Easily Cook Allergy Food & Meals With These 3 Life-Changing Tips

October 21, 2024 By Corinna

Easily Cook Allergy Food & Meals With These 3 Life-Changing Tips

Want to feel less alone in your food allergy journey? Join me by listening to my podcast! This podcast has reached top 130 in the US, and top 20 in Canada. You’ll get personal stories and experiences and feel a lot less alone!

Listen to this episode here:

See this content in the original post

Any mom will tell you that getting healthy dinners on the table is a non-stop challenge. As a food allergy mama, you not only have this challenge, but you also have other major obstacles to deal with.

For example:

Converting every good recipe you find into something that’s safe for your family is exhausting.
Even though you long to be able to forget about finding and cooking safe food for a little while (even a weekend would be nice), you have nobody to take over cooking for you. When you get a break, all that free time is spent teaching your friends or family how to cook safely for your child and reviewing every dish's ingredients for the next social event.
The overwhelm with reading labels at the grocery store is real, and you would love to go back to the days when you could throw anything into the cart on a whim.

Do you wonder if this cooking situation is something that you have to accept? Are you destined to suffer in silence when it comes to easily and safely feeding your family every single day?

I’m sharing 3 simple but life-changing tips that will make cooking allergy food easier and less burdensome. You’ll Learn what to do so you can feed your family fast, without sacrificing safety or quality.

Sound good? Let’s get to it!

3 Tips To Make Cooking Allergy Food Quick and Easy

Tip #1 Don’t be afraid to move out of your food comfort zone.

I know this doesn’t sound easy at all because it's easy to fall into the trap of making only what you know your kids will like. I did it ALL the time. I mean, who wants to throw out the dinner you spent all that time and effort making with only grouchy kids who ask for snacks within the hour to show for it?

Trust me when I say that kids will be kids, and they’ll likely be picky no matter what we do. They’ll gobble something up one day but the next they won’t even TRY it.

This is just what kids do.

Have you heard of “The Feeding Relationship”? It says that YOU choose what to make and your little chooses WHETHER they will eat it, and how much they will eat. If we can get past the idea that our kids have to eat everything we make (and like it), our lives will be WAY less stressful.

Food allergies restrict our diets in so many ways, so keeping an open mind to new things (even if we’re not sure our kids will like it) allows us to focus on the huge variety of foods you CAN eat so you can create NEW family favorites.

If you don't try something, how will you know? Not only that but when you find those new foods your family loves, you'll have more choice and variety of flavors and recipe options. Who doesn't love a bit more variety?

Tip #2 Start Meal Planning.

Ok, friends, I know there are a lot of you out there who have a huge resistance to meal planning. But why does the idea of using proven systems like meal planning to decrease the weight of finding & preparing safe food seem like it’s impossible?

Let me guess…..

You’ll do what it takes to keep your child safe, but you have no idea how to systematize your cooking to make it easier.
You know what your family likes and you’re afraid that a meal plan will force you to cook food that will be wasted and the kids will be looking for snacks an hour after dinner.
You want to live a normal life despite food allergies, but you feel like anything to do with food is now complicated. You don’t have the time to get through the complications to create a system that decreases your cooking stress.

Here’s the truth.

Busy moms like you don’t have a second to waste on things that don’t serve your family. You have so many other things to be doing, but finding and preparing safe food IS REQUIRED, whether you like it or not. Which makes creating a meal plan so valuable for food allergy moms like you.

True, creating a meal plan doesn’t seem simple when you’re already bogged down with your everyday responsibilities.

But that doesn’t mean that the process can’t be a whole lot simpler with a guided map that shows you exactly what to do when and how. I’ll share that map with you in a minute, that will help you:

stock your pantry with the most affordable food allergy replacements and eat more fresh produce and meats because there’s hardly any label reading.

You’ll find that this step-by-step will simplify feeding your food allergy family.

You don’t have to suffer through it, even though cooking allergy food is harder.

A good meal plan will:

inspire you so you have more new food ideas
save you time so you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time having fun with your family
save the stress of converting every single recipe you find into something safe for your family
save money because you don’t have to buy as many expensive pre-made allergy convenience foods
make you feel less burnt out from cooking and baking all the time

So even though food allergy cooking IS more difficult; a good meal plan with a framework, proper techniques and solid strategies will save food allergy mamas more time, energy, and stress, which means it’s all the more valuable!

So take control of your cooking and make food enjoyable again, despite food allergies.

Tip #3 USE Recipe Grouping to make meal planning easier.

Let’s talk about the framework of your meal plan. This framework is going to be LIFE-CHANGING.

Many food allergy mamas look at their food requirements for the day or week separately from what they need on a WHOLE. They believe that thinking about “what’s for dinner” today or this week is their main concern (I did this too!) when in reality, it’s only a small part of the plan. By looking at the “what’s for dinner” question as a component of a whole system, you’ll save time and effort for many food allergy struggles, from the daily worry of what to feed your kiddos to preparing for social events and even travel too.

PRO TIP: A food allergy meal plan that really works is made up of 4 key stages: plan, recipe grouping, batch cooking, and implementing. Each stage is important and combines with the other stages to create an easier, less stressful cooking experience.

In short, a good food allergy meal plan is so much more than planning day by day OR week by week. It’s many moving parts put together in the right way so it’s efficient and time-saving.

And a big part of that meal plan is called recipe grouping.

But what’s recipe grouping you might ask?

Here’s an example of the recipe grouping in a way that they can be reused strategically and save you time and effort. Here are the four main recipe groups I use.

Pantry Panic Meals: Find or create 2-3 recipes that are right out of your pantry. Nothing is required from the grocery store. I like to call these my “Pantry Panic” recipes. Everything I need for them is something I always have in my pantry. I use them to bail me out of thinking about what’s for dinner at least once per week. Think about using canned meats and dry goods to create these meals. For example, a tuna rice dish, if that’s safe for your family or a bean dish. Of course, choose what works for your allergies, but taking a little time to research a couple of pantry panic meals will give you so much freedom each week!

Freezer Frenzy Meals: These are meals I bulk pre-make and freeze about 2 times per year. I use them every week on the days I don’t have time to cook. I choose 2 recipes that my family loves and I alternate them between weeks so we don’t get sick of them.

Convenience Meals: Meals that are pre-made and allergy-friendly. They usually come from the freezer but might be from the pantry too. An example might be frozen french fries with pre-made chicken strips. They may not be the healthiest meals, but they will do in a pinch (and you can always add a veggie that needs using up from the fridge). They’re usually more expensive because they’re pre-made and allergy-friendly, but I recommend having at least one of them ready to go for those days you just can’t cook (or don’t want to).

Regular Rotation Meals: These are the recipes you need to research each week, but you can re-use them over and over, and also mix them with the other 3 recipe groups so the family doesn’t get sick of them. Sure you’re welcome to find new ones every once and awhile, but this can be done with a quick recipe search every few months instead of EVERY week.

So how do these recipe groups come together to make a meal plan which then makes cooking allergy food quick & easy?

I use at least one Freezer Frenzy and one Pantry Panic recipe every week. I’ll use them on the nights when we’re super busy with no time to prepare a meal. Because they’re being rotated between weeks it will be at least 2 weeks since the last time we had that recipe so we don’t get sick of them.

That leaves three weeknights and 2 weekend nights to cook for every week. I usually leave one night open in case we go to friend’s or family’s or go out. Then we’ll usually have one convenience meal or leftovers for the other night.

Whatever is left will be filled with Regular Rotation Meals.

When all these moving parts are combined into a meal plan, you’ll have more allergy-friendly meal ideas and feel less burnt out. You’ll even spend less time reading food labels. Wouldn’t that be awesome?