Good news for allergy sufferers. Cookbook author and food writer Lucy Waverman has partnered with distributors of EpiPen, auto injector for emergency treatment of allergic reaction, to come up with nine seasonal and easy-to-make recipes that contain no peanuts, milk, egg or shellfish. The best part: these recipes are available for free courtesy of EpiPen (or click on the links below).

CJ: How did the partnership between you and the distributors of EpiPen come about?
LW: My husband Bruce has had a severe, life threatening allergy to peanuts and tree nuts since he was four years old. He carries an EpiPen with him. So I’ve always been active in trying to produce good recipes for him. I spent a lot of time over the years making dishes Bruce could eat and feel good about eating, desserts for example, and I thought I could pass them on to others.

CJ: What was your inspiration in creating these recipes?
LW: The way I look at recipes for people with allergies is to focus on seasonal fresh foods, to avoid packaged foods, and foods that mimic food but don’t have much taste. I wanted to work with fresh, tasty ingredients and produce interesting food. People with allergies have been a group that’s been left behind.

CJ: There’s an emphasis on seasonal, allergy-sensitive recipes. How did you come up with them?
LW: Lots of trial and error: The Creamy Macaroni Bake is a good example. I wanted to make one the kids would eat. We experimented with soy milk and tofu cheese and it just tasted like nothing. It was sweet and unpleasant. We also tried one with tomatoes and bacon. Then I had an idea for making a white sauce without using cheese and that’s when cauliflower came to mind.  We boiled and pureed the cauliflower added chicken stock, tossed it with macaroni, added zucchini for colour, added bread crumbs and baked it. The kids thought it was macaroni and cheese, because it looked cheesy and creamy.

CJ: As you mentioned, desserts pose a challenge for allergy sufferers, what are some of the challenges you faced when coming up with dessert recipes?
LW: The first thing on my list was to make a birthday cake. I’ve gone to parties where kids could not eat the cake because they were allergic to dairy, eggs and nuts or whatever. I really wanted to make a Chocolate Birthday Cake that everyone could eat. So through lots of trial and error we came up with a cake that uses a lot of bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, because that’s how we could get it to taste good. Our secret was to use balsamic vinegar and baking soda, which replaced the eggs and made the cake rise. It also tasted terrific. We are very very proud of it.  For the chocolate glaze rather than using chocolate and butter or cream, we made it using corn syrup and water. It looked like a real birthday cake.

CJ: Out of the nine seasonal allergy-sensitive recipes you’ve developed, what stands out?
LW: The Creamy Macaroni Bake and the Chocolate Birthday Cake were the most difficult for us to come up with but my two favourite recipes are: Chocolate Banana Brownies because they are very moist and they also have ingredients you might want to get into your kids like bananas and prunes. When my kids tried them, they absolutely loved them. We also had a taste panel with kids next door, and they said the brownies were amazing.

My other favourite is the Pad Thai. Because of Bruce’s peanut allergy, we never ever go to Thai restaurants. He’s never eaten Pad Thai, because since he relates it to peanuts in his mind so he was never interested in tasting it. We spent a lot of time developing it because Pad Thai can be the worst allergy dish of all time. It has eggs, seafood, peanuts and bean sprouts all the top common food allergies. Our version has none of those common allergens and we added flaxseeds for the crunch. I made it for Bruce and he was like, “Oh, this is what Pad Thai tastes like, I love it.“

CJ: So many people have different food allergies. Since you can’t be sensitive to all of them, which ones did you pay specific attention to when developing these recipes?
LW: We picked the most common allergy foods -- nuts, dairy, eggs and shellfish. Food is the most common cause of severe allergic reactions so I really encourage people to carry an EpiPen.

CJ: Is there a cookbook for allergy sufferers on the horizon?
LW: I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received asking me that question. The thing is I’d want to produce really, really good recipes and it takes a very long time to develop so whether there’ll be a book or not, I can’t say. Right now there are nine, and we’re coming out with three more in the fall.