The Year is 2001.
I was in the grocery store with my 18-month-old daughter. She was happily swinging her legs in the front seat of the cart as I strolled the aisles when it dawned on me that she was old enough to try peanut butter.
Filled with excitement for her to taste the creamy yumminess, I reached for a box of graham crackers, popped it open, and dipped one into the jar of peanut butter I was holding. She reached for it, and the moment it touched her lips, she let out a giddy cry of delight. She sucked on that graham cracker with fervor while I finished my shopping. It wasn’t until I reached for her to buckle her into her car seat that I noticed big red splotches all over her face.
Panicked, I called my doctor, who answered (he truly did), and listened with calm patience as I described what my daughter’s face looked like.
He instructed me to immediately go back into the store, buy Benadryl, and give it to her. A couple of weeks later, the test results came back: she had a life-threatening peanut allergy. I was heartbroken. I loved peanut butter, and I knew she loved the taste, too. I was told that 20% of kids grow out of their peanut allergies. Unfortunately, my daughter is not one of the 20%.
Soon, I found myself reading every ingredient in everything I bought and was frustrated and shocked by how many food items had the phrases “processed in a plant with peanuts” and “may contain peanuts” on the labels. It seemed that every snack food I reached for had these disclaimers. As the months and years flew by, I faced various obstacles because of her peanut allergy. The main dilemma was leaving her with other kids who were, no doubt, eating peanut butter or snacks processed in a plant with peanuts. Numerous times, it became clear to me, indirectly, that my daughter was excluded from certain events because of her allergy. People wanted to have peanut products around, and often they chose not to include my daughter in playdates or birthday parties because her allergy complicated their food choices. Yikes!
As I became a semi-expert on reading food labels (a default mode of mine that I am forever grateful for), I realized that I needed to come up with something my daughter could not only eat but love to eat.
It wasn’t until 2010, when she was 10 years old that I started making my own version of a snack bar. I experimented with ingredients and combinations for quite some time until I got it right. “It” was originally named “yum bar” by my then 10-year-old daughter. Today, due to copyright laws, the snack bar is known as “BarraYUM” (Italian for yum bar).
Before long, BarraYUM became a staple in my home, and I was bringing them to birthday parties and just about every social event that my now three daughters attended. Yes, I had two more daughters who do not have peanut allergies and grew up in a house without any peanut products. Over the years, countless people asked me for the recipe, but my mom advised me, the moment she first had a bar, never to give it out, as she was sure that when the time was right, people would want to pay for the bars. Well, as always, she was right! I listened to her, kept the recipe to myself, and here I am, 14 years later, still making the bars and now selling them in my fully permitted home kitchen.
This leads me to the most important question: “What is a BarraYUM and why is it special?” Yes, it’s a snack; one that fills you up with not only yummy goodness but with ingredients that make it dairy-free, nut-free, and gluten-free. It is a seed-based bar sweetened with dark chocolate and honey. These bars are moist and filling, requiring refrigeration and are best kept frozen. The raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower seeds, unsweetened coconut, puffed brown rice, rolled oats, and dried cranberries complement each other in a way that makes you say, “YUM!” My bars are handmade in my home kitchen, hand-cut, and never look exactly the same. They are also hand-wrapped, which means nothing fancy, but definitely adds a personal touch.
Thank you for visiting and for reading my story of BarraYUM. It’s my hope that when you bite into one, you say YUM!
My advice: read labels on everything you buy. Food is medicine, and how you choose to nourish your body is in your control. The choices you make directly affect your health, mood, and overall well-being. So, as I tell my girls, “Make smart choices,” because it’s your body, and what you put into it can really make a difference in how you feel.
