After many months of testing, my stepson was diagnosed with EOE short for Eosinophilic esophagiti. In a nut shell he is suffering from food allergies. The symptoms have varied from mild to extreme and seem to be worse in the fall and spring. The thinking is that the food allergies get harder for his body to deal with when he is also dealing with seasonal allergies.
So what does this mean? It means that I need to find a whole new way of cooking. For the time being he is not to eat any wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, dairy, eggs, sesame, and sage. The first eight food items are the most common food allergies and the last two were identified through allergy scratch testing. As a growing teenager, he is often hungry!
I am learning fast. I am also so glad that there are many options in the grocery store to help make this happen. Chicken, fresh vegetables, and a grain is pretty standard dinner fare in our home. But we need to be able to mix it up a bit. We also eat a lot of fish – but that will not work for Dom. Unfortunately, one of his all time favorite recipes, Shrimp and Pesto Penne, is completely off limits. It contains cheese, pine nuts, wheat pasta, and shrimp. Oh my! He can no longer eat any of that!
There is a lot of food that he can eat, and like I said, I am learning fast!
Tonight’s dinner was super easy! Thanks to rice pasta, I was able to make him a hearty meal of pasta topped with a meat sauce. He loved it!
Top Eight Free Pasta and Meat Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 lb. organic grass fed hamburger
- 8 mushrooms sliced
- 1/2 zucchini sliced and quartered
- salt
- pepper
- 1 28 oz. can Marinara Sauce (I carefully read labels for ingredients!)
- 1 lb. rice pasta
Directions
- Bring water to boil for pasta.
- Brown hamburger in sauté pan, drain oil.
- Add mushrooms and sauté until tender.
- Add zucchini and sauté until just beginning to get tender.
- Add sauce and simmer all together.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- When the water comes to a boil add pasta and cook according to package.
- Drain and rinse pasta.
- Add pasta to sauté pan and mix with sauce. Heat throughly.
- Enjoy!
I am going to have to be on the look out for vegan “parmesan cheese”. But honestly, the sauce had such great flavor that we didn’t even miss the parmesan topping.
As a blended family, I will be cooking allergy free meals every other week. So follow along on this journey with me as I figure out how to feed a growing teenage boy delicious food and full of the nutrients that he needs to grow and be healthy.
Top Eight Free Pasta and Meat Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 lb. organic free range hamburger
- 8 mushrooms sliced
- 1/2 zucchini sliced and quartered
- salt
- pepper
- 1 28 oz. can Marinara Sauce (I carefully read labels for ingredients!)
- 1 lb. rice pasta
Instructions
- Bring water to boil for pasta.
- Brown hamburger in sauté pan, drain oil.
- Add mushrooms and sauté until tender.
- Add zucchini and sauté until just beginning to get tender.
- Add sauce and simmer all together.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- When the water comes to a boil add pasta and cook according to package.
- Drain and rinse pasta.
- Add pasta to sauté pan and mix with sauce. Heat throughly.
- Enjoy!
how about zucchini noodles? I do not like zucchini but am trying to learn to like and eat them. One day, I was with friends after my Pampered Chef work with the hostess. She invited us to join dinner and played with new toy from Pampered Chef. I was surprised at myself for enjoying eating the zoodles. 🙂 Also I tried butternut noodles, too. They are tasty. Maybe you can try with Dominick?
Pampered Chef sells awesome veggie spiralizer, the new toy. It can do wide, futtucni, thin “noodles” from various veggies that would work with it.
Love ya sis.
Your dish looks delicious. How great that you now know how to help your stepson with his allergies.
Thanks! It is something that we are working on. The diet change is really helping him.
So sorry that your step son is dealing with this. I have/had a lot of food allergies for the past 8 years, well what we thought were food allergies. But turns out that it was because I had such severe environmental allergies that my body thought all these foods were allergens…I am going through allergy shots right now, I’m on month 10 of a 5 year plan. Perhaps if your son got allergy shots his reactions wouldn’t be as bad in the bad allergy season? I think allergy shots are TOTALLY worth it! I was getting sinus stuff every 3-4 weeks and it would take a week or two to recover from it each time…but now when I feel a sinus thing coming on I can take some OTC meds and it’s gone in a day or two. And it’s helped with me being able to eat foods that were once on the no eat list. While that probably won’t happen for him maybe you can control how bad the reactions are? Good luck! I have a lot of food that I like, I wasn’t eating dairy, soy, corn, peanuts or nut and chicken…so I have lots of foods…a lot of what I ate was also gluten free, just because things that tend to not have those other things are also gluten free. And that was way longer than intended, oops!
This was great information! Thank you so much! I am sorry it took a while to get back to you. The changes in food are making a huge difference. He really notices – so we are definitely making steps in the right direction. Allergy shots may be in his future. He did go through the scratch testing. We are working with his doctor and will be meeting with a nutritionist. For now we are focusing on the food and pinpointing exactly which of the top eight he is reacting to. That in of itself is a long process.
You are amazing. I had no idea that you could cook such a delicious looking meal for someone with so many food allergies.
Janis, fortunately there are a lot of resources! Plus we will be meeting with a nutritionist to make sure we are covering all the important nutrients. I am a bit worried about him getting enough calcium.
I wouldn’t worry about that, as long as he eats veggies with high calcium content he’ll be fine 🙂 Like broccoli has more calcium than milk does.
Hey! I’d like to try that rice pasta? Did you get it at Trader Joe’s? I’ve been having stomach issues, so I’m trying to cut back on gluten and see if that helps for starters.
Hi Carole, Yes, it is a green bag from Trader Joe’s and it is Organic Brown Rice Penne Pasta. It tasted delicious!
This dish looks great. I am so glad you found out what was bothering your son. Now you can take control of things and I know he will feel so much better. I know you will create great recipes the whole family will love! I am sure everyone in the house will become involved and learn a lot too!
Yes, he is really feeling better! That is making it all worth while. He really is noticing the difference – it is huge!
Oh my – the poor guy. Allergies are no fun! I have friends with food allergies and I find it easy to incorporate their needs into my kitchen. I’ll keep watching to see your progress!
It is a whole new way of cooking! But there really are so many options available.