Last Weekend: Football and Nut Allergies...

Last weekend was pretty educational. I learned some new things about how uNeXpEcTeD life can be.

On Saturday, Trevor and I got tickets to and attended BYU's first home game of the season.

Lesson #1- Just because BYU can beat a really good team away from home does NOT mean that they can beat a supposedly-easy team at home. Should have been a close out, but... We got S.M.A.S.H.E.D. Lesson learned. And by the 4th quarter, it was like having salt rubbed into our wounds as they let us score so we wouldn't feel so bad about losing by SOoOo much. But hey - we still looked cute, huh?:
Lesson #2- Having friends from your ward to keep you entertained as your team is getting killed makes losing a whole lot less miserable :) Meet the (L to R) Johnstons: Rachel and Darin... and the Lewises: Dixie and Patrick and little Elijah. :)
So then, on Sunday, I continued my tradition of picking a new, experimental recipe out of one of my recipe books or magazines and trying it out on my hubby. On Saturdays, I always go shopping for my ingredients so I can be a great chef on Sunday :) Which brings us to....

Lesson #3- When you're allergic to peanuts and you're in the grocery store reading ingredient labels and you see that the third ingredient in the pesto you're about to buy is cashews... and you're not sure if you're allergic to them or not, you should probably test it out before consuming. That's right. I thought to myself "ohhhh it's just a tablespoon in the whole dish! my body won't even know it's there!" ... and yes, I did have intentions of trying it out on my lips first before ingesting to see if they reacted ... and no, I didn't DO that because I was too busy cooking.
It looked so good (and it does look pretty, huh?), I just started to dig in :) YUM! My... 5 or so... bites were great. Until that hot, scary feeling on the back of your neck tells you that your mouth might be reacting a bit. Okay... time to stop eating. Darn. Like clockwork... within an hour or so, I had a stomachache that would make a grown man whine. :) I contemplated whether I should just allow myself to purge the food that was making me react... but I hate that so much, I decided to muscle through it. And... by the time I went to sleep that night, I was much better.
Fortunately, this time there was no full-body hives, no wheezing, no throat closing (just a teeny bit of swelling) and thankfully, no epi-pen usage or trip to the ER.

But now I know. Lesson learned. I'm allergic to cashews (either that or pine nuts... also the last ingredient in the pesto).

Next ExPeRiMeNt: I'm going to test out pesto with JUST pine nuts (yes.. on my LIPS, not in my STOMACH) to see if it's just cashews or if it's both! Dum dum dum...

Oh the woes of food allergies. But HEY! At least it's just some nuts. Nuts that I don't really like anyway. Nuts that they always list on food labels like: Contains: Peanuts!!!!!!!!!! AHHH! WATCH OUT!!! .. or at least that's how I read it. Ha ha ha....

But seriously. It could be worse. At least I'm not lactose intolerant. Or have Celiac's disease. Whew... I tell you. THAT would be rough. OR... an allergy to chocolate! AH. yes. I would die. Just die. If I couldn't eat chocolate. :)

So... I learned some good life lessons last weekend. So far, this weekend has been much better! I'll update you on tonight's "cheap date" activity in my next post! Hooray! Also... tomorrow for Sunday dinner we will be having creamy chicken enchiladas. VERY far from nuts :)

Good night! And happy Sunday~~