Allergies

Who knew . . . she was allergic to pineapple?

I learned a VERY valuable lesson this weekend but first let's get a few things straight here:

1) I am not a self proclaimed cook and may never be if I continue to live in NY. Why cook when there are soooo many tasty restaurants and sooo few meal times in life?

2) Every once in a while I get the idea to try and make dinner, so I do and something usually goes wrong but yet a few weeks go by, I didn't learn and I try again.

3) I hate grocery shopping in New York, little selection, small stores, high prices, therefore I don't spend a lot of time or attention and try to get in and out as quickly as possible.

4) I have been known to try secret ingredients to see if people can guess what has been added. This is usually more by accident than by design.

Now on to the lesson learned: Always ask your dinner guests if they are allergic to any foods. And to add to that it's a good idea to ask them before you have dinner cooking in the oven and not as you are about to pull it out and serve it up.

So here is how it all went down. I got the crazy idea it was time to try cooking something new for Sunday dinner. I picked out a simple recipe (simple = from first glance I recognize all ingredients and don't have to look up any terms in the glossary), spaghetti pie. On a whim earlier that day I invited two friends over to join me for dinner. M arrived early and provided adult supervision since the oven was involved. The recipe called for cottage cheese. I went to the fridge pulled off the lid and freshness wrapper to find out the band new tub of cottage cheese had small yellow chunks mixed in. I started to get upset thinking I had purchased spoiled cottage cheeses when M pointed to the carton and said, "I think it has pineapple mixed in". Sure enough it did. Who knew? I have never seen that before. So we decided to use it anyway thinking that the sauce and cheeses would mask the sweet pineapple flavor. It became a secret ingredient and we decided to see if C could guess what was added.

When C arrived we were still waiting a few minutes for the pie to finish cooking. I explained to her there was a secret ingredient and we wanted her to guess what it was. After assuring her it was edible and that we would eat it with her to prove this I blurted out without much thought "You aren't allergic to anything are you?". C mentioned she had a slight allergic reaction to mellons (watermellon, cantaloupe, honeydew). Phew, disaster diverted, or so I thought.

Then C said, "Oh and pineapple too". Are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Of all the food in the world it just happens that this is the secret ingredient. So we discussed what allergic meant, what her symptoms were, if it would kill her, etc. Basically from all the questioning she quickly figured out there was pineapple in the pie.

By this time we were all laughing hysterically. I know almost poisoning a friend is not something to laugh at but what are the chances that the very food she is allergic to I have just accidentally added to spaghetti pie?

And just to show you what type of friend C is, she tried the pie anyway (she thought it was okay because it was cooked) and then thanked me afterwards for the invite to dinner. I don't blame here if she never comes back or offers to cook next time.

Who knew she was allergic to pineapple?