For some you know that my husband became ill and was unable to return to work. We went to an alternative doctor that said he was toxic and vitamin deficient. So we went on a strict diet, yes the whole family if it's healthy for one then it's healthy for all I do not want my children toxic by the time they are grown, and began buying special vitamins. The specialness is just that they are vitamins pulled from real food sources not made up by chemists. The results? He is much better and looking for a job so I can say this stuff is real! I can't share in the details because it is my husbands illness and not my own but it is all true your diet affects every part of you. Eating is not just to not be hungry or get a few vitamins it is essential to our bodies and overall health. So that being said now I'd like to share with you some of our adventures in cooking with a few of our cheats oops (hey it was Easter). Hopefully by the time the next holidays come along I will have learned enough about substitutions that we can still have fun with food and keep it healthy. (I will be cheating with stuffing though! It's my fave.)
The diet we are on is pretty simple word wise we are avoiding gluten, dairy except for goat things and butter, dyes, preservatives, soy, and most processed foods. Now that the words are out there you can see that it's a little harder to think of what foods that leaves us with especially with three small children so now I will tell you what I have switched to eating and yes there are still some processed foods because I am busy so until I figure this all out they will have to stay. We first switched our milk over to rice milk, hemp milk, and almond milk which is our favorite the least favorite being hemp milk. Mr A is allergic to rice milk because they have barley in it and he is super allergic to barley. They longer put it on the carton because the amount in it is so small they say it doesn't need to be labeled...I disagree because my son gets so sick on it within minutes he looks like he has been sick for a long time. Foods should have everything labeled on it that's my opinion. The one thing the children really miss is cheese. We have been buying goat cheese and giving them that but they still miss the other one quite a bit and to be honest we adults do too we were big cheese people. I bought some gluten-free flour mix from Bob's Red Mill and we use that to make pancakes which we all like and thickening soups. We even made a chicken dumpling soup with some gluten-free Bisquick the verdict was good. We were a little confused on what to do with lunches. The doctor told us to make extra dinner and eat that but with so many people that is extremely hard to do around here so I came up with a new plan. We bought the stuff to make sushi. I have some nori wraps, brown rice, salt, and fish we roll it up and slice it and we are good to go. This works really well for my sons baseball games and practices too because they are always around dinner and lunch times (what were they thinking? Hungry boys trying to focus and play sports?) My boys all love these I still need to find something that would replace the soy sauce so if you have any ideas I would love to hear them! Recently my family has been eating bread with their soups and my boys were drooling so I had to find them something they could eat at the same time so we bought some brown rice bread and we really like it. It's expensive to me at $3.99 a loaf and it's so small so it's only for those moments when they are seeing everyone else eating bread. A big thing in our family are burritos but we couldn't eat tortillas anymore so I found some yep brown rice tortillas! They don't seem to roll up well even when they are warmed up but it satisfies the need to have one and doesn't taste bad either. I also found a homemade recipe for refried beans that I made and it passed with flying colors. We separated the beans and froze them so that we could have some on hand for when we don't have anything for lunch or don't have the time to make dinner. I have been buying a lot of different vegetables for us to try too because there are so many out there beyond the usual and I have never tried them. We have had rainbow chard's, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, collard greens, mustard greens, and a Chinese radish called something like a diakon. Most of these we have actually really liked. We did not like the mustard greens or the diakon although I thought that the diakon wasn't all that bad even though I hate radishes. We have also for those emergency feeding moments bought some rice noodles of varying types. Most of those have also proven themselves to be quite tasty.
Those are all the changed foods I can think of right now. It's been a challenge to come up with dinners on some night there for awhile we were living on mostly rice which with their high glycemic index value, isn't all that good for you either. I am hoping that as things go we get even more creative and come up with some great meals.
During the last month Pumpkin came down with bronchitis again and we had to take him to the hospital. A few days after that he came down with a stomach flu and could not even keep a sip of water down so we took him back into the ER at 8pm. We did not get out of there until 3:30 am! When we got out to our car exhausted with a sick 2 year old who at least was no longer throwing up because they gave him some nausea medicine because he was dehydrated, our car would not start! It wouldn't even turn over, nothing. We called Hubby's brother because he's the one that figured out last time what was wrong with our tricky, finicky car. He tried to talk us through it but we couldn't find the wires he was talking about. At four I took Pumpkin back in and sat in the Er with a blanket they gave me. At four thirty Hubby came in to tell me he couldn't fix it and I texted a friend of mine who lives in that city (an hour from home) but there was no answer so we went back to the car to sleep. At about five thirty I called my mom but she had to take kids to school 45 min's in the other direction so she couldn't help either. It was around eight am that my friend called and she came with breakfast for us and around ten my father in law showed up and took us to get Pumpkins med and then home. He went back with Hubby to fix the car and they came back later in the day with it working again yeay. Apparently the starter is was was broken this time. It made for a long night and an even longer day. A few days later I got the flu and so did Mr. A. The next week Hubby got it the only one who didn't is Monkey thank goodness. I am so glad to be better and have the children better I can't even tell you enough!
Mr. A's last day of official school is this week. Official because he still will be doing some schooling through the summer in math and reading he's a little behind in those areas. He's pretty excited though. On Friday he gets to have a pool party with other homeschoolers in our area and Monkey is pretty happy to be swimming finally.
Yesterday I worked in the roses because they have been neglected just like this blog only they are growing wildly out of control! I found some really beautiful roses and put some in the vases. There were also a lot of dead roses and they looked like they would have been beautiful had they not been left to there own devices.
Monkey cuddling with George in the morning
Mr A measuring for math
Pumpkin helping me cook in the messy kitchen
Mountains in the front yard after it snowed
A lizard Monkey caught
Mr A's math homework
Mr A doing math
a veggie dish I cooked
Monkey
Monkey
some tadpoles we found
The moon one night (I love my camera!)
a moth we found on our front porch area
some chard greens
the chard stems
Aren't they pretty?
A soup I made yummy
the chard's cooking
My boys at the Easter egg hunt decorating sugar cookies
Our Easter Barbecue
some carrots we soaked in water and then juiced for Easter
Our hard boiled eggs to dye
the dough for our Resurrection Bread
the cinnamon and sugar mix for the bread
the finished Resurrection bread see how the marshmallow is mostly gone
The boys with their eggs
Pumpkin with his
Mr A made a snack for his brothers which they gobbled up
Pumpkin loves his new bike since his old hand me down one broke
cooking up some gluten free pancakes
This is the monster one lol I'm not an artist
A sunset near our home we caught it coming home from baseball one day
Pumpkin sleeping on his daddy
A very cool pic of the moon one night
My brother looking very handsome for his prom I can't believe he's gotten so old!
My mothers bed on Mother's day she says she needs a bigger bed for next year lol
A bird on our clothes line
a pretty rose from our garden
a smoothie I made
the simple ingredients to my smoothie
plus the milk we used and that's it
the sky in our front yard
Pumpkin saying the Pledge of Allegiance it was his turn to hold the flag
Mr A has been making me a heart with an arrow on it all over the place how cute
We went to a baby shower for rescue animals and that's what some of the following photos are about this one is of Bella the Red fox
This is Snow. Did you know that the color of a birds wings are actually their strength? With out that color their wings are too weak.
This is Skunkie
I don't remember this ones name but he's a Gopher Snake
This is Curly he's a barn owl I think he's so pretty!
Monkey got Oreo the snake on his face...I think the artist is not a very good one so below the pic of Oreo
See he is not blue lol
Mr A asked for Fire on his face...he got the word lol
Pumpkin got a snake too
Isn't this one pretty too
Here is Hopper he is a Raven...did you know that Ravens can say words? I did not. He says 'whats up' and a few others
A hawk
Fizzle the Ground Squirrel
A tired Pumpkin
These next ones are of our garden that we worked in yesterday
I am so glad to be back and hopefully things will not get crazy around here again! At least for awhile. I hope you all are doing great!
