Wednesday June 15, 2011

Here it is, the promised treasures.

The clue to finding foods is to shop every grocery store in town and out of town. 

A few of these treasures are recent finds … as in the last week or two.

Most of the time, Liam eats staple items like rice, chicken, beef, sweet potatoes, and sometimes fish.

But what to do when it’s Saturday night and we are craving a carb loaded, gluten, dairy and tomato loaded pizza and he’s not about to eat roast beef aGAIN?

Or what do you feed a fifteen month old who suddenly can’t have crackers or cheerios or cheese cubes or pretzels?

Here is the list of foods we are avoiding:

dairy
soy
egg
peanut
oranges
pineapple
coconut
wheat
oat
gluten
MSG
nitrates
nitrites
tomato
limited cocoa

The following foods make Liam a happy camper.  It has taken me three years to find all of these and hopefully I can spare a mom new to digestive issues some despair.

Our staple when this first started was Redwood Farm goat milk yogurt sweetened with honey. I have found it available only at Whole Foods so far. He is absolutely sick of it by now and will only eat the little flavored ones (at $2 / pop), although sometimes I can get him to eat the plain if I flavor it with maple syrup. It was several months later that I found the first safe cheerios at Martins. Kroger started carrying them in the natural foods section a few months ago and happily, they are now also at Whole Foods as of a few weeks ago. Glutino also makes cheerios but they either have egg or dairy in them, I can’t remember which.

Pretzels were a no go for a long time, too, because glutino pretzels contain soy. Apparently lots of it judging by how much he cried when he ate them. Happily, I found this version by EngerG at Martins. It is the only place I’ve found them and unhappily Martins is not at all local for us. The other stellar item at Martins is gluten free ice cream cones! Seriously! Every child should be allowed an ice cream cone and I will forever be grateful to my mom who found these. We make ice cream for Liam since I have yet to find anything commercially that doesn’t make him sick. It melts in a minute or two, but at least it looks like ice cream.

{Goat Milk Ice Cream}
3 cans Meyenburg Evaporated Goat Milk
1 c. sugar
2 t. vanilla
Mix and put in ice cream maker until solid.

I was so happy when I found organic, preservative free turkey breast. And even happier when I discovered that I could make a sort of sandwich with enerG brand bread (see photo one), turkey breast, and homemade zucchini relish. The bread doesn’t last long, unless you freeze it. And it definitely has the nicest texture toasted. Which is still a stretch, but it works. I’d love to experiment more with baking bread for him; but the broiler fuse in my oven blew three years ago and it would cost $150 to fix it (in a stove not worth that much total) so we’re holding off. I can bake cookies, bars and cakes, but our bread always flops since then and his ingredients are too expensive to keep flopping.

These are the new things I’ve found and I cannot tell you how excited I was every time I found something new! Liam and I do happy dances in the aisle when I pick something up, dubiously scan all the ingredients, and in answer to his, “Can I eat that?,” say YES! Here’s to spreading happiness.

Hot Dogs! The first hot dogs that did not make him sick. Not even thirty seconds of tummy ache! Did someone say camping and school picnics and cookouts and hot dog roasts???????????? Available at Whole Foods

Chicken Nuggets! Seriously, I thought I was going to hit the ceiling when I found these I was so excited! I still nearly pinch myself with giddiness. And I found both the hot dogs and the chicken nuggets in the same week! Never again will I have to say, “There are absolutely no short cuts.” Available at Food Lion

Bagels! Walmart inconveniently ran out of goat milk and I decided it’s time for the trial. Liam has been off goat milk for three days now and I have not heard ONE complaint about back or knee pain. I’m planning to keep him off for a week. But now, what in the world to feed him for breakfast? Bagels with jam to the rescue! He eats dry cheerios sometimes and one morning I mixed some jam in with them. He wasn’t terribly amused with breaking out of the box. I found the bagels at Kroger, but it looked like they were discontinuing them already. I can only hope Whole Foods will carry them in the new, bigger store.

This morning he begged for milk. I felt sorry for him and decided to try a tiny bit of raw jersey milk. After all, the doctor said I am not hurting him by cheating and trying things so I feel a little braver about doing it. He had maybe two tablespoons about fifty minutes ago ……. stay tuned!

And what child does not love popsicles? Edys to the soy-free rescue!

One of the other things I’ve started using (as alluded to earlier) is pure, organic maple syrup.  I use it as a sweetener sometimes in place of honey, on his pancakes, and mixed with powdered sugar to make a frosting.  It is delightful.  When we celebrated David’s birthday, I made his favorite chocolate cake with caramel frosting in a cupcake version and wanted a Liam lookalike. 

Maple syrup frosting on a chocolate chip cookie made us all smile.
 

Enviro Kids (I think) makes a nice cereal called Gorilla Munch that looks just like Kix.  It’s perfect for a snack during church.  So much of Liam’s food feels unsaturated.  Rice flour digests so quickly and holds so few calories, he gets hungry quickly.  Other things he likes in spurts and jerks and then refuses to eat the next time are raisens and grapes.  He loves, loves, LOVES cucumber slices and will sometimes eat baby carrots.  Sometimes he will eat an apple.  Most of the time, you may as well forget it.  Sometimes he will eat strawberries so fast you can hardly see them as they move.  The next thing you know, he will totally refuse to eat something because it has strawberries in it.  You’d think he was still two instead of three!

Some plain potato chips (like Utz) are safe.  How wierd is it that chips and pop are safer than orange juice and pineapple and cheese and other healthy things? 

And lest I forget, these chocolate chips made my day last year.  Now I can make Liam’s cookies at home instead of buying them @$4.00 for a dozen one inch cookies.

I realize that this is far from a comprehensive list, but it’s most of the things I can think of that were so terribly difficult to replace and to find.  If you want a recipe for something you’re having trouble making, please  feel free to ask.  Hopefully if I can’t answer it, I can help to point you in the right direction.  And please share or link up to your favorite safe treasures if you have some.

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• Thursday June 16, 2011 →