Welcome to my pantry!!!I thought since I was going on a mission to clean up and clean out as most people do from time to time I would take some pic's to share
....you know the clean up days where you think "okay, this time it's going to stay organised and clean so everything is easy to see"
...lol well it never seems to work but at least you might find some exciting food that was hibernating at the back of the cupboard or have a few minutes, hours or days of that contented feeling of being somewhat organised
...that is when and until the hubby or child moves everything around and finds a oh so wrong place for what seems like every item!!!
enough of my ranter :PThe reason I wanted to share was to show what a pantry of family with severe allergy's looks like.
Living with a child who has anaphalaxis towards eggs and nuts isn't easy...every shopping expedition becomes very interesting.
Diving into a world of "may contain......" or "made in the same factory as.." can be somewhat frustrating and expensive.
Needless to say 1 3/4 out of my 6 pantry shelves are dedicated to baking alone.
It's been over a year since we found out about Declan's allergy's and it has changed our family's daily life in more than one aspect. We are very fortunate to have a few friends that also have allergy's in their family's and can understand, share recipes, brain storm how to convert that oh so yummy recipe to make it safe and so on.
We are also blessed that their are
company's out there that make safe food for people like us...."HALLELUJAH!!!"Yep, I'm that crazy woman standing in the isle of your local food store who smiles quietly to herself and does a happy dance while pure happiness, excitement and relief flows though her veins....over a new found safe ingredient or product. :)
There are also some very good benefit's of all the jazz that goes with living a allergy life.....baking (a forgotten skill and activity for all ages in past years), knowing exactly what's in your food (preservatives, chemicals etc), becoming more aware of your surroundings and probably much more that I can't think of at the moment.
On decluttering my pantry over the last few days and emptying boxes I saved 2 empty boxes for a specific purpose.
A bit of background information: For part of Thalia's Christmas present she will be getting some play food and play kitchen items and then for her birthday in Feb. she will get a play kitchen to go with them.
The play food we have brought has pretend eggs in it which made us think...do we let them play with it? should we take it out of the pack? leave it in?
After a few chats with some friends we have decided that yes we will leave the egg's in with the presents for the children to play with as a educational tool.
Obviously Declan isn't allergic to a plastic egg, we know that but we were worried at the age of 3, Declan might be confused with the whole concept that it's safe to pretend but not safe to eat the real thing etc..
So the egg will be their to show our children what an egg is,what it's used for, where it comes from, that other people can eat them etc
then as an addition to the play food I will place the 'orgran no egg' box pictured above for the children to pretend to use when they are "baking a cake" to make it safe etc. The no egg box and the safe biscuit box will also show and hopefully educate the children when they are a little older how to read labels and identify safe foods.
Well that's a day in the life of my beloved pantry....
remember eat, live, love and learn :)
ox
Great grandma helping at the drawing table
opening his puff the magic dragon book and CD
cake time!!!
Mr stegosaurus cake before he got butchered
