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Allergy Cooking With Ease
The No Wheat, Milk, Eggs, Corn, Soy, Yeast, Grain and Gluten Cookbook
Revised Edition

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Table of Contents

Foreword........................................................................................................... Introduction to the Revised Edition................................................................... About This Book................................................................................................ How Then Can We Live?..................................................................................... Know Your Ingredients..................................................................................... Muffins, Crackers, Breakfast Foods, and Breads Made Without Yeast.................. Yeast-Leavened Breads, Rolls, and Treats.......................................................... Main Dishes....................................................................................................... Pasta and Ethnic Dishes...................................................................................... Vegetables, Side Dishes, and Soups.................................................................... Salads and Dressings.......................................................................................... Cookies.............................................................................................................. Cakes and Frostings........................................................................................... Ice Creams, Sorbets, Cones, and Sauces............................................................. Pastry, Fruit Desserts, and Puddings.................................................................. This ‘n That: Beverages, Condiments, Snacks, and Tips....................................... References......................................................................................................... Appendix A: The Spelt-Wheat “Debate”.............................................................. Appendix B: Table of Measurements.................................................................. Sources of Special Foods and Products............................................................... Index of the Recipes by Major Grain or Grain Alternative.................................. General Index....................................................................................................

6 7 8 9 13 20 46 63 85 106 115 127 151 167 179 195 213 214 215 216 221 226

Foreword

During the past 35 years I’ve helped thousands of patients with food allergies and other types of food sensitivities. I’ve accomplished this by putting people on one week trial elimination diets. If and when the person’s symptoms improved (as they usually did), the eliminated foods were eaten again one food per day and reactions were noted.

Using this program, many of my patients found that they were sensitive to milk, wheat, corn, egg, and other of their favorite foods.

So, they would come back to me and say, “What can I eat and how can I prepare foods for my family?” In responding to these questions over the years, I have used and recommended many different recipes and many books. Yet, I’m always keeping my mind and eyes open in my search to help my patients.

Then, in the summer of 1991, I received the manuscript of Nickie Dumke’s Allergy Cooking with Ease. I reviewed this book and liked it. Because I don’t claim to be a cook, I passed it along to my allergy colleague, Nell Sellers, who has worked with me and prepared recipes for my patients during the past 30 years. Here are Nell’s comments:

“Allergy Cooking with Ease is a gem of a book. It incorporates all of the key points I’ve been telling our patients for years! She even includes starting the rotation diet day at dinner so you’ll have food for breakfast and lunch the next day. Her book includes something for everybody. She agrees that the diet has to be livable or people won’t follow it for long.”

Features of this book include:

Maintaining a positive attitude

Diversifying and rotating the diet

Providing readers with treats using ingredients which are least likely to cause problems

Other tips in this book include stocking up so as to always have permissible foods on hand to lessen the chances of cheating and making big batches of baked foods and storing them in the freezer for later rotation.

A final word: Nickie Dumke’s book isn’t only a recipe book. It encourages people to enjoy family, friends, work, and recreation. She says in effect, “Be good to yourself. Don’t worry if you fall off your diet now and then. You can always pick yourself up and go at it again.”

If you or members of your family are troubled by food allergies or sensitivity intolerances, you’ll value this book as a treasured friend!

William G. Crook, M.D.
Author of The Yeast Connection

Introduction to the Revised Edition of Allergy Cooking with Ease

The first edition of Allergy Cooking with Ease grew out of keeping my son Joel happy on a restricted diet. He was allergic to wheat and eggs in early childhood, and at age four, we found out that he was also allergic to milk, corn, soy, peanuts, chocolate, and rice. After a period of eliminating all of his problem foods, he was able to eat some of them in rotation, but he still had to strictly avoid wheat and eggs.

When he was in elementary school, I tried to make sure what he took in his lunch looked “normal” and tasted as good as what the other kids had so he would not feel deprived. For school parties and friends’ birthday parties, I brought look-alike party foods. I cooked family meals that he could and would enjoy. We put his little brother, John, on a rotation diet that eliminated all major allergens from his first solid foods “just in case.” I told my mother what I had been cooking on a near-daily basis, and she advised me to write a cookbook so other mothers did not have to “invent” new recipes like I was doing. At first I said, “Nah!” Eventually I decided to do what she said.

As the years went by, Joel’s food allergies got better and mine got worse. I wrote a book for people with extremely severe food allergies. This book (The Ultimate Food Allergy Cookbook and Survival Guide) contained medical information, a rotation diet, and recipes that ran the gamut from near-normal to extremely exotic (rare foods). When people called for help with their food allergies, I told them that the newer book contained everything I knew and that if they were only going to purchase one book, that was the one to get. However, Allergy Cooking with Ease remained my bestseller.

Hard times fell on the original publisher of Allergy Cooking with Ease, and after thirteen years, the book went out of print. However, people still wanted it, so I bought used copies on Amazon.com so I could supply those who called looking for a copy of the book. Eventually, there were no more books to be had. I decided to revise and add to the book and bring it back.

As I have worked on the revision, I have re-discovered what makes this book popular. It is fun like an elementary school age child is. It is Joel as he was when it was written and when the recipes were developed for him nearly twenty years ago. It is John as he chewed on the wheat-free teething biscuits in this book. The emphasis is on keeping your moderately allergic loved ones happy on their allergy diets, not on medical issues or the serious side of life. This is an all-purpose family cookbook, without any additional complications. My mother was right. This book is for all the moms and kids on special diets, or for anyone who needs some fun in their life in spite of their allergies.

About This Book

The purpose of this book is to provide a wide variety of recipes to meet a wide variety of dietary and social needs and, whenever possible, to save you time in food preparation.

Because of the range of allergies addressed by the recipes in this book, not all of the recipes will fit your specific dietary needs. There are grain-free recipes for those who are sensitive to all grains and recipes using a large variety of grains for those who rotate several grains. There are cracker, muffin, and baking-soda-raised bread recipes for those who cannot tolerate yeast and yeast bread recipes for those who can. There are recipes sweetened with fruit and fruit juices for those who can tolerate fruit sweeteners, recipes sweetened with stevia for those with yeast problems, and recipes minimally sweetened with sugar for kids, young and old, who can occasionally tolerate some sugar and may feel deprived without it in some social situations. There are main dish recipes made with game meat for those allergic to ordinary meats, vegetarian recipes, and recipes that can be made with the meats usually found in your grocery store. Rather than concentrating on the recipes that you cannot use (possibly the majority of them), be positive and use those that you can use. “Avoid chronic negativity at all costs,” as Marge Jones said in the September 1990 Mastering Food Allergies newsletter.

Meeting social needs may be as important as meeting dietary needs, especially for children. Therefore, this book contains a pumpkin pie recipe and a grain-free stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving, cookie press cookie recipes for Christmas, cake recipes for birthdays, and a large variety of cookie recipes for school lunches. Hopefully the cookie recipes will prevent children with no dessert in their lunches from swapping the nutritious foods that you spent much time preparing for something they should not eat.

The amount of time that must be spent cooking for an allergy diet can seem overwhelming, so timesaving ingredients and techniques are used in these recipes. The yeast breads are made with quick-rise yeast. Sources of commercial pasta are given as well as recipes for making your own pasta. The recipes include frozen and canned vegetables and fruits. However, when a “shortcut” method could cause allergy problems, other options are also included. For example, canned tomato products can cause problems for individuals who are very sensitive to yeast, so the more time-consuming recipes using fresh tomatoes are also provided. Use the timesaving tricks and devices that you can, and think of the time you spend cooking as an investment in good health for yourself and those you love.

Recommended by Experts:

Wonderful! Nickie Dumke has written a truly comprehensive book that will surely make living with food allergies easier for many people. Besides the breads, pancakes, cookies, cakes, and pie crusts made from half a dozen different flours, Nickie offers her readers creative main dishes, some vegetarian, others using less common meats. And she includes many of the little things that make life more pleasant, especially for children. Imagine, wheat-free teething biscuits and homemade candy canes! Clearly, special food can be fun! You can’t read this book without realizing that the author has “been there” herself.

Marjorie Hurt Jones, R.N.
Author of The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook

During the past 35 years I’ve helped thousands of patients with food allergies and other types of food sensitivities….They would say, “What can I eat and how can I prepare foods for my family?” This is a difficult question, so I’m always keeping my mind and eyes open in the search to help my patients…. If you or members of your family are troubled by food allergies or sensitivity intolerances, you’ll value this book as a treasured friend.

Dr. William G. Crook
Author of The Yeast Connection,
Detecting Your Hidden Allergies,
and many other books

Allergy Cooking with Ease is a gem of a book. It incorporates all the key points I’ve been telling our patients for years! Her book includes something for everybody. She agrees that the diet has to be livable or people won’t follow it for long.

Nell Sellers, R.N.
Colleague of Dr. William G. Crook

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