A Few Good Breakfasts. Gluten Free and Feingold Friendly!

Since diving into this strange, new diet plan here are some of the breakfast foods I've devised.

- Plain old eggs with salt and pepper

- Plain Greek Yogurt from Kirkland (Costco) topped with:

   * Kashi's Simply Maize Organic Corn Cereal 

   * Feingold friendly fruits like: banana and mango

   * or mixed with JIF creamy peanut butter

- Kashi's Simply Maize cereal with milk

- Hodgson Mill's Buckwheat Creamy Hot Cereal topped with
  * Feingold friendly fruits like: banana and mango
  * Brown sugar

- Envirokidz's Peanut Butter Panda Puffs cereal with milk

- Your choice of gluten free, preservative free bread with Earth Balance Organic Coconut Spread or JIF.
  * Honestly, I haven't found a very great GF, preservative free, dye free, etc. bread yet... Maybe because I love real bread so much? But the coconut spread is pretty darn good anyhow. Just keep it on your radar.

- Baked pears and bananas by themselves, over GF toast, or on the buckwheat hot cereal
  * Preheat oven to 400F
  * Place halved pears face-down on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes OR until the skin starts to wrinkle/pucker.
  * Slice bananas, brush with melted coconut spread or butter, bake on a sheet for 10 minutes or until they look smooshy and sweet enough for your liking. You can also cook banana slices in a pan, 1 minute on each side.

Have more ideas? Share them below!

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.

Thoughts from a feminist misfit

         I am a Christian, pro-life feminist. Concerning the charged topic of abortion, I don't expect everyone to think or believe the same way I do. I disagree with the prevailing feminist assertion that "any abortion is a legitimate abortion because any choice a woman makes concerning her own body is a legitimate one." But I realize I'm an anomalous "conservative feminist" and try to keep my mind open to understand where others are coming from when more liberal feminism conflicts with my conservatism.

          So recently a post from a feminist blog about abortion led me down a comment thread that... surprised me. The topic was de-stigmatizing open discussion of one's abortion(s) based on the statistic that 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion in their reproductive lifetime. The post observed that some women regret it and others don't, but regardless of your stance on the morality of abortion, as an inherently invasive procedure that can have lasting physical and emotional repercussions, women should have an outlet to discuss their experiences in a therapeutic way without all the shame and vitriol surrounding the topic currently.

          As a feminist, I can agree with that sentiment. It has nothing to do with putting my stamp of approval on abortion, but everything to do with letting those who need to heal, heal. In a purely feminist sense, women who have an abortion face all kinds of societal flack while it's rare that such judgment is hurled toward the men involved. But especially in a Christian sense, I know there are those who feel beyond the fellowship of others because of such an experience that feels off-limits to discuss, even in terms of regret.

          So I read the comments and took them with a grain of salt.  I thought I knew what to expect, but then came the curve ball comments that surprised me. Not because there were so many women describing their own experiences with abortion (though that didn't make my day), but because of one of the ways that a several women framed it.

          First, at least three women described their situations as terminating a pregnancy earlier, but now being married with one or more children. One woman's sentiment was that she is open with her children about her past abortion, because that way they can know that she really wanted them and loves them and planned them intentionally. She wrote:

Yes, I have talked openly about my abortion - and about what a positive experience it was. I also like to make the point that my children will always know that they weren't an "accident" although they weren't planned. I chose to continue my pregnancies because I wanted them.

         
          Others, evidently, agreed with this line of thought, giving it 33 "thumbs up." Another mother wrote that she and her husband almost decided to have an abortion, but didn't-- and later provided this story to her daughter as a means of showing the daughter how giving her life was a conscious choice, even though other options were considered. It was meant as a testament to how much the daughter was loved and wanted. Other readers also seemed to appreciate this woman's thoughts.

Only one other person had a similar reaction to my own:

Oh dear God. "Thanks for not killing me, Mom!" You're going to hear those words and get the warm and fuzzies?

...which got got zero thumbs up.

          Though I consider myself part of the pro-life/pro-child camp, I'm not going to sling mud at anyone who's made a heart-rending choice like abortion. It's not my place. That said, I was thinking the same thing as the unpopular reader directly above-- it sounds off to want your current kids to feel *extra* loved based on the fact that you didn't abort them. So the children you do birth will be buoyed up knowing that there were other embryos/fetuses that didn't make the cut? Erm, no. I felt icky reading that.

          It's one thing to desire a society in which women who have had an abortion can discuss their difficult and painful experiences without a host of people lining up to judge and condemn them. That's entirely different from desiring a society in which abortion should be considered so common that we celebrate children who are chosen (and expect them to celebrate, too), because it reflects the ultimate empowerment of women as keepers of their own bodies and lives. That's a philosophical approach to "progressive thinking," conscientious child-bearing, and womanhood that disturbs me.

And the fact that there were so many virtual head nods and only one other incredulous voice... Evidently I'm a feminist misfit.

Cute Little Girl wants "LOTS of wine!"

Originally published: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 2:36am
Context: Freshman in college

I'm in Huntington Beach for lunch today. I sit down outside to eat at a taco stand and there's this little family sitting at the table next to us (Zach and me).
There's this little girl in a stroller and I am, of course, eavesdropping.

The mom is sitting there drinking a beer, and the little girl is eating her stuff and drinking out of a sippy cup. And then Cute Little Girl (CLG) asks mom, "Can I have some of YOURS, Mom?" Mom and dad both say, "No, I don't think so."

Then, CLG is quiet for, like, a minute eating her stuff and thinking about life as a CLG. But, just as everything is quiet, CLG says, "I want to drink lots of wine for Christmas!" (This is on January 2nd by the way). But wait -- it improves. Mom and dad look around, embarrassed, and I couldn't help it: I burst out laughing.

Mom then says to me, "She's only three! I don't know where she's getting this..."
CLG chimes in "LOTS of wine!" Dad tries to ignore CLG, but she's really excited about this wine. Mom entertains it a little further for some reason, "RIGHT. Who's going to give YOU wine?"

CLG doesn't miss a beat and answers -- with quite an air of confidence -- "Teenagers."