Day Three - Almost Wheat Free

And so the journey begins

Today is day three of Em being Almost Wheat Free - I say almost as we are not avoiding traces at this stage and there was a hiccup on day 1.  I forgot she had food tech at school and I hadnt informed her teacher of this new restriction.  So she had one piece of filo pastry which she had made into a pie.  Oops.  Must email teacher.

So what has she eaten.

Day one
Afterschool snack - two medium baked potatoes with Olivani.
Dinner - Pork Fried Rice

Day two
Breakfast

Banana Berry Smoothie & Dry Cornflakes

School Lunch

Left over Pork Fried Rice, Nairns Choc Chip Oat cakes, Fresh Strawberries.

The verdict - the rice is too hard to eat and she preferred yesterdays snack lunch.

Afernoon tea - Dovedales Rice & Raisin bread toasted with Olivani, Corn thins with Marmite

Dinner - Minestrone soup made with Gluten Free pasta. Banana.

Day three
Breakfast - Rice & Raisin Toast & Chocolate nesquik Oat Milk

And today she is taking for lunch

Homemade Teriyaki Chicken Sushi (which Em made last night), Orgran animal biscuits and Dried apricots

And have we seen any change?
Her skin is certainly looking better, but that could also be due to the antibiotics she is on to combat the infection.

Is she happy with the change?
So far she hasnt found it to be to much of a challenge.  "Just as long as I can eat potatoes I'll be happy" - bless :-)

Hello again

It has been a long time since I wanted to share things here.

Things have been ticking over so nicely over the last few years with Emma that I had reached point where I didn't really have a lot to say.

But that has all changed.  I guess that is the thing with allergies.  You think you know what you are dealing with and wham! something new happens.

Em is 12 now and hitting the turbulent years of puberty.  Puberty is well known in the allergy world as a time when things can change, you can grow out of allergies - YAY.  Not so good it seems for Em is that you can also grow into them.....

Yup another allergy.  Whilst not yet clinically diagnosed (waiting for the appointment at Starship) our GP has agreed with our self diagnosis that something we have been giving her is causing the chronic flare in her eczema.  I was hoping it would be something easy, but unfortunately all the signs are pointing at it being wheat :-(.

So our new journey is slowly taking off.  Today I am starting her on a wheat free diet.

I've found lots of information on feeding littlies on a very restricted diet, but not much info on what to do with an almost teenager eliminating all Nuts, dairy, eggs, shellfish, sesame, kiwifruit, most soy products and now wheat.  What am I gonna feed the girl for school lunches?

So today I sent her off with what looks like a kindergarten snack, not an intermediate lunch, but she was happy.  Her belly full of porridge with blueberries and coconut cream and the promise of a baked potato for afternoon tea.

Blueberry porridge is one of her favourite starts to the day - this is half eaten before I remembered to take a photo.

Corn thins with olivani & marmite, Chicken strips, bluebird potato chips, peaches in mango jelly and fresh strawberries.

I dont think she will be impressed when she gets home starving, but every other option was turned down by her.  She will learn me thinks.

Loving Pasta

Emma loves pasta!

She would eat it everyday if she could.  Last weekend she decided to make Minestrone soup - All by herself!  She chopped all the ingredients up and carefully added them to the soup pot and stirred it on the stove top.  She tasted and seasoned it.  I think she is a budding chef.

Carefully chopping the veggies

Minestrone is such a yummy soup - filled with lots of veggies, pasta and beans.  It makes a nutritious vegan dinner in about 1/2 an hour.  We don't really use a set recipe but it goes something like this

1 onion, 2 carrots, 1 stick of celery, a couple of cloves of garlic - all chopped up and sautéed in olive oil for about 10 minutes until soft.

Add about 4 cups of water, a tin of tomatoes and some fresh herbs, salt and pepper and bring to the boil.

Once it is boiling add about a cup full of dried pasta and bring back to the boil - boil for about 5 minutes then add about 3 cups of fresh green veggies (cabbage, zucchini, beans, peas, spinach - it doesn't really matter).

After another 5 minutes (when the veggies and pasta are cooked) stir in a tin of kidney or canellini beans.  

Do a quick taste test to see if it is good, add more salt and pepper if you need to.

Then serve with a big slab of fresh bread and you will have a scrummy quick and easy and tasty dinner.

Yum!

Later in the week she had this scrummy pasta salad for her school lunch.  It was made with risoni pasta and had spring onion, red capsicum, celery, cucumber, olives and salami in it.  She would love to have this for her school lunch everyday.

I've always been amazed at how many interesting things Emma will eat.  I guess when you take out so many of the usual kid type food from the diet, the door is opened for lots of other exciting ingredients to come in it.

Happy eating.

Barbs

What Emma ate

Menu Planning  

I've been trying to do it for the last year or two, but this year I am going to make it happen.  2012 is the year to get my act together and get organised.  I know menu planning saves money and I know it makes life easier.  On Monday this week I planned my menu and then did the groceries.  Not only did we eat well, but we came in right on budget as well.

This is what we ate this week:

Mexican Mince with Rice, salad and guacamole
Chicken and Tomato Pasta
Cajun style fish'n'chips with salad
Home made burgers with roast vege chips
Asian style pork noodles
Pumpkin and Chick pea curry with rice and poppadoms
Corned Silverside beef with mashed potatoes, carrots, beans and spinach

pumpkin and chickpea curry - recipe here -
not my photo

Emma's snacks have been Orgran's itsey bitsey bears (left over from being away), Healtheries Rice Wafers with olivani and vegemite, chocolate chippies (made by Dan), Banana,Blueberry and chocolate chip muffins, sultana's, carrot sticks, nectarines, plums and oranges.

Breakfast has been Weetbix with hot water & sugar, Emma style coco-pops (ricies with hot choc mix and hot water) and home made waffles with blueberries and banana.

This week Emma has enjoyed various sandwiches for lunch - filling included red onion and tomato, hot beef, hummus, sweetcorn and baked beans.

And just to make sure I keep on being organised, I even tidied out my pantry!

Now all I have to do is think about next week.

Fussy Kids, Food and Famine

I've been stewing over this for a few days now.  A friend of Emma's has been making comments to her recently about the food I give them for afternoon tea when she comes to play.  "Why does your Mum always give us fruit for afternoon tea?".  Well this week it got worse.  She didn't want to come to our house, prefering to go to another friends house where she knows she will get chips and chocolate.  Now I love chips and chocolate too, as do my kids, but in our house, you gotta eat the good stuff too. 

We eat fruit for afternoon tea because the kids dont like it in their lunches much.  So I usually put a platter of cut up fruit out as soon as they get home from school. My kids have little bits of fussyness with fruit - Bear doesnt like bananas and Dan's not a fan of grapes and Em is allergic to kiwifruit.  After compulsory fruit eating, there is always something else, it may be some home baking (muffins, scones, slices, biscuits), or crackers, sandwiches, toast, crumpets depending on what activities are to follow and what time dinner is going to be.  I dont think that this is unusal food to offer after school. Do you?  (Of course this food is put out only once lunch boxes have been inspected to make sure they ate all their lunch - if not, they must finish that before they get anything else).

I have been reading a few other blogs recently where people are struggling to find food that everyone likes and my kids have fussy friends and to be honest it just plain bothers me.  We deal with restrictions on food daily, yet we all eat the same dinner every night.  If dinner is not eaten, they cant complain about being hungry later, and there is no pudding or milky drink on offer.  Again they have fussiness - Em cant stand stirfry, but will happily eat all the veges raw with the cooked meat and rice/noodles,  Dan doesnt like mushrooms, so he picks them out and passes them to his sisters,  Bear just knows she has to eat it and usually does, she's not big on meat, so I only give her a little bit.

My kids are really good eaters (I mean really good, they think brussel sprouts are awesome and Em always picks them up and begs for them when we go to the vege shop....or is that just plain weird???)  as are most of our extended family, yet my kids seem to have lots of fussy friends.  Em's friend I mentioned above, never eats when she comes to my house, yet I can  usually tempt the other kids fussy friends with fruit of some description.  There will always be things we dont like - I hate sausages and processed meat like salami and a little bit of fussy is fine, but there is a boy in Dan's year at school who doesnt eat anything except those frozen chicken nugget things in the shape of chips ( he even took them to school camp.......).

What is going on in the world when here in our first world economy, we have kids refusing food and copious amounts of uneaten food thrown away. http://www.sustainability.govt.nz/rubbish/food-waste

In America there is an obesity problem which is spreading around the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1082739.stm

Yet in Africa there is a famine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/696803.stm
The children in Ethiopia and Somalia are again dying because there is no food to feed them and they are going at a 1000 a day into refugee camps where they recieve about a cup of some kind of gruel or rice.  The droughts have killed off their livestock and their crops and the prices of food at the markets are too high.  Here are some pictures of what life is like in East Africa at the moment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/gallery/2011/jul/08/east-africa-drought-in-pictures

We have banned the phrase "I'm starving" from our house, if it is mentioned they get a lecture about life in third world countries.  When they refuse to eat their dinner, we tell them again about the children in Africa who would love their dinner, and how it would probably be more food than they got in a whole day.  Em and I saw a documentary on the news recently about the children going to the Dabaab refugee camp.  She was horrified by the skinny arms and legs and misshapen bodies of the children.

I dont know what we can do about it on a global scale. Those mega corporates have a lot to answer for I think.  But I feel a little better knowing my family is appreciating the food that I give them, that we dont give in to all the prepackaged hype food that kids just have to have and that we have minimal waste (by modern standards, but I know we can do better).

Getting off my soap box now..... Just had to say something though.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins

This is my allergy friendly adaptation of Alison Holsts original recipe

2 Cups flour
4 tsp Baking powder
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C oil
1 C rice milk
1 Tbsp Vinegar
Rind of 1 large lemon

Sift flour and baking powder into bowl, add sugar and mix
Combine oil, vinegar, milk and lemon rind then add to dry ingredients
Spoon into muffin trays, Bake at 200C for about 15 minutes.
Mix 1/4 C sugar with 1/4 C lemon juice and spoon over hot muffins before taking out of muffin pans.  Leave for about 10 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

These freeze really well and are great for school lunches

Fruit Buns

It can be hard to be creative with school lunches, especially when dealing with allergic kids.  This recipe is for hot cross buns, but we make them all the time as the kids love them in their lunch boxes.
400ml warm water
2 Tbsp Oil

500g high grade flour

100g wholemeal flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp mixed spice

1 1/2 tsp yeast

1 1/2 c dried fruit (sultanas, currants, raisins etc)

Put all ingredients in breadmaker in the order listed except the dried fruit (or as usual in your breadmaker).  Add dried fruit to the dispenser or when machine beeps.  Set to dough cycle (or raisin dough).

When dough is ready, shape into buns and rise for about an hour.

Bake at 200 C for about 10-15 minutes.

To make crosses mix 1/2 C flour with 2T oil and add water to make a stiff paste.  then pipe onto buns.

Can put a sticky glaze on them made by boiling 3T milk and 3T sugar together until syrupy.

Or else turn into a yummy boston bun with icing on the top - a hit every time.

 

 

Shared Lunches

As the parent of any allergy kid knows, the school shared lunch thing is a real pain.  It is one of the times that our precious kids really do have to show they are different from their peers.  Emma is lucky in one way because there is another girl in her class who is seriously allergic to Nuts and Eggs too.

Today is International day at school.  It is a wonderful celebration of the 30 or so different cultures present at our primary school. 

They have a wonderful assembly and follow it with a shared lunch which is supposed to offer a wide range of foods from many cultures.  I went along the middle eastern theme with pita bread crisps, carrots, capsicum and hummus.  As I put her food out with the others, I noticed the international theme of Emma's class seemed to be pizza, sushi, cake, slices and biscuits and apart from the teacher aides fruit platter, there was nothing else safe for Emma to eat. 


It is days like these that make me feel so sad for my darling girl, but she is so brave about it.  She just knows the food is no good for her.  She really is a true hero to me for the way she handles her allergies.

Emma, you ROCK.  I am so glad you are mine.

School Lunches

Emma likes the most unusual fillings in her sandwiches.  Today she has tuna, red onion and black olives; The two days before it was lettuce, basil, red onion and grated carrot (she liked it so much the first day she wanted it again!).  Monday she had a potato salad with potato, red onions (notice a theme here...) and mint sauce.  A lot of people say she has really mature tastes for an 8 year old and I agree she does, but we have exposed her to these foods at an early age.  When you aren't able to eat what everyone else does, you have to find new and exciting things all the time.  She has been eating olives for ages and now she has added jalapeno's to her list of special treats. Strange kid eh?