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.
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.
For fun and something different, I picked up some coconut (from the bulk section at PCC) so my daughter could sprinkle it atop her fruit. Both kids love it and are eating it straight, as well as adding it to other foods like baked potato and oatmeal. I keep it in a spice/sprinkle container.
Pasta primavera is quickly becoming one of my daughter's favorite meals for lunch or dinner: rice pasta (we use mostly Trader Joe's) mixed with oil, salt and pepper, kalamata olives, and veggies (here, just carrots). She does a great job eating her broccoli, and prefers it on the side rather than being mixed in. This was for lunch, so those are some kettle chips on the side.
One of my favorite meals is sun dried tomato pesto pasta:
Here's my recipe - its a basic vegan pesto sauce with sun dried tomatoes added in:
1 container fresh basil 2 TB olive oil 1 clove garlic, finely chopped (I use a garlic press) handful of cashews 1 heaping TB sun dried tomatoes sprinkle of salt and pepper
Add everything to the blender and blend. Add more oil if needed to keep the blender moving. Scrape down sides with spatula as needed until everything is crushed into a pesto paste.
Once the pesto is done, I mix it in a bowl with some rice pasta, then add another tsp (or more) of sun dried tomatoes from the jar (I use Trader Joe's Julienne Sliced Sun Dried Tomatoes in olive oil).
***
My daughter had another reaction to food today, this time I think it was because of pineapple. We hadn't had any pineapple in about a week. I sliced one up and gave some to her on the side last night with her dinner, and then again for breakfast this morning with strawberries. As it turns out, last night she cried twice, and this morning she was forwarding through scary parts in her cartoon. Today, within an hour of eating the pineapple her skin had a reaction.
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!
