Catalytic
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Posts posted by Catalytic
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How big should I get? 8 quart seems like overkill, but 6 quart doesn't seem like it would be enough. What says the hive?
I have an 8 quart Crockpot (I mean, it's a brand name Crockpot, not a Hamilton Beach or something) and I am not so sure I would recommend it to anyone.
I have no idea when I got it, I remember telling my husband I was NOT going to buy it because it got bad reviews...but somehow I have it. So. I've used it twice in the past couple weeks, and both times, cooking on HIGH, things that should have taken 3-4 hours have taken 12-16 hours.
I don't know if this is because I have a defective pot or if it's due to the volume, but I can tell you it's on its way to the trash can....and that makes me sad because I LOVE slow cookers. I use a $20 turkey roaster for a large slow cooker when i need a larger one than my usual 6 quart oval. (Again, I have no idea where this 8 quart came from, but it's the first one DH unpacked after we moved, so it's in the kitchen and the 6 quart I've been using for years is still in the garage)
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We only keep his highest IgE reactive food out. We are very careful with the allergens we do have. He's very allergic to milk, but we do allow the other kids to have cheese.
I think it's unreasonable to imply that no allergens should enter the house. I would be making a decision that left the rest of us nutritionally deficient. My son is allergic to so many foods that he drinks a nutritional shake (a very expensive! Neocate jr Shake) every night. In theory, we'd all be on the shakes if we ate only the food he could have.
No nuts is easy and we don't have them in the house. Potatoes for some reason are also very risky for my ds so we only have them on thanksgiving. No dairy, egg, wheat, soy, most fish, all legumes, celery, ( I could go on.) would be nearly impossible without all of us suffering nutritionally. Bottom line, it's not in anyone's best interest to live like that so we are just incredibly cautious.
Most food allergies, even life-threatening, aren't airborne. I've not heard of airborne milk, egg, grain, etc. But peanuts are a known airborne allergen and so are shellfish. I think if you know a child has airborne reactions, then it's probably best to keep the food out of the home. I know that steaming shrimp in my kitchen would cause an anaphylactic reaction in my 17 year old. How do I know? Because he's reacted in grocery stores with seafood departments, and his allergist explained the airborne issue. There is zero reason I need to cook shrimp in my house. No one is going to die because I did not cook shrimp, but DS *could* die if i did...sorry, not happening. Now, like I said upthread, I don't completely avoid shrimp for the others in the house...I sometimes buy a shrimp cocktail plate on nice days, and DH and DS18 can sit outside and enjoy shrimp. I've twice bought shrimp for DH to cook on our outdoor stove, but we were camping and the smell kinda lingered afterwards, so I'm not sure if I would do that again.
With my allergy kid, shellfish is the only thing we have to avoid. If he had reactions to peanuts, we'd avoid that, too. But his other allergens, even if he couldn't eat them, we'd have in the house.8
Banning peanuts aside (we will do that), looks like it's very mixed views/ experiences on whether or not a person with a peanut (or any nut) allergy will get better or worse with exposure/ avoidance.
I certainly don't want to run the risk of causing a life threatening reaction. At the same time I am interested in knowing if there's a way for DS to overcome his peanut allergy through exposure. I definitely would not try this myself without serious medical supervision. I'm just not sure it's even possible with the kind of care that is available to us. But I do wonder.
My DS is definitely still allergic to peanuts, but he doesn't like them as a general rule. The reason I had a new IgE test done last year was because he thought he was reacting to the peanuts on a Drumstick. According to the screening, his peanut levels haven't changed, his shrimp had gotten worse, and they also screened for lobster and crab this time...he reacted to lobster but not crab. (Those weren't tested before)
It seems to be an intolerance rather than an allergy. She vomits several hours later. It happened twice, and we were being careful about introducing new foods because of her early history (MSPI to where I ate a very restricted diet and EBF for a while). No hives or itching. She doesn't react to avocados. The possibility of it being a true allergy is scary especially with latex overlap. A friend of ours is an ER nurse with an airborne anaphylactic latex allergy. Yikes.
Thank you though. :)
My son's shrimp allergy started as vomiting, but a lot sooner than 2 hours. At the time, we pretty much only ate shrimp at a Japanese steakhouse, about every 6 months. Every time, he would vomit in the car on the way home. He's a grazer, so we thought it was because he was eating too much when we went. I can't remember how we finally figured out it was shrimp, though.
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What are you filing? I found myself with piles of school papers from the kids that I couldn't bring myself to throw away...about 6 months ago, I sat down and scanned them all into Google Drive. I sorted them into folders labeled with kid name and academic year. Now I scan papers I want to "save" every time I have a pile of 10 or so. It has cut down on a lot of my desk clutter.
I only use eBills, nothing comes by mail. When I got paper bills, I used an envelope/mail sorter and put bills in the order they were due.
We have a master family wall calendar. EVERYTHING goes on it, and anyone without neat handwriting is banned from writing on it. Events, work schedule, co-op, sports, meetings, etc are all written down. I've drawn lines across every day on the calendar (at the very bottom of the day's block) with 2 different color highlighters, and each working child is assigned a color. That's where their work schedule goes. Anything for my youngest gets highlighted a 3rd color. I'm not as diligent about highlighting DH and I's stuff yet (it gets highlighted, but not with a specific color), but I did just buy a pack of 5 colors of highlighters for that purpose. (We've only just begun this whole highlighter thing, because 2 teens just got jobs, and my ASD would take up the whole date block writing his schedule, argh!)
When I was homeschooling 4 kids, I used one of these sorters for a lot of stuff.
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We lived in a desert for a while and we couldn't keep dust out for anything. Even with double paned windows, every day, an half inch of sand or more would build up in the master bedroom windows. I have never been so happy to move. I vacuumed our hard floors twice a day with a Rainbow to help keep it down, but it still was a mess.
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Azithromycin is Zithromax, and while a tough antibiotic, I prefer it to anything else for littles because it's only 5 doses. I personally don't play around when it comes to breathing (and I despise over-using antibiotics and antibacterials because of the superbugs we have created), so I would use the meds as directed, EXCEPT the decongestant. As said upthread, they don't work well for young kids/babies, and you can usually get better results with saline.
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Yes 7 yo is allergic to peanuts but not anaphylactic that we know of (considering he avoids peanuts pretty successfully). The allergy clinic gave him an epi pen and I forget exactly what they said honestly.
He has like 20 different inhaled allergies (grasses, molds, animals etc) and between that and the blood test that confirmed the peanut allergy and having my toddler thrashing around the dr room my head was kind of spinning when they were talking to me, so I just keep an epi pen in my purse and at home just in case he shows severe reaction to anything.
The 2 year old we are currently figuring out. His skin test did not show cashew allergy but he found one in our home and got hives. He also got itchy eyes when he had a bite of a protein bar with cashew in it... this just happened today actually that's why I'm thinking over all this.
Thankfully my kids' medicaid covers the allergy clinic visits and even immunotherapy shots which 2 out of 3 kids are currently getting.
You may have read my story in the other thread, but I'll give a synopsis here, just in case. That cashew allergy concerns me. Also, I imagine 7yo's peanut allergy is bad enough that the Epi is warranted and I would not have peanuts in my home at all. Given the 2 yo, I wouldn't have ANY tree nuts or peanuts in my home. I might have sunflower, but I'm not sure how that correlates to tree nuts or peanuts, so I would have to check into it first.
About 13 years ago, we had a neighbor whose 4 yo developed a peanut allergy fairly quickly. Allergist refused to give an Epipen and Alabama ambulances do not carry epinephrine. One day he had an anaphylactic reaction, Mom ran outside and screamed for another neighbor, whose homeschooled 8 or so year old wore an EpiPen at all times. The EpiPen saved the 4 yo's life, he's 17 now.
His allergy went from nothing to anaphylaxis all in the space of a few months. I'm not trying to scare you, and at least you have Epipens on hand should either of them need it, but I would be very cautious with the 2 yo in particular right now. My own DS was...7ish...when we figured out he was allergic to shrimp. At the beginning, he just threw up whenever he ate them. Within a few months he was getting swollen lips and an itchy throat if he accidentally got a bite. Just a very short time after that, the scent of shrimp was enough to require multiple doses of Benadryl. We have avoided them like the plague ever since. Anytime we go out to eat to a place that serves seafood at all (Chili's, Fridays, etc), he gets a dose of Benadryl before we ever go in the restaurant. We do not take him to seafood restaurants at all. Thankfully we have never had to use his EpiPen, but he just got a job in a food court, so at 17 he is now carrying his own EpiPens at all times. (Prior to now, Dad and I carried them)
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And this is so wasteful - but when we were packing lunches we bought small deli containers and lids from Gordon Food Service and put cut fruit or veggies in them. These work well when your young adults don't want to haul around containers or a lunchbox. They can just toss the little container. Yeah, they are wasteful but really made it easy for our kids to pack fruit, veg, small salad, cheese and crackers, etc.
I love those containers! Before I discovered them, DH used to lose my Tupperware...or forget it for a week or two...and Tupperware is too damn expensive to be losing, and you know I was scrubbing the moldy containers out to try to save them!!! I buy (well, I bought, searching Sam's Club's site to try to link them, they don't seem to have them anymore) the deli containers by the case. They are amazing and leakproof! When i run out, I guess I'll get them here, even with shipping, it's a decent price ($40ish for 240) DH has trained himself to bring them home most of the time now, so a case lasts us several years, and we use them for *everything*. I don't cry if a lid gets broken and I throw them away if they get mold in them.
So many good ideas!
I always used to freeze individual soups for dh's lunch. Also, I would make a big batch of Cajun Dirty Rice and freeze in individual servings and then he could heat them at work.
I freeze soups for DH's lunch and package it in the deli containers I mentioned above. I do rice in sandwich size ziploks and he frequently grabs a bag to go with his soup.
I bought a lunch crock to solve this problem at co-op. We have 200 people and three microwaves.
I tested it at co-op last week and loved it. My food was hot, but not over cooked, in two hours. You couldn't smell anything until I sat down to eat and removed the lid. It's great for leftovers. You can package stuff up the night before and the removable good container is dishwasher safe. You do need an outlet. The 20 ounce was plenty for me, but your son might prefer the 24 ounce. Your daughter may be more open to toting about a cute crockpot.
Eta it doesn't cook, only reheats, so soups and leftovers are your best bet.
That is so neat, I will have to remember it for when DH doesn't have a microwave in his office.
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I've left my inhalers in vehicles my whole life, temps ranging from 100+ in Central Florida heat and humidity, to -60 in Alaska. They have always been fine, so I honestly wouldn't be worried about them.
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So you have 2 kids with allergies, 7 yo is allergic to peanuts, but not anaphylactic and 2yo is allergic to cashews (and probably almonds by extension, since tree nuts tend to travel as a group allergen). Who is the EpiPen prescribed for? What is 2yo's reaction to cashews?
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Someone makes D-ring locks...you could get a case that used a D-ring and then lock it to his belt loops? (I've seen them at Walmart, possibly near luggage, a lot of soldiers use them on the zippers of their duffel bags)
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DH has been on 22 flights in the past few weeks, not a single one has left on time. A few managed to make up the time in the air, but that was only the "makeup" flights he was placed on after missing his connections. One missed connection cost up a $200 hotel night. I wouldn't chance it.
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I'm sure the inhalers are perfectly fine. To my knowledge, if the Epi fluid is still clear, they are fine, too. If this is an ongoing problem, perhaps see if the doc will write you a script for a vial of Epinephrine and syringes/needles, and you keep that in the house at all times, so at least at home there is an alternative if an Epipen doesn't work
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I am allergic to pork, but I would never expect anyone to not eat pork because I am allergic. I think it is best to not restrict the entire family's diet over one person's restrictions. Just imagine how far that would go...child #1 is allergic to pork so no one can have pork, child #2 has lazy eye so cannot see 3D movies so no one is allowed to see 3d movies, child #3 sprained her ankle so now no one is allowed to run and play, child #4 is allergic to tomatoes.....and now..one of the kids has grown up and gotten married to someone with an allergy, etc etc etc. Oh, and then a parent goes on a diet and now everyone is eating that diet, and so on. I had a parent who would always diet and then announce to all of us "we are all going on a diet now" even though she was the only overweight one. I was actually underweight.
Plus, I have read many times that withholding something will cause someone to eventually develop an intolerance to it. I do not think it sets up healthy expectations when an entire family abstains over one person's allergy. If there were a life threatening allergy, my view might be different, but otherwise, no, I would not restrict.
Does the scent of pork trigger an anaphylactic reaction in you? If not, you're probably not even coming from the same place the rest of us are about this. There are lots of food allergies in my house, I am allergic to tomatoes, chocolate, dairy, and my son is allergic to shellfish (shrimp and lobster, he isn't allergic to crab, go figure), wheat, rye, corn, soy, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, and I can't even remember what else. We keep all of the allergens in the house, except the shellfish, because they aren't life threatening. Shellfish, however, trigger anaphylaxis....why on Earth would I keep something in my home that the scent of it could kill my child????
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If I have to have an epi pen for an allergy, then no, it wouldn't be in my house. My Epi kid is due to shellfish, DH and another kid LOVE shellfish. Epi kid can't be around it in a restaurant, either. So, the only time shrimp comes "into" our home is on days it's able to be eaten immediately, outside, and it's already cooked. It does not stay in the house long term and it's never around where Epi kid can be affected. Trash from it is triple bagged since trash is the Epi kid's chore, but we put the shellfish trash into the outside trash can, never dispose of it in the house.
Should Epi kid's peanut allergy become worse, then nuts will not be in our house, either. BUT...his allergist told us to keep feeding him nuts to prevent the allergy from getting worse...so you might talk to your son's allergist about his/her thoughts on that. His shellfish allergy became much worse with each exposure, but the peanut and other allergies have seemed to stay steady on the blood tests. We don't limit anything on his expansive food allergy list except shellfish. (His 2nd worst reaction is to corn)
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The IP isn't just an electric pressure cooker. You can also sauté, slow cook and make yogurt (if you have the newer one) in it. It is the best small kitchen appliance IMO!
And to OP, yes the slow cooker works great! I think it cooks a bit quicker than the normal crock pot but that isn't an issue because it holds the moisture in much better than the crock pot. I rarely use my crockpot anymore.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
According to the IP info, it is a "Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Saute/Browning, Yogurt Maker, Steamer & Warmer"
Mine does all of that, except possibly yogurt and it calls the saute "brown". I haven't actually made yogurt in it because my family doesn't like yogurt and I have a yogurt maker (which is how I found out they don't like it lol), but I know you can make yogurt in a slow cooker, so I see no reason i couldn't make it in my PC. *Most* of the electric pressure cookers can cook everything the IP can, they just don't have as many buttons. There are a few without the slow cook function.
Anyway, I'm not saying IP isn't wonderful, I have been a huge fan of pressure cooking for about 30 years. I've never owned an IP. I have owned stovetop pressure cookers, pressure canners, and an electric pressure cooker. I'd just like people to know there are other EPCs with a lower price point.
Their name "Instant" was genius, electric pressure cooking had minimal resources before they came into existence, so now that I realize what they are, I probably should thank them for the hype, because I have noticed more EPC recipes/websites in the past year or two. (I bought mine on Black Friday or Cyber Monday 2012 from Costco, and websites with info about cooking in it were few and far between.)
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Interesting input everyone. She is neurotypical. She is adopted from my sister so we only know half of her genetics. Unfortunately, since we live in hicksville northern British Columbia, the nearest location for a sleep study or pediatric urologist is almost certainly 16 hours away too. We can do it but it will be a significant sacrifice. I wonder though if a regular urologist might be willing to see her at this point. There is probably one 6 hours away.
We've used the Malem Ultimate alarm. I think that I might try having her use it again and I'll stay near enough to wake her up. We also used a load rooster alarm to wake her throughout the night coupled with an app that asks her a math question before she can turn off the alarm. The math questions was there to make sure she was awake enough to not just turn it off and go back to sleep. This had some success but I can't tell you the number of times she was near tears trying to figure out 0*5+4 or something similar.
I am not sure about Canada, but in the US, you can order a home sleep study, it's around $300 (that was a few years ago). The company mails you the stuff and tells you how to put it on, you mail it back, and they evaluate the data. If I were rural, I would go that route first, and then if there was something questionable, I would make the effort to do a study in a sleep center.
I have sleep apnea. When I first was diagnosed and got a CPAP machine, I joined a forum about it. Needing to pee during the night was talked about a LOT there...and truly, the first night I slept with my CPAP, and every night I have used it since, I do not have to get up to pee, even if I drink a full glass of tea right before laying down (which I usually do).
I really urge you to look into at least a home sleep study for her, I know this is affecting her quality of life. My stepsister had nighttime enuresis until she was about 12 or so, my stepfather got up twice to take her to the bathroom every single night. She had polyps?, though, so there was a medical reason.
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But does it have a stainless steel liner, that's one reason I'm going for the instant pot.
Mine does not have a stainless pot, but there are plenty that do on Amazon. Normal price, most are cheaper than the 6 quart IP. Not sure if you catch the IP on sale.
I've been seeing all the IP hype for a couple of years, I looked at it very briefly a couple of years ago, long enough to see the price and decide that was one kitchen gadget I didn't need. I didn't realize it was just an electric pressure cooker. Over the past few months, I have seen at least a dozen people on my FB who have bought an IP because of the hype...and none of them got it on sale. They rave about it almost every day.
I finally, 2 days ago, decided maybe I would bite the bullet and get one, because of their hype and the recent threads here. So I hopped on Amazon and searched for it, and realize it's just an electric pressure cooker. So I Google'd about the difference, and honestly I'm just not seeing enough differences between IPs and other electric PCs to warrant the extra money. (On sale, the IP is comparably priced for the most part, but I'm not sure how often they run that sale)
Anyway, I don't really care how people spend their money, if they want to pay full price for an IP, hey whatever....except when that person posts daily about their money troubles and everyone is all sympathetic...I'm just like, really?
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Why Instant Pot? Why not one of the other, cheaper, just as well reviewed electric pressure cookers? (Seriously, just curious, I've had my electric cooker since 2012 and I love it...and it's less than half the price of IP)
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That there are buttons on his polo shirts that aren't supposed to be buttoned. "Mom! They wouldn't put them there if you weren't supposed to use them!"
O.M.Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to quit buying my 6 yr old polos because of this. He would insist they had to be buttoned, every single button, totally spaz if I unbuttoned one. Once they were buttoned, he'd spend the entire day tugging the shirt away from his neck. (Not an ASD kiddo)
My ASDs are the same. They leave the one single oreo in the package and open a new one so they can have a fresh pair. :glare:
Well, you have just solved something I have wondered about for 15 years...why the heck my ASD kid leaves one freaking Oreo in each row. For months. And then i clean out the pantry and find 10 packs of Oreos with 2 left in the package.
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Waking up to pee at night is one of the big indicators of sleep disorders/apnea, I would insist on a sleep study.
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So very, very sorry for your loss, I wish you peace and comfort in the coming days :grouphug:
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I've recently had interaction with a child whose parent uses "Time In"....personally I think the child could use a spanking. Spoiled brat doesn't even come close to describing the child...and I have a spoiled brat myself!
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We're enjoying Pandia Press R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey here, as well. My DS6 is working on Chemistry this year, tons of fun! You can download samples from the website of each subject.
Crock Pot Recommendations? Do I want an instant pot?
in The Chat Board
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I was referring to electric pressure cookers with stainless steel liners. I haven't seen any dedicated slow cookers with stainless steel.
bethben, if you were asking about the size of pressure cookers, I would go with an 8 quart. I think mine may be 5 quart but I do wish it was bigger.