Eating Out... Is it worth it?

For us, the answer is a very large, flashing "NO".
And now you get to listen to me ramble on about it for awhile. 

All three of our kids have some sort of sensitivity or allergy that causes their bodies harm, to recap:

*Rebecca: Avoids Sugar and Carbs (carbs act as sugar in our bodies)
If she eats these types of foods, baked goods, bread, pasta, grains her insulin level sky rockets and she becomes...insane. Grumpy as hell, extremely emotional, and she loses her impulse control and ends up making some really bad decisions.
Last year she begged to eat the school lunches and since we had just moved and it was the middle of the school year and various other reasons we said yes. Biggest mistake ever. Her behavior was so bad we were at our wits end, it was so horrible. As soon as we put her back on packed lunches....she was totally sane and mild again. We were so relieved to get our sweet girl back!
(If I eat sugar my bones ache. If Jason eats it he gets migraines - has since he was a kid.) 

*Jarod: Eats only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts. (Would be a huge list of foods he avoids. lol)
Most of you know it took ten years to figure out what he could and couldn't eat. We finally feel like we perfected his diet with some major changes we made over the summer and he's healthier than ever.
All his life he's had a bloated stomach, tiny arms and legs but big belly and he constantly had tummy issues; diarrhea and cramping all the time. He also had some pretty bad eczema.  Last year he missed so many days of school because of tummy problems. (I won't even go into his reactions to food dyes and preservatives - but they cause him to regress back to the level of a toddler.)
This year,with his new "caveman" diet he's has not missed one day nor complained once about his tummy! He's also not had a spot of eczema on his body. Within weeks of switching to only those 5 foods his tummy was flat! He went from having to wear a 14 husky size jeans to a size 10! (He's ten years old so that is a normal size for his age!) He didn't lose much weight, which would have been a concern, just lost his belly!
(I also get tummy aches if I eat grains, not fun.) 

*Alex: Avoids dairy and salt
Alex has the same problems I do, inner ear trouble. We both gets motion sickness and are prone to ear infections. I also have tinnitus and a mild hearing disorder. These can all caused by too much fluid in the ears.
Ears require drainage by the eustachian tube, which opens into the back of the throat and is very susceptible to being blocked by inflammation. Anything that causes inflammation can block the eustachian tube, resulting in a warm moist breeding ground for bacteria in the inner ear, which leads to ear infections. Usually this inflammation is caused by a food allergy, most often dairy.
Salt also retains fluid in your ears, which is painful. 
Once we took Alex off dairy and salt he never got another ear infection or ear pain. (I don't either!)


OK, back to the eating away from home topic....

We basically eat fresh meat, fruit, veggies, and nuts.
Our meat is pure and cooked in coconut oil, not breaded, coated, processed, or full of nitrates etc.
Can you think of very many restaurants that offer that type of food?
Or even one? (Maybe a heath food store cafe but nothing in small cities.)

So why would we want to pay crazy amounts of money for foods that would make my daughter insane, my son have diarrhea and eczema, and my toddler have an ear infection?

We cook all our meals at home about 99% of the time.
If the kids feel  like they really want to have a special day and eat out we might consider it, especially with Alex and Rebecca as we just have to avoid dairy and sugar.  In fact I do like to take Rebecca out once in a blue moon so she can learn how to find healthier options at restaurants.
Jarod however is a bit harder... there is not a single place that won't give him a reaction. We can take him to a steak house type place though and let him get a meat and veggie and he usually just has a mild reaction, if we do this on a Friday most of the time he'll be back to normal by school on Monday...but again, is it worth it? Feeding your child something you know will make him sick? He's eaten out once since May.

"What about eating at friends houses or holidays?"

As of right now....we try to avoid it.

For all the same reasons and also because we don't like the concept of food and holidays. We do not teach our kids to stuff themselves but rather offer the "Let's eat to live, not live to eat" concept.
Plus it's just soooo stressful to be at an event with tons of "normal" foods and have to keep telling people "No, he can't have that. No, it's not ok, we brought our own food." and so on. And there is always someone who thinks we are such mean parents and will try to sneak food to our "deprived" kids. (Deprived hah! Our kids eat the best foods known to man, I spend hours each day in the kitchen whipping up gourmet meals for them, we spend more on food than we do on rent. Deprived of sickness and pain - yes.) Or there is someone who thinks they know better than us what our kids can eat and will feed them things thinking it's ok because "I read somewhere that's it's healthy." Or someone doesn't understand that Jarod has lots of disorders, one of which is that his body does not understand common signals...the feeling of being full one of them so he does not stop eating, ever.  We have learned to do portion control with him - I make one plate for him containing all the food that he needs at each meal. If he sees food on the table he will beg for it even if he's had enough to feed a small army, so we do not put dishes of food on the table - they stay on the stove. Needless to say, holidays where all this food is all over are really hard on him and to others it can look like we are being mean because he is crying that he wants more food and we saying no, but he will not stop eating and will end up in massive amounts of pain all night long if left to eat on his own.
Because of all his issues we've had to implement a "Do not feed Jarod" rule when ever he goes to play at other houses. Even if it sounds safe, it can end up going horribly wrong. Over the summer he had went over to his grandparents one afternoon and they thought it would be ok for him to eat some watermelon...which if they had just given him one piece would have been fine but they didn't limit what he ate and he ended up eating a tons of slices...the result was that he sat on the toilet for hours screaming.
So as you can see, the "Do Not Feed Jarod" rule saves him a lot of pain.

When we go to friends houses or to holidays we go after dinner, which always turns out to be more enjoyable anyways as the host is not busy and we can all play and talk much better. Or we plan a trip to the park or museum which is better for kids anyways than just sitting around a table, less stressful too.

In the past we've tried to do all the dinners and holidays and and eating out but it always, every single time, ends in someone getting sick or having a reaction. So to us...it's just not worth it at all expect for very rare, special occasions.

How about you? If you're kids have allergies, how do you handle eating out? 

Caveman (ish) Cafe: Kid's Lunches

As I said, we switched to a caveman diet at the beginning of summer for our older son's health as he's allergic to so many foods (wheat, additives, and dairy being the worst). We quickly found however, that we all felt better on the diet. Summer was easy because we were all home for every meal and I only kept paleo foods in the house. I let the kids help cook and go on trips to the store with me so we all had fun "hunting and gathering".

Summer came to an end though and I really started to worry about the kids school lunches. Not my older son so much, as he will eat anything I give him with no complaint, but my tween daughter is really picky. So, I started having long talks with her about food and what she felt we should do about her lunches and I asked her to make a list of foods that she would eat at school. She's not allergic to anything really, just has huge meltdowns if she eats sugar. Everything on her list was Paleo except for bread, tortilla chips and hummus. So we decided the chips and hummus were fine and that I would find her some spouted grain bread. (Sprouted grains have less anti-nutrients than whole grains) I took her to the store and let her pick out a cool lunchbag and had her pick out a few grocery's for her first week. And told her that each night she can help me pack her lunch and that she has veto power. I also told her that if she will take and eat her healthy lunch everyday, that she is free to eat the horrible foods at the occasional school party and that I won't say a word. (We've always tried to eat healthy so we've never had processed foods in our home, last year was her first year in a public school (we homeschooled before that) and I about had a heart attack when I saw what they had at the school parties! Little Debbies, and Mountain Dew and Cupcakes and Cookies and Doritos and Donuts and Candy....all eaten in one hour!!! My god. I said a lot of words last year. lol ) Anyways, she was really respectful and seemed content with this, so we'll see.

I also had to figure out what to do about my older son for parties. The holidays I can plan ahead for and I can send baked treats and smoothies the day of, but the teacher asked me to leave a bag of snacks with her for when it's a student's birthday and they bring in treats for the whole class out of the blue. (Jarod can't have wheat, dairy, or food additives like dye and preservatives.) I can't leave a bag of my homemade treats because they go bad in a few days but I was able to find some really yummy macaroons that only have egg whites, honey, and coconut as the ingredients! I also included some organic juice boxes and some Organic Trail Mix. He doens't do to well with juice though, so I'm going to try to find some coconut water for him soon.

And I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing for my youngest son, who will be going to headstart two days a week, they serve lunch and two snacks a day. I'll be talking with his teacher this week to see what the other kids will be eating at snack time so I'll have a better idea of what to send. He is allergic to dairy and is even more picky than my daughter so that will be fun. hah He goes through stages where he will only eat one food items for weeks at a time, so it's frustrating. At least it's only two days a week though.

Anyways, tomorrow is the first day of school so tonight the kids helped me pack their lunches!
They both wanted a main item, a fruit, a veggie, and a treat.

So, my son got a nitrate-free, all natural hot dog topped with our homemade chili, pineapple, raw carrots, my caveman banana cake,  and some True Raspberry Lemonade.

And my daughter has the same sides but instead of chili she made a sandwich on her spouted grain bread. She filled it with hummus, guacamole, greens, tomatoes, and cucumber.(I do admit that she loves her veggies!)

As for myself and my husband, he'll be taking his homemade jerky, some organic trail mix, and a hard boiled egg to work for lunch. And I'll probably make myself a green smoothie and chow down on a handful of nuts while I blend it up.

Oh and the kids asked if they could have pancakes for breakfast, so I just mixed up a batch of Fluffy Coconut Flour Pancakes and will fry those up in the morning!

Whew! :-P

Caveman Cafe: Paleo Pizza with Cashew Cheese

First I just wanted to say that we don't eat comfort foods everyday!
With school starting though, I'm just trying out some new recipes to have on hand for the kids.
Normally we eat tons of veggies with tiny sides of chicken or fish. I promise! lol
But it's nice to know I can fix some "normal" foods for the kids, foods they miss but won't give them all reactions. 

OK, first off the "cheese". I learned how to make this when I was a vegan, it's pretty crazy but works so well!
Does it taste like cheese?
Well, no. But it is the same texture and looks similar so it substitutes well.
And the taste it does have is very yummy, different...but delicious!

I don't have the cookbook where I learned this from, but I kinda remembered how to make it as I never followed her recipes exact anyway (hers always called for lemon juice and mustard and things I didn't like). The cookbook was, The Uncheese Cookbook by, Jo Stepaniak 



Anyway, the one that I remember how to make calls for carrots, to give it an orange tint. So, after I had made the cheese the kids said "Hey, we are making pizza....it should be white!" I hadn't even thought of that...my cheese did look like "cheddar".  Next time I will try adding cauliflower instead of carrots so it can be white, and make this cheese for taco salad!

You have to make this the day before you need it as it has to set for quite a while.

Cheddar Cashew "Cheese"

1 3/4 cup water
1/2 cup chopped carrots
5 tablespoons agar agar or 4 tablespoons gelatin

1/2 cup raw cashews
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3 tablespoons tahini
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon parpirka

Bring the carrots in the water  to a boil and then simmer for around 15 minutes or so.
Add the agar agar or gelatin and cook for 5 more minutes.

Add everything else to the blender. Then add the carrot mixture, after it cools down a bit.

Pour into a greased mold of your choice, I just used a rectangular Tupperware container.

Pop in the fridge until morning.

And it will look like this!

The cool thing is that this stuff slices, shreds, and melts! Here is mine shredded and ready for the pizza!

Ok, so next we needed a crust. I looked around at quite a few different paleo blogs and combined a few recipes and came up with this for my crust.


Coconut Flour Pizza Crust 

6 eggs
2 cups coconut milk

1 cup coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt


I beat the eggs, beat in the milk.
Mixed up the dry in another bowl. Then added the dry to the wet.
It was like a thick pancake batter.

I put some parchment paper on a cookie sheet, one small and one medium, smeared olive oil all over the paper, and then spooned the batter on top and smoothed it out.
They looked like this:

Into the 375 degree oven they went for 20-25 minutes. They shrunk up quite a bit! But looked very yummy!
Here they are after I took off the paper.

Ok, so then I put on some sauce, the cheese, and our toppings! On one pizza we put nitrate-free ham and pineapple. And on the other we put beef, mushroom, tomatoes, olives, and green onion.
Here they are before I popped them back in the oven, just until everything was hot:

And here they are...all done!

Now, the kids have been missing chocolate milk so I have been trying to find a replacement. We can't do rice or soy but we can do nuts.... so I was soooo excited to find Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Milk!!! It's just almonds and cocoa but it's not bitter at all, really smooth and creamy, they loved it! It's a bit pricey though, but will be a nice treat for once in a while. The plain flavor is awesome too and will be good for Alex to take to headstart in his lunches.

Pizza and chocolate milk!

I'm so stuffed right now! It was very, very good! My tummy is very content. lol

Caveman Cafe: Yesterday and Today

I'm trying to blog each meal we have to make is easier for me in a few months when I plan on typing up a list of all the meals we had, to make meal planning easier.

Yesterday we had meatloaf muffins, meatloaf made in muffin pans. They freeze really well so are great for lunches too! Also had a side salad and mashed cauliflower.(You can tell we like our comfort foods. hah)

Today Jason made dinner! Now, I wouldn't label it as healthy but....it sure was good and he stuck with all the food on our "approved" list. He made battered fish, hush puppies, and coleslaw. He used coconut flour to coat the fish, coconut oil to cook them, and added egg and coconut milk to the batter to make the hush puppies. It was REALLY awesome and even Rebecca, who hates fish, ate a ton!

I decided we needed to treat ourselves to some dessert, rare in our house, and made pumpkin pudding! It's so easy and the kids just love it! All you do is open a can of pure pumpkin, pour it in a bowl and add cinnamon, coconut milk, and your choice of sweetener. Not a lot of milk, just until it's smooth and creamy. Mix it all up and eat, unless you want it hot, then just heat it up. The kids call it pumpkin pie in a bowl. lol If it is hot outside you can throw it in a blender with some ice or frozen bananas for a very yummy pumpkin smoothie!

I'm thinking about seeing if I can make pumpkin jello soon.... should be interesting!

Let's see, oh for lunch yesterday the kids helped me make a chicken and vegetable stew. Tons of veggies from the garden, a bit of leftover chicken, and herbs and spices. Very good, in fact we ate it all before I thought to take a photo. hah!

The kids want pizza tomorrow so I'm going to try to make a crust and some cashew cheese. Yup, cheese from a cashew. I've had it before...not bad at all in fact.

But for now I've got to go clean up the mess Jason's fish fry left in my kitchen. lol

Caveman Cafe: Sweet & Sour Pork w/ Cauliflower Rice

I love Tuesdays.
On Tuesday the sale papers come out!
Today pork, pineapple, and green peppers were on sale....so you know what that means!

Sweet and Sour Pork! (Can also be made with chicken, which I like even better but alas, chicken was not on sale this week.)

I also decided to try something I've been reading about on random Paleo blogs....making rice from a cauliflower! It was soooo easy! Just grate a cauliflower until it looks like rice and either steam or microwave it! I loved it! Rice really has no flavor and neither does cauliflower so it works perfect!

Jason cooked the meat while I did the veggies. I think he diced it, coated it in egg and coconut flour, and cooked it in a skillet. I made the rice and cooked pineapple, green pepper, green onion, carrots, and celery in the wok.

It's easy to make your own sweet and sour sauce (just google it), and I usually do, but tonight I had a jar of an all natural, locally bottled Vietnamese sauce! Boy howdy was it spicy! But I loved it! For some reason (old age perhaps?) I can eat spicy foods now. I have NEVER been able to, hated even most mild spiced foods but within the last month I adore the spice!

It was one of the best meals we've had recently and tasted just like it came right out of a restaurant!
My kitchen is a mess right now though...but it was so worth it. Well maybe I won't think that in a minute when I drag myself back in there to clean it up. haha

Why we Paleo

We've eaten a lot of different ways over the years as we tried to find what worked best for our family, we wanted to be healthy and our kids, especially our special needs son, to have the best start in life. Through the years we've been vegan, vegetarian, raw foodies, low-carb, no-carb, specific carb, gluten-free, dairy-free, Feingold...and more. We learned soooo much about foods along the way and how it affected our bodies differently. We did tons of research. Read books from all sides.

The most important thing we learned is that there is no right or wrong way of eating as a whole, no one type that it best for everyone. Actually that's something I've applied to every aspect of my life. What's best for me isn't best for you. Diet, religion, clothes, schooling, job, parenting, relationships...everything. You have to research everything, question everything, and find what's best for you and your lifestyle.

I have no idea what or how you should eat, only you can know that.

But boy did I learn what my body can take and my kids, until they are old enough to take over for themselves, by charting reactions. Pretty interesting stuff.

AND I learned how to cook no matter what "restrictions" we have. Jason teases me that I can find a way to make a cake no matter what is going on. lol

Being vegan showed us that we don't handle grains or sugar well.

Being vegetarian showed us that dairy hates our tummies.

Feingold showed us that processed foods cause us all kinds of problems.

Raw foodies showed us that our bodies love whole foods and everything made from scratch.

And so on.

One day I listed all the foods we can't handle (grains, dairy, sugar, beans, starches,additives) and the foods we do ok with (meat, some veggies, nuts, seed, and berries) and did some research and found that...it was pretty much a paleo diet, also called a Caveman Diet, Stone Age Diet, Hunter-Gatherer Diet or Primal Diet. Pretty much anything your ancestors picked or hunted. Tons of info on google - I'm not gonna put it all here.

We got serious about the switch after our son had his worst tummy issue ever, 2 weeks of non-stop diarrhea, I had taken him in to see about getting some bloodwork done to try to figure out how to help him as he was just getting worse, he's always had tummy issues but this was horrible. His doctor asked me if I had tried a caveman diet, I was so shocked because I had just been researching it! So, we told our son we were going to be caveman and he was pretty excited. lol

He's always had a enlarged tummy, not fat as his legs and arms were small though. In just ONE week his tummy was perfectly flat! For the first time he was proportioned right! And no more tummy issues or eczema!

All of us felt better in fact, both Jason and I lost a bunch of weight and we all have more energy. And our son, well his mental and behavior issues also improved tons - lots of progress!

The downside is it costs a lot. A whole lot. Organic, grass-fed, humanly raised foods are not cheap. We would LOVE to relocated to where we could have a tiny farm and  year-round garden. When we were eating lots of grains, pasta, bread, and potatoes...our grocery bill was so low. But of course our bodies were not happy. And our son was miserable.

Some sites I like:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/  (The movie is really good also and worth a watching.  He's really smart and uses logic and/or math to make his points, plus he's funny. )

http://www.elanaspantry.com/recipes/ (Love her recipes as they are all wholesome, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and yummy!)

http://www.livingpaleo.com/

Some books I read that were helpful.

         

















So in a nutshell our day looks like this:

Breakfast: Eggs scrambled with some veggies
Lunch: Huge veggie salad with diced chicken and sunflower seeds
Snack: Fruit
Supper: Meat, veggies

Other:
Almond milk
Smoothies made with coconut milk, fruit, and stevia.
Dried fruit and beef jerky made in our dehydrater
Moderated uses of coconut flour or almond flour to make breads and desserts.
Tons of water and daily vitamins and supplements such as trace minerals, fish oils etc.


Should you eat like this?
I have NO IDEA!
Do your own research and find out what's best for you.
I don't even know if we'll still be eating like this years from now. I just know it working for the moment. But if I ever find a better way, one that helps us even more - you can bet I'll be switching.

In the meantime, enjoy my yummy photos. :-)

Caveman Cafe: Paleo Taco Salad

Very, very easy!

I found some noodle squash, finally! (They didn't have it over in the UK so I've been without it for sooo long!) It's also called spaghetti squash and I love it. After you cook it, the insides turn into strands or noodles! It's awesome covered in marinara sauce and meatballs, which is what we had the other day for dinner. And we ended up with tons of leftover "noodles". While I was staring at them, pondering what to do with them....I thought, "Hey, it kinda looks like cheese too!"

I decided to add them to our paleo taco salad, but first I stirred in some nutritional yeast to give it more of a cheesy flavor. (Nutritional yeast has a strong flavor that is described as nutty, cheesy, or creamy, which makes it popular as an ingredient in cheese substitutes.)

I also made some cashew sour "cream"! It rocked!
Just blended some cashews and tiny bits of lemon juice, vinegar, and almond milk together. The kids loved it.

They both made our taco salad awesome. It would have been spectacular but I forgot to buy avocados.  :-(
I ADORE guacamole, worship it and would eat it non-stop if it was cheaper.
I always put it on my tacos!
But not today. I wanted to cry. I even thought about photoshopping some guacmole into my photo to make myself feel better.
Yes, I am that pathetic.

Anyway, lettuce, "cheese", taco meat, salsa, sour "cream", olives, tomatoes, and green onion!
But no avocados. :-(
So, just imagine they are there.