My name is Joanna and I am the author behind this food blog. However, this idea came about one day because of my youngest daughter, Kelsie. She is the sole inspiration behind Everyday Made Fresh.
Kelsie was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis in October 2013. Her diagnosis was all we needed to change our eating habits, and become more aware of what we were consuming.
Naturally after the diagnosis of EE, you go in for allergy testing. Her first allergy test was done 2 weeks after her diagnosis. We learned that Kelsie was allergic (like most of us) to a lot of environmental components. However, we focused on the foods. We learned that she was allergic to shellfish and tree nuts. Thus our journey began.
We searched high and low for allergy friendly foods. If you go to your pantry, you’ll see how difficult our search was. We did find that organic brands were more allergy “aware”.
Over the course of the next several months we picked up on the fact that Kelsie was also allergic to blue food dyes and the artificial vanilla flavor, Vanillan. We read label after label every time we go to the store. Yes, it’s a daunting task, but ingredients are constantly changing. We are always on the search for new brands that she (and we) can eat. (we don’t usually eat things she can’t)
Fast forward to Spring 2014 and she was still complaining of stomach pains. Her only outward symptom of EE. After the omission of shellfish and tree nuts, along with medication; she was not getting any better. I decided to take her to another allergist and this is where we are today.
We discovered that she was also allergic to corn, tomato, egg, pineapple, soy, oat, and sweet potato. Yikes! We eat egg, corn, and tomato all the time, or at least some form of it. Think spaghetti, pizza, salsa, baked goods, and corn syrups in most processed products.
With all that, the way we shop for and eat food has changed. It has been extremely difficult to search for recipes that were allergy friendly and not gluten free. We went on a recent cook book search at our local book store and couldn’t find one that wasn’t gluten free but allergy friendly. Shopping for products has been just as hard.
All of these reasons are behind the creation of Everyday Made Fresh. We believe in labeling all recipes and products as much as possible. We believe that the world should be a much more allergy friendly place!
Everyday Made Fresh 