Lunchbox Lunches

One of the things that caused me stress when thinking about sending Sophie off to school was what to send in her lunch. At home, she usually eats leftovers from dinner the night before, or we cook something fast for her lunch. I knew that sandwiches would be okay sometimes, but rice bread is too expensive for her to take every day. Plus, I wanted her to be able to pack her own lunch. As it turns out, she takes muffins for her lunch most days. They don't have to be refrigerated and I can actually make a batch and freeze it, so I'm not baking constantly. If she puts 1 or 2 frozen muffins in her lunchbox the night before, they are thawed by lunchtime.

Do you need extra muffin recipes? In addition to using the muffin recipes from my cookbook, I also make the quick bread recipes into muffins--mix up the batter and pour it into greased or lined muffin cups. A recipe for 1 loaf of bread makes between 12 and 18 muffins, depending on the size of your muffin cups and how full you fill them. Then bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. When they are done, the tops should be starting to brown and a toothpick or knife inserted into a muffin should come out clean. I like to allow the muffins to cool for about 5 minutes in the muffin pan and then slide a knife down the side to lift the muffins out one by one. If you're storing them, especially freezing them, you'll want to let them cool completely before putting them in a ziploc bag. If you're not storing them, they taste best warm from the oven, in my opinion!

There is one drawback--Sophie's older sisters now take muffins in their lunches, too, and we are going through more muffins than you can imagine!

Some of the other things Sophie has taken in her lunchbox are: celery sticks or apple slices with Sunbutter (sunbutter.com and sold at Target in our area!), chips with bean dip or chicken salad, and of course sandwiches Sophie Safe Style--rice bread with SoyNutButter or Sunbutter and jelly.

I'm so proud!

This is Sophie's first year eating lunch at school, as well as her first year having a snack everyday at school. This created all sorts of nervousness for me before school started, but I shouldn't have worried. Yesterday Sophie told me that a few weeks ago, her teacher accidentally gave her Goldfish at snack time.
Feeling incredulous, I asked, "What did you do?"
She said, "I said 'I can't eat those,' and she cleaned off my desk." She said it as matter-of-fact as if she was telling me her spelling words.
Knowing that food plays a central and volatile role in Sophie's life, I am so proud that she is so relaxed about it!

Byproducts

One of the byproducts of being the mother of a food allergic child is that people send me all kinds of interesting articles, information about new research, etc. My sister-in-law Mandy sent me a link to an article about the woman who writes this blog: allergicgirl.blogspot.com and in reading her blog, I found out about some new things happening with food labeling practices in the United States.

Apparently, there was recently an open FDA hearing about "may contain" statements. The AFAA is trying to find out how people are using "may contain" statements and advise the FDA appropriately. If you would like to add your voice, please participate in this short survey about food labels:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=LT6Y49lRmdLyNqqV_2bFLvuw_3d_3d

It only took me a few minutes, and in addition to enabling me to be heard, I also took the opportunity to examine how I am using those elusive "may contain" statements, and what I really think they mean. Thank goodness for byproducts!