Monday Memory: Lessons (Re)Learned

On Thursday after Baby E's specialist appointments, we went back to the store with the large Kosher for Passover section.

They had kitniot-free magarine that seems safe for us. Hooray! Now I can bake flaky biscuits and pie crusts without having to freeze vegetable oil as a shortening substitute. It seems such a small thing, but it really made my week. I even used some of the margarine and some coarsely-crushed Matzo crackers to make a Baby E-safe version of my mom's famous chewy oatmeal cookies. Yum!

The gentleman at the kosher deli is a Shomer Shabbos Mashgiach Temidi. (I'm not sure what that means, although I believe it includes that he understands kosher requirements and is Jewish. He's the one who supervises the kosher meat cutting each week in the butcher area as well as the deli.)

He confidently assured us that the cold cuts (Aaron's) were all kosher for passover year-round and completely kitniot-free. As he explained, they would be Kosher for Passover only if I bought the entire piece of meat and cut it myself at home, since as soon as he opened it and touched it with his knife it would no longer be Kosher for Passover.

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Of course, I was worried about the corn and soy (kitniot) content rather than the Kosher status. So I bought a quarter-pound of turkey lunchmeat and we ate it in the van after we finished our shopping.

The kids enjoyed it so much that we went back in to buy more. We were only going to be in the store a few minutes, so I didn't carry the diaper bag with me.

At the last minute I decided I'd better double-check the ingredients (yes, I know . . . AFTER we'd already eaten it). Squinting through the case, I saw that the turkey had dextrose in it. Okay, dextrose is usually corn-derived, but it can also be potato-derived. But then I saw that the smoked-flavored one next to it had corn syrup on the label, and all the meats in the case had just the OU certification and not OU-P.

The masgiach seemed a little offended that I would question the kitniot-free status of the meats, and seemed to think the corn ingredients on the labels must be a mistake. He kept insisting it was Kosher for Passover and couldn't possibly really contain corn. Then he went to show me the official OU passover guide and saw that only the unprocessed raw Aaron's meats were listed in the guide.

Right about then Baby E started getting really fussy, grunting and bending over grabbing at her tummy and diaper, and getting a bit of a rash on her cheeks.

I realized that the epi-pen was in the diaper bag and explained that if Baby E was having a reaction I wanted to be near the epi-pen, which I'd left in the van. The girls and I hurried out, leaving the masgiach gasping over the idea that epinephrine might be required and apologizing profusely behind us.

I gave Baby E a dose of Benadryl right away and kept an eye on her for a while before driving home to make sure the reaction wasn't getting too bad. Even taking the antihistamine before the reaction really got going, she was fussy and miserable for several hours and got a mild rash and slightly puffy face.

I'm so glad we have the compounded Benadryl to use in such situations. I can only imagine that the reaction would have been much worse without it, since we've seen that the Benadryl generally cuts a reaction down to just a small fraction of its original severity.

It was yet another reminder that I really do have to double-check everything myself, no matter how sincere and convincing someone is about the corn-free status of a food, or how offended they may be if I question it. I also need to remember that the one time I leave the epi-pen behind "just for a minute" may be the one time we end up needing it. I just can't take that kind of chance.

As DH pointed out, the masgiach's mistake would have been a big deal to most of his customers, not just to us with the allergy issues. Selling meat that is NOT Kosher for Passover with the claim that it was OK for Pesach use would be a Very Bad Thing for the Jewish people who frequent the kosher deli, too.

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