I love fall.  It is my favorite time of year.  So far it has been busy and cold!

I participated in FAACT’s Teen Retreat with my daughter.  What an amazing time for teens with food allergies and their parents.  As an adult with food allergies I often feel the odd man out, and am thankful that most of my friends, family, and coworkers ask questions and are understanding to my food needs.  This weekend was the support that my teen needed to feel NORMAL.

Many of us lunched at Maggiano’s Oak Brook. With well over 20 teens and adults needing to special order, Chef Tito did an amazing job.  I love seafood, but often it is pre-seasoned in the morning or the night before.  I knew they could do the pasta for me (gluten-free pasta with just oil and garlic) but I really wanted some shrimp. Chef Tito said yes, they pre-season their shrimp but would try to find some plain shrimp for me and he did! It was great to see all the kids order and eat with no problems. Every child at the table had to list their allergies and ask extra questions making it normal for the next child to do the same.

The rest of the weekend was full of new friends, speakers who were informative and personable, and teens and parents who get what it’s like living with food allergies.  We can’t wait till next years and are trying to figure out how to fit Camp TAG into our summer schedule and hopefully a visit with our new friends before the 2020 Teen Retreat.

Now that we are home and getting back in the swing of things, I am again attempting to make pumpkin bread from scratch that tastes as good as the GF box mix from Trader Joes. With all of it’s cross contamination warnings I would like to find something safer.

My attempt looked good but wasn’t quite done and was dense on the bottom. My kids had all kinds of Great British Bake Off lines to describe the failure, which made me happy. It was an improvement on my last attempt at pumpkin bread, yeah me.

I guess I will stick to my Apple Crisp for today.  And try pumpkin bread again next week.