GAPS Days 1 & 2: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

So yesterday we officially started GAPS, and we survived!

We are easing into the intro, since we still had some perishable non-GAPS foods to get rid of, and we are moving nice and slow so we do not overwhelm Joshua.  He is not eating a lot right now, and from what I have heard about young toddlers on GAPS, that is pretty normal, but I am a mom so of course it is a little hard for me.  We had a breakthrough, tonight, though, and I will get to that a bit later.

First, let me tell you about the few weeks before we started. This is a little long, but bear with me (especially if you have kids with food issues).

Joshua developed yet another food allergy (rice), and when we removed all the rice from his diet he started self-restricting his food. He has done this before, when we removed corn.  Basically, whenever we discover and remove an allergen, Joshua restricts what food he will eat a little more.  Some of his allergies never had the chance to cause this problem.  We knew he was allergic to dairy since before we started him on solid foods, and we knew about the eggs shortly thereafter. We never gave him anything with peanut because we know his cousins are very allergic.  And we never gave him anything with soy because it is a phyto-estrogen and therefore we follow a "no unfermented soy for our family and no soy for growing boys." policy.  But we were giving him organic grits, blue corn chips, and things like that.  He loved the blue corn chips with salsa.  At that point he would also happily eat whatever we put in front of him. He gnawed on strips of pastured pork chop or grass fed steak, and hungrily ate up bacon and sausage.  He ate a whole host of vegetables, including green beans, broccoli, carrots, summer squash, collard greens sauteed in rendered bacon fat, swiss chard cooked the same way, raw cucumbers,.  He ate all kinds of fruits, bananas, strawberries, oranges, melons of myriad varieties, apples, and pears.  We took the corn away, as well as oranges and wheat.  It was a big transition, and he responded by restricting his foods even further. He would still eat potatoes and sweet potatoes, but he stopped eating most other vegetables except for broccoli and carrots, he stopped eating all fruits except bananas and strawberries. And he was eating rice chex and veggie straws (not proud of that but they were non-allergenic snacks that traveled well), as well as occasional Enjoy Life bars and fruit squeeze pouches. 

Well, a week and a half ago we went to see the allergist for the first time.  He explained that he was not a fan of the type of machine that our pediatrician did Joshua's blood test on, and wanted to reconfirm a few of the allergens with a scratch test.  Well, that told us that some of the allergies he had actually were much stronger than the blood test showed, AND that he is allergic to rice.

We pulled the rice from his diet and suddenly Joshua only wanted to eat bananas, sausage, potatoes, and fruit squeezes.  He would not even touch broccoli (which was definitely his favorite vegetable until that point).  Other things were concerning me, namely that Joshua used to use the new words he was learning all the time.  He would look out the window and say "chicken" while pointing to the chickens.  Now he just says "da" for a lot of those same things.  He still says "Mama," "Dada," "Please," and "Detta (for shupetta)."  But a lot of his other words are being replaced with "Da."

Now it is confession time: I only read the second half of Gut and Psychology Syndrome at first.  We were only concerned with food allergies, so I only read about the food.  In the few days before the diet, I started reading the first half of the book, and I kind of went a little nuts.  I started reading about they "typical GAPS patient," and felt like I was reading about Joshua.  Suddenly limiting his food is something Dr. Campbell-McBride spent a bit of time on.  Then I was reading the blog of another GAPS mom and she talked about her child losing words and mentioned some behavioral things I had been picking up on in Joshua, too.  Beyond that, I learned that this was a long time coming.  Joshua, like many GAPS patients and like this one blogger's kid, had persistent cradle cap and a persistent yeasty diaper rash as an infant.  My whole world was spinning for a minute as I realized that Joshua is not just a kid with food allergies.  He is a GAPS patient.  But now I had something new to panic over, if he is so intent on self limiting his foods, how am I going to get him to eat the GAPS foods?

I am going through all of this here on the blog because I had no idea some of the "quirks" I was noticing in Joshua's behavior were common to other GAPS kids.  I had no idea that sudden self-restriction of foods was a sign that behaviorally a child could be headed toward the Autism Spectrum, or that the persistent cradle cap and diaper rash could have been my first clues that his gut flora was off in a way that could trigger food allergies and all the things we are dealing with now.  And right now you might be thinking that your highly allergic child is just that, and maybe a lifetime of eating around those allergies is not so bad, after all.  Especially because GAPS can be so intimidating at first glance.  But if your child is like the "typical GAPS patient," maybe it is worthwhile to pursue.  Dr. Campbell-McBride also mentions the fact that for the GAPS patient, simply removing allergens only goes so far, as the patient will likely develop other allergies if the condition is untreated.  This definitely seems the case for Joshua.  It seemed like he never reacted to at least half his allergens until he had been eating them regularly for some time.

OK, finally, tonight's breakthrough.  We tried to use the ABA method that Dr. Campbell-Mcbride talks about in the chapter "Oh No! It's Feeding Time," of GAPS.  We had limited success.  We stuck to our guns, and offered Joshua a sweet potato chip (homemade and fried in pastured lard) for every spoonful of broth he ate.  But he never willingly ate any.  We did give him some in a dropper, and gave him a chip after each time that he swallowed, but he didn't ever choose the broth.  I know it is a process, but we were not sure if we could handle more nights of screaming fits.  Tonight, we dipped the sweet potato chips in his soup puree, and it worked!  The idea is that:  as we gradually give him probiotics and feed him the GAPS approved foods, we will also decrease the quantity of the non-GAPS foods, and then he'll be fully on intro.

And our mistakes so far:  I have regularly been making kombucha, kefir, and other probiotic foods at various points over the last three years, so when she says to start with like a teaspoonful of sauerkraut juice in some cooled down broth, I scoffed.  We have all consumed a good amount of probiotic foods before, so why start so small.  Well, Joshua had horrible diarrhea and diaper rash today, and I know it is because I put a splash of kombucha in his drink not once, but 4 times.  My intentions were good: correct the gut flora imbalance and he won't crave those horrible starchy foods, but we have to start small because it is a marathon, not a sprint.  For me, I have had monstrous headaches all day long (like, I can feel my pulse in my teeth).  I also overdid it on the kombucha yesterday.  What we are experiencing is called die-off, and it is the release of toxins (and therefore, these wondrous symptoms) that occurs when the pathogenic bacteria and yeast die off.  This is why you start slow.  I backed way off today on the probiotics for both Joshua and I, and slathered his poor backside with coconut oil.  By tonight he was already looking better.

So that's it, the good, the bad, the ugly.  I think we are going to make it.  I know that this is exactly what we need, so we are going to take baby steps all the way through intro and into full GAPS.  I am glad, reading other GAPS mom's experiences, that we have at least one medical professional that is fully supportive of our endeavor (Joshua's new allergist/immunologist, who said that though he'd never heard of it before, the premise makes a lot of sense). I have a feeling that his support is going to be necessary.

Taking The Plunge: GAPS

Many of you know that we have dealt with food allergies for some time.  While my only food allergy is to MSG (so I do not care if it ever gets reversed, because MSG is an excito-neurotoxin that can harm your brain, is addictive, and causes weight gain and I am glad I have a reason to avoid it that is "acceptable" even to non-health conscious people), my husband is allergic to dairy, coconut, and (as we recently discovered) to almonds; as well as being gluten intolerant.  Our son is allergic to dairy, soy (hooray, but still), corn, peanuts, eggs, coconut, and oranges; as well as appearing to be gluten intolerant.

When it was just dairy and coconut for Jeff, I was more than content to just cook around them.  I mean, 2 allergens does not make for a complicated kitchen routine.  We were already making just about everything from scratch, anyway, so it did not really interrupt our routine much.

Gluten intolerance, though, certainly mixed things up a bit.  We were making everything from soaked or sprouted whole grains and loving it.  While we were fairly low-carb, we did enjoy those carbs coming from whole grain pasta or a nice loaf of homemade whole wheat bread.  Gluten-free living was a definite and drastic switch.

Add to it Joshua's allergy to many of the foods we love (eggs, peanuts, oranges,etc) and this was one overwhelmed mama.  So here I am trying to make us all one meal and not use too many gross substitute foods and keep everyone satisfied.  Overwhelmed.

I had long been hearing of people going through GAPS or the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to reverse their food allergies, but I just figured that it would be too restricted for my husband to enjoy and too restricted to feed my toddler well.  Until suddenly it was not too restricted for Jeff.  He wanted to at least check it out.  So we ordered Gut and Psychology Syndrome off of Amazon (Can you believe they did not have it at our local library, or anywhere in the GA Pines library system?), and we got it yesterday.

While we still have a lot to read about the how's and the why's, we looked at the parameters of the diet.  Guess what we discovered?  It basically included the diet Joshua already eats (meat and veggies); but with the prerequisite that those foods be boiled in the broth.  We can handle that.  Not to mention that the broth is a good source of calcium, something that we have to work at with his dairy allergy.

So, all though the original plan was that Jeff go on GAPS (and I go through the intro phase with him for moral support), we have decided that the whole family is going on GAPS together, starting in March.  The delayed start is to give us the time to prepare, stock up (pun semi-intended) on soup bones from our friends at the farmer's market, join friends for dinner one last time, etc.

Initially I was really intimidated about going on GAPS, but now - while I know it will be a challenge - I am pretty excited about it.  We know it is a long term commitment.  We are talking about 2 years of a diet that takes some major commitment before we will even know if it worked for our food allergies.  But the possibility that we can take these two years and turn it into a lifetime of enjoying a variety of nutritious whole foods, that is pretty incredible.  So we are joining the myriad of real-food bloggers who have already taken the plunge, and we are going GAPS.

A Learning Winter

Earlier this fall I learned that I can, in fact, be consistent in things.  And so, I have been striving for more consistency every day (though it has not made its way into blogging, yet, really).  I always thought that I could never really keep a house, and so I never have.  I always thought that any new venture I began had to fizzle out after only a few tries.  And the five month long lapse in blogging might seem to confirm, that, except...

I have been learning to keep my house, really be consistent in menu planning, and get beyond the kick-off in the things I am doing; it just has not left me a lot of time to blog, as of yet.  I am learning that, after 29 years of believing myself to be a flibbertygibbit, the only way to kick that habit is in layers.

My sil and I are keeping a rotating schedule w/the kitchen chores (we share a kitchen). One of us empties the dishwasher, and the other sweeps.  This has proven really instrumental in keeping a kitchen, and the rest has kind of revolved around that.  So for the past several months I have been consistently keeping the kitchen clean.  I really think starting with a shared space was the way to go.  A few months back I added in the dining room (you know how when you are clutter prone everything seems to land on the dining room table?). On top of my heavily junk-magnetized table, we also have my dear Joshua, who gets a little too enthusiastic at meal times (i.e. some food ends up on the floor).  So now I am keeping two rooms, and working on the living room next.  I almost had that one down, but Christmas happened.  Since there are no room-rearranging holidays between now and next Christmas, I plan to be so solid in my routine that it does not take me a month to recover my living room.

Now, this may not seem like very much to accomplish in several months time, but here is the other side of the story.  Food Allergies.

This summer we discovered that Jeff was intolerant to gluten, and rearranging our lives around that was challenging, but not impossible.  We also knew that Joshua was allergic to milk and eggs.  So Trying to keep a consistent meal plan and eat around everyone's allergies was getting a little trickier.  Well, Joshua turned one in November, and with that came an allergy test.  It turns out that he is actually allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, corn, oranges, and coconut, and is sensitive to wheat and raw tomatoes.  It looks like he is intolerant to gluten in general, as well.  While the soy allergy really does not interfere with anything, all of the others do, and so in the last couple months our diet was pushed over the edge from mildly primal (not-as-strict paleo) to almost full-on paleo.  We still eat (raw) dairy, we just do not let Joshua.  In the midst of all of this, we are looking at going on GAPS to reverse Jeff's food allergies and gluten intolerance.  This is going to be a two-year project, though Jeff is going to be the only one who is exclusively GAPS for now (I want to see how it goes with Jeff before trying it with Joshua, also we want to make sure there is a nutritionist/dietician we can include to make sure Joshua is getting everything he needs if we DO put him on GAPS).

It is my desire to chronicle this journey on the blog, and also post as many allergy-friendly recipes as I can to help other parents of children with multiple food allergies.  That said, I have learned that some days it is more important to make sure I have everything prepped to make the meal than it is to blog about the meal.  I am learning about (and striving for) balance, and such sudden and drastic dietary changes can be overwhelming, so we are taking this one step at a time and just trying to be as content and healthy as we can where we have found ourselves.

A word to other new "allergy moms:"

It is so incredibly easy to stress out about food.  Especially when your allergic to everything child wanders into his cousins' room and you find him with a ring of "chocolate animals" around his mouth.  The other day Joshua had some "digestive issues" and I was racking my brain, recounting every minute of the few days prior, sure that he did not have exposure to any of the allergens we know about, when it suddenly hit me: Maybe he is just teething, or has a bug, or has been having large helpings of fruits and veggies in those few days (which, he had).  If you have found yourself in this position, you have also heard the (seemingly) hollow advice of others (who are not in your shoes) to relax, take a breath, do not stress out.  As difficult as it might seem, or as silly as it sounds coming from the mouth of someone who you (I) feel is unqualified to speak into your situation, it must be done.  You have to find a way to calm down, take a deep breath, and then take a look at where you are and what the next steps should be.  This is going to be a long road, and it will be very challenging at times, but you are not alone.

Fun at the Farmers Market and Menu Plan for the Week!

We love going to Mulberry Street Market every Wednesday. We love talking with the farmers about the food they are growing for us, learning about veggies we were not previously familiar with (like burgundy okra, and an amazing assortment of heirloom melons), and stocking up on foods we know are full of nutrients and free from toxins.  Of course on most weeks, you will also find me there, selling my Bee Beautiful Products via my friends at Beans Farm or Salamander Springs Farm.  Next year we are very excited about having our own booth!

We are 100% dedicated to only eating what I would call "clean meats" now (you know, meat from pasture raised and finished animals that are never given hormones, antibiotics, or GMO-laden feed), and the market helps us out with that considerably. While we raise our own chickens (and eggs), we get our beef from Hunter Cattle Company, and our pork from Evergreen East Farm.  Evergreen East raises a heritage pig breed called mulefoot pigs, and they provide us with pork chops (among other things) that are just BURSTING with flavor, even downright buttery. We love 'em!  Hunter Cattle has a great selection of cuts, and we have absolutely loved getting our chuck roasts, sirloin, neckbone (mmm...pulled beef!), ground beef, and more from them. We have also gotten some delicious raw milk cheeses, as well as organic grassfed butter, from Southern Swiss Dairy.

We get our fruits and vegetables every week from a variety of places.  Davis Farm has an astounding array of heirloom melons which Joshua adores for breakfast.  We have also gotten sweet potatoes, purple basil, burgundy okra, pea tendrils, and beans from them.  We have gotten a veritable cornucopia of eggplant, cucumbers, okra, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and summer squash from Beans Farm, Vesterfield Farm, Salamander Springs Farm, and The Little Farm.  We have gotten a few canned goods, too, like jams, jellies, and apple and pear butter from Salamander Springs Farm, salsa from The Little Farm, and pickles from Greenway Farm.

So I have decided that from now on, I will link my readers to the farms we get our food from when we do our menu plan. Sadly, we missed seeing our friends at Evergreen East at the market this week, so our pork chops are from Hunter Cattle, who also raise pigs!  Their chops are also quite good!  Anyway, every week when I do my menu plan, I'll include the farms from which each meal was sourced so local readers can get their hands on these delectable local foods!  As usual, where allergy means that Joshua's meal varies from ours, I list what he has, too!

OK, here is our menu for this week!

Thursday:
Breakfast - Ham, Eggs, fried grits (kind of like polenta, but a slightly different texture) Just Ham and grits for Joshua.
Lunch - leftover spaghetti & meatballs (with quinoa spaghetti).  I usually make my own sauce but this week both the sauce AND the meat for the meatballs came from Hunter Cattle
Dinner - NY Strip Steak, Baked Potatoes, Broccoli (Apparently Thursday is Hunter Cattle day).

Friday:
Breakfast - (Butternut) Squash Pancakes (recipe here) (We're using flax seed & water to replace the eggs so Joshua and my nephew Jo can have them, these are already gluten & grain free) ((the squash is actually from Corley Farm, but via Beans Farm's booth @ the market).
Lunch - Steak sandwich (with pea tendrils and bean sprouts)
Dinner - Pork Chops (marinated in olive oil, cinnamon basil, garlic, salt, pepper, and a splash of ACV), Baked Sweet Potato, braised greens (w/ham and cooked in rendered bacon fat). (the mustard and turnip greens come from Salamander Springs Farm, which does not have a website but is at Mulberry Street Market every week!)

Saturday:
Breakfast - Smoothies, toast with apple butter (Joshua will have some fresh pear instead of smoothies). The Apple Butter is from Salamander Springs.
Lunch - BLTs, hard boiled egg yolk w/a little olive oil and sea salt for Joshua (pea tendrils instead of lettuce on our sandwiches)
Dinner - Chuck Roast with onions, potatoes, and carrots (Dessert is chocolate cake I'm trying with gluten free flour.  Will post results.  We are celebrating Jeff's bro and sis in law completing their move.  Hooray!)

Sunday:
Breakfast - Eggs, Venison Sausage, Toast and Apple Butter (no eggs for Joshua)
Lunch - Smoothies, fruit, celery & peanut butter (no PB for Joshua yet, he'll have fresh cucumbers, which he loves)
Dinner - Roast Beef Sandwiches (from the leftover roast)

Monday:
Breakfast - Chocomole
Lunch -  Roast Beef Sandwiches
Dinner - Tacos (Beef) w/guacamole, salsa, tomatoes, Aztec Cheddar, and lettuce (on gf corn tortillas)

Tuesday:
Breakfast - Eggs, Venison Sausage (just sausage and pear for Joshua)
Lunch - L/O tacos
Dinner - BBQ Chicken on the grill, grilled squash, baked sweet potato.

Wednesday:
Breakfast - Smoothies, fresh fruit (just the fruit for Joshua)
Lunch - Leftover buffet
Dinner - Chicken (in the crockpot with carrots, potato, and onion)

And that is the week!

Menu Plan & Our Busy Week(s)

This week has been busy busy busy, which is why I feel like it is Monday, still, when it is actually Thursday.  Time flies when you cram your schedule full, right?  The end of this week and all of next week look no different, really.  So I am pretty sure that October will be here before I even know what really happened to August (which is, I am afraid, long gone, along with my formerly favorite season. Middle GA has turned me into a spring/fall gal)!  Time and I do not really get along as well as I would like.

Next week holds time at the IHOP in Macon on Sunday, lots of work on flooring and painting the other side of the house Mon-Saturday, with a little reprieve on Wednesday for the Mulberry Street Farmer's Market (and a trip to the library before that!).  In the meanwhile some fantastic folks and I are working together to put on a worship workshop for area churches by November, so a lot of planning and working for that will be going on in this next week, as well!  Never a dull moment!  It is at times like these that I really appreciate menu planning and the little bit of steadiness it brings to our lives.  How much crazier these days would be if I had to ask myself every afternoon, "Oh, what about dinner? What can I make?"

So I am going to list wherever Joshua's meal will break from our own in my menu planning from now on, because it really helps me to be prepared for what to feed him (instead of leaving his food to the last minute).

Thursday (tonight!): 
 Breakfast: Bacon & Eggs, (for Joshua bacon, fruit, and gluten free O's)
Lunch: Roast Beef (with a side of mashed sweet potatoes for Joshua)
Dinner: Sirloin Steak (pan-seared), Salad, and Rice

Friday:
Breakfast: Oatmeal/Fruit (For Joshua probably just O's instead of oatmeal)
Lunch: L/O Steak (steak sandwich for me), (L/O spaghetti squash for Joshua)
Dinner: Tacos / Guacamole


Saturday: 
Breakfast: Huevos Ranchero (Fruit, and hard boiled egg yolk for Joshua, we are switching up the fruits so he doesn't get too bored)
Lunch: L/O tacos
Dinner: Tilapia with Quinoa and Black Beans

Sunday:
Breakfast: Bacon & Eggs, Smoothie (Just bacon & fruit for Joshua)
Lunch: Yogurt, fruit, toast (L/O Fish & Veggies for Joshua) (Lunch is quick and portable because we are stopping at home only for lunch before heading out to IHOP)
Dinner (on the go): Sandwiches (on gf bread for Jeff) w/nitrate free lunch meat

Monday:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with fruit & nuts for me, Smoothie for Jeff, & fruit and O's for Joshua
Lunch:  Tuna for us,   HB Egg yolk & fruit for Joshua
Dinner:  Ham Roast in the Crockpot, Baked & Mashed Sweet Potato, Squash (Sauteed in rendered bacon fat...yum!)

Tuesday:
Breakfast: Eggs & Waffles (egg free & gf waffles) (Joshua will add fruit and nix the eggs, maybe add some bacon)
Lunch:  Yogurt, Fruit, Toast w/PB (For me), L/O's from Dinner for Joshua, Tuna for Jeff
Dinner: Italian Shredded Beef Sandwiches (GF rolls for Jeff)

Wednesday:
Breakfast: huevos ranchero (Fruit & O's for Joshua)
Lunch:  L/O Beef Sandwiches
Dinner: Ham & Eggs w/Grits (Nix the eggs for Joshua)

And that is our week!

Meal Plan 9/8-9/14

The week ahead (and the end of this week we are finishing) holds many great things, and I am so excited about them! Tomorrow is my first worship practice since joining our church worship team! So many other things are also on the horizon, and I cannot wait to see them come together!

As I said in my last post, I plan our meals from Thursday - Wednesday now, since we do the bulk of our grocery shopping at the Farmers Market, on Wednesdays, and we do not always know what is going to be there. Our meat order does not change very often, but who has what vegetables and fruits changes routinely. And, of course, how you cook a certain type of meat can change drastically based on what you have to put with it. 

Here is some of what we have been finding lately at our farmers market!

Spaghetti Squash - We have recently discovered this gluten-free wonder. Our "experiment" with gluten free is over and this is what we have learned: I do fine with gluten, but have lost almost 20 lbs doing low(er) carb eating.  Jeff, however, definitely has a problem tolerating gluten.  On the one hand this is great news: we now know how to keep Jeff healthy and have seen from other real food bloggers that it might be possible to reverse this over a lengthy period of time.  On the other hand, though, it is a big adjustment.  Quinoa pasta is great, but it is expensive, too.  Thankfully, a friend of ours at the market has had an abundance of spaghetti squash.  The added bonus is that Joshua LOVES it.  He eats spaghetti squash with both hands!

Fried Okra - There has definitely been a surplus of this at the market, as well.  We have found a good gf flour mix that we like, and we do half gf flour, half organic corn meal, with plenty of seasonings.  Fried in pastured lard, this is almost guilt-free (it is not entirely low-carb, of course).

Sweet Potatoes - Of course, we cannot get enough of these, anyway. We are a sweet potato loving family!  We will mash them, bake them, fry them, oven-fry them (with Food Renegade's recipe!), and then some.

Eggplant - I never knew I liked eggplant before!  Cooked up in a little bit of rendered bacon fat with Italian seasoning, this stuff is pretty incredible!

Squash (summer) - we already like squash, nothing really too new here.  We cook it like the eggplant, or we skewer it for grilling with a nice marinade.

Green beans (of varying kinds) - nothing too foreign for either of us, here, either.

Melons - One booth in particular has a vast assortment of melons, and I must confess we do not know the names of everything we have brought home.  One thing is sure, though, Joshua LOVES melons of all kinds.

Pears - While we all enjoy pears, Joshua has enjoyed more of these than we have, since I am always looking for foods that he can snack on and we are trying to keep things relatively low-grain for him.

OK, so that is the basic assortment of what we have been eating lately, now onto the meal plan!

Thursday (yesterday) - Fried Okra, organic Grits, and a hamsteak.

Friday - Blackbeans and Rice, Beef (stew beef, technically) sauteed with onions and garlic, organic blue corn chips, homemade guacamole with fresh peppers from the market.

Saturday - Beef Kebabs for lunch with the fam (painting day), Pork Chops, Sweet Potato, and Green/Purple beans for dinner

Sunday - Breakfast for Dinner - bacon, eggs, and homemade gf waffles

Monday - Spaghetti Squash and meatballs (Gluten Free meatballs, using oat flour instead of bread crumbs), Eggplant sauteed with onions and garlic

Tuesday - Leftover Buffet

Wednesday - Chuck Roast in the Crock Pot (with carrots, celery, and onion), and rice.

So that is our week!  I am looking forward to it, both for the menu and all the great things we have going on!

The Only Constant Thing (aside from God's unfailing love) is Change

So, the little blogger app for my phone has not helped me post more frequently, it seems.  That tiny keyboard drives me nuts for anything longer than a text message.  But I digress.

My son, Joshua, is growing so so quickly!  With moving to a new place and trying to get my home settled, I never did try to make my own baby food.  We were getting baby food free from WIC, anyway; so while I wanted to do something better for him, I accepted that our needs were being met and an overwhelmed mommy was not going to do him any good.  Then I read "Real Food for Mother and Baby," by Nina Planck, and we threw out the baby food altogether (this is just in the last month and a half). Joshua now eats - basically - whatever we eat.  He definitely has a dairy allergy, and we have recently discovered an egg white allergy.  No fun, but, I am learning so much about sticking to real foods and avoiding his allergies. So his breakfasts differ from ours (because we eat a lot of eggs and a lot of smoothies), and some of his other meals, too. So this another reason for infrequent posts, because I have been spending so much time in the kitchen I have not left myself time for writing about the kitchen.

Joshua basically eats meats, fruits, veggies, and some grains. While I have not seen an outright allergic reaction to wheat, his dad is gluten intolerant so I am being pretty wary of it. Some wheat things he seems to handle fine, and with other wheat foods his eczema has seemed to flair up.  Lately, though, the eczema is diminishing greatly, and now he mostly breaks out in hives when he has a reaction.

I have to say, as much as I hated the eczema, I kind of prefer it to anything that could point to possible anaphylactic shock (which hives can be a precursor to in severe allergic reactions). I know it is a long shot but we are dealing with neurotic new mommy here and I have no shame in that.  Hives are scarier for me than red scaly skin.  I am sure Joshua prefers the hives, though, because they are transient and so he does not itch for nearly as long.

I have not seasoned anything as fully for him as I have for Jeff and myself, which means some extra steps in my cooking and such, but we tend to eat on the heavily seasoned side, and I do not know how he would handle things like peppers, or excessive garlic.  I would say we eat garlic in excess.

So breakfast is usually fruit of some kind, and some (organic and soy-free) gluten-free O's if he is extra hungry.  Fruit is either pears, bananas, or some kind of melon.  He actually seems to prefer the ones that taste almost more like lightly sweetened cucumber than like the sweet melons I am used to.  We have a good source of interesting heirloom melons at our local farmers market.

Lunch is often a reprise of the previous night's dinner, but sometimes is a hard-boiled egg yolk with a tiny bit of olive oil (to improve the texture) and some salt, along with cucumber slices.  He loves pork chops (and ham, and bacon), chicken is probably next on the list, and then beef last, but he will eat all of them. I have not really tried any fish with him yet.  I actually really want to try Nina Planck's suggestion of Salmon Roe, but it is pricey! If we have a little extra room in the grocery budget sometime soon, though, we will certainly give that a try. He likes the bone broth we've given him (so far just beef and chicken).

Sweet potatoes and green beans are probably his favorite cooked vegetables.  Though he also really likes squash, carrots, and broccoli.  Avocados, while technically a fruit, are probably his favorite raw veggie, but he only really gets those when we are eating Mexican. He likes rice, but I have not tried the quinoa with him, yet, in its whole form. He loves the quinoa pasta we get for Jeff, though. And he loves spaghetti squash and meatballs.

He has never had any kind of "dessert" food yet. He has never had anything with MSG or HFCS (and I hope to keep it that way for as long as I can). He has never had any juice, and never anything with any food dye in it (except in one teething gel when he first started teething. The cranky baby that resulted in has been motivation to keep him dye-free!). 

He is seriously loving the self-feeding experience.  And, in not pureeing anything, I get to eat my dinner at the same time as him, and family meal times are established. We eat together, we pray before we eat, we (generally) all leave the table at the same time.  The biggest downside, as we prepare for weaning, is that the more food he eats (and the less he nurses) the more he gravitates away from me, toward his dad.  And that is actually not a downside at ALL, but it does make me really miss those early days when Mommy was the most important one in his universe. Oh, dying to myself, why must you be so painful? Seriously, though, I love watching him watch Jeff. In play, when he works, all of it. He loves to sit and watch the chickens with Jeff, and he loves to watch Jeff's fish tank with him, too (a dream come true for Jeff, to be sure!).

He will be one year old in just shy of eight weeks and I am amazed, appalled, proud, nostalgic, happy, and bittersweet.  My little man is growing up!

I do our meal plans Thurs-Wednesday, now, because we do the bulk of our shopping at the Farmers Market, but stay tuned for a meal plan post that should have gone up today! :)