Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Friday, March 22, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

What we can eat

I was reminded recently that there are lots of lists of what allergic folks can't eat, but much fewer lists of what we CAN eat. Our own list of 'can't eat' is pretty extensive, for example.

My son is gluten free and dairy free and can only seem to tolerate limited quantities of eggs, GF grains, dyes and preservatives, non-organic fruits and veggies, and palm oil.

My daughter is gluten free, dairy free, soy free, egg free, onion and garlic free, and grain fee. She can only seem to tolerate fruit, dyes, and preservatives in limited amounts, and some fruits are no good at all.

Myself, I'm gluten free, dairy free, soy free, egg free, grain free, sugarcane free, coffee free, chicken free, and sulfite and high-in-sulfur-foods free. I have to limit my consumption of legumes, potatoes, and sweeteners, as well.

But what CAN we eat? Well, in the spirit of looking at the positive, here's a few foods on a 'can eat' list.

I can eat this, for example. Probably.


Monday, March 18, 2013

Things to consider on an elimination diet

There's a lot of sites out there which discuss how to do an elimination diet, from medical sites to forums to personal blogs. There's lots of different ideas on what to avoid, how to avoid it, and in what order you should try to eliminate foods.

I'm not going to talk about any of that. In my family, we dropped the 8 most common allergens and cooked from scratch for a while, and changed that on subsequent elimination diets, based on what we learned.

And that's what I'm going to talk about right now: what we learned. Because even if you can find a doctor who is willing to help you with an elimination diet, many times they seem to be, to put it bluntly, pretty ignorant about the REALITY of an elimination diet. Most doctors I've met don't seem to have the barest clue about what your every day experience is going to be like, or what the food industry has been adding to your food.

I hope that knowing a bit more about the process, from someone who has been in the trenches, so to speak, might be of use for anyone who is going through the process.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

corn tortillas

I can't eat these anymore - maybe someday I can grow my own organic heirloom corn and make this work, but not at the moment.

However, coming from the southwest USA and having made these in the past, I had to put at least one post in here about how to make corn tortillas. They are SO good when made from scratch.

I never used a tortilla press and just made heavy, thick ones by patting them in my hands. I ended up liking those very much, even though they don't roll around food as well. They work great to use as the noodle portion of lasagna if you make a sort of 'Mexican Lasagna,' with chicken, tomatoes, and green chiles as the filling between tortilla layers. A green enchilada sauce goes very well with this, too. Not that I can eat most of that anymore, either, LOL.

This recipe below looks about like what I usually made. Almost no ingredients, just corn masa and water. We sometimes added salt, but that was about it! If you are eating corn, I would highly recommend corn masa over corn meal. It is processed in such a way that the nutrients from corn are more bio-available, so you get more of them.

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000160.html

Enjoy!


Sunday, March 10, 2013

Cupcake Grief

I came across this today, an old post that never went up, but which really brought the moment back. This was the day before my daughter's 14th birthday last year.

Cupcake Grief

Socca Pizza

Gluten free, Grain free, sulfite free pizza!  I am SOOOOO happy!

So, I've been making socca a lot lately, and finally decided to try it as a pizza crust. I baked the socca, made some homemade tomato sauce and spread that out over the top, and then cooked the toppings separately.

The first time the topping was ground bison - tasted great.
The second time it was ground bison and cooked red bell peppers - also great.
The third time it was ground bison plus roasted bell pepper sauce and ground up chiles from the yard - REALLY great. I think that blending up roasted red bell peppers and using that as a sauce would go well with this.

The kids got some mushrooms mixed up in their meat, too, and loved it.

The grin on my son's face when he got to hold up his 'pizza' and eat it - I was close to tears. It's so hard to express how much something like his means to us, just to find a food that we really like, that we can all eat, that we can MAKE. We were all grinning like loons.

So awesome.  I'll put up a more detailed recipe for this later, when we don't eat it so fast that it's completely gone before I even get out the camera for pictures, but for right now?

Socca bread + tomato sauce + toppings = awesome pizza dish.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Kale Chips

I just haven't made these in a while and kind of forgot about them. Wish I hadn't! They are SO easy to make, and the kids will eat them which is always a plus, just like the cauliflower.

A warning for the sulfite sensitive. If you react to anything in the brassica family, this may be problematic for you, so take care. I could eat it when I was reacting a bit less, so I hope that some day I may be able to eat it again. :-)

Monday, March 4, 2013

Roasted Cauliflower

I've been trying to find ways my children will eat more variety in their veggies - as this makes up a huge part of our diet - and finally found a way that they like cauliflower, yeaaa!

Roasted cauliflower. I used this recipe.

Basically, I chopped the cauliflower, roasted it around 400-425 with a little oil or melted animal fat and salt rubbed over them. The kids liked the smaller pieces that had more browned area the best. The bigger pieces didn't go over as well. I'd highly recommend this one!

It always feels great when you can find something the kids like to eat!

LOW HISTAMINE DIET - make this sucker as is. :-)