Grandparents Coming to Dinner

This week marks my first week of allergy friendly meals without specialty foods from health food stores. It took a few hours to make the menu for the week, but it will be worth it. After having our grocery bill triple over the last two months, I'm anxious to resume a more typical food budget. Although I still will end up buying milk alternatives for the boys and flours on special occasion.

The menu was a bit tricky in places. Grandparents are coming to visit. I wanted to prepare a dinner that they would enjoy, but still allergy friendly for Child 1. It had to be simple and not exotic.

And of course we can't forget dessert! There is a rule in our house that when company comes over we have dessert. This has been extremely hard with the newly diagnosed allergies, but I finally hit the jackpot and found a fun recipe that everyone can have (minus the 10 month old).

Here's what I came up with-

Dinner: Grilled Chicken and Vegetable Chicken Kabobs with Rice
(Click on meal to obtain recipe.)

Dessert: Caramel Corn

Recipe given to me by Dana R. Dwyer
1/2 cup margarine (Fleischmann's Unsalted Margarine contains no gluten or dairy. It does contain soy.)
1/2 c. honey
Dash of maple flavoring
4 Quarts popped popcorn (or more), cooled.

1. Melt margarine and honey. Bring to boil and cook for about 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in maple flavoring.
2. Pour over popcorn and stir. Let cool.

-Can add molasses for more flavor.
-Sugar can be substituted for honey.

What a great way to have fun with food allergies!