A few days after my son, Graeme’s, food allergies (to peanuts, corn, soy, wheat, egg whites, and chicken) were confirmed, my wife mentioned his problems to a surgery colleague at the hospital where she is a nurse. “We harvested the organs of a 2-year-old this week. She got into the pantry when no one was looking,” he told her. “Peanut butter.”
I’ve learned from my wife that people in the medical profession don’t often sugarcoat things and the sheer terror we felt hearing that story sent us straight to the pantry for an all out purge. Though it would have been easier to seal it off with bricks than to only remove the items that offend Graeme’s sensitive body, we opted for a surgical strike.
It was a Herculean task. One of my wife’s neuroses (and I say that with affection) concerns running out of food. After we got married she began hoarding essentials. Once we had kids, the pantry became a doomsday vault for the surrounding county. Cereals, rice, wheat products, canned vegetables, dried fruit, bags and bags of beans, peanut butter, peanut oil, peanut sauce, walnuts, almonds, pecans, cornstarch, canola oil, vegetable oil (soy), and soy sauce. Sorting the edible (rice) from the allergic (vegetable oil, which is usually soy) from the deadly (peanut-butter-filled chocolate bunnies left over from Easter), took time and careful scrutiny.
And it was extremely educational. I did not know, for example, that couscous is made from wheat. We purged several pounds of chocolate chips—reserved to jazz up my daughter’s pancakes as a Saturday morning treat—because they are made in a factory that also handles peanuts. The kitchen garbage can filled faster than the county dump on Saturday—tiny rice cakes (corn and soybean oil), Cheez-Its (wheat and soybean oil), crackers (wheat, corn oil, cornstarch), and more. It was a graveyard to all things toddlers and children love and on which we have relied for quick snacks and treats.
When it was done, the pantry was bare and we were all starting to feel hungry, but at least Graeme was safe in his own home. We all breathed a long-needed sigh of relief.
Comments (2)
I hope you carried the unopened packages to a local food pantry and didn’t really toss it all in the garbage.
No… we only tossed the stuff that was out of date (amazing how much food you hoard and how long you keep it!). The rest was dispersed to either our church food pantry or to friends.