Tuesday, September 7, 2010

HI. My name is Cathie and I am addicted...

to coconut milk.  I love to use it in everything I bake as a non-dairy substitute for milk and sometimes eggs.  It is so, so good for you as is coconut oil. It's one of the few foods that has lauric acid, which is fabulous for healing a bad gut (which Celiac's would cause.)   Heck, some people have claimed to cure diseases with it.  Sadly, here's the problem.

A week or so ago, we took the three year old to the doctor to get tested for the wheat allergy (again), a Celiac panel and oat allergy.  He only scored .5 on a scale from 0-6 for wheat and .3 on a scale of 0-6 for oats.  The doctor's not convinced wheat's his problem, but he's asked me to keep him on the wheat free diet for 3 months.  We've got one month practically under our belt.  He did ask me to watch for other allergies.

Here's what I've come up with...coconut and sunflower.  Last time I gave him a spoon full of sun-butter, the poor kid's nose ran like a faucet and he broke out in hives.  His eczema flares seriously if I give him coconut.  Yes, the coconut yogurt he loves may be making his skin worse.  That along with everything I've been baking for him (because I keep adding coconut milk.)  What a bummer.  You see when you have a kid allergic to eggs and dairy AND is failure to thrive, you try to find ANYWAY to get fat into them.  Little kids really need it.  All the non-dairy milks are pretty much fat free.  So, I can't add cheese, cream, ice cream, etc to fatten the kid up.  I'm practically down to potato chips and french fries ;-).  Okay, I'm only kind of kidding.  He doesn't eat much meat.  He will eat baked beans.  We've cut him off from his 2-bowl-a-day oatmeal habit because of the fear of cross contamination with wheat.  He'll eat some veggies and lots of fruit.  He would live on boxed cereal if I let him, but that's not going to happen.  Against my will, I've been giving in to giving him soy based cheese.  I haven't tried tahini yet.  That might be next.  We stay away from nuts and peanuts because of other allergies in our house.  He's eating quinoa about once every two days for variety, although he doesn't like it.  If you have any suggestions on other good-fat foods I could feed him, please hit the combox.

So, I'm back to not knowing how to keep this kid on the growth curve.  He keeps sliding off...
Posted by at 6:47 PM
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6 comments:

  1. Cathie, that is terrible news.

    How about lard? Not the grocery store kind, which is hydrogenated and deodorized, but natural lard? The kind Grandma used to bake pie crust?

    You may have to call around, look for a local farm or butcher that will sell it to you, or possibly one of the natural foods coops will know where to get it even if they don't carry it. I had a source for natural lard that I would have recommended until recently, but can't in good conscience anymore. IT's basically bacon fat without all the salt and smoke. And since pig fat is chemically very similar to human fat, it's hard to imagine that it is bad for humans. You can, of course, render your own if you get a cut of pork (shoulder maybe) with the skin on.

    Since it is a solid fat, you can bake with it, spread it like butter, and of course all sorts of things fry up beautifully in it. Potato chips? Plantains? Even just GF bread, fried up brown in a skillet, sprinkled with sugar? Can you make GF doughnuts?
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  2. Have you tried goat cheese. It's close to dairy so some dairy allergic people cannot handle it. We really like Mt. Sterling Co-op Goat cheese (I have to keep it away from the others it's so good...but pricey).

    It's soy based but how about Tofutti brand ice cream? All beef hotdogs? I've found some that are df without all the nitrates, etc.

    My 7 year old failure to thrive child is up to 39 lbs now so I am interested in seeing what wheat free does for your little guy. Thankfully he outgrew (along with most of his siblings) his dairy allergy from when he was really young, and doesn't have any food allergies that we are aware of. I tend to think if our "little guy" would stop moving for 30 seconds he might not burn everything up so fast...

    Also, speaking of the gut healing....have you tried enzymes to help absorb food? We were given some by our chiropractor and tried it awhile ago - that may be the cause for our small increase finally. I think I'll need to pull those back out and start crushing again.
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  4. Bearing - no...I'm behind because my pc is on it's last legs, locking up regularly, not allowing me to get through all my email in 5 minutes. So, I start with most recent and work my way down, sometimes not making it to the end without it locking up again....sorry.
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  5. I second the lard recommendation. Also, does he like avocados?
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  6. Found one semi-local source for natural lard: Prairie Pride Farm in Mankato. They ship, or you might call them (I probably will eventually) to find out if any twin cities stores carry the lard specifically. I know that the Wedge is listed as one of the stores that carries some of their products, but it doesn't carry lard at all (annoying).
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