How often did you cook before you had allergies?

I used to love going out all the time to different restaurants, and of course fast food (probably too often). However, after I was diagnosed with a few common allergies which caused me general upset stomach or headaches, I started cooking at home a lot. Now I don’t even think about going out much anymore, I really love cooking!

Just curious if my experience is a unique one, or if others realized how much they like cooking because of their allergies. I’d still rather not have them, but it is nice that it opened me up to a whole new area of my life.

-Mason

My food problems came about because I LOVED to bake! I had chronic yeast and didn’t realize it. While I was enjoying finding the BEST bread recipe in the world, I was training my body to rebel at what I fed it. That was several years ago. I can now ‘cheat’ a little, but not very often.

The willingness to experiment has come in handy, though! I will usually try any combination of acceptable ingredients, trying to find something that my family will like, using my (fairly) limited list of foods.

A love of cooking has helped. But you can learn to like doing just about anything, when necessary. :-)

I hope to be able to visit here often. (Don’t have internet at home.) Those who had questions about my recipes, I’ve tried to fix them.

I have to limit eating out due to my multitude of allergies which some are life-threatening. I have found a few restuarants and select items at those restuarants that I can eat, but try to avoid eating out. My husband does most of the cooking, but we have a pretty regular menu as it can be difficult to find enough substitutes. I have had to give up on some recipes because I was allergic to 70% of the ingredients. My family finds it difficult to cook when I come to visit. My main allergies are soy, milk, eggs and pork with soy and pork leading to anaphylaxis. I never leave home without my arsenal of allergy medication and my epi-pen.