I'm cooking tea at the moment, which is a nice curry. It occured to me that if I invited all my friends and family, hardly any would actually eat it. The rest would be allergic or severely dislike it.

Allergies:

Milk - 1 person
Cheese & Yoghurt - 3 people
Peppers, onions, garlic & chives - 2 people
Soya - 2 people
Mustard - 2 people
Chilli - 1 person
"Exotic" mushrooms - 1 person


Dislikes:

Fish - 1 person
Sprouts - several people
Meat - 2 vegetarians
Mushrooms - 1 person
Chilli - 1 person
Palm oil - lots of people


Thankfully:

None of my friends are allergic to wheat or nuts! :edit: Oh wait, yes they are...


I'm sure I've forgotten something important though. Probably one that would kill at least 3 people


So, can anyone suggest a single delicious meal which I could serve at my (very hypothetical) wedding reception which everyone would think was great? The best I can come up with is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, assuming I can find one without "generic vegetable fat" which could be soya or palm

Is the 1 milk person in the 3 cheeze & yoghurt people and what are the other cheeze and yoghurt people allergic to if it's not dairy?

Allergies confuse me. I've got a skin condition that comes and goes that doesn't seem to be related to anything inparticular. Unless it's chocolate. I always sneeze when I eat chocolate.

Two people allergic to yoghurt and cheese are allergic to the bacterial and fungal products, which is a similar thing to those allergic to peanuts - usually its the mould that grows on them that is the killer.

The third is allergic to milk and soya proteins, so that includes all milk derivatives.

However, many people are allergic to milk components which are much reduced in yoghurt because of the fermentation; that includes a lot of Indian people who can drink boiled or fermented milk but not the raw stuff. It's an evolutionary side effect of growing up in a country so hot that raw milk doesn't last long enough to drink.

Ah, of course.

I wonder how many of them are truly allergic ie provokes an immune-mediated response. I've found that with medication, most people who are "allergic" just experience the side-effects of the medication and aren't actually allergic.

Plain boiled rice with a dash of salt?

I remember back in the early 90s how we were promised things like superduper electronic cookbooks where you could enter what you wanted/didn't want in a meal and it'd come up with a recipe that met your needs.

There are websites that sort of do that.

For most of them it causes either vomiting or diarrhoea.

The people allergic to the onion family, it sets off their stomach ulcers very badly.

In either case, it could potentially prove fatal in a less comfortable environment than Britain. I have no idea if they qualify as "true allergies" but I wouldn't want my guests sh!ting, puking and internally bleeding all over my wedding.

I only know one person who actually goes into anaphylactic shock - she's the nut allergy one I forgot about, but she's not invited anyway

One of my ex's is intolerant of wheat, and now avoids a load of other stuff like chocolate. She'd be invited but she's started to bring her own food so I wouldn't have to worry about her too much

In theory, vomiting and diarrhoea can be part of the immune-mediated response, so I wouldn't rule it out.

In those with stomach ulcers, it's just an aggravation of heartburn and hence not an allergy. A small amount of onion shouldn't cause problems but I imagine eating raw onions would. If the ulcers have healed and they are on the appropriate treatment, a tiny amount of onions and spice won't make things worse suddenly, unless they carried on eating said items.

There's evidence that people can be desensitised to things like nuts but it is recognised to be an allergen.

I reckon you could make a meal to suit them all, but it'd be blander than wallpaper paste.

That's really not the case, although absolutely everyone always thinks the same. Ignorant hosts thinking that way have left him hospitalised in the past.

For an example, I accidentally used a flavoured vinegar which had some onion in it. I used maybe a tea spoon in a meal for three people, and my my dad was in agony all night and tender for a week afterwards.

He's also sensitive to strawberries, which I'd forgotten. In that case, using the same chopping board that had strawberries on previously is enough to set him off and it takes several days to fully recover.

At the moment he doesn't actually have ulcers, but these foods still cause acid related problems which are very painful. He's on several kinds of medication to control the acid which work fine on a controlled diet, but these food items are like sulphuric acid to him.

I was about to say how heartburn isn't immune-mediated, and that that appropriate treatment isn't always just tablets and that the nerve supply to the stomach can be cut off in order to reduce acid flareup.

However, I decided to have a look at some article abstracts and there is eosinophilic oesophagitis, where it's basically heartburn but due to allergy. This is something that's very new, certainly wasn't something we were taught about at med school and even when I worked in gastroenterology.

This is completely different to the regular reflux (GORD), where foods like onions and spices etc can aggravate heartburn. I have known it get to a state where people are disabled temporarily by it, but never heard of people being admitted for it. I have heard of people being sensitive to small amounts but a lot more than you would get in your vinegar.

Traditional porridge (water, oats & salt)? Otherwise I'm coming up with a bit of a blank here.

Butternut squash ravioli or perhaps a simple pasta dish with tomato, paprika and capers.

Personally I'd go with slow roast hand of pork; vegetarians can like it or leave it.

With such a bunch of fussy eaters tell them that it is a packed lunch affair and get the caterers to get you the best meal possible, why should you suffer?

Beans and scrambled egg

Not sure on the bean sauce though...

You could possibly do Falafel but aside from chickpeas I can never remember what is in it!