excited to be new members of this terrific group.

Will My Kid Never Eat Chinese Food?

The restaurant I went to as a kid in Brooklyn

As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, NY, there were three food staples that were a part of my DNA: pizza, bagels and Chinese food.  Pick any block in the big apple and walk down it and you're sure to see at least one pizza place, a bagel shop, and a takeout Chinese restaurant.  I can't even begin to imagine what life would have been like as a child without an oil-drenched slice of cheese pizza or a sesame bagel schmeared with cream cheese.  But most of all, what would life have been like without a crunchy deep fried egg roll dipped in duck sauce, a big bowl of piping hot wonton soup with crispy fried noodles, an order of spare ribs and a side of fried rice?  Now that's the real good stuff... the stuff I took for granted. 

Fast forward some twenty plus years.  I'm married and a father of two young daughters.  It's a typical weekend errand run with the family to Trader Joe's.  We see samples of bananas dipped in creamy peanut butter, yet another staple of my childhood.  My wife gives my younger daughter, then 18 months old, the sample which she proceeds to spit out, never ingesting any of it. It doesn't even dawn on us that this is her first taste of the yummy, yet about to be poisonous to her, peanut butter.  Within minutes, a small batch of hives begin to form near her mouth where she spit out the sample.  But that appears to be about it.

We leave the store, and ironic to this story, proceed to a nearby Asian market where I run in to pick up a few more things.  Ten minutes later my daughter's life (and all of ours as well) changed forever.  I'm in line to check out and my phone rings.  I hear my daughter screaming in the background and my wife demanding I get outside immediately.

(If you're eating right now, I suggest you put down the food.)  I arrived to the car to see my daughter spewing like Mount Vesuvius.  By the time she was done, I don't think there was a drop of fluid left inside her little body.  Her body was covered from her head to her toes in hives.  And she was screaming like she was on her first roller coaster ride.  It was downright horrifying.  We rushed her to the nearby emergency room where they administered some Benadryl while I cleaned out the vomit from her car seat so we'd have a way to get her home.

She survived that scary day and the next week we had her at the allergist, where just six months earlier she had tested negative for all allergies.  This time, the results were, as we expected, dramatically different.  They scratched up her back for all sorts of allergies, and the area where they tested for peanuts blew up so bad they had to retest for all the allergies within three inches of that test.  The doc told us that it was one of the most severe reactions he had seen in years, and that it would likely be with her forever.  At that moment, I wondered to myself "Will my kid never eat Chinese food?  Will she never know those same joys I knew growing up?"  After all, there are peanuts everywhere in Asian cuisine.  It seemed so unfathomable, yet it was now her reality.  In the four years since that fateful day, we've managed to cope with it, adjusting our lives and our eating habits, and I've even learned to make some pretty tasty Chinese food at home.  But it never tastes the same as what you get from that take out place around the corner.

So, I ask you, my faithful readers (or I hope soon to be), what is the one food you can't imagine ever having to give up?  What's the one taste you would never imaging your kids missing out on?  I want to hear from you, so please leave a comment!  Oh, and feel free to offer up any of your own homemade peanut-free Chinese food recipes!