Update. Mayonnaise.

[lovimoment]

So, Alex came home from the hospital on April 30th, a Monday, weighing a whopping 5 lbs. He was so tiny that Bill could hold him in one hand. After the setback we'd had the week before with his cow's milk allergy, we thought it would be much longer. The NICU staff had started saying the previous Friday that he'd probably go home over the weekend

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Re: Alex

[lovimoment]

Well, the lactose intolerance isn't so bad - it's that he's also allergic to cow's milk proteins. When they thought it was just lactose intolerance, I could just get lactose-free milk (even the coffee shops have it here because so many people are lactose intolerant) and I could still eat cheese and butter.

But when they decided it was actually an allergy to the cow's milk proteins, I had to cut absolutely all dairy out of my diet - including the lactose-free milk - plus a long list of things that can interact with any cow's milk that slips in and exacerbate the allergic reaction - that list includes chocolate, peanuts, eggs, red berries (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.), and all canned foods. So, when I go to the grocery store, I basically shop only in the butcher and the produce sections. I can't have most prepared foods (pasta, cookies, breads, canned foods, lunchmeats, etc.) because they nearly all contain milk powder, butter, lactic acid, whey, or egg whites. There is one type of bread, one type of cracker and one type of cookie here that I can have, and there is only one sorbet (mandarin), but I think it has a really weird aftertaste. All the candies have chocolate or milk, or both. The only protein I can eat is fresh meat that we've prepared (I actually don't like meat all that much and I used to get most of my protein from eggs, yogurt, cheese and peanut butter, all of which are verboten now). At most restaurants there is only one thing I can have - the steak and grilled vegetables. I can't eat at Italian restaurants at all because all the pastas contain eggs and nearly all the sauces are either cream sauces or made from canned tomatoes. Even pesto often has parmesan in it.

So we have to cook almost all of our meals from scratch now. I can use about 10% of my former recipe book by making adjustments, but a lot of the dishes I can't do because they'd be nothing like the original if I left out the forbidden ingredients.