GI

Thursday we are going to the GI doctor in Austin. Three hours away.
I spent the day today printing up a summary of Mooky's last 17 months of misery. I also called the doctor in Kerrville whose nurse told me they couldn't fax Mooky's medical records to the GI because we hadn't signed a release! So, they faxed the release form to Kris at work, he signed it, and faxed it back. Then I called them to verify that they got it and asked them again to fax Mooky's medical records to the new doc. "Ok, no problem, please give us 2 weeks to get that done."
WHAT????????????????
I nicely explained that it needs to be done today or tomorrow and PLEASE do it. "Well, we're understaffed so I can't promise anything."
Talk about frustrating.

I feel such a heavy load of sadness right now for how difficult this is for Mooky. I guess typing it all up today really made it clear to me. I know that the Lord is in charge, and He has a wonderful plan for Mooky's life. And He can bring good from this. It's just hard for a parent to see their child suffer. It could be so much worse, and I hope it's not. I feel uneasy about what we may eventually find out through this new doctor... but there again, the Lord will get us through it.

I'm at a point where I am once again struggling with what to feed the boy... and struggling to keep his hunger at bay. He used to love to cook. Said he would be a professional chef one day. But, he hasn't done much cooking at all in the past year or so. Rare are the days when he feels good enough to spend that much time on his feet, and expend that much mental energy.

It's 7 PM right now and he is already in bed. That is very normal for him. If he feels nauseous in the night he will get up and sneak quietly into our room so as not to wake us up, and silently go in our bathroom and close the door. He will put a towel at the bottom of the door to cover up the crack of light that "might wake us up". Then, he will take a long shower until all the hot water is gone and hopefully his nausea will be gone too. Then, it's back to bed until 6 am or maybe 7 if he feels really bad.

The main thing to remember is that it could be worse!! And I am thankful it is not.

Mooky

The week of November 18 was a really hard week for Mooky. I am positive he did not have any sugar, gluten, soy, high fructose corn syrup, or msg. And yet, he was very fatigued with a lot of stomach pain, nausea and D.
He had a totally GF Thanksgiving meal on Thursday and Saturday, and then ate some ice cream with wheat in it. WHY do they put wheat in ice cream anyway? (Not that it matters.) It was his own fault because I gave him the responsibility for reading the label and he ate it anyway. He's FIFTEEN for crying out loud! Plenty old enough to handle that responsibility. And we are making an effort to not be the Food Police. He is having to take more responsibility and take the consequences as well. So, Sunday and Monday he was extra extra extra miserable, and still isn't feeling much better today. He admitted that it wasn't worth it, and wished he hadn't done it, so I suppose that is progress. "I suppose", because I am not convinced that he won't do it again if the opportunity presents itself.
BTW, both kids are perfectly capable of spotting gluten and soy in food labels. They can pronounce most of the difficult words you find on the labels (and know what each one is) and when we go grocery shopping they read labels on everything we buy. Outloud. We get some mighty strange looks at times! :o)

Results of the Pie Experiment

Erinn: 10 stars for great taste!
Mooky: 10 stars, and a 2 hour stomach ache,
and the dreaded you-know-what. :o(

The pie was delicious, and thanks again to legendaryabundance for the recipe! Even though Mooky got a bad stomach ache from it, he loved it, and as far as pies go it is a wonderful alternative to one with sugar in it. Today Erinn and I made a pumpkin pie sweetened with a little honey and a little sucanat. It's still in the oven, but it tasted great uncooked. :o)

Mooky has a really bad reaction when he eats sweet potatoes so I searched all over Kerrville for some kind of squash that I could use in place of sweet potatoes. All I could find was butternut squash. I cooked it with butter and sucanat and he didn't even realize it wasn't sweet potatoes until Erinn told him. So, that was a hit!

We had a great gluten free Thanksgiving dinner. Mooky said the dressing was "a miracle". LOL
Too bad we can't have turkey sandwiches for supper... oh well! Things could be a lot worse.

Apple Pie!

Thanks to legendaryabundance for this recipe!!! We made it today and it was a big hit. The kids were very happy with the sweetness of it.

No Sugar Apple Pie SUBMITTED BY: Carolyn Contains no artificial sweeteners!"

INGREDIENTS
2 (9 inch) pie shell
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 (12 fluid ounce) can unsweetened apple juice concentrate, thawed
6 cups sliced green apples

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a small bowl whisk together cornstarch, cinnamon, and 1/3 cup of the apple juice concentrate. Set aside.
In a large saucepan simmer apples with remaining apple juice concentrate until apples are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in cornstarch mixture and continue to simmer until thickened. Remove from heat.
Spoon apple mixture into pastry-lined pie plate. Cover with top crust. Seal and flute edges. Cut steam vents in top.
Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

Erinn cut a beautiful star in the GF pie crust, recipe below. We are going to make this again for Thanksgiving!



The BEST EVER GF pie crust!

1 cup Sorghum flour mix*
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP granulated sugar

Combine all ingredients and pat into two pie pans. Bake at 350* for 20 minutes or so.

*Sorghum flour mix:
7 parts sorghum flour
2 parts potato starch
1 part tapioca flour

Sugar Free Pie Recipes

All my searches for sugar free pie recipes turn up nothing but recipes that use artificial sweeteners. Grrrr.
I am looking for a recipe that uses either fruit juice concentrate and/or honey.
Apple pie in particular! Anybody got any ideas?

Pizza Rice Casserole

I found this gluten free recipe at http://www.homesteadblogger.com/quiverfull/ and I cant wait to try it!

Pizza Rice Casserole
Crystal Miller


2 cups cooked brown rice
1 ½ cups cottage cheese
1 lb. sausage or hamburger or a combo of both
1 onion, chopped
1 -14oz can diced tomatoes
1 -8oz can tomato sauce
2 t Italian seasonings
½ t salt
Mozzarella cheese
Optional:
Pepperoni
Black olives, sliced

Combine cooked rice and cottage cheese and spread into the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Cook sausage and onions until sausage is done and onions are soft. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasonings and salt. Spread this over the top of the rice. If you want to use the optional items layer those on top of the sausage/tomato mixture. Top with mozzarella cheese (as much or as little as desired). Bake at 325 for 30 minutes or until all is bubbly and hot and cheese has melted.

Fish Fry

Harper had a fish fry on Saturday to benefit the volunteer fire dept. Kris had gotten a deer out at Doss on Saturday morning so he wanted to meet me in Harper so I could bring the ice chests
home. Otherwise the meat would have sat in the ice chests until Monday.
His dad decided to ride with him and so we all ate lunch at the fish fry. The fish was "breaded" with only corn meal and spices, so that was gluten free, but they served hush puppies as well.
Mooky thought they were just made with corn meal and so he ate one. I didn't think to warn him about them until after he had eaten it. I dont know what they were made with, but the chances are good that there was some white flour in there.
So, that night he was totally wiped out, pale, exhausted and just plain awful. The question is, was it the hush puppies, or was it from going to town two days in a row?

GF Pineapple Upside-down Cake

Mooky made a delicious pineapple upside-down cake for his birthday yesterday. It tasted great right out of the oven. As you can see in the second picture, we all had a little taste right when it came out. That way, if the recipe had not converted well to GF we would still have time to make a diferent cake. Three hours later when we finally got around to eating it, I thought it was a bit too dry tasting, but Mooky didn't seem to notice! He liked it so much that he didn't even eat any ice cream. Earlier in the day he ate some of the Kinni-Toos cookies and said they were great. He also had a Kinnikinnick donut at breakfast, which was good.
So, basically he had a lot of sugar, and by evening he was REALLY feeling the effects.

the First Gluten Free Birthday

Last year at this time, Mooky was sick, and we were trying to eat more healthily. Organic, whole grains, less sugar, etc. He wanted a "cake made from a mix" for his birthday and since the birthday kid always gets to choose, we bought an organic cake mix at the health food store.
We didn't find out he was gluten intolerant until a few weeks later... Needless to say his cake made him sick! Nanay, Alex, (and Gabby?) came to the birthday party and Alex ended up with a terrible headache. It would be some time before we found out she was gluten intolerant as well. She blamed her headache on me! "Every time I go to Rachel's house, it makes me sick." (Or something like that.) But Nanay said, "No, every time you travel anywhere you get headaches."
So, even though we have been through several gluten free holidays, this is Mooky's first gluten free birthday. The only thing I am worried about is the cake.

The birthday menu:
Kinnikinnick donuts for breakfast.
A huge fruit salad for snacks throughout the day.
Pizza for lunch.
Chicken fried venison tenderloin, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans for supper.
Pineapple upside down cake with white chocolate chips, and ice cream for dessert. Cookies and Cream ice cream! I bought K-Toos for him to put in his ice cream.

I sure hope the cake turns out good since we are simply converting the regular recipe to gluten free. The amount of sugar in that menu is more than we have had all month!

Corn pasta

I found some Boles Corn pasta at the health food store last month and finally got around to trying it out last night.
It was a nice change from rice pasta! Mooky actually ate a good sized serving of it.

Our first ever order from Kinnikinnick arrived yesterday. Erinn was SO excited to see what I ordered for Mooky's birthday! She helped me get it all unpacked and hidden in the back of the freezer. I just need to remember to take it out the night before because it's BREAKFAST STUFF!

Cayenne pepper

Sometimes my kids amaze me. I suppose I should be used to them by now... :o)
Yesterday for lunch I diced up potatoes, onions, zuchhini and squash really small until I had a whole pan full, and added the last chicken breast (diced). Sauteed it all in olive oil, and added salt. It was a little blah so I added some cayenne pepper.
I handed Erinn her plate and she took it with a look of "VEGETABLES?" on her face. (She despises zucchini and squash plain.) But she ended up liking it a lot and even getting seconds.
Mooky said it was too spicy, but he liked it ok. Usually he LOVES that type of thing for lunch, so I was surprised at his lack of enthusiasm.
Within an hour he had a HORRIBLE stomach ache and diarrhea. We're pretty sure it was the cayenne pepper.
Bummer.

Chinese food

We love Chinese food, but it's pretty darn hard to make without gluten, and even harder without soy. So, since Mooky hadn't eaten any soy in a while, and technically he's allowed to have it every four days, we went for it. (BIG mistake.) I made fried rice to go with it, and Mooky ate some bean noodles with the vegetables as a topping.

It tasted great, but unfortunately Mooky got a BAD stomach ache that lasted for days. So, the good thing about this whole experience (besides the taste) was that we decided to get Mooky TOTALLY off of soy.

Gluten Free Brownies!

These are EXCELLENT, and we may even use this recipe as a chocolate cake for Mooky's birthday. Kris even liked these.

BROWNIES

2 sticks butter, melted
3/4 cup cocoa
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup gluten free flour mixture (I used the sorghum flour blend.)
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350. Whisk cocoa into melted butter. Stir in sugar. Add eggs one at a time, stirring well after each. Stir in vanilla. Add flour, xanthan gum, and salt. Stir in chocolate chips.
Grease the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Pour in batter. Bake for 25-35 minutes.

As good as OREOS?

Made by Kinnikinnick, as supposedly as good as Oreos. (Hmmm, seems pretty unlikely, BUT Kinnikinnick does a GREAT job on flavour!) And usually, this kind of thing is not only out of our budget, but also NOT the kind of snack I would buy for the kids.
However, we have a birthday coming up, and the birthday boy would LOVE "cookies and cream" ice cream. So, I am going to order a package of these, and maybe the vanilla flavor as well. But, it's a surprise so don't tell him!

Gluten Free Recipes that WE like!

This is a place for me to post our favorite gluten free recipes. Send me yours and I will post them here too.