No Soup For Me!

Today is Friday, January 8th, 2010. I LOVE food. Ask anyone. I'm a little obsessed with it, actually. My favorite channel is the Food Network and I'm completely obsessed with any show about cake. I can't help myself. My cousin, David was the same way. My son, Brady wants to be a chef. He loves Rachel Ray. He's six and knows recipes by heart. Half of his Christmas presents were cooking/baking related! What can I say, it's a big part of our lives. Maybe it's genetic?

And then this...

Three days ago, I was given some life-altering news. I hadn't been feeling well for quite a while. I thought I might have developed a soy allergy. I grew up suffering as many of us do with seasonal allergies. Basically, I'm allergic to anything green and outside. My allergist once told me that the two places I could live allergy-free were...are you ready for this? Antartica or (drum roll please) a pine tree! After 10 years of shots as a child, I resumed shots after moving back to Arizona only to have two bad reactions within a few months of each other and going off the shots cold turkey. (Notice the food reference?)

I have always known that I have some food allergies...melons, for example which I recently learned is related to a ragweed allergy... so I went to get tested for food allergies. Curious to see what else might be on the list and really expecting a ho hum kind of a result, I patiently held my breath as the nurse poked all 40 foods into my the sensitive skin of my back. As I lay on my stomach for the required 20 minutes, itching more and more furiously as each minute dragged on, I knew the news would not be the best. Call it a gut instinct...

The nurse came in to check on me after 10 minutes of blue cross-approved medical torture only to have to have the doctor come in to see the unusual amount of redness and swelling on my calamine-deprived back. In walks the doctor and I hear words come out of his mouth that I never in a million years thought I would hear (or adhere to for that matter). He said, "Oh boy, it looks like you're going to have to stop eating. Haa haa ha! No soup for you!" Yes, he actually said that. We all laughed and hahaha, it must be some insider allergy office kind of a sick joke, I guess. He's a regular comedian, right!? Hi, Doctor Manning! You're the best!

Anyway, here I am now on day three of completely eliminating (what's more than many?) many of the foods I have eaten all of my life. Granted, some of them I knew I was allergic to. I sneeze and my eyes itch and water when I peel and eat an orange...(which by the way, I had started to eat an orange every night TO BE HEALTHY!...Carrots and celery. My throat usually gets a little itchy, but nothing (I thought) worth NOT eating them. Iceberg lettuce (never touch the stuff but have a salad nearly every day of the week), peas, peaches (oh please!), corn and tomatoes (no more chips and salsa?), yeast (I could easily o.d. on bread and butter any day any time, just try me!), and white rice to name a few. I'm half Puerto Rican for pity sakes! NOT having white rice, might just send me to my grave...kill me now!

This is just a sample of my list of no no items. Now here's the good news. If you show a 0 out of 4 on the allergy test, you truly have NO allergy to that food item. Anything else and there is a 50-50 chance that you will have some kind of noticeable reaction to it. Soooo...that means that for the next few months, I will have to eliminate all of these items from my diet and then try to add them back, one by one to see what happens. Want to join in on the fun?

This is where I'm going to need some help. I've never had to think about my weight (until the very second I turned 39) and I've always eaten whatever I wanted to. I work out and I try to eat healthy foods. (Did I mention I can't have whole grain wheat, which is, of course, the only bread I eat because it's HEALTHY!) My challenge is going to be NOT eating all of these things and staying HAPPY and positive in the face of the evil allergy beast who has plunked itself down at my table.

I have started to research food allergies and picked up a couple of books from the library. What I noticed right away is that there is a definite LACK of specific information about this issue. At Barnes and Noble it took two of us to find a grand total of 4 books on food allergies. "Isn't that the strangest thing," said the B&N employee, "They hid them here in the middle of a couple of different types of Cancers." If B&N doesn't have a stock of books on the issue, who will? I want someone to tell me what I can eat in place of the things I can't so I can still make my family's favorite hot Italian sausage soup! No soup for me is right, as it happens. It's got a tomato base! UGH!!!!!

I know there are other people out there who have lots of allergies to lots of foods and are in the same kitchen with me. If you can and are able to help me with advise or humor, I would love to hear from you. In the meantime, I am going to read the few books I found and google everything thing I can find and get back to you.

Oh yeah, and by the way, I'm not allergic to soy...so that's good.