Taste Restaurant Redux

We tried out Taste Restaurant last night; it's the newest addition to the the New Toronto strip of Lakeshore. Again, when we arrived I checked with the manager about peanut and tree nuts and was assured that all of their dishes were made fresh on the premises and no nuts were used. I had a 1/2 chicken dinner, while my hub tried the cod cakes. DJ ordered nuggets from the kids menu. Everything was tasty and the meal was great - except for our fussing toddler who refused to sit still and wailed repeatedly for a milkshake. It's great to have a place to walk to - and we'll definitely try it again - once they've invested in some booster seats!

Taste Restaurant

I'm totally excited to try this new restaurant - Taste - tonight. A quick call to the manager confirmed there are no peanuts or tree nuts used in any of the dishes. This resto takes the place of an old fave - Lee's Thai Spring Roll - that moved a couple of blocks west on Lakeshore about six months ago. Of course, we can't eat there anymore, but have really been missing having a local restaurant we can walk to when the mood strikes. Will blog more tomorrow about how it turns out.

Feeling Pissy

There have been a couple of times since DJ has been diagnosed with peanut allergy that I get the feeling that certain friends just don't get it. They don't get how difficult it is to find safe restaurants to eat at and why we just don't take his own food with him to ones where we can't safely order something for him. I don't know how other people deal with this, but I don't want DJ to feel excluded. And to me, sitting in a restaurant eating food he couldn't possibly even touch doesn't seem fair. So when a 'friend' recently suggested I 'think about' bringing DJ to eat at an unsafe restaurant because that's his preference, I sort of felt like telling him to shove it.

Frankly, there's not a lot to think about for us. DJ's safety comes first - always. And for friends that don't understand that, I think we'll probably see less and less of them.

Food Allergy Awareness Month

It's Food Allergy Awareness Month. Check out this link at Allergysense.com to win a prize for sending in your expired Epipen and Twinjet devices. The idea is that expired injectors can be used for practice by newly diagnosed families and those simply looking for a refresher.

DJ's pens don't expire for another month, but when they do, we'll be using them ourselves to practice on oranges. That was the advice from our allergist.

Campino - Your Info Placement Sucks

Last week, I was mortified to find out that we had a potentially dangerous snack easily accessible to DJ in our house - Campino Yogurt Gummies. I had opened the package more than a month ago, with the remainder chip-clipped and sitting in the cupboard, right beside DJ's snack basket. Several times in the last couple of weeks, he had grabbed them, and asked for one. Each time, I said no and simply put them back.

Then, last week, my mother and father-in-law baby-sat for the day. DJ wasn't feeling well, and neither my husband or I were in a position to take another day off. Again, DJ tried his luck with the candies, and asked Grandma for one. Luckily, she read the label and caught what both of us had previously missed; a warning that the candies could contain peanuts, hazelnuts and almonds.

I distinctly remember reading the label when I pulled the candy out of my Christmas stocking; I also remember my husband saying it was challenging to find peanut and nut free treats to fill it with.

Yikes. So how did this product end up in our house with two people that supposedly read every label every time? Some mighty strange allergy info placement.

While I'm not abdicating either of us from responsibility (and believe me, we both felt terrible about it) Campino's placement of the warning was so odd, I'm not that surprised neither of us saw it. The product ingredients were listed in English on the back of the package on the left-hand side. The French ingredients were listed immediately below. Neither language included an allergy warning immediately below the listed ingredients, where you would normally find it. Instead, the allergy warning was on the right-hand side of the package, underneath a product description. I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I'm pretty sure the warning was in English only. I'll double check and report back later.

This is obviously a lesson for both of us. I look at the ingredients list and immediately below for any allergy warnings. I don't examine the whole package. From now on I will.

In the meantime, I will be wary of any candies made by the family company, Stork. http://www.storck.ca/en/index.php.

Has anybody else seen products with labelling like this, where the allergy information is located in a different spot than the ingredients?

Thanks goodness DJ didn't actually have any of them and a shout out to my mother-in-law for not assuming everything in our house was safe and reading the label. If not, DJ may have inadvertently suffered a potentially dangerous reaction.

Talking PA

Since day one, we've talked to DJ about his peanut and tree-nut allergy. Given his young age, at this stage we're really just trying to install an understanding that he can't eat nuts and that he has a very serious allergy. Nearly every time I'm cooking, I re-read labels in front of him and tell him how I'm making sure there are no nuts. We do the same thing in the grocery store, and I make a big deal about showing him that I'm checking all food to make sure it's safe.

Because he is so very young and rarely out of my care, there is an almost non-existent risk of someone feeding him. Still, lately, I've started trying to explain how he can never take food from others, saying he must say no and that they must 'ask my mommy first'

Recently, when I asked him what he would say if someone asked him if he wanted to eat nuts, he veered off course. Normally, he promptly replies with our practised answer "No nuts, I'm allergic" But this time, he said "Yes, nuts are yummy yummy. I like nuts."

I quickly snapped back that he must never eat nuts, and holding his pudgy little hands in mine, I told him he could become very, very sick, even die.

I'm almost embarrassed to write this post, thinking about my over-reaction and how I may have frightened DJ. Of course, he doesn't understand death. Our beloved 14 year-old American Eskimo Stella recently died, and he tells me nearly daily how is going to hug and kiss her better.

This article I just read in Allergic Living struck home. Clearly, we will have to find ways to make DJ understand just how serious his allergy is while not making him over-anxious.

Over the last year we've really learned that this allergy is manageable. With a little research, vigilance and communicating the right balance that will keep him safe yet still let him enjoy life is sure to be a challenge.

Terroni

I recently met another PA kid mom, who tipped me off to Terroni. As we chatted about the challenges of eating out with a severely allergic child, she mentioned how many great experiences her family has had at this smallish (4 locations) Toronto chain. I've long enjoyed the pizzas at Terroni's, but hadn't even thought of it as an option. Mainly, it didn't register because every time I've eaten there in the last couple of years, it's been overwhelmingly busy; and the last thing I want when eating out with DJ, is wait staff that's too busy to take my concerns seriously. But now, with a recommendation in hand, we will definitely be trying out Terroni the next time we're up for a night out.

Mostly, it was great to hear about how another family deals with this allergy and still manages to live life normally - and by normally, I sort of mean eating out. It also got me thinking about all of the other safe places that are out there that we're bypassing, for whatever reason.

That's a call for suggestions! Send them my way. And thanks.