Your Allergy Chefs

Let take a break from the heavier posts this week.

These are potato and pea croquettes one of the recipes I get asked about more than almost anything else from our book.

I came up with them years ago for events where we had kids with multiple food allergies and the typical "we'll see what we can do" wasn't going to work. We needed something that would actually look like food, taste like food, and be safe for everyone at the table.

That's how most of our recipes started. Not "what can we strip out" but "what would a kid actually want to eat that we can build safely."

Crispy outside. Soft inside. Top 9 allergen-free. Full recipe and around 100 others in our book At Home With Your Allergy Chefs.

If you make them, send me a picture. Mary and I love seeing the food in your kitchens.

I want to talk about something that's been on my mind this whole week.

Every year in this country, around 200,000 people end up in the emergency room because they ate something that triggered a food allergy. A lot of them are kids. And in less than two months, California is going to become the first state to require chain restaurants to label every allergen, on every menu.

I've been a chef for over 30 years. I've worked in some of the biggest kitchens in the country, including Walt Disney World. And I'm going to tell you what nobody else seems willing to say most restaurants are not ready for what's coming. And it's not because they don't care.

It's because nobody ever trained them.

Culinary schools focus on technique. Health departments focus on temperature. When a guest walks in with a serious allergy, most kitchens are improvising. Every single time.

That's why Mary and I wrote our two books. One for families navigating this at home. One for chefs and food service teams. We wrote them because the gap was real, and somebody needed to fill it.

If this is your world as a parent, a chef, a restaurant owner, a school nutrition director. I'd love to hear what you're seeing. Drop it in the comments. Today, on Day 2 of Food Allergy Awareness Week, we go.

Food Allergy Awareness Week begins today. May 10–16.

33 million Americans live with food allergy. 1 in 13 children. 1 in 10 adults. And every year, this is the week the country pauses to recognize what it actually means to live with this every day.

Today, we're launching something we've been building for a long time.

A free guide for families newly diagnosed everything we wish someone had handed us in our first week. Click the link in the comments to grab it.

This week, we'll be sharing one piece of the story every day: a recipe, a protocol, a tip, a behind-the-scenes from our kitchen. Save the posts that matter. Share the ones someone you know needs.

Wear teal today. Use . Let people see this community.

We go all week.