Allergies and Faux Clam Chowder Recipe

It’s been an eventful past couple weeks. For one thing, Once Upon A Curse is doing extremely well—we’ve held the #1 fantasy anthology spot for over a week on Amazon. Thanks to all of you who have bought it—and I hope you enjoyed my story, BONES. You still have a limited amount of time to buy it at the ninety-nine cent pricing before it goes up to full price.

Tarot Journeys is processing and will be fully up on line in e-format within a couple days! I’ll put up a full release notice for when it is. It’s available at Amazon now, for Kindle.

I’ve been working hard on Fury Rising and I expect to have available this month. I really thing it’s going to be a great series and I really love the characters and world I’m creating. The Fury Unbound series is futuristic urban fantasy with an eco-cyberpunk feel. A friend of mine who looked over part of it tells me it reminds him of the Shadowrun universe—a gaming universe I don’t know much about, but now I want to see what it’s like, because I’m certainly enjoying writing Fury’s world.

Remember, August 2 will see the release of the second Fly by Night book—Flight from Mayhem. Alex and Shimmer take on serial killer of the most supernatural kind.

So the past couple weeks I have been getting requests for two new allergy friendly recipes I created. I’m going to include them on the blog today and tomorrow. So you’ll find my faux clam chowder recipe today, and my pumpkin molasses pie recipe tomorrow.

Speaking of allergies and reactions, about a week ago I discovered that I have developed a severe sensitivity—if not outright allergy—to nuts.

I had been forgoing tree nuts (coconut is not considered a tree nut, by the way) for some time, having suspected that they were causing some sort of issue. Last week, I decided to try a small amount. I should have waited until Sam was home to do a food challenge, but  the fact is, I didn’t. Within ten minutes my lips were tingling, my nose was tingling, my face was beginning to itch. This time I didn’t wait, I ran directly for the Benadryl. Then I called Sam and he came home. I had to take twice the normal amount of Benadryl to stop the reaction and boy, did it leave me in a haze. So I’m being very cautious right now.

Unfortunately in clearing my pantry and cupboards of nuts, somehow a bag of nut flour was left in the garage. It was closed up, but residue gets in the outside easily enough. My niece, who is visiting me, happen to touch it—not realizing what it was—and she had a severe reaction (she has severe food allergies). So last night we were up until 2 AM, calling the paramedics. She’s fine today, but it was a tiring and eventful evening.

And one thing that pissed me off so much was that the paramedics were acting as if she was faking it. Not every reaction will be clinically the same — and one of her responses, which is similar to one I have, is difficulty in responding to what people are saying. Apparently the hotshot EMTs decided this meant that she was on drugs or faking. They asked me so many insulting questions that I plan on making report. I am not quick to take offense, but their attitude and questions were off the wall inappropriate. Good gods, the woman’s a nurse, she knows what a food allergy reaction is when it happens.

So it’s been quite an active past few days. And I’m tired tonight because I didn’t get much sleep last night, and my body is still hypersensitive from my own reactions and then from the stress last night. This year has been really bad for inflammation and reactions and frankly I’m getting to the point where I have almost no desire to try anything I’m not sure of.

Anyway, I leave you with my faux clam chowder recipe. And I hope you enjoy it. The recipe calls for coconut milk. If you cannot use that, you use almond milk or rice milk, though it will alter the flavor a little.

Yasmine’s Faux Clam Chowder

5 large Yukon gold potatoes, do not peel. Wash and dice into small cubes
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced carrots—optional
3 cans of minced clams—do not drain
8 oz pure clam juice
2 tbsp coconut oil or olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt (add more to taste after you’re done cooking)
1 tbsp each: dried parsley (if fresh, use 2 tbsp)
1 tsp dried thyme (if fresh, use 2 tsp)
2 bay leaves
5 strips of bacon, cooked crisp, and crumbled
2 tbsp bacon grease
1 can coconut milk, do not use low-fat
1/3 cup instant mashed potato flakes

• In large soup pot, melt the coconut oil and the bacon grease together. Add herbs, celery, and carrots.
• Stir over medium heat for five minutes.
• Add bacon, clams, and salt.
• Cook over medium heat for another five minutes.
• Add potatoes and clam juice and simmer until potatoes are fork tender.
• Remove bay leaves.
• Mash mixture lightly.
• Add coconut milk and stir well.
•  Add instant mashed potato flakes and stir to thicken.

This is extremely tasty. Makes about 5-6 servings

Substitutions:

• I make it without onions, garlic, or lemon pepper because of my severe reactions to them.
• If you want to add onions, use diced green onions and add with the celery.
• If you want to add garlic—use 1 tsp garlic powder with the herbs.
• Lemon pepper would be better than black pepper—add to taste.
• You can substitute rice milk or almond milk for the coconut milk, although it will make it taste a little sweeter. Use 2 cups of either in place of the can of coconut milk.