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)
soy cheese (Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella/Cheddar Cheese Alternative: Filtered water, expeller pressed canola oil, tofu (soybeans, calcium sulfate), soy protein, inulin (a natural extract of chicory), natural flavor (vegan), agar, sea salt, Brewer's yeast, carrageenan, calcium lactate (vegan), lactic acid (vegan), annatto)
soy cream cheese (Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Cream Cheese Alternative: filtered water, palm fruit oil, soybean oil, inulin (chicory root extract), soybeans, soy protein, agave syrup, sea salt, juice concentrate, natural flavor, locust bean gum, xanthan gum)
plus a little tofu and gluten-free tamari.
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.
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