Please Don't Pass The Mayo

Tonight we had an incident that reinforced our decision to remove all raw egg products from our home. We ate dinner on the deck tonight. My wife ran back into the kitchen but for an instant and in the time she was gone, our daughter grabbed her hamburger and took a big bite. In the past we always had mayo on our burgers. Given our daughter's egg allergy this would likely have been a bad situation.

But alas we are now using an eggless mayo so disaster was averted. There was no way I could have gotten to the burger before my daughter. Naturally my immediate thought was a mental image of the allergic reaction that might have ensued should the mayo have been of the egg variety.

Our decision to remove eggs from the home came after I ate an omelet. It was about a month ago. Up to that point we kept eggs but removed peanuts. The thinking was that we could be careful with eggs but despite all my precautions during the cooking process, I gave my daughter a kiss after eating the omelet and she had a large welt on her cheek. That was the final straw.

Ironically a week or so after we removed eggs from the house my parents were here. My Dad found four eggs in the back of the fridge and fried them up. My wife caught him just as he was bringing the eggs downstairs to my Mom, who incidentally was playing with our egg-allergic daughter. Understandably my Dad did not think about the allergy and it was only after my wife caught him at the top of the stairs with a plate of eggs that he remembered. I did not even realize we still had eggs in the back of the fridge.

Though (like me) you'll probably miss many of your favourite food items, I urge you to rid your home of any products that contain allergens harmful to your family members. Accidents happen and it is just not worth the risk.