Quinoa Hash Browns, and be kind to each other!

As a mother, I try to keep abreast of healthy eating options.  We all do.  We join parenting websites, healthy eating blogs, and Pinterest so we know how to make our Acai berry, quinoa chia puds look like rainbows. We constantly assess our parenting based on what we find on the web, and usually find ourselves wanting.  So we try harder and seek answers from our peers via chatrooms, forums and Facebook pages.

The problem with this is that many of us are very judgemental of each others journeys.  We believe that the information we have gotten from our painstaking research is better or more complete than the information our peers have gotten from their painstaking research.  Unfortunately, for every eating plan, way of life or super ingredient out there, there is as much research to say that it is rubbish as there is to say it is the answer for perfect health.  We also need to consider that we all have different goals and ideas of what is healthy.

I remember a conversation with a close friend, that we had when our children were very little.  We met for a picnic, and both brought food to share.  We brought Christmas pretzels and chips, they brought cake and chocolate (this was prior to our knowing about Miss A's allergies!).  I was worried about my children eating cake and chocolate due to the high sugar and fat content.  I allowed them a small amount.  My friend was concerned about his children eating pretzels and chips due to the high salt and carbohydrate content.  This struck a chord with me in that we were both trying to be the best parents we could be, but we were coming at the problem from opposite angles.

One of the chat pages I belong to had a similar discussion yesterday regarding soy.  Several mums were asking about soy as a substitute for dairy in the case of lactose intolerance.  What they received as advice was a minefield of polar opposites.  From people telling them that soy is a great milk substitute, people saying that only Japanese soy is ok as fermented, people saying only unfermented Australian soy is ok, and people saying all soy is bad and every male child that drinks soy will grow man boobs.  I am not even exaggerating!  This very quickly dissolved into personal attacks, but the most confronting problem was that all sides of the argument had scientific evidence to support it.  How can this be?  I don't know, but it is very frustrating.  How can we as consumers have any idea of what to feed our families, when even the experts can't agree?

All I can say is that we need to be respectful of each other's points of view.  All of us who are dealing with healthy eating issues and allergies and intolerances are doing our best.  We are researching as much as we can and picking out what we can handle and making do with what we cannot.  Because of this, we all need to be supportive of each other and not attack other parents for doing their best.  Just because a child has packets and additives in their lunch box does not mean they are less loved or cared for.  It means that today his Mum gave him biscuits and muesli bars for lunch.  Just because a lunch box is all healthy, hand made food does not mean that child is brainwashed and missing out on treats.  It means that her Mum is trying to feed her healthy alternatives to hopefully make her healthier and happier.  Or that the child is allergic to everything and her mother has no choice.....

Rant over!  Now here is a really yummy breakfast idea that has quinoa in it.  I don't know if this means it is healthy, or that we will now live forever for eating this Superfood, but it tastes good and provides a different grain for those who are gluten free.

I got this recipe from a blog called A Beautiful Mess, made a few obligitary changes and now it is a regular in our house.  I use a pancake maker, a cheap electric appliance that I got from a cheap shop, to make my hashbrowns.  This means that apart from a small amount of spray oil on the hotplates, there is no added fat.  They are lovely fried in butter, not so lovely fried in Nuttelex.

QUINOA HASH BROWNS

Ingredients

1/3 cup tricoloured quinoa (any quinoa will do, but this one looks prettier)

2/3 cup water

1 1/2 cups grated raw potato

1 egg

Season All to taste

Chives to taste

Optional - 1/2 cup grated lactose free cheese

Method

Place quinoa and water in a saucepan.  Bring to the boil.  As bubbles start to appear, cover and turn down the heat to low.  Leave simmer to 10 mins.  Turn off the heat, and leave covered for 10 mins so that the quinoa can absorb the water.

In a bowl, mix the potato, egg, SeasonAll, chives, cheese (if using) and quinoa.  When combined, place spoonfuls either into Pancake Maker and cook until golden.  Can also be fried in butter, nuttelex or presumable coconut oil.  Flip when a golden crust forms on the bottom.

Great served with eggs and bacon.

First Day Back at School

Well, it is the first day back at school for Master H (Year 5) and Miss A (Year 3).  We are lucky that they have both kept the same teacher as last year, so no need to break in a new one!  I love that we already have a good rapport and working realtionship with both teachers in regards to dietary and health needs.  Makes life so much easier!

Amongst the hustle and bustle of the first day, with hair brushing, tieing new shoes and making sure all new drink bottles and hats are labeled, the kids didn't feel like a proper breakfast.  As they both love the King William Chocolate smoothies from Boost, I have made a fair copy that they enjoy on those days when they don't want to eat.  As this had a lot of milk in it, I had to change it up a bit this morning to cater for Master H not being able to tolerate dairy.

I will give you both recipes to do with as you will, my kids love them!

KING WILLIAM CHOCOLATE RECIPE

Ingredients

1 cup milk

1/3 cup Greek Yoghurt

1 banana, frozen

2 scoops vanilla ice cream

4 tsp Sustagen Gold Dutch Chocolate

2 tsp cocoa powder

1 handful ice cubes

Method

Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.

Makes two small smoothies.  The frozen banana makes it creamy, and the Sustagen Gold is packed with vitamins.

DAIRY FREE KING WILLIAM CHOCOLATE RECIPE

Ingredients

1 cup Quinoa and Chia milk (or your preferred choice)

2 tbsp Quinoa Flakes

2 tbsp Coconut Yoghurt

2 scoops Soy Vanilla Ice Cream

1 banana, frozen

4 tsp cocoa powder

1 handful ice cubes

Method

Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.  

Voila! An easy brekky for fussy kids that tastes good.  Also a lot cheaper than buying smoothies, too!

Creamy Tuna Mornay and Soda Bread

We are coming up to the Christmas season.  Here in Adelaide, we have the famous Christmas Pageant every year, where we sit on the side of the road and watch lots of floats with fairy tale and Christmas themes go past.  It is a real tradition, and we go every year with the kids.  We get into the city at around 6am, have a picnic brekky, the kids draw on the road in chalk, play games, and then the pageant does its thing, and we have a great time.  Tomorrow is the day!  This heralds the season for Christmas baking, house decorating and present buying and wrapping, if you haven't done it already.  Santa comes with the Pageant, so he starts appearing in stores to get the lists from hopeful children, and the streets get their Christmas overhaul.

This means that my posts between now, and the big day, will probably focus on Christmas or party treats.  Watch this space if you need some ideas!  Last night I was planning to make our family favourite meat pie, but after a bad day, I just didn't have the energy.  Here is one of our family favourites, with our favourite loaf of fresh bread to munch, covered in butter, on the side.

This recipe comes from Food.com, and the Soda Bread comes from dovesfarm.co.uk.

TUNA MORNAY
INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp butter
3 sticks celery, finely diced
2 tbsp gf plain flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup cream
2/3 cup grated cheese
1 440 g can corn (drained), or 1 cup frozen peas and corn mix
425 g can tuna in springwater, drained
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I freeze the ends of gf bread, or any stale bread, thaw and put in the whiz to make crumbs.  Add some herbs and spices, and freeze in ready to use packs)
1/4 cup grated cheese, extra

METHOD
Melt butter and saute celery for approx 3 mins.  Add flour and stir over heat until bubbling.  Remove from heat and slowly stir in milk and cream.  Return to heat and continue stirring until thickened.  Add cheese, corn, and tuna and mix to combine.  Place in a casserole dish and top with crumbs and extra cheese.  Bake at 200C for 15 mins.  Serve with soda bread.


SODA BREAD
INGREDIENTS
500g gluten free white flour blend
1/4 tsp salt
1 2/3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp Xanthan Gum
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
500ml milk, or rice milk
2 tbsp milk or rice milk, extra

METHOD
Mix together dry ingredients.  In a jug, mix oil, vinegar and milk.  Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and mix to combine, until a soft, sticky dough is formed.  Press into a loaf tin, brush the top with extra milk, and bake at 180C for 90-100 mins.  I find mine is baked after 45 mins, so check every 30 mins or so.  Serve warm topped with your favourite spread.

Can be made into muffins or rolls, just by pressing into smaller tins.

Green Smoothy and Halloween

Last night, we did Trick or Treating at a lovely street party run by one of the mums at school, you know who you are!  The issue with this sort of activity is that Miss A cannot eat most of her haul.  This leads to the night being fraught with emotional highs and lows as we try to guide her to make sensible choices about the lollies she can and cannot eat, without crushing her little spirit in the process.

The way we managed this was to take our usual picnic for the shared dinner, this week's selection was GF lepinja rolls with homemade schnitzels and salad greens, with a salad and some strawberries.  We also took a selection of chocolates and some lollies from Sue Shepherd's gluten free and fructose friendly lollie collection.  I highly recommend these lollies!  Anytime we are going to a party, fete or gathering where there is likely to be lollies and other sweet foods we have a small bag of these for Miss A.  They are not recommended in large quantities, this is always a no-no for people with Fructose Malabsorption, but a small handful so she doesn't miss out is fine.

Given that all of Miss A's friends and school chums are really understanding, I love our little school for how inclusive they are, she had no problems swapping her lollies for chocolates so she still got a pretty nice selection of sweets without making herself sick.  It was, as always, a lovely night, and we walked away from the experience with renewed confidence that we can live with this lifestyle and still raise two well adjusted, normal children who have not missed out on all the fun things due to circumstance.  If you put in the planning, anything is possible, regardless how difficult your eating plan needs to be.


Green smoothy time!  Because of how educated my kids have become through this process, they have both been really eager to try a green smoothy for a healthy breakfast option.  All the recipes I have come across either have ingredients that Miss A cannot tolerate or are outright allergic to, or things that are not readily available in Adelaide or I have not heard of.  This has led to us not yet giving this a try.  Even a search on the web for Fructose Friendly recipes came up with recipes that are not ok for us, for example, they all call for banana as the main ingredient, a big no-no for Miss A, or nuts which we have to avoid completely.  One even called for cherries which are on every High Fructose list I have ever seen!

Once again, invention needed to be my saviour.  We gave this a go, and it was drunk by both kids and only uses ingredients that we can consume readily.  There are a couple of moderate fructose ingredients in there, but with the high percentage of low fructose ingredients, I think the balance works.  It is not an attractive looking drink, being a muddy orange colour, but is packed with nutrients and tastes pretty good.  If too strong for your taste, add extra coconut juice/water to thin it out.

GREEN SMOOTHY
INGREDIENTS
1 cucumber
2 sticks of celery, with leaves attached
2 tangelos, peeled
1 punnet strawberries
1 carrot
2 cups coconut juice or coconut water

METHOD
Put all ingredients except the coconut juice/water through a juicer.  Add the coconut and mix to combine.  Serves 4.

Give it a try and see what you think!  You could try some spinach leaves to improve the colour and boost the iron as well.  Let me know how you went in the comments.

Baked Beans

It has been a busy couple of days for our little family.  Miss A had a big singing audition, should hear today, and Mstr H had his first Acrobatics competition.  Love my beautiful kids.  Hayfever season has really knocked them about, too, so we are going through tissues like you wouldn't believe.  Oh well.

Because Miss A has been not loving breakfasts, but has been eating a lot more lately, I put on my thinking cap.  It dawned on me, baked beans!  So here is my adaptation of a recipe from the Choice Practical Cooking for Babies and Toddlers book.  I have made it easier to make, Fructose Friendly and Gluten Free, and it is pretty yummy, especially on toast.  Miss A loves the LifeStyle Bakery Chia and Quinoa bread.


BAKED BEANS
INGREDIENTS
1 tin beans of your choice (kidney, white, butter, cannellini), drained
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup nomato sauce
100g diced bacon
1/2 tsp each dried chives, mixed herbs, SeasonAll
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp tamari soy sauce

METHOD
Place all ingredients into a large saucepan and bring up to the boil.  Lower heat and simmer for 15 mins or until beans are soft, stirring occasionally.  Sauce should thicken and reduce.  Serve spread on buttery toast of your choice.

Mstr H had two serves this morning!  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.  What is your favourite wheat free bread?

Egg Puffs

My sick little girl is still sick!  Doctors this morning, with the standard diagnosis - it is just a virus.  This may be so, but we are on our third day off of school this term, and it is only week 2.  Miss A's eczema is out of control, so we are back off of milk and soy to see if that is the problem, but I suspect it is this nasty virus causing the problems.

Here is another fun egg recipe that includes veggies.  It comes out of the Jessica Seinfeld book - Deceptively Delicious, where she adds veg puree to just about everything.  Most of the recipes are not fructose friendly, but a few, like this one, are fantastic.  In the recipe she uses pumpkin, but I have found mashed carrot to be Miss A's favourite, while Mstr H prefers pureed spinach.  To puree the spinach in my blender, I add the eggs to it for moisture, otherwise it just jumps the leaves around without blending them.

INGREDIENTS
2 large eggs
4 large egg whites
1/2 cup veg puree or mash, depending on what veg you use.  Steam your veg of choice (or raw if leafy) and mash or puree as needed
2 tbsp grated cheese
2 tbsp all purpose flour (I use maize flour)
1/2 tsp baking powder
sprinkle of salt for seasoning

METHOD
Preheat oven to 200C.  Coat 6 ramekins with spray oil and place on a tray.  In a large bowl, whisk eggs, egg whites, puree/mash, cheese, flour, baking powder and salt until combined.  Divide mixture between cups and bake for 15 mins, or until puffed up and cooked all the way through.  Serve on a plate with some warm, cut up tortilla wrap (gluten free of course) or some gf toast soldiers.

Great to take as a lunch too.  Quite tasty cold.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Green Eggs and Ham (well, bacon actually)

Today is one of those rare days where I have no children.  Thank you Mama and Papa!  So I was wracking my brain on what to write on the blog, and decided to draw on one of Mstr H's favourite recipes, that is still allergy friendly.  Over the last couple of weeks we have been reintroducing eggs, milk and soy to Miss A's diet with success in small amounts, so the occasional eggy breakfast will soon be part of our life again, yay!  I love this recipe as it is chock full of leafy green spinach, tasty and fulfills all childhood quotas by being a direct quote out of a Dr Seuss book!  What more could you want?

GREEN EGGS AND HAM

INGREDIENTS
lg handful baby spinach leaves
4 eggs (depending on how many people you are feeding)
splash milk
lemon pepper
100g diced bacon, cooked until crisp
grated cheese for sprinkling

METHOD
Place spinach, eggs and milk into a blender and blend until smooth.  Spray a frypan with oil and add mixture with some lemon pepper to taste.  Fry like normal scrambled eggs, stirring constantly, until cooked.  Add the bacon and mix through.  Serve in bowls with a sprinkle of cheese, or on toast if you prefer.

We love this as a light dinner for the kids when they aren't very hungry, or as a snack before swimming.  It is very green!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Let's try this again..............

Here is my attempt at a blog again.  My last try led to me posting a heap of recipes, only to find that my information was wrong.  So I tried again, and my daughter's medical condition changed and again, my recipes were wrong.  Since my last post 2 years ago, she has had so many diet changes that I have lost count, and none of them have been fun.  To add to the joy, she has been diagnosed with IBS, Fructose Malabsorption and multiple food allergies, and is currently on an elimination diet too.  She still has chronic eczema and has many digestive problems, is low in iron and spends a lot of her time in pain from bloating and abdominal distention.  Basically, she is a mess, but we love her anyway.

With my journey, many of my friends have suggested I document it here to share with other people who may be going through similar things, so here goes.

I won't bore you with all the ins and outs right now, bit by bit on future blogs will be enough whinging for anyone!  Needless to say, we are currently feeding her foods that avoid egg, dairy, soy, fruit (except apricots, lemons and limes and limited strawberries.  She is allergic to wheat, oats, nuts, tomato and mint, and can only eat leafy green veg, potatoes and limited carrots and butternut.

Here are my two favourite recipes for survival - Nomato Sauce and Coconut Rice Custard.  They are easy to make and are a staple food in this house.  I am planning to put up any interesting recipes that I cook, with links to where I got the recipes from.

NOMATO SAUCE

This is a great recipe as it is easy, and can be substituted for pasta sauce, pizza sauce or even for dipping your chips and nuggets in!  It DOES NOT taste like tomato sauce, because it isn't, but is nice and light as a substitute.

INGREDIENTS
1 small beet, peeled and diced
6 carrots, diced
1 leek, diced
1 1/2 cup water
herbs, spices to taste  (don't do too much flavouring as you can do that when you cook with it)

METHOD
Place all ingredients in a saucepan with a tight fitting lid.  Bring to the boil and simmer until veggies are soft.  Blend in a blender or food processor until fairly smooth.  It does not need to be completely smooth as it is a nice veggie sauce.  Use like you would any tomato sauce or paste.


See how easy that is?  It does tend to turn your bolognaise sauce pink, but otherwise is easy to use!

COCONUT RICE CUSTARD

Miss A (who is 6 yo) uses this as a breakfast cereal, to fill up as a dessert or we add some cocoa and freeze as an iceblock.

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup arborio rice
400 ml coconut milk
200 ml rice milk or alternative of your choice
2 tbsp sugar

METHOD
Place all ingredients in a saucepan and bring up to the bowl.  Simmer for at least 20 mins, stirring often, until it has thickened to a custard consistency.