Meal Prepping Without a Casualty

-

My lovely boyfriend has severe allergies to peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish. I constantly worry that the food he eats has come in contact with these things. Even the smallest amount of cross-contamination can send him to the hospital.

Soooo, what do I do to avoid him…. dying?

Well first I always start cooking with clean hands. Everyone should do this, but it is especially important when it comes to cross-contamination. You should be washing your hands for at least 30 seconds under hot water. Use soap.

If I had way more money, I would buy separate utensils and cooking tools for the ingredients he is allergic to. Unfortunately, I am broke, so I wash all of those kitchen tools under super-hot water with soap. I utilize the wash, rinse and sanitize method to ensure any trace amounts of those allergens are GONE.

Also, if I am eating something he is allergic to, whatever utensils or tools I am using do not touch anything that is communal or can’t be cleaned. For example, if I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I put the jelly on first OR I use two separate knives, so no peanut butter touches the jelly jar. This goes for food outside of containers too. If I have allergen-free donuts for him, they will not be touching the triple peanut butter chocolate donuts.

If there is something that he is allergic to in the fridge, It has to be sealed and moved far away from any foods he would be eating. This prevents that food leaking or spilling onto something he will eat. It is a good idea to not have allergen-containing foods in the same storage area at all.

The thing I find most important when preventing cross-contamination is actually reading the nutrition label ingredients. You never know what company is going to make a change to a product or start assembling allergen-containing foods on the same equipment as their allergen free foods. I make sure to read the ingredients and allergen sections even if it is something he has eaten before.

These are steps to keep in mind when cooking for anyone, not just your loved ones. Someone may have a severe allergy to something you used a pan or tupperware for yesterday, and now you are cooking for them today. Knowing how to properly clean these items can prevent life-threatening scenarios.

-KE


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ketogenic Gets a Makeover

-
Image
Ketogenic Gets a Makeover We have all heard of the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet focuses on the low-carbohydrate, high fat diet consumption. But what happens when an individual does not want to include high-animal fat sources in their ketogenic diet? Welcome, the ketotarian diet. The ketotarian diet is the plant-based version of the ketogenic diet, relying on plant-sources for fat. Plant sources, like nuts and olive oil, make up 60-75% of calories for fat. The premise of the ketotarian diet is similar to ketogenic diet, where you try to have your body enter a state of ketosis to the utilize fat for energy instead of your body’s main energy source of glucose, or sugar. Many benefits are claimed on this diet such as fat loss and disease prevention, however, this is still a very restrictive diet plan that has little research on it to support its efficacy. Basic guidelines presented by Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner states: ...
Read more

The Eccentric Use of Pinto Beans You’ll Never Guess

-
Image
Among my friends and family, it is not a secret that I love legumes. They are affordable, a wonderful convenience food, and pose a variety of health benefits due to their high content of complex carbohydrates, plant-based protein, vitamins/minerals, and phytochemicals: weight management, LDL cholesterol reduction, CVD prevention, blood sugar regulation, diabetes prevention, and treatment of gastrointestinal tract conditions are just a few of the potential health benefits of increased legume consumption. Most people know the term “beans” instead of “legumes”. All beans are technically legumes, but not all legumes are beans, since the term “legumes” also includes peas, lentils, and undried/fresh legumes (i.e. snap peas). While legumes offer a variety of health and non-health benefits, dried beans specifically have a new, unusual use: wart removal (just stay with me now). I had originally hoped there was some nutritional aspect of beans that magically caused warts to fall off, but that ju...
Read more

Get into the Spring Spirit with Snap Peas!

-
Image
Springtime is here! For those of us who live in Ohio, produce can be a little hard to find, since certain fruits and vegetables are not in season year-round. Now that we are entering the warmer months of April, May, and June, that means we finally get an abundance of in-season produce options! One of my favorite seasonal foods that I can find in the spring are snap peas! While snap peas are often used as a vegetable in a culinary setting, they are scientifically considered a fresh legume. Legumes are defined as the mature, immature, or germinated edible seeds of legume plants. Dried legumes, such as beans, peas and lentils, are the mature form of legumes; however, if the seeds have not dried out, they are considered a fresh legume. Think of the soybean: in its mature stage, it’s just a soybean, which can be fermented and eaten, or even used for oil extraction. But when the seed is still immature, it is juicy, green, and is used as a vegetable. Immature, fresh legumes often have a lower...
Read more