Rethinking Recipes for Allergies

It's a story told over and over. When it's your child who has allergies, you drop everything to start learning to make allergen-safe meals.

And if you're already a chef, the food columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail and food editor of Food & Drink, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's glossy magazine, the recipes you can create should be shared with others.

That's Lucy Waverman's story, as told by Judy Creighton on the Brantford Expositor site.

Waverman says that "many children who have dairy, egg or nut allergies feel deprived at birthday parties because the traditional cake contains these ingredients."

So she developed a luscious chocolate cake to which she added vinegar and a bit more oil instead of eggs "and it was absolutely terrific."

Instead of using cheese and milk in a creamy macaroni bake, Waverman cooked cauliflower with stock and pureed it to make a bechamel sauce and tossed it with the pasta, covered it with breadcrumbs for crunch and baked it.

"Kids with allergies to dairy have never experienced macaroni and cheese," she says, "and if you don't know what is in it you think it is macaroni and cheese."

Waverman teamed up with the EpiPen of Canada site to make her recipes available. A sample recipe for Pad Thai can be found on this page but you have to register at the site to get to the others.