In Which We Discover I May Not Be Losing My Mind After All

After I wrote the post about the near-miss with peanuts (link), I was a little worried that I was starting to lose my mind. With three kids and a recuperating spouse, I can occasionally overlook some of the details. So, I thought that maybe we'd somehow bought a different brand of curry than usual. I mean, a manufacturer doesn't just suddenly change the ingredients of a widely-sold item to include an unnecessary but deadly allergen, right? Right?!?!!

The life-threatening box of curry paste.

I actually dug this out of the trash to prove to myself that the ingredients did indeed include peanuts. Then, I carried this box around with me for a week, as if it was an invaluable piece of evidence that I couldn't let go.

Close-up: See? Peanuts!?!!

Despite what I wrote in the blog, I spent most the last three weeks worrying that we'd simply made a big, almost catastrophic mistake, and I was having trouble getting over it. Living with severe food allergies makes it hard not to beat yourself up and/or be riddled by paranoia, especially after you realize how easily you could have harmed or killed your child with food YOU helped prepare for dinner.

For obvious reasons, I just couldn't let it go. So, Saturday, when we visited our favorite Japanese grocery store, I felt compelled to go down the curry aisle and double check the ingredients of ALL the curry being sold there. 

I don’t know what I expected to find, but I certainly DIDN’T think I’d find THIS. 

It's the same brand and flavor of curry, but look!

No peanuts!!

What the heck?!?!! It’s the SAME brand and flavor of curry as the one that had peanuts in it, BUT, there are no peanuts now! The peanuts somehow magically disappeared. That means that, more than likely, they WEREN'T there when we bought the same product previously.
Which means that just maybe I am not losing my mind after all! 

Phew.

The whole experience has made Ren and me pretty apprehensive about using pre-made curry paste. So, on our last visit to the Japanese grocery store, we bought a can of Japanese curry powder instead. 

I guess you can imagine how the kids responded to Ren's first attempt at homemade allergy-friendly curry...

Homemade GFDF peanut-free curry with Easter egg garnish.

Sky and Stow loved it. Pink? Not so much...

Verbose and largely unnecessary postscript: Yes, from now on, I still plan to read labels religiously, even of things we've bought many times before. But, at least I feel a little better knowing it wasn't just my imagination. Something fishy WAS going on with the curry. And, yes, the curry paste has a little bit of dairy and wheat in it. It's one of the few things we continued to eat post-dietary changes because we weren't able to find a decent substitute, and more importantly, because the kids hadn't had a negative reaction to it-- at least, not until the peanut incident.