FAACT's Roundtable

Ep. 221: Making Spirits Bright with Food Allergy Friendly Traditions

• Megan Lavin • Season 4

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The holidays are a beautiful time to create lasting family memories. But what do you do when your family needs to pivot to stay safe while honoring traditions? We’re sitting down with Megan Lavin, the Founder of Allergy Awesomeness and cookbook author, to learn her secrets and discover new ideas for creating incredible holiday memories while staying allergy safe.

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Caroline: Welcome to FAACT's Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to navigating life with food allergies across the lifespan. Presented in a welcoming format with interviews and open discussions, each episode will explore a specific topic, leaving you with the facts to know or use.

Information presented via this podcast is educational and not intended to provide individual medical advice. Please consult with your personal board certified allergist or healthcare providers for advice specific to your situation.

Hi everyone. I'm Caroline Moassesi and I am your host for the FAACT's Roundtable podcast. I am a food allergy parent advocate and the founder of the Grateful Foodie Blog. And I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations.

Before we start today's very interesting conversation, I just want to pause for just a moment to say thank you to DBV Technologies for being a very kind sponsor of  FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Please note that today's guest was not sponsored by DBV or compensated in any way by the sponsor to participate in this specific podcast.

The holidays are a beautiful time to create lasting family memories. But what do you do when your family needs to pivot to stay safe while honoring holiday traditions? We're sitting down with the founder of Allergy Awesomeness and cookbook author Megan Lavin to learn her secrets and discover new ideas for creating awesome holiday memories, all while staying allergy safe.

Welcome, Megan, to FAACT's roundtable podcast. It is absolutely lovely to have you back again on the show, sharing your creativity, your pragmatic solutions, your skill and your family. And most of all, your joy.

I just love how your positive energy comes through. So welcome.

Megan: Oh, thank you so much. It was a thrill to be on last time and I'm even more excited this time. Thank you. Thank you.

Caroline: You're welcome. Well, let's get started. Now, many of us follow your work, own your cookbook. I do and know about your allergy awesomeness. But for new listeners and food allergy friends, can you share a little bit about yourself and then your food allergy journey before we start our conversation?

Megan: Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. So here I was a first time mom, as if that isn't scary enough. Had my first baby, didn't know what I was doing and he went into full blown anaphylaxis at 11 months.

Of course, I didn't know what that was at the time. The first time we gave him dairy and that just sent us on a real quick journey into diving in headfirst, baptism by fire, into what food allergies were.

He continued to not do well, falling off the growth charts. We found out that he also has an allergic condition. It's a rare disease called eosinophilic esophagitis, or EOE for short.

And as well as asthma. So he's got multiple things on the, you know, allergic at March, and then we have my next son, and he also had multiple food allergies.

So just really went from not knowing anything about them to having to learn so much and. And going through that process and with my background in journalism and marketing and realizing I needed to stay home to manage his disease and.

And stay on top of all of his medical issues is kind of this perfect intersection of missing, you know, having a creative outlet, wanting to advocate, wanting to share our story, wanting to save people the pain and the hassle and help put more information out there.

This was back in, you know, like, 2012, when social media just wasn't what it is now. And so I started my blog, Allergy Awesomeness, because I was dead set on still making an awesome life for us, even with food allergies.

And I thought, if I can save someone the pain of feeling alone or even just the joy of having a recipe turn out, you know, if my cooking fails, if I could find something that worked and I could save people the expensive ingredients and time and dishes of a recipe that, you know, didn't turn out, that was the worst.

I wanted to save them from that. And it's just kind of grown from there. And I was really fortunate to get a cookbook deal and become a published author and be able to be on awesome things like this work with you guys and share our story.

And it's really helped turn kind of that initial bitterness into sweetness and help us realize that there is purpose in the pain.

Caroline: What a great sentence. Purpose in the pain. I love that because you really have turned around such a challenging situation, and you've made a real impact on the community. I mean, I've learned so much from you because I think one thing you do that's really special is you give people permission to just be.

And if you're going to whip out a frozen dinner, then you are, and that's okay. And you're still a good mom. And I just think you've got such a beautiful approach and beautiful touch.

So thank you for all that you do for the community.

Megan: Oh, thank you. My pleasure.

Caroline: Now, let's just jump in to how do we honor and explore holiday traditions with food allergies? So where does someone even begin to start their holiday planning? Like, do you first start off with, how is my family going to Celebrate.

What are we going to do? And then think about school and all the exterior things or church or whatever else you're doing. How does someone even just begin?

Megan: Yeah, well, it's. It's a lot, right? I mean, even for people who don't have food allergies, the holidays are very busy, sometimes stressful season of life. There are a lot of things going on.

Like you mentioned school, church, family, community.

And so I'm going to share my approach. I, like you said, I want to give permission to people to do it a different way. I recognize I am a little Type A, but this is what works for me.

And I sit down with my kids usually around Thanksgiving weekend, and we make like a bucket list of things we want to accomplish, things we want to do, traditions we either want to say goodbye to, or we want to start or we want to continue.

And we make a list of all the things we want to do, whether that's going to see Santa at the mall or it's going to our annual church Christmas party.

And then I get a written calendar, do it on an app if you'd rather. And I write out when everything is. And by seeing it all laid out, then I can be like, okay, church party is the first weekend.

So that's the first thing I need to tackle. I've got to contact them, find out what they're serving, so on and so forth. Okay, the school parties aren't till the second week, and I really just kind of make a line of attack and I go through each one, and by getting ahead of it and recognizing, okay, this is what we've got going on, or, you know, maybe this year we don't want to do this.

And really getting my kids buy in and input helps me kind of know where to put my time and attention, and then I can kind of work backwards from there.

So that's what I always suggest is how do you want the holidays to feel? What do you want to have be included in this busy month? What's worth your time and effort?

And maybe you'll see, oh, there's these two conflicting things. I'm going to decide this or that. And then you can step back and say, okay, this is what we want to do before you really dive in and get into the nitty gritty of ingredients and labels and reaching out to people.

So that's always worked really well for me.

Caroline: That is really an excellent strategy. And I really like how you pointed out that you involve your family, you involve the kids, like, what really is a priority for them Because I think sometimes as families, we go in one direction thinking, oh, the kids are going to love this event.

And you find out they're actually not as interested in it.

Megan: For sure. For sure. Especially as kids grow, you know, and there are sometimes where it's like, I'm sorry, this may not be your favorite, but it is a tradition. Sometimes you do have to pull the parent card, but it is nice to have them feel like they've got a say in a buy in.

And, you know, maybe we're doing this for Susie as a family because that's her favorite and that's part of being in a family. And we all give and take and that way we each at least have something we know we're looking forward to.

But I think that's a really good way just to get everyone kind of on board and lay out the month.

Caroline: Exactly. And see where they're feeling. And again, and I love how you also talked about, you know, sometimes this is what we do. We love a family member and this is special to them and we're going to go.

Because I think that also translates to siblings who don't have food allergies either. I love my sibling and this is what we're going to do. What a wonderful point. So now let's talk about if a tradition just isn't going to work, what ideas would you have for creating a new, new tradition?

For example, if the family enjoys baking, like a certain recipe, a special recipe that's maybe been handed down for generations, but now the recipe just isn't going to work because of too many allergens in it.

How would you approach that? What would you suggest to a family?

Megan: Yeah, well, first off, I just want to acknowledge, like, how hard that can be. Like, traditions are traditions for a reason and they carry meaning.

And I think sometimes we belittle ourselves or gaslight ourselves a little bit to be like, oh, it's just Grandma's cookies, it's no big deal. But like, there, there's shared connection through food and especially food traditions, and it's okay to grieve those and it's okay to feel sad.

But I think once you've allowed yourself to have that feeling and you try to be aware enough that you don't stay stuck in it, then you, you step back and you say, well, why?

Why did this tradition become a thing? Why, why is this important to us? It's because if you look at it, it's usually because it's about gathering, it's about spending time with those you love.

It's about making memories, and that can be built upon anything. It doesn't have to be grandma's cookies. And once you realize that, there's kind of a freedom in that. And I think, especially in today's generation, we are all kind of about this new wave of parenting of, like, questioning, like, what do I want to carry forward in my family traditions?

What do I want to stop? And realizing, like, I have the freedom now that I'm in my own home and my own kids, I can start or stop any traditions.

And I'm not beholden to that. And there's kind of an excitement with that as far as, like, okay, so then what does that look like? I get to totally create.

My kids won't know any different. I may know, but they don't know grandma's cookies, so let's make up our own. And I've been there, you know, growing up, we always did, like, an overnight egg bake that you would eat Christmas morning, Right.

The mom could prepare it the night before because it's busy opening present, and it was like this yummy, savory, or, like, cinnamon rolls. Those are kind of like two foods that for years, I just grieved, you know, and I would, you know, secretly like, oh, I still wish I could kind of have that.

But then I looked at. Okay, what I enjoy is having something really yummy to look forward to on Christmas morning. I can cook. I can find something yummy. And it can't be eggs.

Okay. Oh, and then I found my pumpkin scones, and I thought, that's seasonal. Those are delicious. It's a sweet treat. Kind of like the cinnamon rolls. I'm gonna do that.

Okay. What could be something savory? Oh, I make a really good breakfast sheet pan that has bacon and potatoes. Let's do those two combined. And I want it to look a certain way, but I think we can sometimes be really rigid in that.

And my kids are never gonna tell you, like, I had an awful Christmas breakfast. You know, they didn't, because I've stepped in, and I realized, what can we work with?

Okay, here's our parameters. Let's plot, play within those parameters. And we've had delicious Christmas mornings. And honestly, if you were to ask my kids, well, I care about what food has been served.

I don't even know if they would remember, because what they're really caring about are the presents, having fun, the glee of Santa. And so I think sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

We belittle ourselves, or we get really hung up on things. But I think if we can shift that perspective to looking at like, okay, there's freedom in it and I can still achieve the same end goal with maybe a different recipe.

Caroline: And that is so true. As you were talking, I was just thinking back to my childhood and you're right, there were certain dishes we made and that was lovely, but that's secondary to everything else.

Like I'm remembering the Christmas tree and people coming over and the grandparents and going to grandma's house and then going to the other grandmother's house. And at that, the big memories.

Right. And I'm glad you brought us back to that.

So now let's talk about your family and what holiday traditions do you incorporate into your household based on your allergens or anything else?

Megan: Yeah. So I love the holidays and I try and maximize. So I will give you a few things. But recognize, don't compare yourself. Because I feel like my time to shine is like food and cooking and like really squeezing the most out of holidays.

And so I don't want to give this list and have people be like, oh, that's not me. Because you might be better at like doing imagination play with your kids.

And I'm terrible at imagination play. And like, you know, you might be way better at decorating my trees. Like so. So that's not my, that's not my shtick. I just want to always give that caveat when we give lists of the things where that we shine in to not compare yourself and feel like, oh, I don't have the bandwidth or the time or I'm not in that season of life that I can do all those things.

But one thing that we've always done, even back when it was just my husband and I before kids, is we made goodie plates for the neighbors. And obviously that plate had to completely change once we had food allergies.

But we, and, and you know, I kind of had that like, chip on my shoulder. Like, are they going to find it as good? Are they going to like having gluten free cookies if they don't need gluten free cookies?

But yes, I do. I think my. If you go to my website, I think I have some really bomb. Everyone raves about it. The neighbors love getting them holiday recipes.

I've worked really hard on. And so, and, and you know what? We don't even stick to the same items. At least at the first. We are kind of like, okay, maybe we'll do my chocolate peppermint cookies.

Okay, no, maybe we'll do the like white chocolate and Craisin oatmeal cookies, maybe we'll do.

And I gave myself that freedom to kind of like, what, what sticks? Like what? And what's easiest for like little hands to help with and what, what did the neighbors seem to really like?

And then once I finally cracked the code on dairy free caramels, that's been our go to for the last few years and people are like excited to get the laven caramels and we make them and then we have an assembly line and we're all wrapping them and then we go and we deliver them and we carol as we deliver them.

And so that's like a really fun tradition that we look forward to. Also. I think a lot of people do this. We make cookies for Santa the night before. There have been some years where we've done sugar cookies and some years where I'm like, no, I'm so sick of the sprinkles and the frosting everywhere.

We're just going to do like our thumbprint cookies. I always give myself that freedom to play within. It's cookies for Santa. But it might be a different cookie this year because maybe we're sick of sugar cookies that year.

I also really love to throw a party for my kids and their friends. And I always have all allergen friendly. Everyone can have everything. And so I do like a big crock pot of my dairy free hot cocoa so it's warm the whole party that kids can come serve themselves.

I have cotton candy and it looks like snow, you know, because it's white. I also do like jello and clear. I hope I can explain this well enough, but I do it in clear cups.

But I draw the Grinch face with permanent marker on the outside of the cup and then I fill it with green jello so it looks like the Grinch's green face.

I have candy canes, you know, I do things like that. We do a late night. We have like a holiday movie. Kids can come in their pajamas. I also like to do like a cookie afternoon with my kids and their friends and we make my melted snowman cookies.

So I have the dough ready. You know, it's all ours and friendly and it's only my kids that have the allergies. But everyone seems to always enjoy that. And that's the thing is I.

It's a lot of effort to do all these things and be hosting and for some people that's not their thing.

But I've learned that my kids feel so special and included because I can be in control of all of it. And I'm the one inviting and it's in a safe environment.

I also have a really good friend and she has kind of a bigger kitchen in a bigger area. So we do like a Christmas party and I come up with all like the minute to win it games with a couple of families.

So I try and like really have something fun every weekend to look forward to. But I think again, it comes down to that planning, giving yourself permission to kind of play with the themes of what you're doing.

Okay, cookies. What does cookies look like? Maybe it's a little different this year, but I love it. I, I am here for the holidays. I love all the fun, I love the planning and I think it makes them really special.

And I hope that our listeners can find ways to also do something that really works for them.

Caroline: Well, I think you bring up some really good points too about just being flexible. Like it's cookies for Santa. Doesn't have to be this kind, doesn't have to be that time.

And you just kind of adjust it. And your excitement about the holidays is so fun.

Now that you've given us just a wonderful supply of all sorts of great ideas of what you do in your home, is there anything else that you would want to share in terms of new or old traditions that are allergy friendly for our listeners that they might want to jump on?

Megan: Yeah, so one thing that we always do, and this is so simple, is we go see Santa at the mall. And at least at our mall he always just gives out a candy cane which are usually very allergy friendly.

Of course, always check, read labels. And that's something that I don't have to host, I don't have to do. It's a very time honored tradition, you know, going selling what they want and then they get that little treat after.

So that's something my kids always look forward to. Also a tradition I've always tried to make is being the volunteer for my kids school Christmas parties. You know, I talk ahead of time to the teacher, make sure I have that day cleared.

And then I always say let me be the one over the food so the other moms can run the games or there's other moms volunteering, but I want to be in charge of the food.

And that way I can make sure that it is a safe experience for my kids at their schools. And it's so fun going in and seeing them with their little friends and seeing them in their own environments.

And then as far as like we have a church congregation annual Christmas party I usually try and do like a Christmas piano duet with my two boys and that's really special.

So again, sometimes doesn't always have to be food centric. It can be, you know, that you're doing a duet or you're like I mentioned previously, you're giving to the neighbors or you're going and seeing Santa.

We also love to go sledding and make snowmen, like ice skate. Like there's so many things that you can do to make the holidays special. And nowadays with Pinterest and Instagram, like there's so many good ideas, minute to win at games, ways that you can really make them special.

Whether you're on a very restricted diet and you feel like baking just isn't in the cards this year or something like Mindsight to help you or the sky's the limit.

That's what makes I think the holiday so fun is you can just do it as grand or as little as you want.

Caroline: I love that because includes everybody, right? So if you've got a really tight schedule, a lot going on, you can pick one thing or you could pick 10 things. You are someone who just is bursting with ideas.

So should we be directing our listeners to your website and your social media media?

Where should we tell them to go find you?

Megan: Yeah, well, it depends on what you're looking for. My website is mostly a collection of my recipes. So that's where I have over 300 recipes. Most of them are top eight free.

And you're going to find everything from holiday baking to easy dinners to breakfast, all, all in between. And then my social media is where I really try share, you know, here's the current update or here's what's going on.

It's more the behind the scenes, the lifestyle, the emotional pieces. I also do monthly vlogs for allergic living and discuss a lot of topics that come up with managing food allergies.

So try and give a little bit to everyone depending on what it is you're looking for. If you need recipes, my site allergyassomeness.com my social media Instagram is probably my favorite where I share the most.

You can find me on Facebook and Tick Tock, but Instagram is kind of my main hub and that's allergy underscore Awesomeness is my handle on there. So hopefully, you know, however I can help the readers that they just need to feel like they've got a friend online and another mom that's going through it.

Find me on social if you need something to cook or bake, find me on my website.

Caroline: Thank you so much. So now, before we wrap up today, is there anything else you would like our listeners to hear from you?

Megan: I think just give yourself permission to let the holidays look different and find a way to make it shine in your own way. I just wish everyone a happy and safe holiday and I hope that as the years go on, as it has for me, that it gets a little easier.

Every year you get more used to it. It's not so much of a new normal, it's just a normal and give yourself grace. You'll get there.

Caroline: Beautiful. Well, thank you again so much for your time. You're obviously a very busy mom with lots of kids and getting ready for the holidays and lots of activ activities. So thank you so much for your time and we wish you a happy holiday too.

Megan: Oh, thank you so much you guys take care. It was a pleasure.

Caroline: Once again, I would like to say thank you to DBV Technologies for being a very kind and generous sponsor of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast. Please note that today's guest was not sponsored by DBV Technologies or compensated in any way by the sponsor to participate in this specific podcast.

Thank you for listening to FAACT's Roundtable Podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon. Please subscribe, leave a review and listen to our podcast on Pandora, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio and Stitcher.

Have a great day and always be kind to one another.