Vestres' Boon

By  Paul McGillivary   Food allergies affect more and more people. The hard part is identifying the source of the allergy. Many folks get tested for environmental allergens. This seems to be the route of choice for many doctors. But for a lot of people, this may likely miss the root causes of the patient's symptoms. Food allergies can develop over time. You may eat a food earlier in life and be completely fine. Later on, you can eat that same food and have a reaction. The first episode simply primes your body to react later. Your body mislabels certain foods as enemies to the body. Once that food is introduced into the body, it starts to produce antibodies to fight the mislabeled enemy. This is why you can eat the food and not react until later in life. Some people grow out of these reactions. You may find that a child reacts to eating peanut butter, but can eat it when they are three. Shellfish are notorious for later onset reactions. These allergies tend to persist in the i...

L entil Fritters, So Tastily and so easy to make!

About a month ago my daughter went to see a new allergist, and he suggested doing a new Skin test for allergies to identify exactly what she was allergic to. To all of our surprise peanuts were not one of them. Peanuts actually are not tree-nuts, but rather are closely related to the legumes, or beans. Peanut allergic people can often eat tree nuts and tree nut allergic people can often take peanuts. However, some individuals may be allergic to both. In addition, you can be allergic to some but not all tree nuts. Almond seems to cause the least problems of all common tree nuts. Unfortunately her allergy to cashews is so severe, that a few hours after we had left the doctor's office we had to rush to the Emergency Room. Her arm swelled up bigger than her leg, and turn beet red, and she was in excruciating pain. Then I remembered that a few years ago when she was in High School, one of her friends gave her a candy to try from India. It contain cashews or a combinations of different n...

By  Olan Butler Americans consume between two to three pounds of sugar every week. The sugar is being processed in so many foods we eat. These foods are not just sweets. Sugar in large quantities can be found in peanut butter, mayonnaise, bread, ketchup and many other categorically "non-sweets" products. Now let's get to the question: Why is Refined Sugar bad for you? Refined Sugar is bad for you because it raises the insulin level in your blood. Raised blood insulin levels depress the immune system. If your immune system is depressed then your ability to fight disease is weakened. Raised blood insulin levels can cause weight gain. Insulin promotes the storage of fat; so, when you eat foods high in refined sugar, you increase fat storage. Obviously, the result is rapid weight gain. Refined Sugar contains no vitamins or minerals so in order for sugar to be metabolized it must draw on the body's reserve of vitamins and minerals. When these reserves are depleted, me...

Today I went to IHOP with my son, his wife, and our grandson. My daughter couldn't come. Her egg allergy is so bad that just being inside would be enough to make her sick. So why did we go you ask, well my daughter-in-law has never been to IHOP and I feel that we need to experience as much as possible in life. My daughter stayed home and ate some delicious eggless waffles she made. Well neither the food nor the service was anything to write about, but I'm going to anyway. We got there and had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated, then another 30 minutes to get served. All in all we wasted over an hour in IHOP and honestly the breakfast I make at home is more nutritional, better tasting, and a heck of a lot cheaper. The only positive I saw was no one had to do the dishes. So next Sunday, we are going stay home! Want to know what I'm having; Eggless omelets , with Hash Browns, and Turkey breakfast sausages. There's no better way to spend a Sunday morning, then bond...

Due to her egg allergy, there are a lot of foods that my daughter has to avoid. Her allergy is so bad that whenever she’s at a birthday party, she has to leave the room before the cut the cake. She would get a severe reaction just from the touch of anyone who had come in contact with the cake. We jokingly call them “egg infested”.  Whenever we have a party at our house we make an eggless cake , and everyone eats and no one gets sick. Well yesterday, she had Waffles for the first time in her life. We found a recipe for eggless Waffles on vestres.com and my daughter naturally asked “ dad, is this what real waffles taste like? ”, and to me they actually taste better than regular waffles. That got me thinking about how many things that we sometimes take for granted that are out of reach of some people, for whatever the reason. This is why it so important for me to get as many recipes as possible into vestres.com . I want people to be able to visit the website and find good tasting a...

I watched the video on the left and had to add it my blog as it brings back many memories of my daughter Jessica growing up. Her allergies are egg and tree-nuts. I recall many trips to the hospital with her as a child, and the worst part is that it never ends. On her 21 st birthday she decided to go out with some friends for her first ever grownup drink, and of cause there was egg in the sour mix and at 1 am I get a call that they are with her in the emergency room. You learn never to trust anyone in a restaurant; I've had cooks tell me that there is no egg in mayonnaise. This is why I started vestres.com, it a Recipe Sharing Network, for people who for one reason or another have to watch what they eat. It is an ever growing collection of recipes put together by people that have the same condition and know what they can and cannot eat. It does not matter whether you have a food allergy, a medical condition, or just a life choice to abstain from certain ingredients, vestres.com can...