Everything Has Egg In It

In his quest to be the most difficult baby alive, Philip has developed an allergy to egg.

Oh, and also tomato.

So, this is a fun new discovery. Philip is also eating table food. He is also in that place in life where he MUST eat what everyone else is eating. His own food is not good enough anymore. He must have mom and dad's food. Excellent.

In case any of you have forgotten, I live in a small town in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. We have a Wal-Mart, an Albertson's and a Smith's (Kroger). Well, what we don't have is a health food store. And you know where you can buy food that is free of Allergens, such as egg? Not at Wal-Mart. So now I have to plan a once a month trip to SLC, three hours away in order to buy pastas, breads, egg replacer, chips, cookies, various other snacks, frozen waffles, soups and many other items that are egg and tomato free.

Now in case this is lost on any of you, I want you to realize what this means. This means birthday cake made with a can of soda. This means no pizza, no spaghetti, no white bread, no mac and cheese, no pie, no poptarts, no ranch flavored anything (check it out, it has tomato powder in it), no hot dogs, no sausage and no to a lot of other things as well. The list of "egg" derivatives is about a mile long. Instead of memorizing it, I am just carrying a notebook around writing down things that make my son's face swell up and writing them off as "Never Again." The list is long.

See, if life allowed it, I would be a Vegan (except for cheese, man I love cheese) because I am not all that attatched to meat and dairy anyway. And now that eggs are no longer allowed in my house, it would be an easy transition. IF we lived close enough to a store like Wild Oats in order to supplement our diet. As it stands, Wal-Mart is not Vegan friendly. However, we are considering just throwing all the meat out. I hardly use it anyway. Right now I have about six pounds of frozen meat (and by meat I mean turkey products because beef makes me poop) in my freezer and some of it has been there for a questionably long time. I like beans and tofu and spinach (good spinach, not this new e coli sporting stuff). And I can get iron and protein in those forms. But then factor in these stupid kids, and I suddenly feel obligated to let them eat what they want. Mommy can be a vegetarian, but if Helen wants some turkey for lunch, I don't know how to all of a sudden say, "No, we don't eat turkey anymore."

Fortunately in all of this, god has been especially kind. Our church has a large number of hippies in it. They are part of a co-op. They order organic everything and have invited us to tag along in this venture. Two of them have kids with allergies to egg. Well, their kids are also allergic to wheat, gluten and a number of other things that make me look at Philip and smile. So, they have started bombarding the house with egg-free pretzels (yep, pretzels are all shiny because of egg), recipes for egg replacement and catalogs for ordering nice healthy food that is friendly to my whole family. Go figure, join a church, join a commune. It's kinda nice.