This weekend we went to Bolles Organic Farm to pick some strawberries. We ended up getting one flat! The kids had a fun time running around and my daughter was so excited about all the delicious looking berries. There's one more good week of strawberry picking, then around July 10th they'll have blueberries and raspberries. My freezer will be filled with organic berries. How fantastic!
Of course, once they were cleaned (and most put into the freezer), I went to work finding ways to eat them. We started with strawberry pancakes topped with strawberries and maple syrup, strawberry smoothies and, of course, our favorite scone recipe. All delicious. I didn't have a gluten-free pancake recipe on hand, so I adapted one of my favorite pancake recipes (I don't remember where I found it originally months ago) and they were great. I think I'm getting the hang of gluten-free baking. I intended to make my daughter a side of home fried potatoes, but as I was having a veggie burger with fries for dinner, I gave her french fries instead. I do like a little time outside the kitchen!
Fluffy Strawberry Pancakes 1 cup brown rice flour 1/2 cup tapioca flour 1/2 tsp xanthan gum 2 tsp baking powder (the original recipe calls for 3 1/2 tsp but I ran out. either works - the more you add the fluffier they are.) 1 tsp salt dash of cinnamon and nutmeg 1 TB maple syrup 1 TB brown rice syrup (optional - I don't think I needed both sweeteners) 1 1/4 cup rice milk 1 egg (used egg replacer) 3 TB canola oil 1/2 - 1 cup berries
1) In a large bowl, mix flours, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt cinnamon and nutmeg. Make a well in the center and add sweetener(s), milk, egg replacer and oil. Mix until smooth. Add berries and mix, being careful not to over mix.
2) Heat lightly oiled griddle over medium heat. Pour or scoop (I use a soup ladle) batter onto griddle. Brown both sides and serve hot.
We've started using Coconut Secret'sCoconut Aminos as a replacement for soy sauce. I love it! It really does taste like soy sauce. Not only are we adding it straight over stir frys, but also I'm using it as an ingredient we've been missing in macaroni and cheese and different sauces.
Last night we made a mixture of Sunbutter, coconut milk, coconut aminos and salt. We were aiming for a kind of peanut sauce. I also made a coconut curry. Nice to have some new options for dinner sauces.
Cheese Wrap-up Whew. A week has gone by and I have a collection of pictures. First, the wrap-up from cheese week. My daughter did not have any new reactions to cheese, however because she did have some initial issues stated earlier (stomach ache, crying outburst) I am going to re-test cheese later. The Naturopath said to consider these issues a reaction, but she is not yet sure it's intolerance, allergy or enzyme deficiency. Hmm. Well, I'll stick that one in the back of my brain and let it simmer.
Soy Test The next test we did at the beginning of this week was soy. We were pretty excited at the idea of getting to eat lots of soy, but after reading labels and disallowing foods that had other no-no's, such as wheat or sugar or corn, we ended up with a large dose of:
soy based hotdogs (Lightlife Original Tofu Pups: water, soy protein isolate, organic spray dried tofu, contains 2% or less of natural flavors (from vegetable sources), beet powder, yeast extract, sunflower oil, natural smoke flavor, salt, paprika oleoresin, vegetable gums, tomato pulp)
My daughter is a big fan of hotdogs, so she had them at just about every meal. I opted for some tofu. Because I was pretty sure that soy was one of her top allergens, I assumed that just a little would make her body respond with a major rash. By day 3, she had a little reaction, but nothing like the reaction I had seen a few months ago that I assumed was caused by soy. I decided to max her out on soy and see if I could force a reaction from her body, to verify whether soy is an issue or not.
breakfast... (hers, then my version)
lunch...
and dinner...
By the end of the third day, she did have a skin reaction I was expecting to see, but much milder than I had seen previously, when she had some slices of soy cheese pizza a few months ago. This got me thinking, maybe its another ingredient in pizza that she was reacting to?
I consulted with my daughter's Naturopath and she let me know that an exposure to one allergen could set the body up to react to the next introduced food, so I'm going to take an extra week of cleansing before testing a new food. I'm wondering if this wasn't part of what I saw earlier in this ED, where my daughter appeared to react to three different foods in one week.
As for emotional reactions, my daughter didn't have any that I noticed during the three days of soy testing period. However, today she had what was either a normal 6 year old outburst, or a delayed emotional reaction to the soy. She was completely fine, then started crying and was angry because she said I was being mean to her by asking her to do a few things she listed. It lasted about five minutes, then she was completely fine again, and she asked if she could do those things she had just complained about. She realized she was contradicting what she had just said, but appeared to return to her self again. The outburst came on so quickly and was so out of character for her that I immediately took it as a possible food-related reaction. For myself, I think the soy made me more aggressive, but I would need to test again to be sure. I'm thinking about removing this one long-term from my diet, except in small quantities.
Coffee! (sort of) I've been drinking Teeccino Mediterranean Herbal Coffee (Vanilla Nut flavor: Organic carob, organic barley, organic chicory, dates, almonds, organic dates, natural vanilla extract, natural nut flavor, figs) on and off for a few years because I have somewhat of an intolerance to coffee if I drink too much of it. I make it in my espresso maker. This is cheating a bit, as I'm not really supposed to be eating almonds or vanilla, but I was ok with it.
It felt so great to drink something very close to a cup of coffee! I drank it here, with Silk Organic Unsweetened soy milk (organic soymilk, calcium carbonate, sea salt, natural flavors,carrageenan, vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2, Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin b12). Also, somewhat of a cheat, I bought this to add to my daughter's smoothies to add even more soy into her testing period. After the initial soy test was over, it started getting warmer out and I made an iced rice milk version, also really good!
Sesame seed lasagna! I adapted a raw manicotti recipe to make some ED friendly lasagna. I added gluten free lasagna noodles, and pretty much followed the rest of the recipe. It was fantastic! Next time I will add about twice as much sauce (and some red wine). I avoided adding wine this time since it's on our avoid list, but since it cooks down in the sauce, I think it will be okay. Almost 8 weeks in and I'm saying that more and more. Also, I think a layer of vegan pesto would be a great addition as well.
Wow. It's hard to explain how excited I was to find a burger that we can eat. I was at Central Market, about to buy some more protein powder, when I realized I was pretty sure it's about 7 bucks cheaper at PCC (note: I re-checked, and the PCC version is not organic, so that's why), when I was struck with a hunger for veggie burgers. I wandered over to the frozen section and looked at the options, then saw Sunshine Burgers, which I've been eating on and off for a year or more. I picked them up and read the package, and lo and behold - 2 of the 3 kinds are ED friendly. Actually, all 3 are, but their Southwest flavor has black beans, and since my daughter reacted to those (I think), we are avoiding them.
We tried the first of two kinds tonight, Sunflower's organic Garden Herb burgers (organic cooked brown rice, organic ground raw sun-flower seeds, organic carrots, organic herbs and sea salt.) We had a side of fries, Alexia organic Yukon Gold Julienne Fries with Sea Salt. The ingredients include citric acid. I remember reading something about citric acid being a no-no online, but I really need to check the info from our doctor. I felt it was worth it to avoid washing potatoes and pulling out the mandolin slicer to make my own fries. My daughter was thrilled with the fries, of course, but was only so-so about the burger, even with the avocado, which she likes some days and not others. She agreed to finish the burger (8 grams of protein!) in exchange for another round of fries. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to bribe my children into eating food with rewards of other food, but I'm okay with it today. I pondered making gluten free biscuits to create hamburger buns, but I decided to play with the kids instead. It was worth it! And, I looooved dinner. It felt good to eat something that seems normal.
Last night I made some garlic and ginger fried rice and sweet potato fries. Super yummy and a hit with both of us.
This morning I decided to make something different for breakfast, to try and distract my daughter from the fact that she is no longer eating cheese.
I made rice pudding, roughly based on this recipe.
I mixed together 3/4 cup cooked brown rice (I was thinking about how much oatmeal we usually eat, but I forgot that oatmeal expands, so it didn't turn out to be as much for both of us as I had thought it would be), 3/4 cup rice milk, 1 TB maple syrup and heated on stove top until most of the liquid was absorbed by the rice. Once off the stove top, I added a little cinnamon and salt. Both my daughter and I liked it. I served it with a protein smoothie, vitamins, water, and half a banana. We were good and full.
I took of picture of her lunch because she assembled it, and it's a nice simple balanced alternative to her usual lunch of pasta primavera. We use raw nuts and seeds, and today I sprinkled a little salt on the seeds, as she usually won't eat many of them without it, and then, what's the point?. That goopy stuff is sunflower seed spread, which really is pretty good when you dip crackers or carrots in it. Almost like peanut butter, but not quite. And, a little cup of applesauce. I think I might try making some peanut butter cookies soon, substituting the sunflower seed spread for peanut butter.
Well, cheese. Hmm. After the first cheese testing day I talked with my dad and found out he has some mild issues with mozzarella cheese in block form, so I removed my daughter's mozzarella block cheese in case that passed through a genetic line to her, and kept her on mild cheddar. Maybe she can eat some kinds of cheese and not others? I hadn't really considered that idea enough before this week. Yesterday, day two of the cheese test went fine, and today she also seemed fine, except her stomach hurting at the end of the day. But no rash, which is incredibly hopeful. Now I'm supposed to watch her for the remainder of the week since it can take that long for a reaction to occur.
For dinner, we had beans and rice. My daughter had hers with cheese mixed in, I added avocado and hot salsa from Trader Joe's, and we both loved our dinners. My daughter asked me to make her nachos for her last cheese day, but since we can't eat tortillas (because of the corn or other ingredients), I melted some cheese over kettle chips, also a big hit. For dessert, I made some raspberry ice cream that I read about recently. I just put some frozen raspberries and coconut milk into our food processor, and added a smidge of rice milk and brown rice syrup. Yum!
My daughter woke us up this morning, excited for "Cheese day". Our Naturopath advised us that 2 slices of cheese with each meal 3 times a day (for 3 days) is the correct amount for testing dairy. We bought 2 kinds of organic cheese for testing: pre-sliced mild cheddar and a block of mozzarella. We melted 1 slice per meal over pasta or potato, and she wanted to just eat the other slices by themselves. She was so excited this morning, she was giddy. It has been about a year since she has had any cheese. My husband talked with her this morning about how we need to watch for energy or emotional reactions today, and so after breakfast she let me know she felt great, and right before dinner said, "I know you want to know how I feel, not how excited I am, but how my body is feeling from eating cheese, and I want you to know my body is feeling great."
We spent most of our day out in the sunshine, and it's been a while since we've done that, so I wanted to make sure she wasn't dehydrated. I had her drink 2 glasses of water with dinner. After dinner, in the bathtub, she started crying. The initial reason was that her brother picked a "movie" from a stack of DVD's she selected to watch tonight - he picked Charlie and Lola, which is quite tame and she said she doesn't like it and feels very frustrated and sad that she doesn't know why, even though she put it in the pile for him to pick from. Then she said she was crying (which she still was) because she misses her protein powder because it makes her body feel good (we aren't taking it because her cheese consumption covers her daily requirement of protein), then said her tummy was hurting. She started coming up with non-cheese related excuses why this could be. Too much water too quickly. Too much to eat. Then I talked with my husband, and we did the same thing. Too much sun today, not enough sleep last night. Uh-oh. I know it's possible (I mean, I think it's possible) that her tummy could be hurting from trying to process cheese for the first time in a year. Also, from drinking too much water too quickly. But honestly, if I had to guess, I would say this is definitely a food reaction, since her temperament has been fairly even for weeks (although, come to think of it, she did have a giant tantrum last week that is completely out of the ordinary for her). But the emotional reaction of crying in addition to her upset stomach makes me wonder if tomorrow we are going to start seeing some physical reactions to cheese.
Well, I learned a few things today. I was about to start making an Indian curry dish for dinner when my daughter came over to urge me to make something different ("yuck! curry..yuck!") so I looked around our pantry and came up with spring rolls. I've been avoiding making these, or any Asian food because we can't use soy sauce or peanuts, which are apparently two of my favorite ingredients now that I can't eat them.
So, I spent the following hour and a half making spring rolls - well, searching the internet for soy-free sauces and making spring rolls intermittently, and trying different variations of canola oil, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, salt and coconut milk to come up with a sauce my daughter would eat. She sampled and we came up with one she liked (all ingredients minus coconut milk). I poured the sauce into a ziplock bag, then added lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, carrots, and cooked rice noodles into the bag to marinate. I then added ingredients to a rice spring roll wrapper, added a little avocado and I thought they tasted pretty darn good. I made some for my daughter minus cabbage and lettuce at her request. She ate one roll, then told me she was full. And also, didn't like them. Meanwhile, I was cooking a separate soy sauce noodles and veggie dish for my 2 year old, which he ultimately pushed away and didn't want to eat.
I would have taken a picture of the spring rolls, but I was so hungry I ate them before I had a chance to get a picture. However, here's a picture of the remaining ingredients I made when I was cleaning up and made one final large spring roll for tomorrow:
My goal for next week is to be more organized about what I'll be cooking ahead of time. Also, I'm learning that as much as I like to let my daughter voice her opinions, she doesn't like a good amount of what I cook, regardless of whether she suggested the dish or not, so I should just make whatever I want. It's taking me a little while to actually get that it's okay for me to just prepare a healthy dinner of my choice, taking their preferences into account, and say, "Eat it if you're hungry. Otherwise, go play."
Here's a few links I found while making spring rolls today. I found some yummy recipes I'd like to try out at some point:
I'm planning to wait out week 5, since my daughter had another rash breakout a few days ago. I'm not sure what was the cause, but it might have been something from a party she attended. She received and used a Tootsie Roll flavored lip balm with ingredients too small to read, and I'm wondering if that was the cause. She also had some green peas (from her restricted list) that day, and some non-organic potato chips (other than being made from non-organic potatoes, they were safe). In any case, I am most comfortable waiting out this week before testing cheese, of all foods. It's the one food that appears to have caused most of the initial damage to my daughter in terms of physical reactions, and I really need to make sure she's reacting to it when we test it, and not something else, like lip balm.
My daughter asked me to make more Wondie bars for this week's breakfasts, and as much as I truly love them, I think I'm ready for a break and something new for breakfast. I looked to The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen for something new, and picked Raspberry Scones. It did require a trip to the grocery store for xanthan gum, different flours and shortening (Spectrum Organic palm oil), but I decided I should really start buying these items since it looks like we could be eating this way for quite a while, perhaps through the summer. We used coconut milk and skipped the vanilla. These turned out so delicious! I think they are the most decadent treat we've had so far on the ED, and I think anyone, restricted diet or not, would enjoy these. The whole house had a nice raspberry coconut smell.
My daughter was excited when she learned we could eat shortening, as that means we can try making tortillas, one of her favorite foods that her grandma taught her to make. I tried one batch with brown rice flour that didn't have very good flavor, then tried another batch with gluten free all-purpose flour, and that batch was pretty good, although I never quite struck the right balance between too dry (crack when rolled out) and too wet (stick to the counter when rolled out). I'll post the recipe once I find the right balance.
We stacked macaroni and cheese sauce (for cheese), mashed potatoes and pinto beans on top. I think avocados and a side salad would have been a nice addition, but my daughter wasn't too interested in either of those. All in all, a successful day!
I made some frosting today roughly based on a Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen recipe. I mixed 1-2 TB canola oil, maple syrup and arrowroot powder. I love that they recommend adding crushed beet (squeezed through a garlic press) to add a pink color! How creative, since we are avoiding artificial colors. My daughter was very happy with the frosting which was good on the gingerbread cookies we made a few days ago (which are vanishing quickly, because I keep eating them). Also, I noticed a cake (on the same page as the frosting recipe, above) I could make on this diet, except for the cocoa powder and vanilla. I might try it, if there's an occasion. Maybe 4th of July? We'll see. We used to eat dessert almost every day, after lunch and after dinner. I'm kind of liking this excuse to eat considerably less goodies.
Also, I found out a likely cause for my daughters coughing, stomach aches and sore throat. We went to her pediatrician yesterday and they swabbed her nose and discovered she is allergic to some kind of pollen that's in the air right now. Apparently, post nasal drip can be responsible for stomach aches. The doctor said it could just be spring pollen and clear up by the end of June, or she may also be allergic to summer pollen. The way she suggested we figure out which it is, and to verify that in fact this is what's causing all of her symptoms is to put her on Claritin. However, when I checked with our Naturopath, she said we should hold off on using Claritin for as long as possible as it will interfere with the elimination diet. So, we'll wait on that. It's good to know that a pollen allergy is a possible cause of the worsening cough and mild stomach aches, although it would be great to verify this and give her some relief from it. At this point I'm hoping it will clear up on its own in the next few weeks.
We are waiting out this week in hopes that my daughter will be back to 100% by Saturday so we can start her testing phase. In addition to her flare-ups over the past few weeks, she has also had a bit of a cold, which her Naturopath said could interfere with the results of the testing. We've come this far, so I'd really like to be sure about whether or not she's reacting to foods during the testing phase.
In anticipation of a party she has coming up this weekend, we baked some gingerbread cookies. One of the party activities is decorating sugar cookies, and I thought it would be nice if she could decorate (and eat) cookies too. I asked her if it was okay that she would be decorating a different kind of cookie, and she responded, "Yes, it's ok, I mean the point is to decorate something. It will still be fun." Sometimes I think I come up with things to worry about, because clearly this child isn't concerned about being different.
So, I followed a recipe from vegweb, substituting gluten free all-purpose flour, rice syrup for molasses, skipped all ginger (because we were out of powdered and I didn't want to risk fresh ginger being too strong for my daughter). It made a good firm cookie for decorating, but doesn't have much flavor. My daughter sampled one tonight and said, "they're ok", which I will happily accept. I'm going to make some frosting for her to bring so she can decorate them with raisins, and anything else I come up with between now and the party that seems like it could be glued to a gingerbread cookie.
We made our first sandwiches today. I toasted the bread, but it was pretty crumbly. My daughter requested sunflower seed spread and jam. We didn't have any sugar-free jam, so I mashed up some strawberries and that worked just fine. There's also a new chip we're trying out: Trader Joe's Veggie Chips. They aren't organic, but I was feeling a little lax this week. For my daughter, the sandwich was a success.
I made essentially avocado salad on bread, and I thought it was fine, but I think I prefer just a salad. The bread has the look and consistency of angel food cake, and doesn't really have any flavor.
We made some hummus since garbanzo beans are back on, even if just a few servings a week. I started out using this recipe a few months ago, and now I just mix ingredients without looking at the recipe. Invariably, my husband saves my hummus by adding more oil, salt, pepper and cumin. I always think I've added enough, but his hummus is always better.
For dinner, I wanted to eat some veggies but also wanted a new sauce. I thought it would be fun to try making Steph's tofu sauce (without the tofu, of course) from PCC, since my daughter loves it. I think I have the recipe around here somewhere (they give out recipes at the deli counter if you ask) but the amounts are crazy large since they are creating enough for a store, so I just mixed up a little of each of the ingredients, based on the order from most to least: orange juice, sesame oil, ginger, brown rice vinegar, olive oil, garlic. The recipe also calls for tamari, but because we are avoiding soy, we couldn't add that. I added some salt to try and make up for it. For sure, this sauce is tons better with tamari, but once all the veggies and pasta were mixed up, I thought it tasted pretty good. However, my daughter who liked one bite of it during the tasting portion, lost her love for it once I served it. I am going to try this again once I get some coconut aminos, which is supposed to be a great soy-free alternative for soy sauce. If that works out, it will be a great help.
I found some new vitamins for my daughter that are not actually 100% elimination diet friendly, because they contain sugar (organic evaporated cane juice), but after searching and finding some form of sugar in all the vitamins I found, I decided these were the safest. They're called Yummi Bears Organics Multi-Vitamin & Mineral and I found them at PCC (but the amazon price I just found is almost half the price!). Free of yeast, wheat, milk, eggs, soy, salt, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, allergens, gluten, casein, gelatin, artificial flavors, artificial colors and preservatives. My daughter LOVES them, so hooray for that.
This weekend we went to Bolles Organic Farm to pick some strawberries. We ended up getting one flat! The kids had a fun time running around and my daughter was so excited about all the delicious looking berries. There's one more good week of strawberry picking, then around July 10th they'll have blueberries and raspberries. My freezer will be filled with organic berries. How fantastic!
