Chef Cards
Welcome to my official guide on how to make a Chef Card! Chef Cards are documents used and created by people with multiple food allergies that clearly illustrate their allergies, their favorite foods, their safe ingredients, and other important information. They are used when communicating with chefs to make it easier to to prepare the perfect meal for you, like the picture above with Chef Fallon and I using my chef card to discuss my meal. You'll find a template that you can use along with step-by-step instructions below.
A good chef card is comprised of five main elements: An intro, an overview of your allergies, all your food allergies in a list, your favorite foods, and safe ingredients that can be used in cooking your food.
Intro
The introduction to your chef card should have simple stuff. Including your name is essential along with a nice picture of yourself to make it easy to tell that it's yours. Don't forget your age, and as an option, you can include some personal info about yourself related to food allergies. For example, I mention that I'm part of FARE's Teen Advisory Group as a link to the blog you're reading right now. Before I had the blog, I didn't have this as part of my chef card, so it is completely optional. The rest, however? Non-negotiable.
Overview
In this part, you state your dietary concern and then specify a few things about it. For instance, are you anaphylactic? Do you carry your epinephrine everywhere? Are you sensitive to cross contamination and avoid "may contain" items? My overview states that my answer to all these questions is 'yes'.
Food Allergies
The most important part of every chef card is your in-depth list of food allergies. The way I organize mine is by putting all my allergies in a list in caps on the left with side notes about them on the right. It is important to make sure the chefs can easily identify this. For instance, with my soy allergy, I say:
SOY Protein (no soy protein or soy flour BUT soy lecithin, soybean oil and Kikoman soy sauce are okay)
Favorite Foods
This is simple. Just a large list of all your favorite proteins, sides, fruits and veggies, desserts, and more. It is helpful to include specific brands like So Delicious or Namaste or Enjoy Life, so try to if you can.
Safe Ingredients
Many people often leave this out, but its importance can not be underestimated. This is where you list as many safe ingredients that are allowed to be used in your food to the point where a chef could prepare you a meal even before you came to the restaurant. Include all food groups, plus things like oils, seeds, and other important cooking ingredients.
Template above link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wi8bVwOQVlGoFq4Z7Ir3MN2AP7SS7cGnagQJNTmMQwI/edit?usp=sharing
Go to File --> Make a Copy to make your own card using this template!
Of course, feel free to adjust the style and fonts to make yours special. I hope that this was helpful!