Your go-to for Top 8 food allergies friendly recipes.
Hi, Our names are Katherine and Rob. Together we are parents to 4 kids some of whom have multiple food allergies.
Welcome to The Allergen Free Kitchen where our family is exploring recipes for families, kids, and adults struggling with top 8 and 9 food allergies.
Our family started a long journey of major food restrictions when one of our 4 children developed an allergic condition known as EoE. In response their medical team had our child on a very restrictive food elimination diet to find out which foods were the issue for our kids.
When we knew about the allergies we put all our cooking and baking knowledge into finding things we could all eat safely.
We have a passion for cooking and love challenges. Our biggest drives are to make sure our kids never miss out and to share our recipes with you to help you find joy in food.
The recipes on the site are devloped or adapted by Rob and I.
We are not professionals, but we have lived these top 8 food allergies and meals everyday!
We are not trained chefs or dieticians. I have worked in commercial kitchens and cook everyday and have a passion for cooking and baking. Figuring out how to make the easiest meals for our family with food restrictions is my passion. I, Katherine, have Allergy certifications for food allergies in food handling, manufacturing and processing, and in management of food services. Currently certified in Canada by SafeCheck food training and updated in 2024.
Rob holds a designation for accessibility for those with disabilties. Being an advocate for himself, his disabilities, and ours Rob is a huge part of our journey as a family. His drive is create a website that helps make recipes accessible to those with priority food allergies.
We thought since we have done a lot of the heavy lifting by developing top 8 & 9 allergen safe recipes, we should share them with other families because we know how hard this journey can be.
If we can help just one person struggling to find new recipes that they can create with their food allergies, it is worth it for us.
Making dinner when you have allergies shouldn't be stressful or contain a ton of ingredients that are hard to find. It should be delicious and comforting.
Finding out one of our four kids had severe top 8 food allergies was life changing.
In addition to anaphylactic allergies our kids have food intolerances and one has a condition called EoE.
What is EoE?
EoE is an Eosinophilic Disorder where certain foods cause their body to release eosinophilia (white blood cells) that swell and cause the oesophagus to narrow and be inflamed. That means food can easily get stuck requiring it to be removed surgically. That was how we found out about our child's issues.
It is a different kind of allergy than anaphylaxis and doesn't show up on skin tests
- the only way to figure out the triggers is by eliminating all high risk foods and then re-introducing them when the oesophagus heals.
Foods must be re-introduced one food type at a time, with scopes in between to see if their body was releasing eosinophilia.
The two basic treatments are to cut the food permanently forever or medicate with acid reducers, steroids, or other medications forever. Medications only caused other issues in our little one so here we are cutting foods from our lifestyle.
Our Kids 'Progress
In the passed two years we have isolated the exact EoE triggers as all dairy products. In the past year our child had a reaction that was more severe than an EoE reaction and we are currently exploring if they have developed an Ana allergy to dairy.
Our Recipes Willl STILL be Top 9 Free
Even though we have made some allergy wins and been able to re-introduce some foods with strict medical guidance with our kids' medical team we are continuing to develop recipes that are strictly top 9 free. We have lived the food restrictions for so long that we understand how hard it can be to find safe recipes that work with multiple ingredient substitutions.
The Future
We are also able to start adding in some restaurants visits with our kids. This is something that we will be researching and stressing over as we haven't been to a restaurant with the kids in so long. We hope you join us for this new phase of our food allergy journey.
In 2023, Katherine was diagnosed with MCAS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, along with other conditions she already had: POTS, Chronic Fatigue (ME/CFS) and more. This meant we had to make sure the foods were safe for me to eat, too.
Our Journey
When I started to look at what we could eat I found it really daunting.
We had to eliminate:
- Dairy,
- Egg,
- Wheat
- Soy,
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Tree nuts
- Peanuts
- Mustard
- Cantaloupe
- and Gluten!
In addition to other random anaphylactic food allergies.
I knew we had to do it as it is for our child's health.
I feel strongly that my job as a parent is to help my children live a long, healthy and happy life.
A lot of tears were shed and anger lashed out by all of us
- this was to be a massive lifestyle change.
How were we going to do this?
I found substitutions that worked for us and recipes similar to what we liked but was finding I was still adapting almost every recipe we used.
I would cobble together vegan and gluten free recipes to come up with something somewhat palatable we could beg four kids to begrudgingly eat. Figuring out where to start with cooking with top 8 allergies is tough. I went back to our favourite recipes, tired of hearing the kids tell us everything they missed, and started to rework our tried and true recipes. If we were substituting I may as well use recipes I knew we liked.
It wasn't long before I started to take our knowledge and develop our own recipes.
Those are the recipes we are sharing with you, except one or two family recipes we share with their permission.
Shortly after we had other friends that also had massive food changes to make.
That was when I realised I wanted to help others in our position, people who want to eat what they love but not spend forever in the kitchen.
Working With Rob and Katherine
If you are a brand or blogger, or anyone that would like to work or collaborate with us. Please contact us or email us at Katherine@TheAllergenFreeKitchen.com. We have food photography, recipe development, and collaboration services available. Here at The Allergen Free Kitchen we would love to work with you. For information on working with us on food photography projects please check out our Photography Portfolio with A Flight of Fancy Food Photography.
We are striving to provide family friendly, easy, quick, and delicious recipes with loads of taste but zero of the top 8 allergens.
Kind regards,
Katherine
Katherine@TheAllergenFreeKitchen.com
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If you are looking for more information on living with Food Allergies consider these resources:
Allergy Resources
If you are struggling with allergies or which foods are safe for you we encourage you to contact your medical team to help determine what is best for you.
For additional allergy resources please check out the following allergy education and advocacy pages:
In the United States:
- Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Connection Team (FAACT) - Home Page
- Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) - Home Page
- U.S Food & Drug Administration (FDA) - Food Allergies - Home Page
- Recalls, Reporting and Alerts on Food - in The United States of America
- Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA - Recalls
- US Food & Drug Administration, FDA - Recalls
- Celiac Disease Foundation - Home Page
- National Celiac Association (NCA) - Home Page
- Beyond Celiac - Home Page
- Celiac.com - Home Page
In Canada
- Food Allergy Canada - Home Page
- Celiac Canada - Home Page
- The Government of Canada - Health Site- Food Allergies
- The Government of Canada - Food Allergen Labelling, the List of Ingredients and Allergens on Food Labels, and Allergens and Gluten Sources Labelling
Recalls, Reporting and Alerts on Food - in Canada