Hershey’s and I need to have a talk.

Every year I count on Hershey’s chocolate chips for my holiday baking. Now I am thinking that perhaps I will need to buy them from a safe peanut-free internet site. You see, Hershey’s has decided that Mexico is a wonderful place to manufacture some of their products. I do not know the conditions of these factories and I do not know how well they adhere to the food allergy guidelines.  

If a Hershey product says “Mfd. by The Hershey Co.” on the back near the ingredients, I know that it was made in Hershey, Pa. If it says ”Distributed by The Hershey Co.” it did not come from Hershey. In fact, we don’t know where it came from. They’re tricky like that.  

And if you haven’t figured it out yet, the chocolate chips now say Distributed by. I’m very upset. I will more than likely be buying my baking chips from Vermont Nut Free Chocolates. I am not thrilled about this as I hate that I can’t just buy my chips when they are on sale for $2.00 at the store. I am now paying considerably more plus shipping. Yes, my son will be safe but why did Hershey’s have to sell out and take away jobs from us Americans. It’s disgraceful.

Halloween 2009

Halloween this year was a crazy mess. We arrived home from Disney around 2:00 in the afternoon. Trick-or-treaters were due to arrive at 6:00.  We came home, unloaded the car and then headed to K-Mart to get some candy for the TOTers and for Alex and Isabelle. Alex was surprisingly happy to dress up as a vampire and hand out candy to the kids. I’m hoping this is the start of something new for us. It was wonderful being able to buy the kids candy (and popcorn) I knew they could have while still giving them that Halloween rush. We had a ton of kids come to the house and at the end of the night Alex informed me that he “sold” a lot of candy. Lol! If only that were true! Ha!

Necco All Natural Candy Wafers

Through TwitterMoms.com I was able to participate in receiving a free bag of Necco wafers. As one of the first 50 people you had to send an email to Necco with your address. When I did so, I asked if the wafers were peanut-allergy friendly. If they weren’t I simply said to disregard my email.

A week or so later I got an email stating that I was one of the first to respond and that the wafers were peanut-allergy safe! Yay!

When we got home from Disney our bag of Necco’s were waiting for us. Neither of my kids liked the Clove flavor but I kind of expected that, the orange and lime however were big hits! We also got a few rolls of the chocolate wafers and they were very tasty!

Pick up a bag the next time you see them, the rolls are small so they fit nicely in a diaper bag or purse. It’s great when you need that quick treat for the kids so you can get through the grocery store!

Halloween or in other words “Food Allergy Nightmare Night”

Halloween has always been a source of worry for me. To trick-or-treat or not to trick-or-treat, that has always been the question.

When Alex was first diagnosed Boscov’s department store would give children with diabetes a $10.00 gift card to their store. I approached them about Alex’s peanut allergy and they let him participate also. All you had to do was give your candy bag to the customer service desk and they give you the card. Awesome! That worked until Alex was about 4. When he turned five he wanted to TOT and not give away his candy. Hmmmm. That’s a problem.

So we tried TOT’ing and denying candy with nuts. That left very few houses to receive candy from. It also got old telling people “he’s allergic to peanuts but thanks anyway”. Several times I got the “but this one doesn’t have peanuts” and then I would have to quickly explain that he still can’t have it.

This year we are getting home from Disney the night of TOT’ing. I’m hoping that is my saving grace. I have explained to Alex that he can dress up and give out candy while enjoying candy that is safe for him. Then the following night they can dress up and go to our parents’ homes and TOT there. As of now he seems ok with this. Whether that still holds true on the 30th remains to be seen. Fingers crossed!