Elimination Diet - Round 2

Image by Danny McL via FlickrWhat would you not do for your kids...that's the question right? Three months ago I gave up dairy to help with Liv's tummy issues. I was resigned to no more cheese, milk, yogurt, milk chocolate, ice cream, you name it, for the duration of my nursing her. And then all the symptoms came creeping back.

Screaming fits. Arching. Doubling over. A fussy, unhappy baby all day long! Then came the lack of sleep, and now we're on to no sleep so I broke down, called my pediatrician with my special, VIP, have my own parking space I pay so many co-pays, dedicated number (just kidding, but I really should have one) and heard exactly what I expected. No fever, no rash, equals we can see her but it doesn't sound like there is anything wrong illness wise.

Now I love my pedi and her team of nurses so the snarky...wanna come watch the show tonight, it's an all=nighter, reply stayed in my head. And we started talking alternative ways to address this. We ended up on dropping known allergens and seeing if it made a difference. See the worst part about food allergies/intolerance is the best way to diagnose is through an elimination diet which means there are no instant answers or results. So the plan was to drop dairy and soy, give it ten days, then if needed drop Egg, Nuts and Peanuts (yeah I know but they seperated them too...I would have assumed Peanuts fell into nuts), give it ten days and then if needed drop corn and gluten.

So instead of the next month of trial and error today marks day one of my allergen elimination diet. I'm going to toss them all for the next ten days and if we see massive improvement I'll start adding them back slowly. We'll also do a round of blood testing to confirm for her records.

So the sad, sad story is that heading into the Holiday season with it's food, fun, and desserts, I'm heading into it able to eat anything made with no dairy, soy, eggs, nuts, peanuts, wheat or corn. Sounds like a lot of fresh food to me...sorry Stovetop!

Related articles

• How an Elimination Diet Could Uncover your Food Allergies (brighthub.com)
• Food Allergies & The Holidays (wholefoodsmarket.com)
• Allergies in Infants (brighthub.com)

Delightful Dark Chocolate Allergy Friendly Brownies

It's been a long week, and it's only Wednesday! It's the kind of week when I head to the kitchen more often than I should. Baking relaxes me, cooking does too if it's not the 5 pm, kids screaming, "what's for dinner" rush. In the last week I've been called to make gluten free, dairy free pineapple upside down cake, my own special dairy free dark chocolate cake, dairy free dark chocolate mousse (which still needs work) and a homemade, almost as good as the original dairy free version of the Starbucks Toffee Mocha. Quite a week even for me! Sleepless nights and teething babies will do that to you!

Today I started thinking of all the great recipes I've experimented with but have been to much of a slacker to get put up here. One of my recent favorites was a dark chocolate gluten and egg free brownie recipe. This could easily be made dairy free by using an all purpose gluten free baking mix that doesn't contain dairy. Pamela's, the one I used, contains buttermilk solids.

Delightful Dark Chocolate Allergy Friendly Brownies
1/3 cup Pamela's Baking Mix
1 cup water
1/2 cup or 1 stick Flieschmans unsalted butter (only the unsalted is dairy free)
2/3 cup unsweetened dark chocolate cocoa powder
2 cups white sugar
1 tsp vanilla (gluten free)
2 cups Pamela's Baking Mix
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional...just omit if you are nut free)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan.
2. In a heavy saucepan combine the 1/3 cup of baking mix and water with a whisk. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly until thick. Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside to cool.
3. In a small saucepan, melt butter. When melted add cocoa and mix until smooth; set aside to cool.
4. Beat the sugar and vanilla into the cooled flour mixture.
5. Stir in the cocoa mixture until well blended.
6. Combine remaining baking mix, baking powder and salt, stir into the batter until just blended.
7. Fold in walnuts if you wish.
8. Spread evenly in the prepared pan.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
10. Cool before cutting into bars.

Enjoy!

An Allergy Free Cooking Makeover

There's a new look on the blog! With the addition of cutting dairy out of our diets (added to the gluten, corn and egg free diet) I've found little time to think or blog about anything else. With that in mind and with the goal of helping others find information and recipes on dealing with food allergy issues I have given my blog a makeover. I'll be indexing all the recipes over the next few days for easy access and adding in several new favorites. I also added a store to Traveling the Tightrope to make it easy to find the right ingredients and baking essentials. Family updates will still pop up now and then but with most the family on Facebook I am finding an outlet for my kitchen creativity here! Hope you enjoy the new look!

Alex is Four

What a year! Filled with attitude, funny faces and a fair share of time outs, it's flown by. Enjoy the laughs!

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Time flies

Boy does it! Four years ago, right this minute I was trying to hold off asking for an epidural to dull the pain of my stubborn child who flipped backwards and didn't want to join the world. I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl, I had no idea that the next nine months would hold NO sleep, or that there is no feeling in the world like having a child who holds your heart.

Over the years he's been a tyrant toddler, a precocious preschooler and now a little boy. He's growing fast and we are so very blessed to have been given this gift from God to raise and call our own.

Since I'm in a nostalgic mood, let's take a walk down memory lane! LOL

Birth to One Year

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One to Two

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Two to Three

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and Three to Four is on it's way. Check back later for updates!

Reflux and Colic Elimination Diet

So Liv has awful reflux. You can hear it all day long, and the poor thing will be perfectly happy and then hiccup and scream. After a week and a half on the prevacid, gripe water and gas drops I decided my sanity and my poor little munchkin deserved more drastic action.

Dr. Sears has a reccomended elimination diet to help determine what is causing your infants reflux/colic so you can avoid it. Instead of dropping one food at a time to determine the trigger, you drop all but a few basic foods for two weeks and then add back foods slowly. This way generally shows faster improvement since the baby gets instant relief from whatever is causing their pain.

So I'm am eating a bland diet of turkey (breast, sausage and ground lean turkey), rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash and zuchinni and pears. For two weeks! I love food, I love cooking and my husband will back me up when I say I hate eating the same thing over and over. I don't even eat leftovers. So now I'm trying to find out how many ways/dishes I can prepare these limited ingredients with only salt and pepper for seasoning.

Day 1:
Breakfast-Turkey sausage and diced small red potatoes, sauteed in a skillet and seasoned with salt and pepper
Lunch- I ate the breakfast leftovers since we were having a crazy day and I didn't have time to cook.
Dinner- Red Himalayan rice and grilled turkey breast.

Day 2:
Breakfast-Turkey breast and rice
Lunch-Ground turkey sauteed with new potatoes
Dinner- Grilled Turkey breast with sauteed squash and roasted new and sweet potatoes

We're on to day 3 now. So far so good. I'm down 3 lbs and Liv slept 5 hours last night and only had minimal fussing. Here's hoping it keeps up since sleep and a happy baby will make the next 11 days much easier.

Tonight's appetizer---Gluten Free Shrimp Bruschetta

Ingredients

* 4 slices GF bread
* 10 shrimp sauteed in olive oil, butter and lemon, tail removed and chopped
* 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
* 2 TBSP basil pesto
* Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice the bread into 1/4-inch pieces on the diagonal. Put them onto a baking sheet and bake them, turning once, until they are golden brown on both sides, about 10 minutes.

In a bowl combine the shrimp, tomatoes, basil pesto, and salt and pepper, to taste. Put a tablespoon of the mixture onto each piece of bread and serve.