Gluten Free for almost 3 months

Liam and I have been GFCF since December 27th.  Almost 3 months.  I feel great and he has had nothing but great reports from his therapists and teachers.  I would love to think the diet is to thank, but I am cautious to give credit where credit isn't due.  I started incorporating the dairy back into his diet this week with no noticeable change in his behavior.  A noticeable change in the contents of his diapers, but meals have been a bit less complicated and less restricted, I'll deal.  I'm glad to find that there is no major dairy sensitivity, especially since it may reduce the number of groans from my other angels applied to our "diet".  I'm really curious to see how the reintroduction of gluten will effect him.  I don't want to deprive my son of anything unnecessarily, but I'm secretly hoping for an excuse to continue to eliminate or at least reduce the amount of gluten in my family's diet.

The fitness professional in me is grateful for another reason to read nutritional labels, avoid eating out and trying new, clean recipes.  I have not had that bloated, food comma feeling since I cut the wheat.  I find it much easier to eat smaller, cleaner meals and my energy level has been great.  I'm currently teaching group x classes 10 hours a week and personal training 5 hours a week and the tired I feel at the end of a long day is a good tired as apposed to the I've-been-hit-by-a-truck tired.  I'm also paying close attention to my water intake, drinking 2+ liters of water a day.  My new favorite trick is to buy the 1 liter smart water bottles, $1.25 when you buy them from the grocery store, they fit in my car's cupholders, I reuse them for a few days refilling them with the filtered water from my fridge, then toss the bottle and grab another.  Filling it up twice a day is much easier to keep track of than 4-6 16oz bottles or trying to guess/remember how many times I refilled my glass at home.  It may sound silly, but it works for me.

Enough about me.  We've had some great educational and sensory discoveries this week.  With Zoe's homeschooling I was about to lose my temper with her dawdling and spacing out during assignments, math especially.  Then I had an epifany, a realization I should have had much earlier.  I had been teaching the concept then giving her a work load of about 40 math problems, a combination of the new concept and a review of previous ones.  I was giving her an hour to finish the 40 problems, which should have been more than enough, yet some days it would take her three hours and me constantly having to remind her to focus on the task at hand to complete it.  For a multi-tasking mom that doesn't sit still until her head hits the pillow, this was increasingly frustrating and beyond my comprehension.  So, almost accidentally, I gave her a 10 problem assignment to finish in 10 minutes.  4 minutes later, she was finished.  Then we tried it again, another 10 problems finished before the allotted time frame, EUREKA!  I feel so short sighted for not acknowledging and accepting earlier that Zoe is not motivated by simply finishing a task, as I am, but accepts tasks that she feels are manageable and is happy to complete them.

As for Liam, I had another epifany, that I should have had sooner.  Liam is not necessarily a "head banger", however he does bang his head during his rare and occasional tantrums.  This has actually lessened over time, but I mention it because it may apply to his recent desire to wear my elastic headbands.  He's always had a thing for hair, so when he began stealing my headbands, which I wear almost daily, I didn't think much about it.  But then he started to put them on his head, which I thought was really cute.  Then he started to leave them on his head for a pretty lengthy time period, this got my attention as I have never been able to get him to wear a hat or tolerate a hood on a jacket.  Tonight, when he commandeered my headband I went to my winter clothes and got a thick headband meant to cover the ears.  I put it on his head, covered his ears and all, and he loved it, left it on until bedtime.  I now know that it is most likely the pressure on his head that he likes, something like head banging, but I got the feeling that the fact that it covered his ears and muffled sounds may have been a plus.

That's enough for this post...more sensory, homeschooling, nutrition, fitness stuff to come!

GFCF Recipes/ Sandwich Bread & Breakfast Bars

Here are two recipes that have made this process much easier.  When switching to a gluten free, dairy free diet, sandwich bread can be the hardest thing to replace.  I found a great recipe on another site, but couldn't find a few of the ingredients, so I gave it a go with things that were easier to come by.  It worked great so I decide to make some variations, and they came out great too!

Easy Gluten Free, Dairy Free Sandwich Bread

2 1/2 cups Brown Rice Flour
2/3 cups Cornstarch
1 Tablespoon Xanthum Gum (this I had to get from a health food store)
1 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cup warm water
1 pack active dry yeast
1/2 cup unsweetened almond, soy or rice milk
2 Tablespoon vegetable oil
2 eggs

Variations
For herb bread:
1 Tablespoon Onion powder,
1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder,
additional 1 teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh herb of choice (I like rosemary)

For Cinnamon Raisin Bread:
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raisins

In a medium sized bowl, combine yeast and warm water.  Set aside, allow yeast to dissolve completely.
In a large mixing bowl combine all dry ingredients and whisk together.
Add all wet ingredients to dry ingredients.  Mix at medium speed for 5 minutes.
(Dough should be the consistency of creamy mashed potatoes)
Grease bread pan.  Pour batter into bread pan and spread evenly.
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm, dry place for 1 hour.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Bake for 55 minutes.  When done, allow bread to thoroughly cool on a cooling rack before slicing.

Peanut Butter Breakfast Bars
The kids loved this!  I found the GF Kellogs Rice Krispies cereal at my local grocery store, hooray!  My bars looked a little lighter than this because the recipe calls for brown rice crispie cereal.

• 3/4 cup nut butter (almond OR cashew OR peanut OR sunflower butter)
• 3/4 cup sweetener syrup (honey OR GF brown rice syrup OR good quality Agave nectar)
• 1 1/2 cups roasted raw nuts and / or seeds (almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds- use your favorites in any combination)
• 1 cup unsulfured dried fruit (cherries, cranberries, blueberries, apricots, pineapple, raisins- use your favorite dried fruits in any combination)
• 4 cups GF brown rice crispie cereal (I used gluten-free Erewhon Organic Crispie Brown Rice Cereal).
• 1/8 teaspoon Kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.  (I used a 9x13 pan to keep the edges uniform, worked great) 

Place nuts and / or roasted seeds and dried fruit in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse several times, just until the mixture is coarsely ground.

In a large saucepan melt nut butter with liquid sweetener over medium low heat. Stir and watch carefully to prevent scorching. When the mixture is smooth and bubbling cook for about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Add salt and vanilla and stir to combine. Use a large spatula to stir in nuts, dried fruit and cereal. Stir until all ingredients are coated with nut butter mixture.

Scrape mixture on to the prepared baking sheet. Use the spatula to evenly spread the mixture on the pan. Place a large piece of waxed paper over the mixture and use a rolling pin to smooth the top of the mixture. Cover with the waxed paper and refrigerate for about 2 hours before cutting the energy bars into whatever sizes you prefer.

Wrap bars in waxed paper and store in a covered container in the refrigerator.

Yield- About 16 -32 bars depending on how they are cut. I made 16 large bars by cutting the mixture in half lengthwise and then cutting each half into 8 pieces, about 1 1/2 inches wide.

http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreesnackrecipes/r/glutenfreeenergybars.htm

GFCF Diet

With the holidays behind us and our lives slowly returning to "normal", I decided to start my family on a gluten free, dairy free diet to see if it would help Liam's development.  Despite a little protesting and drama from my big kids (husband included), I dove right in.  We are only on day 5, so in no way am I claiming to be an expert on this, but I wanted to share the experience while it's fresh.

The first 3 days I spent my waking hours researching recipes and ingredients, hunting through every grocery store in town and giving my KitchenAid mixer the workout of a lifetime.  I think I have literally purchased anything and everything labeled "gluten free" available in this area, except the stuff with dairy in it.  The funny thing is, my cabinets have never been so full of junk!  GF chocolate chip cookies, brownies, breakfast bars, chocolate almond milk, corn chips, etc.
Typically, our diet consists of lots of fruits & veggies, whole grains, low fat dairy and lean proteins.  Very little processed food or sweets.  I guess this was my way of proving to my family that this "diet" was not going to be the ricecake fest they feared.
The biggest hurdle was finding a substitute for sliced bread, as sandwiches are a lunch staple.  But I was lucky  to find a really easy sandwich bread recipe that I can substitute ingredients for regular sliced bread, herb bread or sweet breads.  Of course there were ingredients in the original recipe that the local groceries don't carry, but I made it work, and got a thumbs up from the fam. They are still bummed about the lack of cheese, but I'm working on that.

Breakfast and Dinner are actually going pretty smooth.  Typical breakfast foods for us are eggs, grits, smoothies, granola and sometimes turkey bacon.  So, other than making egg sandwiches on corn tortillas instead of wheat bread, not much has changed.  I did find a really good peanut butter breakfast bar recipe that the kids like.  Dinner isn't to bad either as I found a rice pasta and rice and potatoes are on the OK list.

Dining out is a beast of it's own.  We rarely eat out, but of course, we were invited out to dinner New Year's Eve.  We stuck to steaks, rice, sushi and veggies but 3 of us had tummy aches the next day, just sayin'.  We also had a birthday party and we brought our own bread and brownies, which went over really well and the kids didn't fight me for the cute owl cupcakes made for the birthday boy.

So far, so good.  Liam seems to be a little calmer, although, it maybe because we are all settling down after the holiday madness.  The true test will be the reports from his teacher when he goes back to school.  And other than the day-after-eating-out tummy issues, everyone else seems to be fine.  I know this will take time to see if it makes much difference in our lives and I am not expecting a miracle, but I am glad that we are all becoming more aware of what we are putting into our bodies and making a concerted effort to feel and understand the effects that our food has on lives.

I will post the recipes for the bread and breakfast bars in the next post.