I’ve been a risk taker my whole life.
I wasn’t taking a risk when I wrote #AllergicToEverything. It started out as a little journal of recipes that were working for me. It was a notebook I kept in my Kitchen.
This is my friend Phil on his 30th birthday (along with a few of the best people ever). He saw my journal and said I should publish it. It was in that moment that I began to see #AllergicToEverything as a book.
A long, long time ago. At least it feels that way. Circa 2011.
This is the original cookbook – with “recipes” misspelled and all. This is also an illustration of why an editor is important to this project. I am dyslexic and tend to spell phonetically.
Yes, I did spell “recipes,” “reciPIES”
I sat down that summer and typed up the recipes. The next summer I sat down and decided I should Kickstart it. Then the summer after that I rented a cabin in Willits to finish the recipes. And once I’d finished the recipes, I dreamt of a little more and the guide was born. From shopping to symptoms, to where allergens like corn hide, one-third of the book became a bible of sorts. To write the intellectual stuff I needed a change of scenery so this past summer I sat down and wrote the lifestyle guide, from hotels in London and Germany with my boyfriend. And here we are, in this new summer of 2018, the summer that I finally launched the Kickstarter to fund the first print run.
The book is written. The backers are backing.
#AllergicToEverything is my book-baby. It took me nine months to plan for this Kickstarter and six years to write.
It is over 200 pages long and includes 115+ recipes (from food to beauty to cleaning supplies).
At first, the book was recipes that would work for me, and then it became recipes that would work for anyone avoiding the “top 8.” I grew to have an appreciation for the bold indicators on the labels of our food (required by the FDA to indicate the top 8). I will note that I believe corn should be included on the list and that one day (in our near future) I believe it will be. At the rate at which we pump it into our diets (even feeding it to our cattle), it’ll be no surprise. Perhaps there is a correlation to the way we introduced wheat into our diets with the rates of gluten intolerance, allergy, and sensitivity.
In the end, each recipe will be tailored to be friendly to all of the top 8 food allergens (milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, fish, wheat, soy). The book is now 90% complete, I am still working on the top 8 modifications. My recipes are also free of oats, corn, sesame, and gluten.
I am a Food Allergy Collector, a real live human living with multiple food allergies. I am #AllergicToEverything. #AllergicToEverything was once upon a time something I made for me, and now my dream is to bring it to life for you.
Support the project on Kickstarter here.