She remembers the day she almost died in vivid detail. The first thing she noticed was her throat closing up, and then the vomiting began. It was supposed to be a fun family vacation; in fact, they even got a discount for the hotel from her father’s law firm. They were assured many times that the food was safe, that they would act with the utmost vigilance when preparing her meal. Somehow, a mistake was made, and two of her severe allergens ended up in her meal: eggs and sesame.
Farrah Murray (’28) has had to deal with severe and life-threatening allergies from the day she was born. And when she was just seven years old, a tiny little slip in the hotel kitchen caused her to go into anaphylactic shock and nearly die in the back of her parents’ car.
“When we were driving to the hospital, I remember being in and out of consciousness, and my dad was screaming at me in the car and telling me to stay awake,” Murray said. “I wasn’t panicked, though. I didn’t have the thought of death or anything like that whatsoever.”
Despite the troubling reality that food is out to kill her, Murray transformed her bravery when facing her food allergies into a love of cooking that began at a young age. It became an obsession that peaked in middle school and has since slightly dwindled with her starting high school in the IB program. But before any of that, her cooking journey had very humble beginnings.
“When I was a kid, I would pretend I had my own fake restaurant with Play-Doh, and then I finally upgraded to a fake kitchen with those plastic veggies that you can cut up. I would make my parents sit through it, and I would have my mom film mini-cooking shows,” Murray said.
Murray’s mom, Anna Bishop, admits that she had a role in sparking the fire of Farrah’s passion for cooking, and not just in the form of being the camera crew for Farrah’s version of Top Chef.
“I was proactive in my children’s cooking with me. I wanted them to cook, and I wanted them to do it together. I always had them help me when they were little, even though it took a lot longer to cook. And Farrah really took to it,” Bishop said.
And when Farrah was just eight years old, she made her first meal on her own: chicken noodle soup. A simple meal, but nonetheless a huge feat for a person of her age.
“I used what I learned from cooking with my mom to do it by myself,” Murray said. “The best part was being able to do the steps by myself and have people really like it at the end.”
The rest of Murray’s family, including her father and two younger sisters, can both testify to her skills as a chef. Murray greatly enjoys cooking for her family, and her sisters are always asking her to make her ‘Special Rice.’
“They call it that because, for one, it’s really good, and two, I don’t tell them how I make it or what’s in it so that they can’t make it for themselves,” Murray said.
Her favorite food, however, is not her ‘Special Rice’ nor the chicken she so often makes that gets raving reviews. It is, in fact, grape leaves, which come from the leaves of a grapevine plant and are traditionally used in Greek cuisine. There are many ways to prepare them, but Murray has her own special recipe that perfectly hits the spot.
“It isn’t the most fun to make, because it’s a very long process, but the outcome is worth it. I mix ground chicken, rice, cinnamon, salt and pepper, a little olive oil, then it cooks in lemon juice and water in a pot for an hour with chicken on the bottom of the pan,” Murray said, describing her method.
Surprisingly, Murray does not find it challenging picking replacements for the foods she is allergic to, even though two of her allergies, eggs and dairy, are two of the most common ingredients found in cooking. For dairy, she finds that coconut and soy are more than adequate replacements, and for eggs, she uses flax, a flowering plant that can be ingested, or tapioca starch, a white powder made from the roots of a cassava plant. While that seems complicated, it has never seemed that way to Murray, who has always been congenitally allergic to these ingredients most of us consume every day.
“I don’t even think I’ve ever had eggs. I just know that I’m very allergic to them,” Murray said. “Technically, I could follow vegan recipes, as long as they also don’t have chickpeas, sesame, and most nuts in them, but that’s the thing, I’m not vegan. I can still eat certain meats and other things that vegans can’t, but what I’m allergic to doesn’t really fall into one category.”
For all the pleasure Murray derives from cooking and from doing it well, she is still keenly and consciously aware of her allergies at all times of the day. Nevertheless, she has hope that her allergies, from the most severe one, dairy, to the dog allergy that affects her every day she spends with her 3 loving dogs, will lessen with time. Until then, she hopes that people can become more aware of the trials of food allergies and, more importantly, how to prevent them from coming into contact with the person affected.
“A bunch of people do not actually know what allergies are, and what they consist of, because they don’t have them,” Murray said. “And I think if people understand that it really is a disease, and if they understand that it’s not just an intolerance or being picky, then that’s the first step.”
