Betting on Bento Boxes

Sometimes I spend way too much time thinking about the next best thing. That can be either good or bad. Sometimes it does keep your mind on the lookout for ideas though. And just sometimes, it pays off.

I have been agonizing over ways to make healthy food options just a little bit more appealing to the younger set in the family. Even though I'm down to only just one little person who needs direction in this department, she needs it the most. I stumbled across Primal Kitchen where they do a wonderful job of blogging about the paleo/primal/whole foods approach they take to kids lunches. There are some great ideas there. And the most inspiring I think is the fact that they are using bento boxes to package up the offerings and make them unnumerably more interesting to little diners.

Further research led me to find Laptop Lunch's Bento Buddies which are very cool modular, lidded bento boxes. As well I tracked down Lunch Bots stainless bento lunch containers. Without a budget to stick to, I'd take either one of those for H-Bob in a heart beat. But until I make such a purchase, I decided to do the next best thing and use some silicone cupcake liners that I had which fit perfectly into a lidded container. This doesn't make a very packable option as nothing is lidded, but it did provide a low cost introduction to breakfast and lunch presented in a more fun manner.

 

Just for fun I decided to see what the library had to offer in this realm and found The Just Bento Cookbook - Everyday Lunches To Go by Makiko Itoh who also blogs at Just Bento which provided a lot of visual inspiration as to what I could adapt to our whole foods/primal food approach. And as usual, another great source for bento lunch ideas I found was on Pinterest. More visuals there to delight the eye and inspire for sure.

Perhaps packing a lunch for a stay-at-home child would become just as bothersome as doing the same for my high schooler who has chosen to take lunches in order to have enough healthy foods to fuel his athletic needs. But on the other hand, I could set aside portions for her just as easily while tackling his lunch demands.

So my final take is that I plan on keeping my eyes open when school lunch boxes start to show up on the retail shelves this summer to look for something that might work, and most importantly, is BPA free. I tend to worry about some of the cheap, imported plastics that find our way into the food supply. Until then, we will experiment with my make-do bento box and see where that takes us. Based on today's enthusiastic response to breakfast that we needed to take on the go, we just might be on the right track.

Do you have healthy, whole food lunch dilemmas for either children at home or on the go? What's your favorite and most successful way to deal with them?

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Six

So where have we come since October of 2011 in our diet and dyslexia adventure? An extremely long way since January of that same year upon diagnosing her vision difficulties, and an amazing journey since going gluten-free in August and finding the key to her joint pains, attention issues, processing skills, and reading ability. H-Bob will be coming up on almost nine months of eating gluten-free here soon. So here's where we are...

May 2012

H-Bob has completed all necessary vision therapy. Her therapist has helped her complete all physical changes that were needed as well as activate those vision processing areas that had been on vacation for so long. This is in itself is remarkable in taking her reading level from a kindergarten level to reading books in the 850 Lexile range which is almost on track for grade level for her within that one year period. Although her therapist did not official endorse dietary changes as part of her protocol, she could only acknowledge that massive gains were made once H-Bob dropped the gluten and sugar. By the end of her sessions, she noticed things that I had not specifically picked up on as much...much more eye contact, confidence, the willingness to stick to a task, ambition, and general happiness. I couldn't agree more.

As far as her charter school studies are concerned, she was required to take our state reading and math testing this past spring as usual. The previous year she was quite a ways off from meeting state standards in third grade and had to complete her reading assessment in four or five sessions. This year she came closer to meeting those standards but had closed the gap considerably. I fully expect that by her fifth grade testing, she will be able to meet those standards. The fact that she did her testing in those subject areas in one or two sessions was a major accomplishment from last year. Again, diet definitely played a part in allowing her attention and determination to see her through those tests in larger chunks of concentrated time.

At home she is still the ever creative right-brained child excelling at sculpture and creative pursuits. She's so amazing at having a vision of something she would like to produce but is sometimes stymied by her abilities and supplies. However, we're excited to see that her frustration levels have evened out. It's hard to be a little person trying to accomplish great things. We're still working on getting her reading level up a little. She's got great comprehension for things heard orally but are working on this skill for that which she reads silently. She seems to have a flair for writing cursive...probably the artistic value of it...and her printed writing is so much more legible than it was. She is definitely more able to produce a written paragraph compared to the agony of her previously eking out a sentence or two. Her mathematical abilities took a great jump with her diet change, but anticipating struggles with Saxon when long division was introduced, we opted for Math-U-See for this year. But we still found out that this still became a stumbling block. It wasn't until discovering double division that we jumped this hurdle. I have a feeling that spelling will always be a bugger for her, but we are making progress there as well.

Overall, there is no doubt that our diet change and supplements for H-Bob are here to stay. Especially, as there have been secondary results there too.  About three months after eating gluten-free with H-Bob, I noticed that I was feeling more and more light headed. Just before Thanksgiving it became particularly bad, and I decided to check my blood pressure as I had been on two medications for the past year after a dentist discovered that my pressure was through the roof. Low and behold, my blood pressure was in the 115/60 range...way too low...apparently due to the fact that dietary changes I had embraced along with H-Bob combined with my medication were keeping the levels too low. My doctor told me to drop my dose to half, and then finally had to admit that it needed to be completely taken away. He had to eat his previous words that blood pressure never comes down in an older person. Surprise...surprise...I say. 

Realizing that H-Bob cannot go back to her old ways of eating for the remainder of her life and that it was currently my job to figure out how she was to accomplish that, I begin to investigate more thoroughly the gluten-free diet.  I didn't like the idea of pumping sugar-laden, processed, refined-flour products, although gluten-free, into our diets on a long-term basis. Leads here and there took me to recommendations to go vegan, vegetarian, raw, or paleo/primal. I dabbled in the raw food diet for about thirty days but saw that H-Bob lost too much weight. I had more energy and woke up feeling incredible every morning but developed insomnia...later learning that I was probably became deficient in the amino acids from animal protein that promote sleep. Since that eliminated vegan, vegetarian and raw, I decided to see what paleo/primal was all about. 

So since that time, we as a family began a 30-day paleo/primal food challenge in which our food choices included animal protein, vegetables, fruit, and healthy fats which included olive oil and coconut oil and other coconut products, along with avocados and some nuts. Sounds pretty good, right? Oh and did I mention what wasn't on the menu? All dairy, gluten, grains, legumes, seed oils and not a drop of sugar or artifical sweeteners. That was a pretty tough sale to the entire family I admit. But you know what? By the end of those 30 days, all of us realized that our abdominal fat just melted away...literally. DH lost 15 pounds or so without even batting an eye. No one ever went hungry. We embraced the idea that healthy fat is not bad nor is plenty of animal products. We filled up to the brim on veggies and fruit smoothies and ate enough protein and fat to feel satiated at every meal and just watched our health change before our eyes. Co-workers mentioned how great DH looked and noticed how much more energy he had. Our teen son's acne cleared. I could wake in the morning without feeling as if I'd run a marathon during the night. And H-Bob began to put some meat on her bones. I begin to notice that Goat Princess no longer had trouble falling asleep at night and did not drop off to sleep randomly during the day. Once everyone was over their carb-cravings, constant need to feel the need to eat every few hours, and sugar addiction so-to-speak, eating in a paleo manner was definitely a win-win situation.

Today Goat Princess still eats a pretty strict primal diet although she's beginning to allow herself a couple of cheat meals a week. She'll notice right away the carb crash that happens following those meals.  I too follow a primal diet, allowing myself some dairy products such as butter and buttermilk and the occasional cheese garnish. But milk in the latte is a thing so the past...welcome my new friend, coconut milk.  H-Bob still struggles with sugar and wanting the occasional gluten item. She'll have her treat but always pays the price of mood, attention, and leg pains. She's gradually learning that it isn't always worth it. DH eats out so much at work that he really tries to stay primal, but once going back to way too many cheat meals, he finds he doesn't have the resolve to stick with it. Looks like he needs another thirty-day challenge to clear him out again. Our teen athlete eats a pretty primal diet although he has no trouble dining out with friends on the weekend. You can tell when he's really overdone it as his acne will flare up and gets that total way-too-tired couch-potato syndrome again. But overall, it is a pretty win-win situation.

You know the silver lining they talk about? Well H-Bob's dyslexia has been that for us. Not only have we learned how to support her needs, but as a family our health and well-being have been affected in such positive ways that we can only be truly grateful.

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Five

Cliche as it is, it's hard to believe that this is the fifth post in this series. But bear with me as I try to lay out the results of our diet change with H-Bob in our attempt to clean up her diet and experience positive changes in her learning abilities. You can catch up by reading parts one, two, three, and four.

September 2011 

By the time school rolled around, H-Bob was eating a gluten-free diet with very little amounts of sugar and dairy. Interestingly enough, once she lost her carb-craving associated with the gluten, she no longer felt the need to guzzle glass after glass of milk, and that empty space in her stomach could be filled with the fresh vegetables and fruit that had been missing from her diet. She was talking a multi-vitamin, an omega 3 supplement with DHA and EPA along with a probiotic. The last piece of the puzzle that I threw in was a supplement provided by Jarrow called Neuro Optimizer. This provided extra amino acids to support healthy brain function in an attempt to help her fill up any void that might exist nutritionally. But poor H-Bob. She had a cupful of pills every morning to deal with. We had our share of struggles over this, but when you can see such improvement, it sure helps to keep up your resolve.

During August when we saw that her ability to ‘see’ correctly had drastically improved, we started to think about finding a intervention reading program to help her get from her kindergarten reading level to something closer to her grade level which would be fourth grade this school year. We settled on Saxon Phonics Intervention Program as it skipped a lot of the fluff that you would expose a younger beginning reader to. It just hammered in the basics with lots of repetition and practice across all the different learning styles in a manner that would not be demeaning to an older student. Wanting to achieve success, I followed it to the last letter not skimming or skipping anything. Information I had read indicated that dyslexics benefit from intense phonics instruction to completely reinforce the application of phonics. It was amazing to see that by the end of September, H-Bob’s reading was phenomenally better. You have no idea how encouraging this was. H-Bob’s charter school classes were beginning the end of September, and I was a bit nervous about her entering Orchestra I with her violin as she had the ability to play well but could not for the life of anything read music. Her great musical ear had bolstered her along all through last year. But to my surprise, there was vast improvement over last year. All of this was definitely paying off.

October 2011

By this time, H-Bob had settled into a pretty predictable routine of eating clean, whole foods without gluten. But if she were exposed to gluten accidentally, it was so obvious She would experience her leg pains again, but even more intense as it took only a little exposure now to affect her. Her attitude would flip a switch and she would become very emotional...whether angry or sad..and it would be intense. Her attention would wander and there would be zero focus. There's nothing like a glimpse back into the past to remind you that whole-food nutrition without gluten will be paramount to her life...and permanent.

I’ll never forget the morning H-Bob yelled from her bed upon waking that morning. “Mom, mom! You’ll never believe it! I actually had a dream last night! And there was this music. I could hear all of it. All of the parts. And there was color everywhere!” I suppose that shouldn't sound like too unusual of a dream, but for her it was.  Due to her monotone diet and resulting lack of nutrition, it had appeared that there were neural connections that weren't being made just simply because she did not have the raw materials to support her neurological system. This tended to be expressed as her inability to envision things on an internal blackboard so to speak, difficulty recalling things, plus her various learning disabilities...all things that were frustrating for her. She was ecstatic over what her mind was now able to do. It’s hard to explain how significant this felt. All of those nagging questions whether things were not quite right with her processing skills were now ironing themselves out. It was all becoming too clear that the typical SAD diet we had been eating, although healthy by many means, still did not provide her picky palate with what she needed. That combined with her supplements to support catching up her deficiencies seemed to help complete the whole pictures. The saying, you are what you eat, was really hitting home.

Her vision therapist had explained that now she had the physical ability to take in printed material, she needed to achieve proficiency in the seven visual processing skills needed to process information. Because she had lacked those many, many years of taking in and processing information, she was simply behind in those skills. The physical ability formed the base of a pyramid and the various skills would build upon the top of them. She was so great at coming up with exercises that kept H-Bob's motivation up when they could have been very repetitious. She built activities around her interest in art and animals, and it seemed that once those activities were introduced, she flew through the exercises and made huge leaps and bounds of progress.  These activities helped all across the board with her reading that was progressing nicely as well as her handwriting skills, her focus, her mathematical abilities, and  her reasoning. Pretty much everything in her life was positively affected. Here, finally, was the positive and ambitious girl that we knew existed.

I think I will be able to wrap things up with my final post as we move into where we are today. Stay tuned!

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Four

Thanks for joining me on my series of posts about our daughter, H-Bob, and our discovery of her dyslexia and the effects of her diet. If you'd like, here are links to parts one, two, and three. Read along and find out how we took the first steps to evaluate and tackle major changes to our diet.

August 2011

Well...we bit the bullet. H-Bob and I were going to attempt to eliminate gluten, dairy and sugar from our diets. Just to see what might happen. Although most professionals...and remember, I'm not one--just a investigative type of mom...recommend at least a six week period of avoiding these foods, I was just hopeful to pull it off for two weeks. How could one exist without these food? What would you eat?  The whole concept was very intimidating and daunting to me. That shows you just how entrenched we were in our standard American diet (SAD). The clincher that gave me the determination to see this through was that as I flipped back through her food journal, I could see the relationship of what she was eating to her outward actions.

Nevertheless, just the thought of eliminating these foods from our diet made ME panic. Why was I so worried? I could go back to eating the same old way anytime, right? The next week was the WORST of our lives. I can truthfully say that the two of us went through withdrawals that must be equal to anyone dealing with an addiction. I did not go through the cupboards and throw out the offending foods as there were four other family members who absolutely did not want to be involved in this experiment. But, oh, I wish I could have. To walk by the bread and butter. To not have milk in my coffee. No pasta. Not even any steel cut oats. Processed foods were out of the question as they usually had sugar. I thought I was going to die. And H-Bob basically did. There were tears and crying and yelling and screaming. But by the end of the week, something remarkable happened.

Our intense obsession over these foods was over. The storm of sorts was gone. And we did survive. Not only survived, but H-Bob was feeling good. Those unpredictable, daily multiple meltdowns were oh-so drastically reduced. I will admit though, it did not have a perfect ending. I couldn’t keep H-Bob on that strict diet any longer than about ten days. I caved. Perhaps if I wasn’t trying to support her and eliminate the same foods from my diet at the same time, I could have kept up my resolve. But it didn’t happen. So I allowed her to choose…gluten or dairy to add back in. She chose dairy, thankfully, and we marched on for a second week without gluten.

Then I began to start noticing other things. H-Bob’s several times a week ankle joint pains were a thing of the past. Her tic was gone. She smiled a lot more...was more aware of things around her...and seemed to have a veil or fog lifted from her being.  She flew through her vision exercises. The roller-coaster emotions disappeared. All those things that made her life stressful were falling away. Maybe all those glowing reports by other parents whose children were on a gluten-free diet were accurate after all. Now let me say here again before I forget...I am not a doctor or a researcher or a professional of any kind. I’m not making a suggestion that you or anyone else you know can follow in our footsteps and experience the same results. But just the same, I want to

SHOUT ALL OF THIS FROM THE ROOFTOPS.

It really did work for H-Bob. Now after that required announcement, back to the diet thing. I was becoming a believer in gluten intolerance. Dairy did not seem to produce any undesirable effects. Sugar, on the other hand, seemed to exacerbate things but not on the level it was.

Another aspect that I was delving in to was that of fatty acid supplementation. Although limited, there is research to support that many kids on the spectrum scale are found to be deficient in omega 3 EPA/DHA. Effects from this supplementation do not appear as quickly as a diet change and sometimes take up to a month before any positive results are seen. But I was still looking for a missing component and this could be it. H-Bob’s GF diet had eliminated many of the mood and attention issues but there were still the issues of the way her brain seemed to have difficulties in processing information. We noticed that short term memory was pretty non-existant. ADHD anyone? She seemed completely inable to visualize anything internally. Part of these issues her vision therapist commented would be addressed after her vision abilities stabilized to where they should be. So we added an omega 3 supplement that had roughly equal parts EPA and DHA in it.

We were seeing such great improvement in other areas that I became a firm believer in everything else that naturopaths and other doctors of functional medicine had been using to help autistic, ADHD, and dyslexic children. So there were a couple of other things we did during this time. I began H-Bob on a probiotic as I became aware of the leaky gut syndrome that can cause autoimmune reactions to gluten in the form of her leg pains. We also added in a complete children’s vitamin. I have never felt totally secure in the fact that those gummy-type children’s vitamins actually are very potent, and due to her nutritional deficiencies (caused by her limited diet and malabsorption by her leaky gut) I tracked down a powdered vitamin recommended by Dr. Mark Hyman, author of The UltraMind Solution, whose nutritional advice was invaluable in helping to understand the dietary changes we needed to make.

We were probably four to five weeks into these supplements and noticing that none of the other negative symptoms were returning. Besides that, there started to appear additional unexpected benefits. One day while working on her eye therapy practice work, H-Bob startled me by exclaiming that something ‘switched on’. She was so excited she could hardly explain it to me, but while working on her divergence and convergence exercise she said that her ability to cross and uncross suddenly ‘turned on’. Something she had struggled to overcome since the beginning of her eye therapy. From that point on, she was 100% able to complete those exercises. Her therapist could hardly believe the improvement she made that week. We noticed that she could grasp the meaning of numbers while working on math. Her thinking skills were improving as well. Everything was moving along on an inclining scale upwards.

But then, life took over. DH had a fishing trip scheduled with a buddy and his kids. They were to spend an extended weekend camping. Cooking their guy food. Buying treats. All the bad stuff. I tried my best to convince DH that gluten was out of the question but knew that he didn’t really see the day-to-day effects that her new food choices were having on her. The day they came home, H-Bob bounded into the house with a red licorice rope in one hand and a soda in the other. Oh my. It wasn't long until it was all too clear that there was a diet connection here. After a miserable couple of days getting her back onto track, we were once again back to gluten free.

This was definitely a turning point in H-Bob's life. From here on we experienced positive gains. But our journey was far from over. School was about to start. Would any of these changes be evident once structured learning took over again? That will be the topic of Part Five.

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Three

Thanks for joining me on my series of posts about our daughter, H-Bob, and our discovery of her dyslexia and the effects of her diet. If you'd like, here are links to parts one and two. Today we delve into the issue of diet which kept surfacing everywhere I turned while researching learning disabilities and attention issues.

July 2011 

Since the concept of diet being more than just what one puts..or doesn't put...into their mouth kept haunting me, I started to maintain a food journal, just for kicks, recording what H-Bob ate and what moods, attention span, cognitive abilities she expressed. Simultaneously I began to read everything I could about diet and ADHD. At this point I had already come to terms that all of our children had exhibited ADHD symptoms and had different learning patterns that enabled them to learn better in a homeschooling situation. But H-Bob combined all of the other three children’s most difficult traits into one bundled-up child. Not only did she maintain a short attention span when it came to reading-type work (even though we had a partial explanation for that with her vision difficulties), she also had intense phobias that would change from time to time along with other conditions that would fall under the label of compulsive disorders. At time she would have tics involving various parts of her body (the current one was blinking her eyes which was getting quite intense). There were violent mood swings with extreme bouts of crying over melancholy music or recalling sad memories. She really was the poster-child of a difficult child to raise.

So as I began to actually record these items, we began to realize how intensely they controlled her life. There were many many books and on-line sites that I gleaned information from. The evidence was overwhelming. Children experiencing these conditions seemed to be directly affected by their diet. These issues would drastically improve once they eliminated foods that they could not tolerate, cleaned up their systems of toxins, and began supplementation with DHA and EPA Omega 3 fatty acids. But how could this be true and not once have had it cross my information path? I’m a pretty well-read person and this had been completely under the radar to me. Even the fact that her pediatrition never threw out this information floors me.

Here is a list of some of the most compelling books I read through that summer while standing in the gardening watering and simultaneously trying to read a book in the other hand.

The Kid-Friendly ADHD and Autism Cookbook - best concise explanation of how dairy, gluten, and sugar can affect your child. 


Digestive Wellness - a more in-depth read detailing how digestive issues can have a far-reaching affect on all body systems.


Healing the New Childhood Epidemics - very detailed information on special diets, intolerances, nutritional deficiencies, and toxicity and the role they play in ADHD, autism, Aspergers, and dyslexia.


The Ultra Mind Solution - another very detailed book on nutrition that applies mainly to adults and the concept that diet is a contributing factor to any and all conditions detrimental to one's health and overall well-being. 


The LCP Solution - this provided more support for the role of Omega 3 in the diet and the effects of its deficiency. 


Brain Allergies - an older book that first opened my eyes as to how food sensitiveness can provoke psychological responses. 


Changing the Course of Autism - this book is specifically targeted at those on the autistic spectrum, but the diet, nutritional deficiencies, and toxicity issues are still applicable to dyslexics. 

So much information crammed into so many different books all to be inhaled and interpreted into what I began to feel was a very short window in order to begin to consider drastic changes in our diet. I must say that various encounters with friends whom I learned were making dietary changes for various reasons gave me the hope to travel down this path and that just perhaps we weren't alone.

Next up...the results of our food journaling...and what we discovered.


 

Links to and part four.

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part Two

Thanks for joining me on my series of posts about our daughter, H-Bob, and our discovery of her dyslexia and the effects of her diet. You can catch part one here.

 June 2011 

It all started with a Tweet. Someone who mentioned that she had just purchased a copy of How to Raise Your Strong Willed Child. It sounded like a good title to investigate. We used to tweet back and forth how H-Bob and some of her children exhibited over-the-top, strong-willed-child attributes. I tracked down a copy at our local library and started reading. It confirmed that I indeed have a strong-willed child. As an infant she cried continually...was sensitive to light, touch, all sounds, and motion. As a toddler, she was still whiny, a picky eater, always in motion. These all fell under the different personality traits outlined by the book. Fascinating and affirming that H-Bob was not the only such child on the planet.

Not so much a personality trait, but we noticed as a preschooler she had no interest in the printed letter although she loved to be read to and became skilled at drawing. Beginning reading lessons were met with resistance. Being able to distinguish sounds seemed difficult. It seemed as if she could not understand the concept of rhyming words. What we learned one day was forgotten the next. And forget anything that had to do with math. But back to the book. Sprinkled through the book were those disclaimer comments…if your child exhibits this or that, you might want to consider the possibility of a learning disability. Those little things that pricked at my insides and said, “What are you going to do with that information, now?”

There were references to several different other titles and online information to consider as follow-up materials to the book. I promptly checked out stacks of titles from our local library (just check my Shelfari shelf on the left-hand side of the blog) and entered the world of dyslexia. It didn’t take much more than that to clinch the fact that this was what we were dealing with. School was out for the summer, so we proceeded with what we had on our own. I brought it up with her wonderful vision therapist who told me her son was dyslexic and had eye abnormalities similar to H-Bob when he was young. She had already suspected that H-Bob was dyslexic but didn’t mention anything. H-Bob’s eyes needed to ‘see’ effectively before anything else remedial could be introduced. Interesting that she did not consider dyslexia a liability at this point. I would learn in time that dyslexia is a gift and not something to be feared.

As I mentioned in my much briefer posts here and here at the time, I’m not one to take things lying down. There simply had to be a reason for her dyslexia. Current information seems to point towards a hereditary link. To my knowledge that did not exist in our family. What else could there be? Here began my search. I first scoured the web to find more information that I knew where to start with. Luck had it that the first book I picked up at the library was Disconnected Kids. If I thought that Raising Your Strong Willed Child was an eye opener. This was a life-changer. Dr. Melilo outlines his take that dyslexia and anyone on the austism/Asperberger spectrum are dealing with conditions on just one front, with individuals with dyslexia being extreme right-brained and autism/Asperbergers on the left-brain scale. Due to various conditions, the two halves of the brain can become disconnected and either of those conditions can occur. One section of his book outlines how to test at home for those conditions, and the dyslexia became very clear. These situations can be reversed according to his protocol with retraining the brain to communicate to the other side through occupational therapy activities and by a diet change. We promptly started with activities that started communication between right and left brain and could see that anything left-brained oriented was so difficult for her. She lined up true to the symptoms of someone who has limited use of the left hemisphere...not too coincidentally, the language processing side of the brain concerned with reading.

There is way too much information to condense here…I’m already feeling like I’m rambling even there is so much to say…but getting to the diet part. That seemed like a bunch of crock. How could eliminating gluten, dairy, and sugar change the way one felt or thought? That’s all H-Bob lived on as she was such a picky eater.

BINGO. 

That was the key, although we didn’t yet realize to what extent it would change her life.

Next up...food journaling and a new side to nutrition that we had never been exposed to.


Links to part three and part four.

Of Diet and Dyslexia - Part One

As I sat with my mother at her optometrist appointment a few weeks ago, we started talking about an article on gluten sensitivity that was published in our local newspaper, The Oregonian, that I had brought along to read...a full-page spread in their Living Section on gluten sensitivity issues. My mother has always been interested in nutrition and has tried to follow my train of thought on our discovery of gluten intolerance with H-Bob after her dyslexia diagnosis. It seems so foreign to her that wheat…the substance of America’s breadbasket…could be so offending. It was then that I realized that was my exact sentiment nearly a year ago, and it would seem that I should share our story. I wouldn’t have believed where we are today from the viewpoint of a year ago. Not one tiny shred...even to the point I would have bet my bottom dollar on it.

 As I previously blogged in Overcoming Dyslexia and It's Dyslexia...So Now What?, H-Bob’s learning difficulties seemed to stem from a dyslexic situation that I finally allowed myself to follow down that particular rabbit hole. After all, who wants to admit their child has a learning disability. But the evidence was there, and I had been choosing to ignore it.

She’ll grow out of it.

Just a delayed learner.

She’ll catch up next year.

But it never happened. So hang on. Here’s our wild ride.

January 2011 

I had scheduled a vision screening at H-Bob’s charter school for her realizing that part of her reading difficulties could be based on her visual tracking. We had a similar experience with Camo Queen back when she was in sixth grade that was easily resolved with vision therapy. At the end of the screening, it was apparent that we were on to something. H-Bob’s tracking was off as was her ability to cross and uncross her eyes. And quite a bit at that. Her initial appointment with the optometrist revealed that her visual processing speed was at that of a kindergartener. He was amazed that she was reading at all. In her world, the words would be overlapping, dancing on the page, and coming in and out of focus. No wonder our attempts at reading were stuck at the beginning Bob Book levels. At this time H-Bob was nearing the end of third grade...at the age where the effectiveness of reading intervention hangs in the balance scales. After several months of therapy, H-Bob had been working hard at the different exercises that were prescribed. They were hard, strained her eyes, forcing them to behave in the way they needed to. But there was progress. Things were going to work out.

Well, things have a way of working out, but perhaps just not the way you envision.

Next up...fast forward to June 2011 and an encounter with another life-changing book.

Links to part two, part three, and part four.

Breakfast Menu for Visual Learners or Non-Readers

Technology is only as good as the practical use you can apply it to. Right? Not sure where that leaves Facebook...ha ha...but at any rate there are some great concepts out there just waiting to be utilized in creative ways. I hardly consider myself creative, a mimicker for sure, but original thoughts sometimes are few and far between. I have noticed lately since reading up on my dyslexic learner that combining activities will often stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. My most brilliant thought moments can be found while I'm working next door at the barn. This week's light bulb concerns Pinterest.



Pinterest is new to me, and I've only had a little bit of time to figure it out. It's a site where you can 'pin' photos found on the web on 'boards' that you define. Fun to play around with for sure. But practical? Now it is. Enter the visual menu for young kids or visual learners. The menu I have in mind is there to help me remember as well as show H-Bob what gluten and caesin free, low-sugar items we have on hand to eat on her elimination diet. We're trying to focus on 'what there is' as opposed to 'what you can't have'. I'm starting out with breakfast...although there are a few pins on that board that need to go to their own separate GFCF board...lemonade for breakfast? Probably not. Click here to see what's there so far.

Source: sixinthenorthwest.blogspot.com via Connie on Pinterest

Source: s57373.gridserver.com via Connie on Pinterest

You can see that by pinning photos of the cereal we selected or the fruit and granola recipe, that we have our own 'menu' of sorts to get the day started on a fun, positive note now that choices are a little bit limited. Not only can H-Bob see them at a glance, but as the board continues to fill up with GFCF products and links to similar recipes, I will have a reminder as well since my cluttered mind tends to overload at times. A step in the right direction for us I hope.

What fun use have you discovered for Pinterest?

Waffles, Anyone?

Waffles, anyone? Here what works for us...


I took my favorite waffle mix, mixed up a 6-batch bulk mix of the dry ingredients, and put it inside of a large storage container. Nothing new. I'm sure you can find something similar in a lot of kitchens.

But taking it one step further, I used my handy-dandy Dymo machine, the one I have to keep hidden from fascinated small children, to print out strips with the rest of the ingredients...egg, oil, etc...along with how much of the mix needed in order to whip up a batch of waffles. Kinda like my own personalized waffle mix. I keep referring to it as waffles because that is what we prepare mainly, but it would work just as simply for your pancake recipe. As far as that goes, the same concept would apply for any dry mix that you might keep on hand.

 

And if you're curious, here's the bulk recipe I use along with the individual batch guidelines:

Bulk Batch Waffle Mix

6 cups flour (I use 3 cups whole-wheat pastry flour and 3 cups unbleached white flour)
6 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3 tablespoons baking powder

To make a single batch of the waffles use:

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons waffle mix
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 tablespoons oil, or melted butter if you prefer

Put together in your mixing bowl and whisk until just combined. A few small lumps are just fine.


It works for me. It might work for you. The ticket to waffles that anyone can prepare.

I'm wondering if you keep homemade baking mixes of different types on hand. If so what unique storage and preparation ideas do you use?

Homemade Popsicles

Did you lick them frantically to keep up with the drips? Or did you chomp your way through them? Everyone seems to have their own way to gobble up popsicles, kids and adults alike. They all seem to have their favorites too. At our elementary school, they would sell popsicles during lunch recess...who would ever hear of THAT now? To this day some of my favorites...when I do indulge...are those that we had back then.

The Big Stick.



Root Beer Twin Pops.



Orange Creamsicles.



But today I try to stay away from such syrupy sweet confections and all the garish food colors. But I do fancy ice cold things. So the answer is a homemade popsicle with only what I want in it.

I scoured the web the other day for recipes and came to the conclusion that a basic fruit popsicle is the easiest and healthiest. No recipe needed. Although this concoction sure looks good:

Source: smilemonsters.blogspot.com via Connie on Pinterest

Put your selected fruit in the bowl of a food processor. Whir it up until it is pureed. Add a little sweetener. Some is good in that it softens up the texture of the finished popsicle so that you are not sucking on an ice cube. Some berries benefit from the tang of a little lemon so squeeze some in as well. And the last ingredient which I think makes all the difference is to add some dairy. It too keeps the finished popsicle from being too hard and just plain MAKES it if you ask me.

I have some ancient Tupperware popsicle holders which are nice in that you pour in your puree, cap them, pop them in the freezer, and walk away for four hours.



If you use Dixie cups on a tray, you will need to let them solidify somewhat before you stick in your popsicle sticks...although now they're just called craft sticks.



There are some pretty cool molds out there, but the Dixie cup version just looks classic.



A friend mentioned that leftover smoothies would be great to freeze as popsicles. I couldn't agree more.

So since the ice cream man does not make the rounds out in the boonies where we live, and I hate to pay the pretty penny for store-bought popsicles with all their fillers, we will be making plenty of homemade ones this summer. And filled with fruit, who can complain.

What was your favorite popsicle as a kid, or what IS your favorite one now? Or have you given them up as an adult. It will be fun to compare answers.

Cupcakes with Italian Meringue Buttercream Frosting

It's funny how things happen sometimes.

Someone is flipping through the TV channels. They linger on Food Network on which a show is airing that has cupcakes.

I remember that we wanted to do something special for the woman who is the girls' liaison at the charter school. Cupcakes would be nice.

Surf the web looking for photos of cupcakes to get inspired. Find some cool daisy themed ones like here and here and here. Look for a tutorial to figure out how to make those cool daisy decorations and found a good one here.

Head to the pantry for a cake mix. Whip up some lemon cupcakes. Decide they deserve a fantastic frosting. Then back to surfing the web and locate this great article, "How To Make Buttercream Icing; Two Delicious Buttercream Frosting Recipes" here. Wonder if we could perhaps pull off the Italian Meringue Buttercream version as somewhere rattling around in the back of my head it seemed to be synonymous with "incredible". All this just because of a little inspiration from a glimpse of a cooking show.

But by this time, people wandering through the kitchen had eaten nearly half of the first batch of cupcakes, so we frosted the remaining, and then of course had to sample the almost finished product. So, so good. Not grainy like regular buttecream, just smooth and silky. As you can guess, now there were only a few cupcakes left, and we still hadn't even embellished them of all things.

That would mean tomorrow's agenda will include baking another batch of cupcakes, getting them frosted with the remaining buttercream...which I'm sure glad there is still plenty left...a pound of butter for one batch? Wow. Then it will be off to Michael's Crafts is search of fondant and then back home to attempt the daisies.

But it's all good. A little snack for us. Something special for April, the girls' ES. A little girl time in the kitchen.  And a fantastic new frosting recipe for when you need something a little spectacular.

Reinventing the "What's for Dinner?" Wheel

What can I say? I'm not easily satisfied with preparing and eating the same o', same o' dinner fare every night. I like variety. I like to use what's in season. I like to use what's on sale. However...it is not always an effective use of my time. Definitely time to reinvent the dinner wheel yet another time. Sigh.

But this time around, the effort I put into this little project will be there for me to fall back on anytime I need a break from being overly creative or frugal in the kitchen.



This is what I did:

I went through my recipe collection and pulled out 20 different main dishes that my family will eat without a lot of complaining, that don't require a ton of effort, that contain a variety of proteins, and are fairly inexpensive to prepare. In addition to that I pulled four crockpot recipes to use for Sundays. I spread them out over a four week period of time taking into consideration that we might not want to eat something with burger in it three nights in a row. I also arranged them so that an extra chicken could be baked or grilled providing the leftovers necessary for the next night's meal of say, enchiladas. Saturdays were reserved for trying out something new.

I starting using BigOven.com to type my recipes in several years ago, and I love it. But that would be another whole post. Anyway by having the recipes readily available to me, I used BigOven to put them together into a menu plan by week and created a master grocery list. From there it was simple to print everything out and place it in a binder with four tabs, one for each week. The first sheet is the menu plan by day of the week, the next is the master grocery list, and then come the individual recipes. I am beginning to fill in the side dishes that would be standard to include with each meal as I follow through with this plan.

It's a no-brainer to realize that with a plan in place, I will follow it. I won't stand as perhaps many others do before the refrigerator at 4:30 p.m. and wonder why I forgot to defrost this or that. I won't have to wrack my brain for something different that we haven't tried for awhile. I will have already made those decisions in advance for my tired little brain.



And so far it's working. By making notes on each master weekly plan as I go along, I will be reminded to pull out the steak for the fajitas the night before, to start the pizza dough in the morning, or to soak my beans overnight. A welcome relief for my worn out thinker as of late.

Perhaps after I've spent some time following this plan I will be ready to head back to my old ways, but in the meantime, I will relish the fact that I know what's for dinner today, tomorrow and for the rest of the week. Yeah!

Have You Had Your Fruit Today?

I had an unusual thought the other day as I was staring at our diminishing fruit bowl...I wonder how much fruit our family of six should actually be consuming on a weekly basis. I wonder how much fruit I should actually be purchasing each week to have on hand for our family of six. Hmmmm.

So a quick check with an on-line food pyramid shows a recommended 2 to 4 servings of fruit per day. Based on one active teen boy (4 servings), an exercising husband (3 servings), two adult women who are fairly active (2 and 3 servings), a teen girl who seems to live on air (so let's call her 2 servings) plus an 8-year-old (another 2 servings), we should be eating 16 servings of fruit per day. That would be 112 servings per week! With that in mind, I am pretty sure we are not eating enough fruit. Reports from cardiologists and oncologists even recommend 5 servings of fruit per day. And they should know!

With this startling information, I'm going to take a stab at guessing how much fruit we have been consuming based on my casual, oh-that-looks-like-enough approach at the grocery store.

A couple bunches of bananas, sometimes actually only one - 12 servings
A bag of apples - 8 servings
A bag of oranges - 6 servings
Maybe a couple of grapefruit - 2
Pre-packaged Dole-type fruit cups for lunches - 6 servings
A couple of frozen containers of 100% juice - 12 servings
A berry dessert if we're lucky - 8 servings
Dried fruit for granola - 8 servings or so

If my mental math is correct, that's about 62 servings...only about half of what we need. Yikes! So now what?

If we each ate a banana, apple, and orange or 100% juice per day per week, that would be 126 servings and more like the recommended daily requirement. Throw in a fruit dessert and perhaps dried fruit with breakfast cereal, we might actually exceed the minimum amounts and approach more healthy levels. Is it doable? It certainly looks like it on paper. If you're filling up with whole, unprocessed foods that are hopefully taking up stomach space and cravings for those other things that aren't so good for us but still call out our names, we've got to be pursuing a more healthy food intake.

But I'm not sure if I'm ready for the data: the grocery list this coming weekend would have to have a staggering 42 bananas, 42 apples, and 42 oranges. Well perhaps some of those could be minused by the fruit cups sent in lunches and dried fruit with breakfast cereal. But still...that's a whopping lot of fruit! The scary thought is that I haven't even thought about the veggie aspect yet...there are more recommended servings per day there than for fruit.

What do you think? Is it worth your health and the eating habits of your children you are responsible for to make such an effort? Is it overkill? Does it really matter what you eat? And how much would that add to the grocery bill? It sure looks like I've opened up a can of worms for myself to deal with. In the meantime, tell me your thoughts. I really would love to find out how others ensure their families truly are getting a balanced diet.

Iron Chef Kitchen and a Full Pantry

I suppose there is a chance that you have never heard of the Iron Chef food contest on Food Network. If so the short explanation of this program is the specialty ingredient that is revealed at the beginning of each contest to three chefs who then have to create several courses using this item and a fully stocked pantry.  They come up with some pretty stunning pieces I tell you.  And to be sure, many of them I would never touch, much less my family.  So what's the parallel here?

Our kitchen doesn't usually feature a stunning surprise ingredient too regularly, but it usually does offer up extras of several ingredients or containers of leftovers that don't seem to appeal to anyone the second time around. So my own personal Iron Chef dilemma is to simply turn those items into our next meal or face the fact that they need to go to the chickens before they spoil.  I do keep a pretty well-stocked pantry which might rival those of the TV studios. It's just one of my priorities to be sure I have on hand what I might possibly need just so I can run my own personal Iron Chef dinner any night of the week.

So here's an example of how it went this evening:

There were bowls full of spring greens from the garden needing to be used up...romaine, kale, radicchio, mache, endive, spinach. Good healthy stuff. So a main course salad was where I was headed. I mixed up some of my Honey Mustard Vinaigrette, grabbed some frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer (a branch of my well-stocked pantry) and threw them on the Foreman grill, still frozen, with a little seasoning salt.  There were snap peas from the garden and a red onion as well. In they went.  Main course was finished after the chicken slightly cooled and was sliced to top the salad.



I had some smokey paprika goat cheese that I had made, but then of course needed something to go with it. So using my recipe for Parmesan Flaxseed Crackers, I popped them into the oven...once again thanks to my pantry and my lovely Parmesan producing goats.  Since we were fresh out of croutons, the crackers would also double as 'crunch' in the salad for those who just had to have a crouton substitute. As far as goat cheese goes, some of the plain chevre would have been pretty good in the salad too, but that would have been too exotic for probably everyone.



The mystery ingredient of the week would have to be strawberries from our patch.  I had just finished reading Blue Jeans and Cotton Tees's recipe for Strawberry Pie, so I put that together as well with only a few modifications based on what I had on hand.



Another dinner down the hatch thanks to inspiration from the Iron Chef and my pantry. But in reality the majority of a lot of our work in the kitchen is probably Iron Chef based. What was on sale this week at the grocery store? What do we have too much of that we'd like to use up? What produce is overly abundant thanks to our gardens? It's a tough job sometimes, creating something from the situation we're currently handed versus what we otherwise might plan out in advance. But that's the beauty of a culinary challenge...keeps us on our toes, keeps a little extra change in the pocketbook, and keeps the dining interesting. Bon appetit!

Sourdough Starter Waffles

I have kept a sourdough starter on hand off and on for most of my married life. Sometimes I have totally forgotten it for years...no way to resuscitate it. Another time I left it setting in the oven to brew a bit overnight and inadvertently turned on the oven in the morning...created a really nice piece of plastic bowl art dripping through the wire racks and an awful mess. But lately I've tried to do a good job and keeping it going. But why? Why bother? A connection to our past when starter might have been the only way to produce leavened goods? I thought I would go do some research and see what fascinates people about sourdough starters.

For starters, Wild Yeast Blog gives a pretty consolidated list of health benefits...lower glycemic index, more available minerals, better for gluten sensitive people. Kitchen Stewardship focuses on the benefits of having starches predigested by the sourdough starter yeasts. Nutrition Data Blog has links to scientific studies backing up the health benefits of sourdough. And Ranprieur has an entire tutorial on the whys and wherefores of sourdough starters.



All of these sites offer a lot of good food for thought, but when it comes right down to it, sourdough products just taste good. Take these sourdough waffles for instance. Something about the yeast in the batter makes the crispiest waffles ever, couples it with a bit of flavor that compliments the sweet toppings we usually pile on them, and you can't beat their light interior.

Sourdough Waffles

1 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1 cup sourdough starter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar; set aside. In another bowl whisk together egg, starter, oil, and milk. Stir wet ingredients into dry until just moistened. Preheat waffle iron. Ladle the appropriate amount of batter for your waffle iron and bake away. Waffles are done when golden and crispy. Enjoy with your favorite toppings. Mine...sliced bananas with a tiny bit of syrup. Delicious!



Have you made or purchased a sourdough starter? Do you use it frequently? Perhaps you have a link to your favorite sourdough recipe. I'd love to hear from you.

Do You Like Radishes?

Well, do you like radishes? Some people don't. They're spicy...too hot...tough...just don't care for them. Nice garnish, but nothing to really consider eating. I never was much of a store-bought radish person either. But home-grown radishes are really tasty. We have been growing Cherry Belle for the last few years, and then added Scarlet White Tip this year. These are good!

Radishes are pretty easy to grow if even you have a small garden space. Only thing to remember is that they need to grow quickly enough to avoid being invaded by root maggots or becoming hot and tough. They also need plenty of cool, moist soil. They are a  perfect vegetable for growing in the spring or late fall. The fact that they mature in 30-something days makes for a rewarding effort in the garden when there isn't much of anything else growing. OrganicGardening gives some great tips on growing radishes too.

But what to do with these guys other than putting into a salad? Here's what I do. It's not much of a recipe; pretty much more of a procedure:

Toast a somewhat thick slice of peasant/rustic bread.
Butter it. (THIS is the key ingredient. Don't skip this step.)
Layer thinly sliced radishes over the entire slice.
Sprinkle with kosher salt. (Table salt would work but would not taste quite the same.)

Enjoy, and then find yourself making another helping.

It's the first part of June here, and the radishes are still growing strong. So I've kept up my succession planting. We've had an extremely damp, cool spring which has probably helped. I know that once our temperatures start climbing, the radishes will just be a memory until fall.

Demerara Sugar and French Press Iced Coffee

It seems most everyone has a food vice of one sort or another. Mine...at least since I've entered that 40-something age bracket...happens to be of the caffeinated kind. Unfortunately, I don't guzzle straight black coffee though. It has to be dolled and dressed up with sweetener and milk.

So what's so bad about caffeine? Now that it has redeemed itself with its discovered antioxidants, I'm not worried in the least about it. And milk? Full of calcium. Besides I tend to use our lovely rich goat milk when I have it on hand. So what's the vice? Well, it's the sweetener I find myself stirring in twice a day. High fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, and the like. Those additive things that aren't really good for us. But what's one to do?

Enter organic Demerara sugar. I just so happened to stumble across it in the bulk food bins while looking for something else. It looked interesting. It looked like something you would find sprinkled on the top of baked goods at a high end pastry shop. It looked intriguing enough to buy. So buy some I did.

I decided that I needed to figure out what this Demerara sugar was. Wikipedia says that Demerara sugar is, "...unrefined, granulated brown sugar made from sugar cane extract...It takes its name from the Demerara colony in Guyana, the original source of this type of sugar..." The rest of the article goes on to show how Demerara, Turbinado, and Muscovado sugar are all relatively unprocessed varieties of sugar. Good news to me, not to mention the fact that this particular Demerara sugar was organic as well.

Next up was to try out my new sweetener. I decided to stir a teaspoon of it into my coffee before splashing in my milk. To my surprise, it was more than just sweet. It had hints of caramel and a tinge of molasses, much more depth than plain white sugar or corn syrup would ever have. I then found out that I happened to be behind the trends of culinary experts of the world, not that I would expect anything different. Billingtons, an unrefined cane sugar producer, reports that "with its distinctive aroma and crunchy texture, Demerara is the traditional accompaniment to coffee." And here I thought I had discovered something new.

So here's my favorite way to enjoy this natural sugar:

Iced Coffee

1/4 cup Coffee beans, coarsely ground
1 cup Water, cold
1 cup Water, cold
2 teaspoon Demerara sugar
Ice cubes
splash Whole milk

The evening before, place 1/4 cup coarse ground coffee and 1 cup of cold water in a French coffee press. (Alternatively you could mix together the coffee and water in a glass container and use a fine mesh strainer the following morning.)

In morning add the additional 1 cup cold water and use the plunger to press down the grounds.

Divide the coffee between two glasses; stir 1 teaspoon demerara sugar into each glass. Fill to top with ice cubes or crushed ice. Pour a splash of milk over the top if desired.

Serve immediately.

So I say, go ahead and have your food vice. But just see if you can't tweak it to make it a tad healthier. You might find as I did that the healthier version is actually much tastier!