Worry Free Dinners ...

... it's a very nice concept, and I hope it gains ground across the country. As someone who measures the success of a vacation by the quality of food sampled and obviously ingested during said vacation, I could only imagine the horror of being allergic to certain foods (unless that food happened to be liverwurst).

But with Worry Free Dinners, everyone has some kind of experience with all of that, which helps build camaraderie, said Sloane Miller, who started organizing the events in April.

"People sit down and start chatting immediately like they're old friends," said Miller, known in the blogosphere as "Allergic Girl." "It's so nice to be with people that you don't have to explain [to] why you want something on the side."

So far, Worry Free Dinners has catered to food allergy sufferers in New York -- there are about 12 million in America, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) -- but Miller is looking to take the concept to other cities.

Allergic Girl's Blog.