Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

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Food Allergy Counseling: Allergies Don’t Need To Stop You, Kyle Dine

Me and Kyle Dine in Central Park

Colleague, friend and fellow adult with food allergies, Kyle Dine, is an allergy educator and musician. He works with Anaphylaxis Canada and he tours the United States singing to school assemblies, helping children, with and without food allergies, learn how to be better advocates for their health. You can book him for your school here. You can also read his blog post about our fun day here. 

I am a sponsor of his latest tour,  Let’s Go Nuts. As part of my sponsorship package we decided to do a video together about food allergy awareness. Our song is: "Allergies Don’t Need To Stop You". Which is totes true. We are living embodiments.

This is some classic Kyle Dine singing with yours truly, Allergic Girl. 

Feel free to like it, share it and sing it with your kids.


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Allergies Don’t Need To Stop You
 © Kyle Dine & Sloane Miller

I'm an Allergy girl
And I'm an Allergy Guy
I can do almost anything
And I'm willing to try

I can jog in Central Park
I can play sports and the guitar
So we have a couple allergies
Doesn't mean we can't go far.

I can eat safely at a restaurant
I'll make the reservation, what food do you want?
I can climb a mountain, be on top of the world!
I can make new friends  
You’ve got one in this girl!

I'm an Allergy girl
And I'm an Allergy Guy
I can cook nearly anything
And I'm still... willing to try!

I can live in the big city
I can live in the countryside
Wherever we'll be, allergy free
Is possible for you and I

I can read a label like I'm reading a book
But you gotta double check, here I'll give it a look
I can draw, paint, build, camp, dance [and sing
It's cool to know we can do anything

I'm an allergy girl
And I'm an allergy guy
And whether you're young or old
Whether you have many or few
Allergies, don't need to stop you!

Or me, or you, or him or her, or any of you!

***

Thank you, Kyle, for a wonderful afternoon of laughter and song! 

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Allergic Girl: Interview, DNAinfo.com

A much beloved Kips Bay / Murray Hill neighborhood restaurant that was on the forefront of gluten-free dining and allergen-awareness here in New York City, Bistango, is opening a second location on the Upper East Side (1420 Third Ave at 77th street.)

I’ve been going to Bistango for a few years now. I’ve consistently had safe and yummy dinners that were prepared by an allergen-aware staff.  If you’ve been there you may recognize it as the setting for the last scene of my Allergic Girl: Adventures in Living Well with Food Allergies (Wiley, 2011) book trailer.



Last week, I was interviewed by DNAinfo.com to reflect on the news that Bistango is opening a second location. A quote:

“[Owner] Anthony is a true restaurateur in that the customer comes first,” she said. “He focuses on what each customer needs and then tailors a menu to that.”

Read the full story here on DNAinfo.com.

I can’t wait to try it out. 

Best of luck to Anthony and the whole Bistango team!

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Food Allergy Counseling: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Animation Helps Explain Food Allergy

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has developed a three-minute animation that shows how the immune system responds to a food allergen and what you should do to avoid potential exposures.

Some food allergy facts:

• An estimated 15 million Americans have food allergies
• Food allergies appear to be on the rise in all industrialized countries
• A food allergy reaction sends someone to the hospital emergency department every three minutes

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) created and distributed these free food allergy guidelines. The food allergy guidelines are worth reading through and discussing with your board certified medical heath provider.

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9 Food Allergy Blogger Tips


Part of the Mylan Specialty (makers of Epi-Pen) Blogger Summit for food allergy bloggers, many of whom are food allergy moms, was a presentation about using social media from expert, Ritesh Patel (on Twitter, @ritters90). Ritesh is also, himself, the father to a food allergic teen.

Smiley, knowledgeable, food allergy dad, Ritesh Patel


This is my seventh year of blogging about living well with food allergies (and sixth year of food allergy coaching) but there is always more to learn, refine or re-envision about blogging and social media. So I listened with a beginner’s mind to Ritesh’s presentation. Below, in brief, are his nine top food allergy blogging and social media tips with relevant links.

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1. Make all content “shareable, embeddable and mashable.”

2. Ensure your content is relevant and readable in other social media environments, like on tablets and smartphones.

3. Look at vine.co if you have an iPhone – it creates short bursts of video. Here are video options for other platforms, like Android.

4. Look at rebelmouse.com – it creates a magazine of your Twitterfeed.

5. 2013 is the year of the video, like Youtube.com. Add more video to your blogging and your social media feed (see number 3).

6. Joining and using Google+ is vital to your brand.

7. For better SEOs, use natural language in blog posts, titles, subtitles and tags; cultivate inbound links; and use fewer acronyms in your blog posts. Here's a link with more information about increasing your SEOs.

8. Use the same image for your brand everywhere.

9. Google's Author Rank is becoming more vital. Here's another article about author rank via Brooklyn Allergy Mom.

***

Thanks Ritesh, for all of the excellent information!

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Cooking Allergy Free

Last week, I was honored to speak and be part of planning a Blogger Summit here in New York City with Mylan Specialty (makers of Epi-Pen). Part of the event was a dinner with everyone the night before and then breakfast and lunch the day of. We worked closely with the Chef of the Strand Bistro, Kelvin Fernandez, whom you may remember I did an Allergic Girl Dines Out Video with last year.



Chef Kelvin’s shellfish allergic so he really understands food allergies, issues of cross contamination and building a delicious menu. Over the course of two days, we collated every diner’s food restrictions, created a safe-for-everyone menu and vetted over every single ingredient and sub-ingredient of every dish.

Here are some gorgeous shots of the chef and I in his kitchen during that vetting process. (Photographs courtesy of Noel Malcom):

For a food allergic group like ours, he opens a new salt to use!
For any dish that used a "processed" food, we looked at each and every label.
Chef always changes his gloves. He also has latex-free gloves for patrons and his latex-allergic sous chef.

The final result was a dinner everyone could enjoy as there were several allergic and intolerant girls at the table.

*Stay tuned for a blog post of the OMG delicious short ribs he made.*

Thank you Chef Kelvin and the Strand Bistro!

PS: Planning a trip to NYC? The Strand Bistro is one of my go-tos for my concierge clients. More about the Chef and the Strand on this blog post.

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12 Days of an Allergy Free Christmas, Kyle Dine


Colleague Kyle Dine has done it again - creating an adorable video for the food allergy community called: "12 Days of an Allergy Free Christmas"! 


From his website: "Kyle Dine - A Christmas classic with a new spin! Food allergy musician Kyle Dine goes over 12 necessities to have an allergy safe and festive holiday season. This cheeky song gets a little crazy with props flying all over the place and concludes with Kyle getting choked up over a tray of delicious gluten-free, egg-free muffins!"

And here's the video - enjoy!

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Insalata Cuoco, Recipe

Socca with Insalata Cuoco
*UPDATE: As of January 2013, Chef Mike is no longer at Nizza.*

See that gorgeous salad in that picture above? And in the YouTube video here and below?



Want to know how to make it? Here is the recipe direct from Chef Mike. Thanks again Nizza!

Insalata Cuoco by Michael Schimelpfenig, Chef de Cuisine, Nizza NYC

For the salad:
1 clamshell mixed greens (mesclun mix)
2 bulbs fennel, shaved
2 bartlett pears, batons
.5 lb goat cheese, crumbled
For the dressing:
.5 lb bacon strip
1 shallot, minced
.5 bunch parsley, fine chop
.5 cup sherry vinegar
1.75 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt, to taste

Method:

The salad:
Begin this salad—as with any salad—by washing the mixed greens (even when the package says “ready to eat”), the pears, and the fennel.  Remove any green stalk from the top of the fennel bulb, and shave as thin as possible across the top.  This is best done on a Japanese mandolin (Benriner is the brand I use).  In the absence of a mandolin this can be done with a sharp knife.  Save prepping the pears until near ready to serve the salad, as they will oxidize and turn brown if sliced too early.  Prepare the pears by quartering it around the core.  Place each quarter flat side down and cut each into thin slices, then cut the thin slices into batons.   
The dressing:
Cook the bacon in a hot sauté pan until crisp.  Remove from pan, and allow it to cool before chopping.  Once cool, coarsely chop the bacon into small bits.  Blend the bacon, shallot, parsley, and sherry vinegar in a small mixing bowl.  Whisk vigorously while slowly adding the olive oil until all the oil is incorporated.  It is important to add the oil as slow as possible in order to assure that it will blend in with the rest of the ingredients, and not separate within the mixture.  Add salt to taste after the vinaigrette is blended. 

The final product:
Toss the greens, fennel, and pears with the bacon vinaigrette in a medium mixing bowl.  Taste, and adjust seasoning as desired with salt.  Keep the goat cheese refrigerated until ready to serve this salad.  Cold goat cheese crumbles with more ease and is less messy to deal with than warm goat cheese.  Crumble the goat cheese over the top of the salad and serve.
*This recipe will yield three portions.
  

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Nizza, Food Allergy Aware, Video

Fungi Socca
*UPDATE January 2013: Chef Mike is no longer at Nizza.*

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know Nizza has been my food BFF for some time now. I had my birthday there a few years back and we shot some of this Cooking Channel segment there two years ago. Recently, they brought on a new Chef de Cuisine, Michael Schimelpfenig or Chef Mike. It seemed like a perfect time to revisit Nizza and their allergen awareness policies and just general niceness, really. They kindly invited us to come in and make their home, ours for a few hours and film it on video.

Numodo shot and produced this fourth video in the Dining OutWith Food Allergies series at Nizza. You can watch it via a link here or embedded below:



Scrumptious, right?

Here’s a behind the scenes tidbit. Initially, that gorgeous fungi socca with truffle oil worried me. Chef Mike went over every ingredient and all was safe, I love mushrooms, but the truffle oil...who made it and was it possible tree nut contaminated? Very often truffle oil is made in France by companies that produce walnut oil, a French cuisine staple. Or like this oil made in California with a French process and partnership. If you have a look at La Tourangelle's nut oil lists, and you are a nut-allergic girl like me, you will see why when Chef Mike said fungi socca with truffle oil, I paused.  

I gently explained that very often truffle oil is made by a nut oil producer. He immediately went and retrieved the oil bottle to show me the label. It's from a company called Sogno Toscano. The label didn’t mention that it contained tree nuts or was made in a facility with tree nuts nor did the website that I checked from my smart phone say anything about tree nuts. But it was imported from Italy, so I was unsure if they were, or were mandated to be, FALCPA compliant.

Chef Mike said, “I can call the distributor right now, they can call the company directly and we can find out the answer.” See why we love him! His cell phone was at the ready and in less than two minutes, we had the answer. Sogno Toscano does not make nor process any nut oils in their facility. I able to tuck in with confidence and boy, was it yummy.

Does this mean that Nizza is 100% safe for everyone, all of the time, about every allergen? No, that’s not possible. But with communication about your needs and concerns with regards to your allergen(s), the staff at Nizza will do what they can to allay those concerns and make you a dish that is safe for you.

Thank you again Nizza, can’t wait to see you again soon!

(212) 956-1800
630 9TH AVE
NIZZARESTAURANT@GMAIL.COM

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Cochinita, Brooklyn, NY

As an Allergic Girl who coaches the food allergic community about living well with food allergies, I love hearing about new, potentially safe dining-out spots. I was excited when a little bird, GFBird on Twitter, told me about a new restaurant in Brooklyn that she thought I'd want to try: 

"I came across an eatery in Brooklyn that may be Sloane-friendly. It's called Cochinita, and is 100% GF, save for a few brands of regular bottled beer. In chatting up the owner, Adam, I found out that he has severe nut and shellfish allergies, so I know he "gets it", as far as cross-contamination, etc. It's a very casual place, with a small space for indoor seating and a backyard patio opening in mid-May...a great place to have in your back pocket if you'll be out and about in Brooklyn." Here’s her review on her blog, GF Bird.

An allergic boy running a restaurant? This I definitely had to check out. I had some back and forth over email with Adam Frank, the owner and chef about his allergies and about what he serves. He is peanut, tree nut and shellfish allergic. They have no tree nut or peanuts or shellfish on site and one fish dish, fish tacos. He asked me if being near fish would bother me. No, I replied but so kind of you to ask. (Very important to know your food allergic situation – go back to your board certified allergist if you have questions about aerosolized proteins.) So off we went to talk with Adam and try his cuisine. Here’s a video about our wonderful experience.

Cochinita, which means little pig, is a Mexican-based restaurant and Chef/Owner Adam is clearly passionate about that cuisine and his restaurant. A clean, tidy, modern space with an open kitchen, they were prepping their mini-flans, fish for tacos and afterwards, beef for tacos.  Everyone was properly gloved and washing up (I watched) in their separate preparation sections.

The Cochinita menu is tailored (read: small) which is good for those with dietary restrictions as there are not many ingredients nor allergens to contend with.  Adam went over how he creates the recipes himself, they have a recipe book behind the counter if you have questions about the ingredients of a dish (love that), all the necessary sanitizing steps they take, as well as cross contamination precautions. Feeling secure enough to try (on camera!), with all my emergency medications on me, my emergency plan in my phone and my safe friend with me (the producer, Heidi Bayer of Numodo and Brooklyn Allergy Mom), I dove in.

I tried the beef taco (made with a tiny amount of gf tamari) which is, I think, my fave. A brisket-like cut of beef, with that background note of extra umami from the gf tamari equaled delish. The pork was next up, so flavorful, perfectly pulled, well-spiced and seasoned. The chicken, that’s the plate with the rice and beans in the video, was like the chicken you’d pull after you made a chicken soup – tender, tasting of carrots, celery and onion and simple. The rice – what is in there Adam? Green love? (and some cilantro). They have one fryer and all it makes are fried tortilla chips, dedicated to corn chips, only in canola oil.

And if you needed more incentive, everything is green - plates, forks, spoons, cups - all compostable - which they do as well. LOVE!

Everything was delicious, well-seasoned and totally yummy. OK, now are you ready to watch the video? Here it is!





Thank you Adam and Cochinita for creating a safe space for those of us who love homemade, authentic Mexican cuisine. And like to be green. And happen to have dietary restrictions.

Contact Adam at salud@tacoscochinita.com if you have additional questions and tell him Allergic Girl sent you!

Cochinita
922 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY 11238
718-789-7700
salud@tacoscochinita.com


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The Cooking Chanel, Allergic Girl


I love that the segment for Al Roker’s My Life in Food that I did last year for The Cooking Chanel is still running – it means more of you might feel like this woman who Facebooked me:

"Just watched an episode of "My Life in Food" on The Cooking Channel, which had you... My daughter has multiple food allergies & its been a total roller coaster. Glad to know there's others who really do understand."

Here's the show if you haven’t yet seen it. From "My Life in Food":

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Gluten-Free, Boar’s Head


From my colleagues at Boar's Head, here's their monthly newsletter all about how gluten-free they are.

This month they included the fun recipe and video we created together last year - top eight allergen free, yummy hot or cold.

Read more here or watch more here.

Thanks again Boar's Head, love you guys


© Boar’s Head


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Managing Food Allergy, COFAR, Video

An excellent video about the definition of food allergies and anaphylaxis, what medications to take when, label deciphering and cross contact by Dr. Scott H. Sicherer, Pediatric Allergist, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, through COFAR – the consortium for food allergy research.

This is a great 10-minute video to share with friends and family or anyone wondering about your food allergies and how to keep you safe.

Also, you can download the guidelines for diagnosis and management of food allergies from the NIH.

All of this information is to be used in concert with a consultation with your board certified allergist.

Thank you Allergic Living magazine for alerting me to this video’s existing by posting on Facebook.

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