Week Fourteen: Allergies

A tale of woe

My week:

When I was a kid, I started having really bad seasonal allergies. I was allergic to everything, it seemed, from grass to our pet cats. My parents took me to an allergist by my school, and I got tested.

We were expecting to find a lot of environmental allergies, and we did, but we were not expecting to find any food allergies. In fact, I tested positive for 11 food allergies!

And these were weird food allergies. Not your run-of-the-mill “I’m allergic to pine nuts and dairy!” No, I was allergic to potatoes, watermelon, soy (which is in everything), peas, sesame seeds. Things like that.

I had to carry an epipen for cauliflower, oranges, and pork. Like, what? Have you ever heard of anyone being allergic to those things? And meanwhile, little me was going around warning people, “I’m DEATHLY allergic to cauliflower, oranges, and pork.”

So I followed a restrictive diet for years. I think this was a much bigger struggle for my parents than for me, since they were the ones actually feeding me. But I missed french fries and watermelon! One year, for Hanukkah, since I couldn’t have potatoes, my mom made me latkes out of rice.

After about two years of this, I switched schools, and my parents moved me to a different allergist closer to my new school. He decided to retest me for the sake of his records and, surprise surprise, I had NO FOOD ALLERGIES AT ALL.

I still had all my environmental allergies, but I didn’t test positively for any food allergies. We were all baffled. I had taken a faulty test, and I had avoided all those foods for no good reason.

In the past, the story has ended there.

But recently, there has been a new chapter. Remember a few weeks ago when I announced that I was allergic to snap peas? Turns out it’s more complicated then that.

In fact, I have oral allergy syndrome.

This is, apparently, quite common, and it can only occur among adults who have pollen allergies (guilty!). Basically, certain raw fruits and vegetables have protein structures that resemble pollen, so the immune system briefly mistakes the produce for pollen and has an allergic reaction. Don’t ask me why this suddenly started happening now.

The good news is, it’s not serious! Because it’s an allergy by misidentification, it can’t cause anaphylaxis and the reaction will always stay localized to the mouth. The bad news is, it means I’m allergic to, like, a ton of fresh fruits and veggies! We’re talking snap peas, celery, green beans, bell pepper, avocado, apples, and more. I’m sure I’ll keep discovering more and more foods that I’m allergic to.

A silver lining: the foods are fine as long as they’re cooked.

Interestingly, the list of potential offenders for oral allergy syndrome has a lot of overlap with that first list of food allergies. Peas, soy, melon, and more are on the list. I wonder if that caused my initial false test. Maybe my immune system misidentified the proteins then, mistaking them for pollen. Although I don’t know why that would have happened, since oral allergy syndrome isn’t supposed to be a thing until adulthood.

We’ll see how disruptive these new restrictions end up being. So far, I think it’ll be okay, but it’s kind of a bummer! I mean, I like apples and avocados! Anyway, here’s what I made this week.

What I made:

Tofu salad bowl

Tofu salad bowl: You can’t tell me this isn’t the most beautiful salad you’ve ever seen. It’s so pretty! From The Weekday Vegetarians, in case you were wondering! The dressing is the star of the show here, a delicious citrusy situation. Also, you can’t really see from the picture, but there are peanuts in here! What fun. This is the second recipe I’ve made using Jenny Rosenstrach’s crispy baked tofu, and it’s just such a great way to make tofu! Easy and delicious. This recipe made more salad than I anticipated, so I didn’t dress it all, and it actually keeps quite well for leftovers as long as you separate out the tofu and leave the leftovers undressed. I might have some for lunch today, in fact…

Green pasta

Green pasta: I revisited the green pasta from The Weekday Vegetarians because it’s so delicious and easy to make! Again, I used store-bought pesto, so it isn’t as vibrantly, beautifully green as the version in the book, but it still tasted great! My mom and I both had it as leftovers the next day. Fabulous!

Spring rolls of friendship

Spring rolls: I’m excited to talk about this one, because one of my friends sent me this recipe out of the blue! For someone who only started cooking a few months ago, I LOVE that my friends now think of me when they see good recipes. It made me so happy when she sent me this! Guess what, they turned out delicious and were really fun to make. I also made a peanut dipping sauce, not pictured here. I will say, my spring roll wrapping skills are… subpar. I definitely get the sense that it’s a skill you have to practice. Anyway, these are refreshing, light, and satisfying!

What I learned:

I learned the difference between julienne and match sticks.

I think my favorite type of chopping is a chiffonade! There’s something so satisfying about it.

This is not food related, but I watched a few episodes of Young Sheldon, and I want to talk about it. First of all, I know Young Sheldon gets clowned on, but I bet those people making fun of it have never actually seen the show. I never particularly liked The Big Bang Theory, so I never had much interest in Young Sheldon, but it is unbelievable how different it is from its source material. And, in my opinion, it’s much better. Okay, so Young Sheldon is a single cam show, but it really has the vibe of a classic family sitcom. It reminds me a lot of The Goldbergs, a show I loved when I was in elementary/middle school. Whereas The Big Bang Theory can be pretty mean-spirited, Young Sheldon is charmingly sincere and tender. The family dynamic is really quite sweet. Also, no laugh track, if that was your hangup with The Big Bang Theory. I don't know why I feel moved to talk about this, except that I think it’s striking to have a spinoff be so well-developed as its own thing, and really be independent of its source material. The only other example I can think of is Better Call Saul (which I never really watched). And in that case, its source material, Breaking Bad (which I never watched) is pretty much universally beloved. I don’t often hear people say “Better Call Saul is sooooo much better than Breaking Bad!” But, in my opinion, Young Sheldon is sooooo much better than The Big Bang Theory! I guess all this to say, I don’t think Young Sheldon deserved to be clowned on in the way it was. If you like sitcoms, I would recommend it. It’s cute.

Thanks for reading!