October 6 - So what can we eat?

October 6- So what can we eat?

So much for me "blogging" every day!!  It's been more than a month since my last post!  geesh!  sorry about that - will try to be a little more consistent!  And i'm going to tel you right now that you have to ignore my lower case typing.  sometimes i catch it, most of the time i don't care so don't send me notes about the lack of consistent punctuation.  My fingers hardly keep up with what my brain is spitting out as it is!!

I ran into a friend in the grocery store tonite and she said she'd been waiting for my "what we can eat" blog, and then I got a message from a different friend in ATL who asked about the same thing, and another friend in NC has asked me twice about food so I need to apologize for being so slow getting this out!  It really is good info I want to share with all of you because I have seen first hand how this is saving my family.  So here goes!

So after my last update, i left everyone with the WHY I was doing this and what my "directions" were from Dr. Pendergrast (the pediatrician we are working with who is much MUCH more than a pediatrician!).  It might be good to go back and re-read the 2 basic rules I have to follow so THIS post makes more sense (no flour, no added sugar).

When I got home from the visit with Dr. P where we decided the flour and sugar had to go, I knew the first thing I needed to do while no kids were around (remember, they had no idea this was coming) was empty my fridge and pantry of all off-limit items. I really think all I had left in my pantry were 6 cans of green beans, fe cans of tomatoes and corn and a box of grits.  Really. I'm not kidding.  I wish now I would have taken a photo of my empty pantry (because that thing is NEVER empty!) but my mind was trying to still wrap itself around what I had just done -- "donate" perfectly yummy food to all my neighbors -- so I was not thinking forward to blogging for you and how great that photo would be.  It was pretty scary what I was doing and all I could keep asking myself was WHAT am I going to feed everyone tonite??

It was a extremely overwhelming, to be quite honest, but I knew that if ANY of the off-limits stuff was left in the house, it would be too easy for ME to get to.  I knew I would be the first one to cheat when no one was looking.  I'd end up saying "we'll eat this regular spaghetti just this one time because I don't have time to cook something else."  I didn't want to set myself up to fail so I had to get rid of it.  Every last bit of it.  I also thought that if my kids were going to do this 100%, I was going to do it with them 100% -- 1-0-0%.  It was only fair that I could undertand how they were feeling since I was honestly doing it 100% with them.  Food sometimes calls to me in the middle of the night and I feared the frosted flakes would have a shouting match with the shredded wheat and I knew who would win!  Tony the Tiger is one tough cat!  So it all had to go.  Old Mother Hubbard would have been proud - my cupboard was BARE!
  
One of my 4 children, Alex, is a horribly picky eater, and that is being gracious. How he has actually grown is beyond me.  My picky child will rival your picky child any day (is that a bumper sticker??)  His food choices, or lack of, really tempts my patience on a daily basis and I have to remind myself that this is not a battle I want to have and I just let him eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches, with no crust, all the time.  He's happy, I know he got some protein, so I let it go.  I count to 10 quickly, and practice deep breathing, and clench my fists, but I let it go.

Alex will NOT eat meat, with a couple exceptions -- do you call McDonald's chicken nuggets meat?  And he will chow down on my meatloaf.  go figure! but that's about it.  He also dislikes most veggie and fruits.  He prefers a ketchup sandwich without the burger or hotdog any day.  He loves broccoli though so we eat that a lot! So now that this food plan we are on is mainly fruits, veggies, and meat, Alex is not happy. Before this venture began, there really were only about 6 - 8 things he would eat and I just gave almost every one of them to the neighbor next door.  I had a feeling Alex would move in with them.  When I donated all my spaghetti to them, I warned them to lock their doors at night and don't shoot if you hear an intruder in the kitchen. Alex was going to be my biggest battle.

I really felt it was important to find foods that would make him happy because I want him to stay with this lifestyle for a long time.  And I also didn't want him to resent his sister as the cause of his newly found misery.  He cried a LOT the first week, lots of meltdowns.  And I never got mad at him.  I could not let this be a battle.  I had to take his feelings into account.  He just lost most of his "normal" food so I had to find a new normal for Alex..  My other kids, and Tom, seemed to come around nicely to these changes since they ate a bigger variety than Alex so it has ended up that I work harder to please Alex than the others.  Sometimes I succeed.  Many times I do not.  I promised him if he kept working with me, I would find foods he likes and I keep pursuing that promise every day.

But now that you understand the rules I have to follow and 95% of the food in my house is gone, I'll give you the rundown on what we really eat.  I'm sure there are other things that can be added but these were foods we were used to eating already so we kept them and I'll slowly add things as we go.  Please don't think this list are the only options you have.  You can have ANYTHING you want that meets the 2 rules.

I'm giving you a list that has grown over the past 3 months so you get the added fortune of knowing I trudged along in constant search of food that qualified so you have a MUCH wider variety of foods from Day 1 than I had on my Day 1.  We started with lots of rotisserie chicken, fresh veggies, and a full orchard of fruits in our kitchen... and me at the stove.. considering giving up often.

Let me start with bread... because if you have kids, you'll understand how losing this was to be the biggest challenge for me to overcome.  When we started this journey in June, bread was out.  It's ALL made with flour. This was the hardest part of this change because my kids lived off sandwiches and if sammies are gone then mama is at the stove cooking a hot meal.  THAT was a lot of work!!  But I did it the first month.  I cooked every meal - there was no other option.  There were no "fast" foods, like a sandwich, but, about 4 weeks into this diet with NO BREAD, we discovered EZEKIEL 4:19 bread.  It is flourless and no added sugar and it was allowed!!

EZEKIEL 4:19 is a bread made from grains and sprouts and when having to choose between no bread or EZEKIEL 4:19, everyone in my family LOVES this now!  It's in the Natural frozen section of Krogers. Earth Fare has it also. They have tortilla too that we use a lot.  They also made hamburger and hot dog buns.  It's a very filling bread since it's all spouted grains.  It's also not as soft and flexible as bread you are used to but after going 1 month without any kind of sandwiches, the kids took to this GREAT!  It has to stay frozen til you are ready to use it, and then it has to stay in the fridge.  With school in session, I don't know how we'd survive without E4:19.  PLEASE read the label on anything you buy though. I assumed the entire line of Ezekial with flourless but discovered the pita bread they make DOES have flour so we cannot have that.

Now that E4:19 is in the picture, and this bread is FILLING, we have added HALF an E4:19 english muffin with peanut butter as a breakfast option. Half really is enough when you add peanut butter and a piece of fruit.  My kids are filled *every time* with half an english muffin.  That would NEVER have happened before. Remember, I have some big eaters!!  But this E4:19 really is yummy and filling!! 

Here's a list of the items that are staples at our house now.  Many of these are the things we create recipes from.  This is not an exhaustive list.  As I remember what I left off, I'll add later.

Breakfast
Eggs (this is the favorite of everyone but Alex... no surprise).  Since we don't have high cholesterol levels overall, we can eat eggs and we have them most mornings.  It's quick to scramble 2 eggs.  I'm sure Dr. P will tell you that 2 egg WHITES are better but I do the whole egg.  I also keep hard boiled eggs in the fridge and I have sliced one and put on half a toasted english muffin with a little cheddar cheese on top, microwave 10-15 seconds for the cheese to melt a little and I send them out the door.  It's like an Egg McMuffin for them and it's fast for me!
Grits (plain only - not flavored.) - this was Alex's only breakfast choice for weeks.  He'd add cheddar cheese to them after they cooked so the cheese melted and he'd have cheesy grits.  We CAN have cheese. [cheese note -- pre-shredded cheese has flour added to the pkg to keep the cheese from sticking together so we buy the blocks and shred at home - also cheaper].  We also use grits for shrimp and grits. yum!
Meats (bacon, canadian bacon, sausage, etc.) We choose nitrate free meats since nitrates are so bad for you.  Hormel makes a Naturals brand bacon and lunch meat that we eat. Dr. P recommend Boars Head lunchmeat too.  Hormel also makes a nitrate free Canadian bacon that goes great with scrambled eggs or on that hard boiled Egg McMuffin thing I mentioned above. And there is a Naturals sausage as well. Watch for sales - the Naturals are more expensive but getting rid of nitrates is important to me - it should be important to all of us.  Since I'm doing this food change to improve or health, I don't want to only do it 80%. WalMart carries the Hormel lunch meat cheaper than Krogers and if you go to the Hormel website, you can get 55 cent coupons for it.
Oatmeal - it's not a big hit in our house but I like it.  I get the steel cut oats that need to cook for 30 minutes and add a chopped up apple and raisins for the last 20 minutes of cooking and some of the sugars from the fruit sweeten the oatmeal.  I'll make a large batch and keep it in the fridge for breakfast a few days.  It gets firm in the fridge so just add milk in the AM to a bowl and nuke for 45 seconds and it's great reheated.  I will add agave too - NOT honey (see next item).
Agave - this is a substitute for honey.  Honey is out.  Agave in moderation is OK.  It is lower on the glycemic index.  I will add a teaspoon or less to a bowl of oatmeal too.  Alex eats agave and PB sammies daily.
Fruit -- all of them.  i keep bowls in the fridge and on the counters and they have to choose a fruit before they eat anything else.  we have NEVER eaten so much fruit in our lives!
Shredded Wheat - I buy the kroger brand plain shredded wheat, the kids slice up a banana on it and it's fast and satisfies the urges for a bowl of cereal.  This is often a late night snack for me too.

Did I tell you we HAVE to eat every 3 hours?  It's part of the diet.  It's a metabolism thing.  I'll get to that later.  Remind me if I forget.

Snack Ideas:

Apples and peanut butter - one of Alex's favorite.  Watch your peanut butter and check the ingredients!!  We eat Smuckers Natural or JIF natural, or we grind it ourselves at Earth Fare.  We eat organic apples as often as I can get good ones too but that's another blog.  And I LOVE almond butter!!  Only discovered that because of this diet but L-O-V-E it!!  it has a sweetness to it so added to an apple and it gets my sugar craving most of the time.
Cheese stick and serving of lunchmeat - my kids love the Hormel "salami" lunchmeat - 4 slices is a serving - and they wrap it around a mozz. cheese stick and eat it like a popsicle. (not a breaded, deep fried cheese stick -- the plain cheese stick found in the dairy case.)
Air popped popcorn - this is a popular item here too since i let them get the air popper out and do it themselves.  no butter, little salt.
Fruit -- any and often.  A new favorite here is frozen grapes!  taste like mini-popsicles!  carly loves them!  or frozen cherries.  I just discovered kiwi on this diet too and most of us love those too!  I keep them in the fridge and cut the kiwi in half and cup the half in my hand like a bowl and scoop out the fruit with a spoon (thx to my sister Angie for sharing that tip!).  Very refreshing when it's cold.
Triscuits and cheese - triscuits are allowed!  swiss cheese is the best of all the cheeses so I'll cut up swiss and eat it on some triscuits if I need to munch.  or cheddar.
Almonds - These are a healthy food in general and Emily loves these.  I send these to lunch as well.
Nacho chips and salsa - Tostitos qualify and even generic store brand nachos work if you check the ingredients - if it says corn, oil and salt, you can eat it - don't eat anything with flour in the ingredients!  We add some some fat free sour cream.  Squish up an avocado with a little lemon juice and you have guacamole too.  Salsa just from the natural ingredients will have a little sugar but check the ingredients again just to make sure no additional sugar was added.  Who doesn't love some chips and salsa!!  BEWARE that the chips and salsa at your neighborhood Mexican restaurant are NOT allowed on this diet!  they have flour and are deep fried, etc.  I have brought my own Tostitos to the mexican restaurant before.  they have never cared since their chips are free anyway and I'm not eating theirs.  Don't eat the flour tortillas either!!
Fritos - Fritos are OK too and i have those for lunchboxes.  
Cottage cheese and canned pears - we like this but other fresh fruits go great with cottage cheese too. Fat free cottage cheese.
Hummus and triscuits - watch the ingredients in the hummus to make sure it's all natural.
*I can't get the kids to eat many fresh veggies b/c they are big ranch dippers and i have not found a ranch i like that fits the diet so we don't munch on fresh veggies as a snack often.  When I find a qualifying ranch, we'll do this too.

Robert encourage me to change things up a bit with this big food change.  He suggested we serve dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner.  If we are changing the food, making the whole process a fun adventure might be good.  We have done that a couple times but not as often since mornings are rushed. Kids think it's neat to have meals reversed.

Odds and Ends we eat that you can mix and match for meals

• Meats, poultry, fish, shrimp - we eat natural meat - Laura's beef is the kind we choose. I buy Krogers rotisserie chicken regularly (toss the skin) and keep it in the fridge for chicken salad with grapes, adding to quesadilla, anything that can use a boost of protein.  Fast and cheap.
  
• Tuna fish - add some boiled eggs
  
• Mayo -- we switched to Kraft Olive Oil mayo for the healthier oils.
  
• Ketchup - Heinz makes a low sugar ketchup.  I have not found a sugar free ketchup so we go with the low sugar even though there is a tad of sugar in it.  Ketchup was an important thing to the kids
• Spaghetti is OUT but we found Brown Rice spaghetti at Earth Fare called Tinkyada (that's the brand name) and it cooks soft like regular spaghetti (unlike the wheat pasta which is rough and chewy).  Brown rice pasta is very filling, is white in color so the kids don't know, and it tastes good! And they make spaghetti noodles, lasagna noodles,macaroni -- hopefully you are thinking now that mac and cheese is an option with the right noodles, lasagna too!  Kids are happy!  Remember, cheddar is allowed and so is milk and eggs so whip up some good mac and cheese
• S'ghetti Sauce -- we use Ragu NO SUGAR ADDED sauce.  Krogers has it -- there is a blue flag on the label that says No Sugar Added.  Look for it.  It's hidden among all the flavors and my kids love it!  (I'll post some recipes later that we have found and one is homemade s'ghetti sauce that is yummy!)
  
• Brown rice - no white rice, no potatoes on this diet!!  Stick with brown.  And I found that regular Kikkoman soy sauce has no sugar BUT the "light" kikkoman (to cut down on sodium) does have sugar so we go with the regular soy sauce.
  
• Brown rice cakes (like rice cakes but with brown rice - in the Natural section of krogers.  These are good with tuna fish on them.  I send tuna and these rice cakes separately in lunchboxes for the kids.
  
• salad (try to eat more than just iceberg - iceberg has the least amount of nutrition of all the salads). I put out lots of toppings for salads including black olives, black beans, crunch a few Tostitos chips like croutons, tomatoes, raw broccoli, mushrooms, cheese, walnuts or almonds, raisins, feta, bleu cheese - yum!!
• DRESSING - I need to mention this for sure!  We discovered a favorite that all my kids LOVE and this is coming from a bunch of creamy ranch loving kids who'd rather starve than eat italian dressing!  Newman's Own Oil and Vinegar is FABULOUS!!!  I'll buy it back from you if you try it and don't like it.  Delicious and fits the diet.  I also put this dressing on the wraps I make the girls for lunches. Remember to read the labels when you are looking for a dressing.  Most of those dressings have added sugar and flour.
• Quinoa - (pronounced Keen-wa) - another food we discovered since this began and we LOVE it!!  I buy it in bulk at Earth Fare (in the bulk section in the back for $3.50# - compared to $6# or more in a box at Krogers! -- it looks like diced up rice and you cook it with a 1-to-1 ratio.  I actually cook mine with chicken broth, boil on stove top, take off heat, and the quinoa will absorb the water.  I will stir fry some veggies and then add quinoa to the stir fry so it's like the cooked rice at the Japanese restaurant.  Add some soy sauce if you want. My kids really like this.  and it's sooooo good for you!
• Please change your butter -- get rid of it.  We use, very sparingly, Smart Balance Light.  Made with healthier oils.  I thought we'd never be able to do without butter but we really don't use it often at all.  Peanut butter on toast is our new butter
• Olive Oil - we use this a lot -- as liquid, as a spray too.  Our pans are sprayed with Kroger brand organic EVOO instead of butter.
• Canola oil - replace your veggie oil with this -- and using Smart Balance oil is even better. 
• Jelly - we use Polaner all fruit with our PB&J sammies.  Only fruit and it's natural juices as sweetener.
  

We drink a LOT of iced tea BUT i make it half regular lipton tea and half green tea.  Kids love it and green tea is so good for you!  We do NOT make good ol' Southern sweet tea anymore.  I used to put 1 1/4 cups sugar per gallon - yum!  But now we use STEVIA to sweeten our tea.

Stevia is a natural sweetener that is a plant leaf ground up super fine, like a dust similar to Equal or Splenda.  I buy the Stevia packets and keep them in my purse for on the go and I buy the bottle of liquid Stevia for the house.  The liquid is super concentrated so we'll put 5 or 6 drops, or less, in a full glass of tea so a bottle of Stevia will last me close to 2 months?  Since it's natural, you don't have to worry about all the chemicals in the manufactured sweeteners like Equal.  I just don't trust all those chemicals so I keep them to a minimum.

Talking about sweet - we will occasionally, and i mean 1x every month to 6 weeks have Edy's No Sugar Added ice cream -- usually for a birthday party.  It's scary to read all the chemicals that actually make a No Sugar Added ice cream so we keep it minimal but it let's the kids keep some of the things they are used to and still watching the sugar.  We also found the Brown Cow fat free no sugar added fudgesicles would qualify but also, use sparingly because they are nothing but chemicals on a stick.  But when the kids would be swimming with the neighbors and popsicles came out, I'd let them have the fudgesicles instead.

I feel like I'm going all over the place here!  I hope it's making a little sense!

Some food combinations we like:

• quesadillas (use the Ezekiel wraps), with mozz and shrimp or rotisserie ckn, on a griddle on the stove
  
• wraps -- the Ezekiel wraps again, lunchmeat (Hormels Naturals), lettuce, black olives, salt/pepper and i put on some of the Newmans Own Oil and Vinegar dressing and wrap away!  cut in half, toothpick to hold each side closed -- the girls are the ENVY of their lunch table every time!
• nachos -- put a serving on a plate, crunch a little, add lettuce, fat free sour cream, salsa, homemade guacamole (just avocado and lemon juice, thank you), tomatoes, black olives, ckn or shrimp, whatever you fancy - on a dinner plate.
• salad bar - all the kids love making their own salads with fun toppings and the Newmans Own dressing.
  
• we eat burgers and Oscar Meyer Naturals (nitrate free) hot dogs every now and then with Ezekiel 4:9 buns.
• E4:19 english muffins to make mini-pizzas (kids were sooo excited when we figured that out!)
• egg salad is OK too.
  
  

We buy organic fat free milk (Kroger brand is great) and organic apples (have you read the Dirty Dozen list??) .  No need to buy organic bananas.

OK - this is a lot of info and since I want to get it out there, I'll stop here and start working soon on some recipes.  I think I might also just type up a grocery store style list of all the foods in my house and maybe you can use it as a shopping list!  I really believe that now since the hard part of figuring out WHAT to eat is done, this is really easy to keep doing.  We are not really missing anything but the junk food.  We have found a substitute for almost everything and everyone is happy (except Alex but he has adjusted pretty well)!

I do want to add that for the first 2 - 3 days of this diet, i was ready to kill someone or something for SUGAR!  I've never craved anything as much since my pregnancies!  I wonder if it was just because I knew I couldn't eat it?  But i went nuts eating apples to satisfy the urge or I would have a tablespoon or two of almond butter.  I know now that if you can get through the first few days, the cravings are GONE!!  Really!  and i can tell you that i have had to get BACK on this diet a couple times in the past 4 weeks and each time, the first 2-3 days is hard. Maybe your body really is craving the sugar you have taken away but please find something that will calm your urges because it will pass -- I promise -- than you'll feel soo good!

Two of my sisters started eating like we are too. One lost 10 pounds in her first week!  I have a close friend and she and her husband are doing it too.  He lost 16 pounds in 2 weeks JUST by dropping the sugar and flour.  If I would only do a little exercise, I bet it would come off faster for me!  But that's another blog. :-)

til next time...
Jennifer