Archive for What didn't work

New Recipes

January 31, 2010 at 10:34 pm · Filed under Journal, Recipes, What didn't work, What worked ·Tagged , , ,

I tried two new recipes today: Applesauce-Oatmeal Cake and Pumpkin Corn Muffins.

No one liked either one, although we’re planning to take spoons to the browned butter icing I used on the cake.

Experimenting with new recipes that fit into our world is frustrating.  On paper, they may look promising, but when no one in our family of six likes them, it’s disheartening.

It’s also expensive.  When using tiny little bags of flour that cost several dollars each, each experiment has a financial side to it.  We don’t want to be wasteful, yet our goal is to make this diet as easy on our son as possible, finding things that not only meet his dietary needs but taste good to him.

Tonight he told me that he’s feeling really left out, and as much as I try to keep things normal for him at home, and have the rest of the family eat what he’s eating, he’s still missing out on things.  It just doesn’t seem fair.

Successes this weekend included the Gluten Free Goddess’ Delicious Bread (made into buns) and Annie’s Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks, plus a roast beef no-cheese omelet that my son gobbled up even though the roast beef was kind of spicy.  (Finding sandwich meat that doesn’t contain sugar is a bigger challenge than one might think.)

The eczema seems to be settling down; hopefully by about Tuesday we’ll be able to reintroduce something and make some headway into figuring out what the real triggers are.  We’re a week behind already, but we want to do it right so we don’t have to do it over.  At least that’s what logic tells me.

We’ve been following this diet for a month now, and I’m not sure if it’s going to get easier or harder from here on out.

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Week 2: Triple-Check Labels

January 18, 2010 at 6:50 pm · Filed under What didn't work

In my defense, trying to keep track of the 39 (I kid you not) specific things my son must avoid is difficult.  It still doesn’t make me feel any better that I’ve failed on several occasions recently.

My parents came to visit this weekend, and my in-laws and some nephews came for a while as well, so I practiced cooking for eight or twelve instead of just the six of us.  To their credit, they all at least pretended to like the pumpking bars and oatmeal cookies made with sorghum and millet and buckwheat flours.  We made some very good turkey soup for lunch Saturday; we’ve found that vegetable stock is a tasty soup base.

I had planned tacos for Saturday supper and had gotten all the fixin’s.  Except for the cheese, my son could eat it all.  I was so excited to have found a taco seasoning packet that didn’t include sugar or soy.  But upon checking the packet before starting to cook, I hit a dead-end:  it has basil, and basil is on the 3-week list.

So the tacos were out.  What to make instead?  We decided on spaghetti.

So I made a big pot of sauce using a base of the one brand we’d found that didn’t include sugar or soy.  I made two pots of noodles, one regular durum spaghetti and the other the long spaghetti version of the corn noodles we had last week.

Everyone ate heartily.

After supper, I started clean-up, and as I was rinsing the sauce jar I happened to peek at the ingredients again.

Oh, no.  Basil.

It gets worse.

As I put the noodle box in the trash, I saw that instead of corn noodles, they were rice noodles.

Double mistake in one meal.

Basil was a “yellow” food, and rice is orange.  I crossed my fingers and hoped those would be foods he could tolerate.

No such luck.

The eczema started worsening overnight last night and today it’s in a pretty bad flare-up.  If it’s a reaction to the foods, it’s somewhat delayed, which I was told could happen.

It could still be a fluke, but if it isn’t, if it’s really related to my feeding him things that are on his don’t-have list, we’re learning that he is indeed very reactive to things.  Two meal mistakes, two reactions.  This isn’t looking so good.

Lesson learned: I need to have a second person check the labels before I start cooking.  My mind is so muddled up that I’m having a hard time keeping things straight.

I need to get better at this, and soon, or we’ll never figure out exactly what the real triggers are.

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Week 2: Lessons Learned?

January 14, 2010 at 4:25 pm · Filed under Journal, What didn't work

We started this diet last Monday.  Although the doctor had warned us that it might take several weeks to see an improvement in the eczema, after just a few days it seemed that my son’s skin was already much better.  Was it a fluke? Maybe.  Was I just seeing what I wanted to see? Also possible.

The past few days, however, he started with some mild flare-ups again.  Nothing bad, but red, raised areas where there had been none.

I thought and thought–what had he eaten differently? Had we missed something from the list?  He had eaten some corn chips at a restaurant before we caught him, and they may have been fried in soybean oil, but the seeming reaction didn’t show up until 3-4 days later.

I rechecked the lists and suddenly it hit me today to check the barbecue sauce that we had deemed safe.  He’s been eating some of that this week.

Tomato concentrate. Tomato paste. Water. High fructose corn syrup. Distilled white vinegar. Molasses. Salt. Modified Corn Starch. Natural hickory smoke flavoring. Mustard flour. Caramel color. Sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate as preservatives. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey flavoring. Onion powder. Garlic powder. Spice. Xanthan gum.

Wait a minute.

I looked at the list again.  In addition to foods, there are a few chemical things we have to watch for.  Blue #1, Red #1, and Fluoride are yellow.  Polysorbate 80 is orange.  Sorbic acid is red.

Then I rechecked in the explanation book that accompanies the test results.  “Sorbic Acid:  Its mineral salts, such as sodium sorbate, potassium sorbate, and calcium sorbate . . . “

Houston, we may have a problem.  Potassium sorbate is another name for sorbic acid.  Sorbic acid is on the 6-month avoidance list.

Oops.

Now we play the wondering game.  Could such a tiny amount of something really cause a visible reaction?  In the case of food allergies, I know it can, so I shouldn’t discount that that it’s possible.  If this was a reaction to the potassium sorbate, we 1) may know something that he really does react to, and 2) know how careful we have to be to avoid things on the list.

Fortunately, in this case we’re dealing with intolerances rather than epi-pen-possible allergies.  That’s comforting.  It’s also comforting to know that we may finally be on to an answer of some sort, that foods are indeed causing the eczema.

On the other hand, it may have just been a fluke.

Bottom line, I went to the store and bought yet another bottle of barbecue sauce, one that doesn’t contain potassium sorbate or anything else on the list.

Live and learn.

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Week 2: Bread

January 14, 2010 at 2:04 pm · Filed under Journal, Recipes, What didn't work ·Tagged ,

One of the biggest challenges of this diet has been finding something to fill up my little guy’s tummy. Most of the gluten-free breads have rice in them, and he can’t have rice. Even the manager of the natural foods section at the grocery store I went to yesterday sympathized with me on this front.

Last week we found that the Bob’s Red Mill cornbread is very good, especially when hot and fresh.  By the third day, however, it got an “off” taste to it; we now know that we have to eat it fast or freeze it, as two days is the fresh limit on it.  I know this will be an issue with many of the from-scratch, no-preservatives recipes I make.

The cornbread, then is one bread we’ve found that our son works.  The other day I found another.

I found the recipe for Gluten-Free Multi-Grain Sandwich Bread on the Gluten-Free Goddess blog.  It was easy to mix up, raised nicely even though my yeast was of a questionable age, and smelled heavenly when it was baking.  My son loved it, and he liked it in his lunch the next day with honey on it.

To avoid it going bad like the cornbread did, I stuck the rest of the loaf in the freezer, thinking I’d cut off a slice every morning for his lunch.  There was only one problem with that:  this bread does not slice when frozen.  My husband and I tried a combination of three knives, and none would go through it.  Then I pulled out the big gun, the electric knife, which didn’t go any farther.  The loaf is now on my counter thawing so I can slice it.  I had hoped to avoid preslicing it before freezing, thinking it might dry out if sliced and frozen, but I guess that’s the way we’ll have to go with it.

Live and learn.  We’ll get better at this as we go.

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Day 4: Quinoa, Buckwheat, and Millet

January 8, 2010 at 12:59 am · Filed under Journal, What didn't work, What worked ·Tagged , , , , , ,

The kids had a snow day today, so I had to plan two safe meals.

The oatmeal will be used for baking, since my son didn’t care for a bowlful of oatmeal made with water. When you’re used to milk in your oatmeal, it’s hard to make the change, even if Mom does put in extra brown sugar.

I made quinoa-banana muffins from the back of the quinoa flakes box. Everyone tried one at lunch, and no one liked them. The birds are seeming to enjoy them, though, although with all the snow we have they don’t have many other food choices.

Next attempt was chocolate tapioca pudding from the tapioca box. To its credit, I don’t think it was the tapioca that was the problem, but making the pudding with coconut milk after being accustomed to dairy. The Enjoy Life chocolate chips were really good, though. I liked them better than Hershey’s or Nestle’s semi-sweet chips.

Today was buckwheat day, so I made buckwheat-potato pancakes, which had both buckwheat flour and potato flour in them. The batter, and the pancakes, were very thick, but boy-who-needs them gobbled up two in a jiffy. They weren’t hits with anyone else, so I put the rest in the freezer for future school lunches.

For supper, I made vegetable soup with safe vegetable broth, some frozen soup vegetables, a can of mushrooms, cut-up leftover roast beef, and some millet thrown in the last 10 minutes. I purposely undercooked the millet because I’m not sure what will happen with the leftovers. I didn’t want it to get too thick. My husband really liked the soup, and he’s not a fan of vegetable soup normally. The boys, who aren’t big on vegetables, didn’t do too badly either.

The kids are still working on the chocolate cake from a few days ago and it’s almost gone.

Coconut milk is not a hit with anyone, even if we put chocolate in it. That’s all right for now, as I can used the canned variety for baking and not have to drive to buy the chilled version. We’ll reintroduce soy in a few weeks, so hopefully soy milk will be a better alternative.

One of my friends commented that we’re getting to experiment with new recipes and new grains in a wheat-filled world. That part is very true, and with some successes it will get easier.

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