Category: Food & Cooking

As is well known, Henry has allergies to bananas, dairy, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts, and when he was very young was sensitive to salicylates, azo dyes, and some aspect of screen printed ink on many of my T-shirts. He is gradually easing on the egg and milk fronts, in that he can eat foods into which those have been baked or cooked thoroughly, and can eat foods which have been fried in butter, or that contain butter or sour cream cooked into them.

The girls never had evidence worth noting that they might have allergies. Until now.

Valerie had classic allergy symptoms after eating a peach, skin included, and getting the juice on her skin. She had also drank “peach punch,” a favorite juice we sometimes buy the kids when it’s on sale for a dollar per half gallon, but I discount that as a direct factor, with reason. Turns out that onset of peach allergy can be a symptom of the onset of birch pollen allergy, naturally manifesting in the spring, and common in our neck of the woods. Processed, peaches or peach juice might not trigger that the same way a raw peach, skin and all, could be expected to, or so I gather.

It has been several months since we needed Benadryl for Henry – approaching a year, perhaps. It took a solid dose of it – initially I gave her a lighter dose based on what I remembered giving Henry when he was younger – but that and washing thoroughly cleared it up. A bit slowly. She had hives all over her belly, was extremely itchy, was red around her mouth, and had one eye get red and puff up almost closed.

I called the doctor’s office and they lined up a prompt appointment with the allergist. Early next week will be busy! Sunday there’s a beach get-together the kids and I are going to, centered around a friend visiting from Oregon. Monday Valerie has two sessions of evaluations at the kindergarten, seeing just what help she may need with school and how she should be placed. Then we have a brief get-together with someone I haven’t seen since 1976, visiting from Minnesota.

On Tuesday afternoon it’s Valerie’s allergy testing. Should be interesting, since she’ll get a battery of them, and they are notorious for showing allergies that have never been seen to exist in actual practice. Like my grandniece with the peanut allergy that isn’t. Which I suspect may be true with Henry, since that’s the one thing he never showed signs of at all. In his case we won’t take chances, though.

So yesterday was Henry’s annual allergy appointment, which turned out a bit unexpected, as the doctor decided not to retest him this year. He’d like to wait until next year, at which point he’ll be to the point of maybe growing out of the ones that are commonly grown out of before adulthood.

Things have been going well, so just keep doing what we’re doing. He’s had no signs of any new ones that needed testing. There was no answer to the question of why his tree nut allergies showed up positive without our having had evidence he was allergic to any of the ones in the suite. Macadamia is not part of the testing. He broke out after sucking the salt off a macadamia, and it could have been cross-contamination or something else. Also, he had eaten most tree nuts, and showed a reaction to what he’d had, in proportion to how much he’d had it, but none to what he’d never had. If I were going by observation, I’d say he was allergic to milk, eggs and bananas, not the peanuts or tree nuts, yet those are the most dangerous, traditionally, and also the easiest to avoid.

I was able to report to him that he was correct about Henry eating things with dairy or eggs cooked in. He can eat cake, brownies, donuts and bread with those, for instance, and we no longer look at whether red sauce has milk, as some unexpectedly do. If it is flavored with cheese, duh. If it’s “traditional” flavor, why would I expect milk? But there it is!

I still have to pick up the eppy pen prescription, waiting at Walmart, which I’ll swing by tomorrow. In effect, that was what the appointment was about. Which is fine, though I was already curious about what a retest might find – if there’d be a breakthrough.

At the risk of having to reschedule it or whatever, I made an appointment a year ahead. He goes back, and gets the retesting next time, April 12, 2012. Subject, of course, to any need to change it for scheduling or insurance conflicts.

He may not be allergic to strawberries, but man is Henry allergic to something in a big way.

We spent much of the afternoon and evening with my mother and grandmother. Late in the day, my mother doled out M&M’s, being Pandora before I could remind her it’s milk chocolate. I consented to his having a few, but she reduced the number he got. It was probably half a dozen. Though perhaps there were a couple more thrown in. Of course, I also used to worry about something like M&M’s due to his clear reaction to the azo dyes in things. That seemed to be related to sensitivity to salycilates, which he also outgrew.

That was the last thing he ate before we came home, and pineapple has never bothered him before. I am sure nothing bad was in the other food, and the timing doesn’t fit.

When we got home, he looked fine but for one lumpy hive/welt I took to be a strong reaction to a mosquito bite.  I swatted one in the back seat as I strapped them in, so not unlikely to have had them feasting on him, and I have thought before that he’d reacted strongly to bites.

Then his face blew up with multiple hives and redness, one of the more severe attacks I’ve seen, if not up there with what happened when he ate a pile of eggs.

He’s had Benadryl and his face scrubbed in case there was a contact component.  He seemed to be a bit itchy.  Figured that’d help, whatever the cause.  I still lean toward the milk chocolate, though, and that’s impressive beyond anything I’ve seen him have to what amounts to a tiny trace of allergen.  I’m watching it go down even as I type, to where it’s mainly crimson cheeks and a couple peripheral spots.

Anyway, just when you figure you can relax…

For the record and any who might care to know, given his history, Henry not only seems unambiguously not allergic to strawberries, but also has decided he likes them a lot.

He’d mostly snubbed them previously. That seemed significant, given his dislike of eggs and peanuts, both of which are allergens. On the other hand, he loves dairy products, which give him a rash on contact, whatever they might do internally. That also tested positive. And he loves bananas most of all, but while those tested negative, he reacts worse to them than anything but significant ingestion of eggs. Apparently this is an “allergy” related to latex allergies, as opposed to the “oral allergy syndrome” food allergy they test for.

He wasn’t tested for strawberries, because we had no suspicion, and they limited it to the biggest (thus wheat and soy being included) and the supected (thus banana, which wouldn’t have been otherwise).

The remaining ones I can think of that are not yet known and potentially serious are a couple of the tree nuts and shellfish. There are allergies to Brazil nuts, walnuts and shellfish in the family, as there were with eggs and dairy.

I still see him get a little red from ??? when eating things that should not be a problem. The most recent instance, and it was minor to the point I’m not even sure it had anything to do with food, was basically just fries and iced tea at Wendy’s.

Anyway, glad that’s one more thing out of the way.

Some of the finer points of the thing with Henry are, that is. Tonight Last night he ate summer squash for the first time. A lot of it. With relish. He thought it was one of the Best Things Ever.

It was crookneck, to be exact.

The main list I always consult for relative levels of salicylates mentions butternut and pumpkin. Pumpkin is, from what I understood from having read about it in the past couple years, very closely related to zucchini. And the summer squashes are kind of related, right? So if pumpkin was reasonable, probably summer squash was fine. I also know crookneck was rather distinct from straight yellow summer squash.

Anyway, he ate a pile of crookneck squash, loved it, and later this evening last night got a little itchier than we might expect or prefer, if not full blown bad. Could be the heat. Could be the levels in the squash. Could be something else. All complicated by Valerie being sweet and wanting to share a cashew. However, he’d started itching before that, cashews are super low in salicylates, and a full-fledged allergy would presumably show a more spectacular result. So he got to eat maybe half of a cashew and thought it was the best thing he’d ever had. In fact, the itching could have been heightened simply by his level of sadness over cashew being removed from his mouth and the bowl being empty when he looked in it after following Val around until she set it down.

Still, the itching and slight redness above the usual made me go poking around, and I found a better site for salicylate levels, except it’s laid out badly.

That says “summer squash” is in the very lowest levels. Except… by “summer squash” they mean something also known as chayote, which is completely unfamiliar. Scientifically it is Sechium edule.

That same site says zucchini is one of the worst handful of veggies. It’s grouped with things like peppers, radishes and concentrated tomato products. In fact, the only things that aren’t herbs, spices and miscellany that fall higher are raisins, prunes and raspberries. Seems odd, but I guess he will not be trying the zucchini that’s in the fridge.

But… what about other summer squashes, including crookneck?

Zucchini is apparently part of Cucurbita pepo, along with some types of pumpkin, yellow summer and crookneck squashes, acorn, pattypan and spaghetti squashes.

So why would it be so high? And the others not? They’re not, right?

The site places pumpkin (but which variant?) and marrow squash into the second lowest category.

In the third it places “squash.” Just squash.

So helpful. So descriptive.

A bit more looking things up and I learn that “marrow” is simply a word for squash, in some countries. So saying “marrow squash” is like saying “squash squash.”

I also learn that, in the strictest sense, “marrow squash” is a large, straight green squash that resembles a zucchini, but is often grown to huge sizes and stuffed. I think I’ve seen marrow squash. I think we’ve always called it zucchini and it’s just been that zucchini don’t all look exactly the same.

But wait! If it’s a straight squash, why do I find pictures online of it looking like a green crookneck? Along with southern recipes.

Bottom line, apparently if you seen a reference to marrow squashes, it’s more likely to mean the various summer squashes as to mean the big green or crookneck green ones. Which leads me to that original salicylates list, the one I usually use for handy reference.

Voila! There’s “marrow,” in the moderate column for vegetables, along with pumpkin, parsnips, fresh tomato, carrots, and some other stuff. That fits.

What’s missing from both is a specific reference to butternut squash. I believe we may have developed the impression of butternut as okay by direct experimentation, or by seeing it elsewhere, since we’ve looked at many of these lists or sets of recommendations. They do mostly agree, fortunately.

That leaves me thinking that the reference to “squash” without any further distinction covers butternut and the general winter squashes. Then again, butternut is Cucurbita moschata, which also includes some pumpkin varieties, including one used for commercial canned pumpkin. What I think of as the main winter squash is Cucurbita maxima, which includes hubbard and buttercup.

You have to become an expert just to feed the kid safely. Well, it’s not unsafe for him to get a bit itchy, just uncomfortable. I’d say he clearly reacted mildly to summer squash or to something else, but there was a lack of “something else.” Maybe the charring on the steak? Bottom line, besides that this is confusing, and beware of naming conventions, is moderate amounts rule.

The other day, I gave him peach. No peal, just the inner part, after it had sat on the counter to ripen a few days. I meant only to give him a sliver, but he ate several. Thought it was awesome. And didn’t react at all. Check off peaches as a food he “can have.” But… not in large amounts. Or maybe not so much? I see the lists disagree. The new one has peaches in the second lowest class, along with things like lemon. And apple juice, which he can’t have, at least very much. And light grape joice, which he can’t have. At least not much. The other list has peaches in the second highest class. Along with some of the other stuff the alternate list has in the second lowest class. Wild.

This is why he becomes a science experiment. It’s the only way we learn for sure what he can have without becoming an itch factory or breaking out.