{Allergy Free} Blueberry Donuts

These are full of fresh blueberry flavor and are now my favorite donuts!  The glaze on top is the best part!

Blueberry Donuts

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp xanthan gum

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup brown sugar

4 T Earth Balance Soy Free

1 1/2 tsp egg replacer whisked with 2 T rice milk

1/2 cup vanilla hemp milk

1/4 cup frozen blueberries (I use wild Maine blueberries which are smaller - Wyman's brand)

Icing

1/8 cup frozen blueberries

1/2 tsp lemon juice

powdered sugar

Whisk together first 6 ingredients.
Cut in the chilled Earth Balance until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.
Put blueberries in microwave for 30 to 40 seconds until soft.
Whisk in the egg replacer and milk to the blueberry mixture.
Add the blueberry mixture to the flour and blend until just combined.
Put batter in ziploc bag and snip off one end and pipe the batter into greased donut pans.
Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.
Cool on wire racks.

To make icing:
Microwave blueberries for 30-40 seconds until soft.
Mash with a fork and add lemon juice.
Whisk in powdered sugar until the mixture is the consistency of a glaze.
Dip the baked donuts into the glaze.

Makes 12 donuts.

Allergy to Mustard

We suspect that Bee has a new allergy - mustard.

While this shouldn't actually come as a huge surprise, I was disappointed that another food had to be removed from our list.

Mustard comes from a seed and Bee seems to be allergic to most other seeds.  Therefore, it would make sense that she could not have mustard either.

She has eaten foods containing mustard in the past and has never had a problem - until now.

This past week I made our honey dijon chicken recipe that calls for Dijon mustard.  We sat down to dinner and after 2 bites Bee declared that she did not like dinner and wasn't hungry.  This was very unusual for her, especially since she had just said she was hungry.  I looked very closely at her and could see her lips and the skin around her mouth starting to swell.  A few minutes later her mouth, cheeks, and face were covered in huge hives.

At that point my husband and I pushed our chairs back from the table, grabbed Bee, and ran to the bathroom.  We washed her face and her mouth and scrubbed her hands.  Then we administered Bendaryl and covered her hives with cortisone cream.  We put Bee on the couch with us and we all sat around and watched her, waiting to see if she had difficulty breathing or any additional swelling.  Thankfully after 30 minutes, the swelling went down and the hives started to fade.

That's when I thought about what we had eaten for dinner and I had the nagging feeling that it was something in the chicken recipe.  Since that recipe only has a few ingredients it was easy to guess that it had to be the mustard.

So, no more mustard for us in any of our recipes.  It's just another ingredient that we now have to watch for as we read labels.

I had so hoped that her seed allergies (which have always seemed less severe) would start to recede.  I guess we now know that they are not getting better but may in fact be getting worse.

Now we will be avoiding flax seeds, poppy seeds, mustard seeds, sunflower seeds, quinoa, chia seeds, and sesame seeds.  Ironically, hemp seeds are not a problem for us as our family drinks hemp milk.  Why is this possible?  I don't know....Food allergies don't always make sense to me!

Allergy Free Chicken Salad

It's summer and I love eating chicken salad.  It happens to be my hubby's favorite summer time dish and he asks me to make it for his lunch every week.  Here's my recipe for an allergy safe chicken salad!

Chicken Salad

1/2 cup Vegenaise (I use the one made with olive oil)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp poultry seasoning

1/4 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 T lemon juice

3 cups diced chicken

1/2 cup diced celery

1 cup diced grapes 

1/2 cup diced green onions

Add first 6 ingredients to a large bowl and stir well.  Add remaining ingredients and stir until evenly coated.  

My hubby loves to put his chicken salad on our homemade bread or even eat it over a giant spinach salad.  It's a favorite with the kids too!

A Little Update on the Blog

My blog has been strangely quiet lately.  I haven't had much blogging time with focusing on homeschooling our five kids and trying to get settled into our new house.  I've finally dusted off this blog and am trying to get back into a good blog routine.  

One of the reasons I haven't felt like blogging is that I'm simply tired of the allergy-free life.  Can I admit that out loud?  I am so tired of not being "normal" and trying to find healthy alternatives.  I'm tired of worrying about whether my kids are safe.  I'm tired of cooking every meal from scratch.  I just haven't wanted to think about our allergy free life at all.

But we're going through some changes.  I have some updates to give.  I've learned a few new things and we've discovered some new struggles and challenges to overcome.  It's time for me to step back up into my role as allergy mom and remember why I continue this journey.  

I plan to blog a few days a week sharing about our allergy life and posting a few of our new recipes as I try some more experimental cooking and baking in the kitchen. 

What can you expect at Hives?

• I plan to blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays only.  

On the other days you can find me at Lextin Academy, my other blog that chronicles our homeschool adventures and our favorite curricula.

On Tuesdays I'll share more about our family and about where we are in our allergy journey.
On Thursdays I'll try to share new recipes that have become favorites at our house.

• In the rest of my spare time I'm going to work to spruce up the blog a little bit.  

I plan to go back to old posts and do some editing - adding new pictures and making sure that all the recipes are written correctly.  I hope to add more pinnable images to posts and just do some general "cleaning up" here at Hives.

Know that it's a work in progress!