Our Feingold, Gluten-Free Diet Plan... AKA: Are there actual foods we can still eat?

    It's been evident for some time that P has more energy and sleeps way less than the average toddler. Literally, every--single--time we go out with him, he's tearing around at full speed and someone comments, "Wow! He's sure gonna' sleep well tonight!"... and he almost never does. He just goes and goes. That alone wouldn't have convinced me to change our diets so drastically, but more recently this was also accompanied by steep mood swings beyond normal Terrible Twos. He's gotten out of control crying, or sometimes raging, to the point that he almost seems scared. Another red flag: he can lie awake for 2 or 3 hours in his bed without going to sleep. Just crying, tossing, turning, calling out for a million things. Then when he wakes up, he's a wreck--more crying and screaming, often for upwards of 30  minutes.

     His pediatrician brought up going gluten free, but only after trying a few other things. The other things fell flat, i.e., I didn't notice a difference. So after toying with the idea of diet change for a while, I bit the bullet and dove in. I hit Trader Joe's and thought I'd find all these great gluten-free (GF) foods. I was a little overwhelmed and asked an employee for help, at which point I told him what the GF diet was for. He alerted me to the Feingold Diet, originally called the Kaiser Permanente Diet or KP Diet. It's intended to address ADHD behaviors (which the TJ employee said all but disappeared in his 7 year-old son on the diet), but can also help with sleep issues, perseverating, and some other things I saw happening with P that time-outs and patience hadn't done boo to remedy.

     The nuts and bolts of the Feingold Diet are to cut out artificial dyes, artificial flavors, and certain artificial preservatives, and foods containing salicylates (a compound that occurs naturally in certain foods) like apples, grapes, fresh pineapple, berries, tomatoes, peppers, oranges, tangerines, cucumbers, almonds, apricots, pickles... you really need to look up the comprehensive list. There are different stages. During Stage 1, you eliminate all of the foods on the list, then after a period of one to two weeks you integrate the foods back one at a time and hopefully get some of them back into your diet if there are no adverse reactions.

     So after some research on that, I decided that I would rather try both diets (GF and Feingold) at once just in case there were multiple food factors affecting him. Then after a few weeks I could try integrating some of the foods back into his diet. The learning curve is STEEP, which is why I'm going to keep a record of the things I'm feeding P on this diet. So stay tuned as I post those soon!

     Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm probably not doing this 100% correctly. If you are an expert at going gluten free or using the Feingold Diet, and you notice that I list some food that's not in line with those diets, go ahead and let me know! Also, before you try any diet change for your own child, consult with your child's pediatrician.

Lost in Translation: My Chocolates

Originally posted: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 7:51pm

Ben Preston and I just had some fun trying to guess what was in the box of German chocolates we were eating (we ate the chocolates, not the box). Anyway, the cheat sheet that most boxes of chocolate comes with--you know, to tell you what's hidden in each chocolatey surprise--is written in German. Very authentic. So we headed to the all-knowing fount of internet wisdom: Google. After translation, here are some of the things we found out about the chocolates we ate:

Marc de Champagne Truffles: chocolate-wraps from wife
Gianduja: delicate melting Gianduja with typical nutty-note
Ek Chuah: tender roasted cacao nibs in fine bitter-nut-nougat cream-chocolate-in alpine milk.
Pistachio-Marzipan: aromatic pistachio-marzipan flavored with cherry-water in the dark

After being thus informed, we're still trying to figure out whether we're okay with eating "nibs" or chocolate-wraps from someone's wife.

Steal the bacon-- just not MY bacon!

Originally posted: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 5:59pm I don't know how to put this, but someone stole my bacon.

Stole.
My.
Bacon.

My bacon is not for stealing.

Remember the Bacon Explosion I posted a few weeks ago? Delicious recipe that called for 2 lbs of bacon? Yeah, that bacon came in a pack of 4 1lb bags. That means I had 2 lbs left.

So THEN I made green beans with bacon, onion, and tomato. I made it twice. That used up another pound. That means I had 1lb left.

So I go to look for it just now, and... WHERE'S MY BACON?!! It's not in the fridge, it's not in the freezer. I even got panicked enough to look in a couple of drawers. Just in case? No bacon.

I called Bryce, and he has no idea where it is either. I made him reassure me that he wasn't playing a trick or something (though I don't know what kind of "trick" it would be-- hiding-- bacon...) and then I did another thorough sweep of the fridge and freezer. I took everything off the shelves and felt around corners in case my bacon is lying neglected and afraid in some secret refrigerator dungeon between the vegetable drawer and the wall.

I found no bacon. Though I did find some dried mushrooms labeled "Matsutake 10/17/97" (the last person to live in our condo was Japanese, so I guess she kept a special stash. I just googled it to confirm and found that it's a highly sought after mushroom that can be sold for $2,000 per kilogram when it's in season. Um. Wonder what 13 year old mushrooms would sell for...). ANYWAYS, still no bacon.

I'm very vexed by this missing bacon... I would remember eating/cooking a whole pound of bacon.

Thoughts on where my bacon went?

The Meat Cake Adventure

Originally posted: Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 7:22pm

So I made this meat cake/log/brick for our church's ManFood competition. I laughed several times while making it, just because...well, I hope you can laugh at it, too.

Here we go:

Step (1) Weave 1 lb of bacon together.

Technically still good like this.

Step (2) Cover bacon mat with 1 lb ground beef. Sprinkle with a little cooked bacon.


Step (3) Press a mix of whole and sliced Little Smokies into the beef.

Smokies: the only other meat that could've improved this thing.

Step (4) Cover with cheese.


Step (5) Add MORE BACON!?!


Step (6) It needs BBQ sauce. And BBQ seasoning.

Slather away.

Step (7) Roll that sucker up and cook it good! Do not eat until fully cooked, however tempting.

Admire the weave.

 

Cheese Balls: The Snack (not a medical condition)

Originally posted: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 10:35am

Alternate title: My selfish alter-ego

For Halloween my mom gave Husband and I a ONE POUND drum of cheese balls/puffs (meant to resemble pumpkins or something). One pound doesn't sound like much, but think of how light those things are. It's like the size of a sparkletts jug.

We have so many we've been using them to barter with. Ex: We gave a friend a baggy of cheese puffs to borrow two of her movies. Cheese balls could be the currency of the future, should the economy continue in a downslide...

And people get really excited about cheese puffs. Like everybody wants one or two as soon as they see that you've got some. But you look like a selfish jerk if you only give someone one or two cheese balls even if they only ask for one or two (I mean, who can't spare a handful of a cheap snack?), but I'm REALLY covetous of certain food. Luckily, cheese balls are the kind of thing that I realize I will get sick of pretty quickly. As soon as all that processed cheese dust and the deep-fried dough puffs start to build a layer of glutinous, sodium-filled jelly in my stomach... I'm done and ready to share. But sometimes I don't want to share food.

Like, usually, I love to feed people. I will give you tons of home-cooked food. I'll make several dishes and want you to stuff yourself on them, but if I go to the store and find some snack food that I REALLY want, and then I get it... I'm like freaking Golum hiding in some cave with the "One Snack." I think everybody else wants it, too, so I eat it secretly where no one will see and ask for some.

I try and keep this covetousness a secret. Husband only recently found this out with grape juice. It's a guilty pleasure, since it's kinda expensive as far as juice goes. I have to limit how much I drink or I will make myself disgustingly ill on it. And like I said, I get kinda manic about it, like, even *how* I drink it. Grape juice must be sipped. Must. Otherwise you miss the full spectrum of delicious flavor. Well, a few weeks back, we got two 64oz containers of grape juice from Costco. I thought I was going to cry I was so happy about all that juice. I quickly imagined how, if I paced myself, I could make it last a long time.

When we got it home, I immediately poured myself a glass; so did Husband. I hadn't calculated his consumption into my grape juice forecast. I tried to let it go, thinking of how silly it was wanting to have all the grape juice for myself. I sipped my cup of juice: it was fantastic; incredibly flavorful; like an old friend it was familiar and yet I hadn't had any in a while, so the taste was refreshing. Slowly sipping and savoring, I was entering a sort of meditation with my grape juice. Then I heard a horrifying noise: *glumph**glorb**glumph*

"NO!" I cried out unexpectedly. Husband was GULPING down his glass of grape juice. That oaf was reverse-vomiting the precious nectar of my delight. I snatched his glass from him before he could finish off what little juice remained in it. I was another person, it seemed.

"What are you DOING?!" my mouth surprised me by talking, "You can't CHUG the grape juice!"

I must have really shocked Husband because he just stood there with his eyes popped open about as big as I've seen them. He was biting his lips together and his hand was still curled around some phantom cup in midair-- everything had happened so fast, and surely he hadn't expected to be attacked just then.

I explained how it needed to be sipped, savored, about the spectrum of delicious flavor, the nirvana... I started to hear how ridiculous I was. And Husband was still standing there looking really sheepish before he burst out laughing and promised that he would "sip from now on." While he conceded that it was unquestionably better when sipped, I felt bad enough about letting my Golum alter-ego surface that I told him he could chug it if he wanted to and I wouldn't attack him again... He still seems too afraid to do that, though, because whenever he drinks the grape juice now, he always casts furtive glances my way as he sips. Secretly, I am pleased.

Now you know more about my selfish alter-ego.