Wk 11 Day 1: Chocolate & Sugar Test (S'mores)

Well, the day finally came where we could eat chocolate and sugar again. I used to eat at least a few chocolate chips every day. After the first initial days of withdrawal from most foods I was used to (most notably, coffee), I haven't really craved chocolate or sugar, although I had thought about how weird it was that I was able to go so long without it. I wasn't really as excited about eating it again as I thought I would be.

I noticed that it really opened up what we could eat once we added sugar back in. I picked up some Kettle BBQ chips that I've been avoiding so far because of the sugar content. When I think about it, it's kind of vexing that so many foods include sugar. A little bit here and a little bit there adds up to too much sugar, in my opinion. I can see I'm going to have to think about this one as I look forward to phasing off the ED and into a less restrictive diet ahead.

Since we are on a camping vacation (in a motorhome) this week, I decided this would be a good time to test chocolate and sugar, so we could have some s'mores. To me, it's just not camping without them. I'm thinking of this week as a kind of break from our ED, without actually breaking from it, as we are keeping all (well, most) other "avoid" rules in place. I also thought it would be nice to bring some chocolate chip cookies, so I followed the cookie recipe on the back of the package of organic chocolate chips, substituting brown rice flour, tapioca flour and xanthan gum for regular flour. They turned out great! I'm not sure if it's the amount of time I've been away from chocolate or, perhaps sugar, but I found just one cookie was plenty each time I ate one, whereas before I could have easily eaten more. Maybe it's due to the rice flour? I'm wondering if it's more filling then wheat flour? I need to look into that.

So, now on to finding the ingredients for the s'mores. I found some ED friendly chocolate: Trader Joe's Fair Trade Swiss Dark and Theo's Organic Fair Trade Rich dark with 70% cacao. I didn't notice how thick Trader Joe's bars were - if you are headed out on a camping trip, I recommend Theo's even though it's a little more expensive (or even less expensive, use chocolate chips).

I found some gluten free graham crackers at PCC called, perfectly, S'moreables (pea starch, non hydrogenated shortening, potato starch, brown rice flour, brown sugar, sweet rice flour, tapioca starch, water, rice bran, sugar, blackstrap molasses, honey, glucose, salt, sodium bicarbonate, pea protein, vanilla, sodium carboxy methylcellulose, pea fibre, guar gum, inulin, soy lecithin, mono calcium phosphate). I must admit that I'm not exactly sure what some of those ingredients are, and it does include a tiny bit of soy, but I was feeling brazen, so I went for it.

Lastly, we needed marshmallows. I don't use the normal ones, since they have gelatin (animal bone) and aren't vegetarian. There are several vegan marshmallows on the market but most if not all include soy or some corn derivative, which is not too ED friendly for us. I decided to use Ricemellow Marshmallow Creme (Brown rice syrup, soy protein, natural vegan gums and flavors) because it had the shortest list of ingredients. Even though it has soy, I decided another small amount would be okay, because I believe our Naturopath has figured out what's going on with my daughter, and I guess I really feel I would be depriving my daughter to have her miss out on s'mores. Written out, it's not a very compelling argument to break from the ED, I admit. I wouldn't be doing it if we were early on, but I'm confident she isn't allergic to chocolate or sugar and she will be okay with a little tiny smidgen of soy. Wow, such excuses!

So, here's what happened. Our first day of the trip, my daughter was sitting outside with her brother for a few hours while I set up camp. Apparently in that period of time, they downed a bag of chips, a cookie each and some other snacks too (I hope some fruit). After dinner, we made a nice fire and made s'mores. Since we have marshmallow creme, instead of roasting marshmallows, we didn't actually use the fire to melt anything, and just sat near it while compiling our layers of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallow creme. I made my daughter 2 small ones, the size of a quarter of a normal graham cracker each. However, she did use the Trader Joe's chocolate, which as I mentioned before, is pretty thick. Before bed, she told us her tummy was hurting, and around 3 in the morning she woke us up to let us know she didn't feel too good. After throwing up twice, she was fine. Needless to say we avoided making s'mores again for a few days, and even then only one small one per person. She didn't want any more marshmallow creme, and I used the thinner Theo's chocolate. I melted the chocolate onto the graham cracker in the oven which I hoped would somehow digest better.

She learned a good lesson, since it was likely the combination of all the extra foods in one day that upset her stomach. She now is starting to notice that even though foods taste good enough to keep on eating, she should only eat until her body is full, then stop, even when it tastes really good. I *thought* she knew that before, but she's talking about it more at mealtimes, so I guess she needed a reminder. Later in the week I decided to bake some s'mores cookies, crumbling chocolate chunks and graham crackers into the batter. Yum! I think I've learned a good lesson myself - camping is still fun without s'mores.

Wk 7, Day 6: Soy Test, Lasagna & Coffee (sort of)

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)

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.

Week 3, Day 5: Pumpkin soup

Today we tried some pumpkin soup for dinner. My daughter wasn't too excited about it at first. I had her try one version with coconut milk and one without, and she preferred the version with coconut milk. She liked it enough to eat most of one bowl. I loved it and went back for seconds, adding some rice to it for more substance. The little chunks are carrot and apple.



The recipe comes from The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen. I quartered the recipe and used canned organic pumpkin as it's the wrong time of year to find actual pumpkins. I didn't have any celery. I added more maple syrup than recommended (about a tsp per bowl).

My daughter is feeling better now that we've removed pineapple from her diet, and I've greatly reduced her intake of orange juice in case citrus in general is problematic (I hope not! She loves both orange juice and lemons).