I was going to take along banana muffins to share but found choc date balls in the Paleo Cafe cookbook. They went with the Christmas Party theme and were fun and easy to make. The kids of course had to try one before we went to the party!

Debs.

adapted from: Paleo Cafe

Tonight is Batman’s Little Kindy Christmas party. He is so excited, even more so knowing the whole family will be there, as well as a visit from Santa and a clown. Each parent has wrapped a book for Santa to give to their child. We’re looking forward to a fun family night.

With all we have on today I thought I would make a batch of banana muffins. That way Batgirl can take one to eat at the party when her friends eat birthday cake; Batman can take one in his lunchbox to Little Kindy; and the rest can be shared with the other families at the Christmas party. Usually I make The Healthy Chef’s banana loaf recipe, but decided to use the banana muffin recipe in The Paleo Cafe cookbook I received for my birthday last weekend.

Do you find preparing ahead when attending parties helps your children who have food allergies?

Debs.

adapted from: Paleo Cafe

Debs.

 This week is also the beginning of our ‘no wheat‘ month. After looking through some of the recipes I had pinned on Pinterest, our daughter decided she would like to make some paleo chocolate chip cookies to share with her class.

With her chef’s hat and apron on, our daughter was ready to start cooking. I placed all the ingredients on the bench making it easier for her to see what she needed. Out came the kids tupperware baking set (so fun and colourful).

Each ingredient was carefully measured, counting out loud to herself to make sure she put the correct amount in, especially as she was doubling the recipe.

I think her favourite part was adding all the chocolate chips in!

Balls were rolled in her small hands and gently pressed down to form the cookies. Once the cookies came out of the oven they gave the whole house a lovely coconut aroma.

Our daughter was a little nervous about speaking in front of her peers but was excited for them to taste what she had created as the class chef.

Debs.

We made the ice cream the first afternoon letting it set in the freezer until after school the next day. Our daughter was excited at making her own ice cream and seeing the process involved. The boys however didn’t understand why it wouldn’t be ready until the following day’s afternoon tea.

After making the chocolate coating I worked quickly to completely cover the ice cream bars. Our daughter was fascinated at how quickly the chocolate set on the ice cream (thanks to the magic ingredient of coconut oil).

These dairy-free ice bars were so delicious our youngest son cried when he realised he had eaten it all!

Debs.

This might be the toughest month in terms of thinking of what might have wheat, especially when we are away from the home. Our daughter has already had to miss out on participating in a few Creative Chef days at school due to the food having milk products. She has been quite happy to not eat them as she knows she is on the elimination diet and it will help figure our what her allergies are. We are so proud of the way she has been handling these changes, with only being five years old.

This was my first attempt at making grain-free bread thanks to Against All Grain. It is moist and tastes nice toasted or as a sandwich.

Our three year old son loves his almond butter sandwiches and banana. He could quite happily eat them for every meal. We were unsure how he would go with all the changes. He enjoyed his almond butter sandwich on grain-free bread and banana for lunch. Since we started no milk and wheat he has been tasting all the food that is put on his plate at every meal and tasting new flavours. Prior to this he would put up a fuss (we would just mention he might not like it but did need to taste it – often he chose not to eat his supper and knew there was no other food available until breakfast).

It is worth going through these changes for our family as we are already see good results coming out of it.

Debs.

On Friday night we went to Movenpick for ice cream with waffles or pancakes. The kids were super excited as ice cream has always been a special treat. The kids straight away ordered the shared ice cream with pancakes while my husband and I enjoyed the waffles. Straight after our daughter finished her ice cream she started coughing and clearing her throat.

I have always been sensitive to milk growing up, although we never knew the information that is available now, so I just went on drinking it. As I  headed into adulthood I started getting stomach pains if I had full cream dairy, so switched to lighter versions as it was the high fat content in foods that caused a fat intolerance. I remember when I was young and visiting family, we were having ice cream and I started coughing while eating, but I still wanted to finish as it tasted so good to my young taste buds.

On Saturday we went to Coffee Club for lunch ordering milkshakes and toasted cheese ham fingers for the kids. Giving them a good variety of milk products. By the end of the weekend we had ice cream, milkshakes, cheese and yogurt. We didn’t go overboard with too much dairy or extra foods just added it into our normal weekend.

 Milk wasn’t the main contributor to our daughter and son’s runny eyes and nose or eczema. We did notice a few things over the weekend though – our daughter started getting a stuffy nose the day after we started introducing milk as well as the coughing and clearing of the throat. All the kids were restless and found it hard to settle and go straight to sleep after the weekend of dairy, normally they would be asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed (two to three hours later they were all still awake).

One of the interesting reactions we noticed from the dairy weekend was with our one year old who started banging his head a lot throughout the weekend. Thinking back through the no milk month we discovered he hadn’t been doing it like he was before we started the elimination. I decided see if anyone else had written about this symptom with milk and found there were other parents who’s young children would also bang their heads but when dairy was taken out of their menu they stopped.

We will continue to limit milk products while having the occasional foods when we go out. Our next food elimination will be ‘no wheat‘. I am expecting this month to be tougher than the last especially with having to remember what different items might have wheat in them when we aren’t at home.

 Debs.

Thanks to quirky cooking’s blog we have made our first batch of rice-almond milk. It is dairy free, creamy and delicious to drink on it’s own. We are enjoying drinking it in our coffee, with cereal and as a replacement in baking.

Creating our own milk is a great way to help educate our kids. Our daughter loves learning the how and why behind things. She loved helping make dairy free milk from raw ingredients – brown rice, almonds, coconut oil,  rice malt syrup and water. I worked out the cost to be around $1 a litre (the same as buying cows milk from the supermarket). We bought bulk ingredients to cover the month so we can make 2 litres of milk at a time when needed.

The process is so simple and the most amount of time taken is waiting for it to cool before straining the milk. After grinding the rice and almonds to flour, coconut oil, rice malt syrup and water is added and cooked for 6 minutes. Once the milk has cooled to room temperature it can be strained in a nut bag.

I had heard about nut milk bags but hadn’t seen them until we visited the Paleo Cafe and saw them available for sale. The nut milk bag is fantastic – strong, easy to use and can be rinse and used again. Once all the milk has been squeezed out of the nut milk bag (about 1 litre), another 1 litre of water is added to create 2 litres of rice-almond milk. The pulp can be used in recipes or made into flour.

Debs.

 We had already decided to visit the Paleo Cafe before we knew we needed to start an elimination diet. Saturday being the beginning of the ‘no milk’ month was the perfect opportunity to go. The cafe was constantly busy with a great vibe to the place (staff we’re helpful and friendly as were the customers). On the back wall was a large display of products and resources available. I had been reading about nut bags to make your own milk, and found one to purchase at the cafe.

The kids enjoyed a chocolate banana smoothie (with almond and coconut milk), and banana pancakes with whipped coconut cream. My husband and I loved every mouthful of our breakfast. The paleo bread was tasty, leaving you wanting more. It was a wonderful family morning. Our daughter has decided she is now a paleo girl.

Debs.

Early last year we started substituting whole flour (for spelt, almond and coconut flour), oats (for rolled spelt), and started cooking with quinoa. I also started using almond milk, coconut milk, coconut oil and macadamia oil in recipes. While discovering what didn’t work for our family at the same time – buckwheat, bran and sunflower seed reactions. We switched peanut butter for almond butter (kids love it and tastes much better). We were using raw sugar, honey or maple syrup for sweeteners rather than the processed sugars. Towards the end of last year I read more about rice malt syrup as a substitute sweeter and started using it as well. Recently we’ve switched raw sugar for coconut sugar.

Since our daughter was a baby, she has often had runny eyes and nose. We’d been wondering if it could be an allergic reaction, especially as her brother also started getting the same symptoms since turning one a few months ago.  A week ago our daughter had runny eyes and nose so we decided to have her tested for allergies while she still had the symptoms. She was so brave with her first blood test. The test results came back negative for hay fever and dust mites etc (thank goodness) but was positive for food allergies. This was a broad test focusing on egg white, milk, wheat, soya bean, peanut and fish (cod).

 We are glad to know we can help fix these allergies by eliminating the reactive foods. We are doing an elimination diet, one month of each group starting with milk this month, wheat the next etc. After each month we’ll reintroduce the food to see if there is a reaction.

Have you discovered any reactions with allergies or intolerance in yourself and/or family? Are you still on that journey too?