well, slap me silly

and call me sally...

i have a lot of food allergies (we could argue semantics and call them intolerances, but please don't go there with me - i am not in the mood) ...... i can eat golden delicious apples, bartlett pears, onions, garlic, and iceberg lettuce ... most other fruits and vegetables have to be altered ...... even touching a raw fruit or vegetable can bring on hives, rashes, swelling, and (scariest, for me) difficulty breathing ... so i use vinyl (not latex - i am allergic to latex) gloves when i'm working with most raw foodstuffs ...... i was raised on apple juice because cow's milk made me barf ... and it still does ...... i cannot eat any kind of nut ...... avocados close off my airway ...... if there is a banana peel in the trash, it has to go outside or i will be overwhelmed by itchiness ...... i know that anyone can be allergic to anything and i am not ignorant about food allergies...

flashback thirty-two years ... Earth Science said his first sentence, "UNH MO MA!" ... which was baby for i want some more, mommy ... and he was talking about strawberries ... even though he could not tolerate dairy products or bananas or most vegetables, he could eat strawberries ... and i gave them to him

i received a phone call from said son, asking me to make a smash cake for his daughter's first birthday ... doesn't matter what kind of cake, just make sure it's pink ... oh-kay, i can do that ... and did ... and showed up at the party with the cake and scrubbed, hulled, sliced strawberries (his favorite) as garnish ...

youcan'tputstrawberriesonthecake - LABresearched-shesaystheyareoneofthetoptenno-nofoods forallergies - shecan'thavethemtillshe'sone - ohwait-sheisone - iguessyoucan - ihopesheisn'tallergic!!!!!

i did not put the strawberries on the cake ... i did not leave the strawberries near the baby ... and i was already gone before the smashing began ...
i did some surfing about strawberries and babies today (it has been more than a decade since i've had ready access to a pediatrician ... besides, who needs doctors when there's the all-knowing Internet - ready and waiting to diagnose, advise, chastise, prescribe) ... there is information here and here about waiting till a child is more than 12 months before you offer strawberries (and milk and wheat and eggs and peanuts and honey and soy and chocolate and just about any other food) ... you can even buy a bib that will let everyone know not to give your child strawberries to eat ...... now, if she'd just been wearing that bib...