Happy New Year!! I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season.
We spent New Year's Eve with friends. My best friend/neighbor came over with her family. Our kids have grown up together, and our girls are "BFF's". For those without young girls, that stands for "Best Friends Forever." We had a nice dinner, played Rock Band on the Wii and the kids managed to stay up to watch the ball drop. They were having an easier time of it than us adults.
Planning the dinner menu was a bit challenging. Not only were we accommodating each others' family traditions, but also accommodating Abigail's peanut allergy and her son who has Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EE) which is an allergic inflammation disease that occurs in the Esophagus. Their family always does fondue on New Year's Eve so she brought a delicious cheese fondue for our appetizer and a chocolate fondue for dessert. She had a time finding a bakery bread for the cheese fondue that was safe for Abigail and ended up also having to bake a scratch pound cake for the chocolate fondue. Thanks to my dear friend for doing that! I usually put a beef brisket in the crock pot and make a really good tangy barbecue beef dish. By using her barbecue sauce and substituting ginger ale for the beer, it was then safe for her son. There is so very little he can eat and my friend had to bring over most of his food. If we could make what we were eating safe for him, we did. In the end, the food was fabulous, everyone stayed healthy and we had a great evening!
Here's a link to some more information on Eosinophilic Esophagitis. My prayers are with my friend, her son and the rest of their family today. Her son who is just 7 has been on an elimination diet for months now with no significant improvement to his condition. They are starting an elemental diet today and he will be drinking his meals for the next 8 weeks or so. That's got to be extremely tough for a 7 year old, but he's a brave little boy! We love you guys! Hang in there!
Coming soon, my first ever give-away and my own Top 10 list of healthy eating habits for the new year. And, I'm still waiting anxiously for the food challenge results for the first Sublingual Peanut Clinical Trial participants.
