KEY POINTS:
When a member of Lisa Aish's allergy-afflicted Auckland family outgrew his bad reactions to wheat, she celebrated by giving him a normal biscuit - and cooked lots of muffins.
Mrs Aish knows how hard it is to cook without eggs, milk and wheat, so a new cookbook written for families like hers is particularly exciting.
This week's launch of the New Zealand Food Allergy Cookbook comes after the death last month of allergy sufferer Grant Freeman, suspected by his family to be the result of a severe reaction to a cafe meal.
Food allergies are incurable and put sufferers at risk of severe reactions from exposure to tiny traces of the food.
Five-year-old Hayden Aish's wheat allergy was identified at 10 months but he had outgrown it before turning 3.
That still leaves his brothers, 2-year-old Thomas, allergic to dairy products, and Anton, 6, whose allergy list is the longest: peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, cats, dogs and dust mites - they give him eczema and itchy red welts.
Mrs Aish is allergic to pollen and her husband, Peter, has a shellfish allergy.
After an annual finger-prick and blood test found Hayden's wheat allergy had disappeared, he was able to eat wheat-flour basics such as sandwiches and biscuits.
"That was quite a nice treat for him," his mother said. "A lot of those wheat-free biscuits can be quite dry. It's an acquired taste when you've got nothing else."
The Mt Eden family's combined allergies mean Mrs Aish, as the cook, has to take great care.
"You have to do all your cooking from scratch as much as possible. I don't use many premade sauces. There's one pasta sauce that I buy.
"We don't have eggs or any nut or peanut products. We still have cheese and milk. Thomas isn't going to go into anaphylaxis. We've just got to be really careful with the cups - Thomas has his own cup, his own spoon and fork. Everything goes into the dishwasher to make sure any residue of dairy products is cleared away."
Mrs Aish found cooking without eggs and dairy products possible, using apple instead of eggs in muffins, but found baking without wheat flour a flop.
"I ended up buying expensive biscuits. A cookbook would have been very useful at that stage."
The book, a project of the Allergy New Zealand support group, was co-written by an allergy sufferer, Ros Campbell.
After qualifying as a chef, she was diagnosed with allergies to numerous foods so had to change course and now runs a bakery which produces products free of gluten, wheat, dairy and eggs.
After explaining a food allergy as opposed to a food intolerance, the book outlines how to adapt standard recipes for various allergies, suggesting coconut milk as one replacement for cow's milk, tofu for eggs, a range of flours and clever tricks for wheat.
And while chicken sausage rolls with a potato and cornflour pastry may sound, well, different, the glossy picture makes them looks fluffy and appetising.
On a plate
* Food allergies affect more than 80,000 people.
* Prevalence thought to be increasing.
* British and US studies found peanut allergy prevalence in children trebled in a decade.
* Food allergies can cause skin reactions through to anaphylaxis, a severe,life-threatening condition with constricted breathing and extremely low blood pressure.
Source: Allergy NZ
