After scrubbing up like a surgeon and donning an old apron to protect his clothes, my son is ready for action. He’s pounded the chicken and beaten the eggs and he’s ignited the gas stove with a little help from me.
He’s ready to cook.
Me? I’m enjoying a cup of coffee nearby, ready in case disaster strikes as my son cooks dinner.
He carefully dips the chicken breast into the beaten egg and then drags it through the bread crumbs. Carefully, he slides the chicken into a pan of sizzling olive oil with just a bit of butter for taste. Tongs in hand, he watches carefully for the edges of the chicken to brown just so, a signal that the piece needs to be turned over.
“Guess what happened in school today,” he asks. I hear about kick-ball and the upcoming book fair and how he well he thinks the upcoming parent-teacher conference is going to go.
I am happy that my son enjoys these cooking lessons. Since he grew tall enough to reach the stove, I’ve been teaching my son to cook for two reasons: Everyone should know their way around a stove, and like most people with food allergies, understanding food and knowing how to prepare his own meals is a life enhancer for my kid.
Will has a “lucky” allergy, as I call it. “It will keep you away from junk food,” I always tell him. Unlike classmates who are allergic to peanuts or dairy products, Will gets migraines — really bad, really debilitating ones — when he eats food containing nitrates and nitrites, which are preservatives, and monosodium glutamate, which pumps up the natural flavor of foods. Sometimes the punishing headaches chase him into a dark, quiet room where all he can do is sleep; sometimes the headaches make him vomit; they always make him miserable.
Before I realized to what, I knew my son was allergic to something.
One doctor took a look at the dark circles under his eyes — “allergic shiners,” he called them — and prescribed a one-size-fits-all antihistamine. When I suggested we find out to what my son was allergic, the doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“What does it matter? It could be dust. It could be mold. It could be anything,” he said, handing me a hastily scribbled prescription. “This will cover it all.”
The problem was that the prescription knocked my kid out cold.
A full battery of allergy testing, which ruled out everything from dust to grass to pollen, couldn’t test for reactions to food. Another doctor figured it out, at least in a big-picture kind of diagnosis.
“He’s healthy,” she said. “Pay close attention to what he eats. If you don’t figure it out and the migraines continue, we can always send him for neurological testing.”
I’ve always been vigilant about feeding my son healthy, natural food. But as he’s gotten out in the world more, controlling what he eats has become a challenge.
Special events at daycare included McDonald’s burgers. Birthdays and holidays in school are celebrated with sugary snacks. When he visited friends, he was introduced to processed foods and baked goods, the likes of which he’d never seen at home. The occasional “bad food” days resulted in occasional headaches, but it wasn’t until he began eating in his elementary school cafeteria that the really bad migraines began.
At least once a week, it seemed, my kid had a high-intensity headache that left him looking like he just got back from a Las Vegas bender, his mood matching the dark circles under his eyes.
I give thanks for the turning point in all this, the day I arrived to pick my son up from school, only to find him sleeping off a migraine on a playground bench; none of the adults in charge noticed him there. Since noise exacerbates the pain, we drove home in silence. As I merged onto the freeway, I glanced into my rearview mirror in time to see him erupt, spewing vomit all over himself and the back seat of my car.
Frustrated, I stayed up that entire night, a mother possessed, searching the Internet for a clue, praying there wasn’t something seriously wrong with my son. I Googled “boys, migraines, vomiting,” then, “boys, headaches.” I went from site to site to site until I found these three words: hot dog headache.
At that moment I felt like the caveman surely did when sparks flew from the sticks he was rubbing together.
I learned that some people get headaches from sodium nitrates and nitrites, preservatives that give processed meats — including hot dogs — their long shelf life and pink color. (As an interesting aside, nitrate compounds are also found in dynamite. Dynamite!) I learned, too, about the suspected link between nitrate allergies and MSG sensitivity.
These three additives, alone or in combination, run rampant through school cafeteria offerings, where sausage, bacon, flash-frozen chicken, pizza with pepperoni — and hot dogs — are staples.
Processed foods are now banished from my son’s diet. He tells people he’s “not allowed,” or “allergic,” when offered something he knows he can’t have.
The change in my kid is remarkable. Gone are the allergic shiners. He looks healthy, all pink cheeks and sparkling eyes, and his moods are steady. Life for him is a whole lot better. This leaves me to wonder how many kids with similar food allergies are treated with drugs to combat the symptoms — both physical and behavioral — when treating the cause would be so much easier.
My son began feeling so good that one day he decided to “test” his allergy and indulge himself with a school cafeteria hot dog. A short while later his head throbbed, a painful reminder and a valuable lesson.
So I’m teaching my son to cook.
As he slides the breaded chicken into the sizzling olive oil, I feel so proud of him; I smile, too, at the bonus I get.
“Guess what happened in school today,” he asks.
(The chicken is delicious hot or cold. It’s perfect straight from the frying pan, cooled for sandwiches, or sliced atop salads. You can also top it with pasta sauce and cheese for chicken parmesan. This is a very simple way to prepare chicken that’s standard in lots of Italian dishes.)
Ingredients:
Three or four boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 well-beaten egg
3/4 cup bread crumbs (Italian-seasoned bread crumbs are mighty tasty. You can buy them already seasoned, or make your own with stale bread and Italian seasonings like oregnao and basil.)
Olive oil and a couple tablespoons of unsalted butter for pan frying
Directions:
Pound the chicken breasts between two pieces of plastic wrap until they’re about 1/4-inch thick. If you’re working with larger breasts, you may want to hand-filet them. The thinner you can get the breasts, the quicker and crispier they’ll cook.
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan.
Dip a piece of chicken into the egg and then dredge it through the bread crumbs.
When the oil and butter are sizzling, add the chicken. Cook until the edges of the chicken are brown; flip and cook the other side.
When the chicken is nicely browned, remove it from the pan and place on a platter lined with a paper towel to absorb the oil.
You may need to add oil and butter as you work through the pounded chicken.
Enjoy!
