I realised I never actually posted about the results of all my allergy and intolerance testing!  Around October 07 I stopped cutting out the foods I thought was making me ill and ate a full and varied diet for three months.  Then around xmas 07 I had an intolerance test as well as ear -nose- throat specialist look at my ears/palate problem.

It turns out they aren’t related….I still have an unknown probably “inhalent” allergy that causes the itchy palate/nose/mouth which they won’t be able to treat.  The consultant said that my blocked ears will get worse and worse on exposure to the allergen, then in the future when it gets really bad i will have to have an operation to “laser” my ear/nose tubes which are getting hardened on response to the allergen. I also have IBS and am intolerant to lots of foods:

dates, crab, mussels, white pepper, spinach, leek, pear, mushroom, raspberry, olive, egg yolk, kidney bean and grapes.

I’m not too sure about some of the foods, but I (and Olly) have suffered when I eat pear, olive, egg yolk, kidney beans and grapes.  Not good! Eating these gives me a lot of digestive problems, which sometimes last for days or even up to a week.  Then some food (red wine, mayonnaise dip type things, Pizza hust pizza) also make me feel incredibly nauseus for two days or so after eating them.  I learned this the hard way after multiple visits to pizza hut to test whether it really was the pizza that was making me ill!

So anyway, it makes sense that when I cut out the wheat/dairy I was also not eating a lot of products that contained egg yolk.  So I spent most of last year adapting all my recipes again and tried so many different substitutes for egg including: egg replacer, cornflour, banana etc but nothing turned out right 🙁

Then a few weeks ago I read an article on the internet about people with egg intolerance being able to tolerate duck eggs.  I suppose this is similar to people that are intolerant to cow milk but can drink goat milk.  So Olly and I had a right job finding duck eggs in our new home town….we tried Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Marks and Spencer – none of them sold them.  Then we visited a tiny Waitrose, the size of an express convenience store, and they had them….mind they were £2.35 for 6 eggs.  They were free range, and larger than chicken eggs.  That weekend I had a duck egg overload – I ate a fried duck egg sandwhich and made my “special” scrambled eggs.  Then I monitored my symptoms.  I didn’t feel sick/nor wanted to vomit (a good sign).  Only thing was i got a little constipated – but no where near as bad as when I eat some things!  So conclusion is that maybe I can eat duck egg but VERY occasionally so as not to aggrevate my IBS.

A quick note on what duck eggs taste like/look like.  When you fry a duck egg, it looks like a chicken egg .  The fried egg has a thicker egg white bit and the same yellow yolk as a chicken egg.  To me it tastes the same as a chicken egg, but then I haven’t eaten chicken egg for over 1 year now, so I prob have forgotten the taste LOL.

I can’t wait to use the eggs in baking….