Surviving the Holiday Season

Well, I made it to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving and only gained two pounds. Pretty darn good. My Mom can COOK, oh - my - goodness!

The day after, we had Mom's world famous Gluck. (Go check out my how-to blog, I'm posting the link to the recipe there in just a minute!)

But on the rant side -- what the heck are people thinking?

My Dad is highly, and I do mean HIGHLY, allergic to mushrooms. We tell everyone, not a shroom in the house, not in the kitchen, not nowhere near Dad.

Sigh.

So my sister's well-meaning and very nice friends brought salad to Thanksgiving dinner. Actually, they brought two salads. One was a nice plain green salad. And the other had freaking MUSHROOMS on it!

Double sigh.

Yes, Dad only ate the salad that was "safe". And four hours later he was starting to itch and swell. His allergy is as bad as a peanut allergy. Yes, it's really bad!!

Why, oh why, do people get the idea that if someone says they're allergic to a food item, either "they don't like it" or that it's OK to bring it along anyway. Obviously, they managed to get some cross contamination from the cutting board, the knife, or when they tossed the salads. We were all kicking ourselves for not warning Dad that the friends just aren't as careful as we are about food prep.

Fortunately, this didn't turn out to be a tragic holiday story, he took Benadryl in time and kept his reaction to a mere two days of swollen itching misery.

As my sister said, "So much for letting people bring stuff to the holiday meals." From now on, we have a menu and don't even think of bringing a dang toadstool into any of our houses!

(FYI: I love mushrooms and I do eat them -- but NOT when my Dad is around!)