food dye from the funeral

Well, that about says it all... sort of. I have not posted much because of my parents' health problems, among other difficulties. I'm sorry to say my dad passed away about a week ago. As if that were not all hard enough, my son's birthday was the day of the funeral. Then we went to a lunch afterward only to have banana peppers in both the sandwiches and the pasta salad. In case you have not seen my previous posts about banana peppers, they soak them in yellow dye. I've seen some of our worst reactions come from banana peppers. Too bad, because I really like them. Normally, I would just send all the "contaminated" food back, but when 3 kids had already waited an hour at the restaurant (until 2 pm) for lunch, I didn't care any more and we all ate it. Well you can imagine how that turned out.

Now I messed up again and got green gum instead of the white gum for St. Nick's day. My 4 year old has been back to the spitting, yelling, defiance, you name it. Uhhg. Hopefully only 1 more day of that until the effects wear off. You would not think a little stick of Trident would make a difference, but it does for my kids. I try to stick to Freedent, or other white gums, but I have been distracted and less careful lately.

On a more positive note, I found dye free candy canes at the health food store. Well, actually, my friend asked if they would order them back in November and they called her Saturday to say they were in. My friend had ordered some online, so I ran over and got her box. Good thing I went right away, it looked like the last box. If I get my act together I'll dig the box back out an post the brand name.

Here's hoping everyone else is more successful in their pursuit of dye free foods this holiday season. We did avoid problems on Thanksgiving. Still sad that Crescent rolls have red and yellow in them, but we somehow survived without them.

rough week

I have not been posting much because my week has been spinning out of control. My refrigerator stopped working so we had to go buy a new one without any warning. Threw out most of my food because the fridge went from being less cold than usual to not cold at all in 24 hours. We've had a mild stomach thing passing through.

And I could swear my 3 year old is high on dye again. Lots of spitting, kicking and overall disagreeable behavior much of the time. It's been going on all week, but it just dawned on me that I let her have a few bites of Greek salad last night after I had removed the banana peppers. In case you don't know, banana peppers and most pickles are soaked in yellow dye. Clausen makes pickles that are dye free (the refridgerated ones). I posted about banana peppers before. You would think I would learn my lesson, but, well, we all have our moments of stupidity. Maybe if I share mine with other readers, you can chose a wiser path.