A reason to smile
A diagnosis of food allergy has a huge impact on over 2.6 million people in Canada, with the highest average being in children (1 in 13 kids). Of those kids, ~40% have life threatening allergies to more than one type of food, my daughter Olive being one of them.
I’m so glad to say that we’ve come a long way since I was a kid growing up with egg and dairy allergies in the 80’s where even my family GP advised my Mom that there was no such thing as a dairy allergy, and general awareness and support of allergic living was pretty much non-existent.
When we found out that our daughter had anaphylactic allergies to eggs, dairy, peanuts and treenuts we had a lot to learn in order to safely navigate things like daycare, school, sports, birthday parties, travel and eating out. We’ve been so lucky to have such wonderfully supportive people in all of these avenues who recognise that food safety is important, and also that allergy kids being included in food activities and events is also important.
In stark contrast to careful and controlled food handling when out in the world, at home we make food a fun and creative activity to do together. Experimenting in the kitchen has been a source of limitless inspiration and empowerment, and one we can all enjoy the results of!
Enter Smile Cafe.
Smile Cafe is a living breathing collection of recipes we’ve created, refined, shared amongst friends that are completely free of the top 6 (and sometimes 8) food allergens. With such a huge number of kids in the same boat we wanted to share and continue to add to our recipe winners in the hopes that others might find them fun to make and even better to eat!
The website was named by Olive, because all kids, allergic or not, can come here and safely make and eat delicious foods, if that’s not something to smile about, I don’t know what is!
