Wednesday lunch

SBJ sandwich, mango fruit squeeze pouch, frozen corn and an apple

ninja pancake

I bought frozen pancakes that are allergy friendly and he totally disliked them. 4 months down the road, I made the same pancakes but made them look like a Ninjago ninja and he scarfed it down

Monday

Strawberries, Annie's GF Snickerdoodle bunnies. Veggie straws, pizza. (We had Amy's GF DF pizza for lunch yesterday and we always add the "orange" Day cheese to it). We had a leftover piece

Banana Choc chip bread GF!

So I wanted to experiment a bit w the Betty Crocker's GF chocolate chip cookie box. I followed the directions to start, (for the 3 eggs, I use flax goo). For the butter, I use the Fleishmann's unsalted butter sticks (vegan), so after adding all the ingredients per box, I added 3 smashed bananas, 1/4 cup of water. Then baked 350 for about 30 min. (I def vary my cooking times by baked good and especially when I add more puréed fruits, they tend to stay gooey if we don't bake longer, so I would Rec'd watching after 30 min to see if the center is still gooey.

To recap on ingredients needed:
-Flax goo eggs x 3 (or reg eggs).

-Box GF BETTY Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix

-2 or 3 ripe bananas

-1 1/4 cup water

1 stick of vegan butter (or reg butter)

-that's all folks!

Wednesday

Soy yogurt w choc chips (hmm can u tell what mom bought at store over weekend and what DS has requested daily!!) honey ham squares. Tortilla chips, juice box

Tuesday

Half SB & J (on Schar bread), piece of banana choc chip bread, frozen corn, juice, yogurt w choc chips

Monday

Annie's GF SNICKERDOODLE bunnies, soy yogurt w container of mini choc chips to stir into yogurt, juice box and fruit strip

Wednesday

Schar bread w SB n J, cereal, strawberries, juice box

Tuesday

Carrot chips. Schar bread sticks, soy yogurt, deli meat

Monday, holiday!

Holiday so we took the clan to www.thedinopark.com

Friday lunch

Schar breadsticks, GF sugar cone w Craisins and raisins inside, deli meat, apple, yogurt

Thursday

Sun butter and Jam on Schar bread, frozen corn, apple slices

Wednesday

Corn tortilla w soy cream cheese and jam ( he actually LOVED this!)soy yogurt, homemade bread/muffin, apple

Tuesday

Deli ham pinwheels, soy yogurt, grapes, frozen corn and Schar breadsticks

Monday lunch

Thermos funtainer w warmed rice and Aidell's pineapple chicken hot dog. Juice box and apple sauce.

Friday

Pizza day at school. Last Friday of the month, his preschool has a pizza day. Which I am not a fan of, because he is the only one who can't eat it :( so I try to figure out a way to still make his lunch special. There is a restaurant called. Zpizza which offers a GF crust and they carry Daiya cheese. Whenever we eat there I order an extra pizza and freeze it. He then can eat it by the slice when he wants to. I have tried multiple GF Crusts, homemade or store bought, he likes this one the best. I think bc it looks the most like his schools pizza. Sometimes that plays a factor for him (which I understand completely) and sometimes he can care less about eating something similar (like when I try to add pepperoni to his pizza--yuck mommy!)

Thursday lunch

Lunch meat pinwheels, soy yogurt, frozen corn, juice box.

Tuesday

Warmed up FunTainer (hot water inside for 2 min) prior to putting in warmed up food...
Brown rice, Aidells pineapple hot dog, 2 kinnikinick choc "Oreo" style cookies

Monday

Sunbutter and plum jam on Schar GF bread, grapes, frozen corn, tortilla chips.

Friday lunch

Strawberries, fruit strip, Hormel natural pepperoni, cereal mix

Thursday Lunch

Soy yogurt, Schar breadsticks, Hormel natural pepperoni, apple, fruit strip, and a water bottle

Wednesday lunch

Today's lunch was a hit. I found GF sugar cones at Whole Foods and I filled it w blueberries, 3 slices of bacon, fruit strip, and a mini muffin (spice muffin)

Tuesday's lunch

Lunch meat roll ups, carrots, corn, banana/spice cake muffin. I use Namaste spice cake mix (subscribe and save via amazon and then I just modify and sometimes put zucchini, carrot shreds, Craisins, choc chips, or bananas...so many options! It's his fav muffin mix

Monday lunch

So today didn't go so well. My son ha strep throat over weekend and apparently he didn't have an appetite for lunch! He ate all his apple slices and that was it. He didn't touch the sunbutter and jam or the Schar breadsticks. I don't think I will include that many apple slices in the future. we have a ton though, we were assigned to snacks for our soccer game Saturday but it was canceled. Anyway, I prob will have a lot of apple slices this week in lunch... I may try to make some apple cobbler or something too.

Friday lunch

Strawberries, juice box, Schar breadsticks, Smoothie pop. (it's about halfway unfrozen by lunch and I make his smoothies milk or yogurt based, so by the time he eats it, similar to drinking a yogurt blend.

Thursday lunch

Thermos w brown rice and Aidells hot dog. Strawberries and a juice box, today was the first day he ate everything in his lunch.

Ingredient label for breadsticks

They are crunchy and fun to eat. Total bonus, today a friend at lunch asked if he could eat some bc they looked so yummy :) love it when an allergy friendly lunch is a favorite :)

Schar breadsticks

I buy them on Amazon, sometimes I find them at a natural grocer

Wednesday lunch

Schar breadsticks (amazon), (I wrappe them in paper towel to keep them separate from the lunch meat pinwheels), pinwheels are soy cream cheese and honey ham. Soy yogurt, carrot sticks, and enjoy life chocolate chips.

Tuesday lunch

So he didn't like the crackers yesterday. But at least he ate one...
We went bk to sunbutter and jelly sandwiches today w the Schar multigrain (only top 8 is soy) w a rice krispie bar (our local generic grocer brand it's dairy free unlike the brand names ) plus corn and blue berries, he is digging the cold corn!!

Close up of GF Cracker sandwich

Our local grocer carries their own brand of GF EF crackers, most of the brand names have some sort of allergen in them, I am so thankful for HEB!

Monday lunch

GF crackers w soy cream cheese and lunch meat "sandwiches" tortilla chips, enjoy life brand cookie, blackberries, fruit cup and juice box.

FunTainers for left overs

I microwave a coffee mug of water for 90 sec and pour into the funtainer. Then I reheat what ever left overs I going to use and that takes a few min to do, so the. I dump out the water and pour in the left overs, it stays warm til lunch! I pack a small bowl (ive learned my preschooler makes too much of a mess w plates!) and a small spoon and it def nice way to change it up a bit.

Leftover Friday

Reheated some quinoa noodles that we eat w earth balance buttery spread and a little salt. I also cut up some of his fav sausage. W a pack of raisins on the side and a juice box. This all goes in the FunTainer

Lunch Box containers

I have quite a few containers that I have used in my son's lunch box the past few years of preschool. This year, Rubbermaid came out with a new lunch box kit, the ice pack snaps into one of the containers on the outside and the small containers are easy for my son to open.  So far, we have switched to using this container.

http://www.rubbermaid.com/category/pages/productdetail.aspx?Prod_ID=RP092026

I bought it at my local grocery store, but I tend to buy quite a bit of allergy friendly foods on Amazon and I saw Amazon sells this here as well.

Day 2 lunch

Schar bread (amazing bread!!!) we have tried ALL breads, I have a GF bread machine setting, but nothing compares to the Schar bread!!
Sunbutter and jelly sandwich, Enjoy Life cookie, frozen corn, and grapes.

Day 1 lunch

Smoreables Graham style crackers with sun butter and jelly. Soy yogurt with Enjoy Life choc chips (yep my son pours that into his yogurt), frozen corn (which tastes nice and cool by the time lunch rolls around).

Back to School, what's for lunch!?

Now that my oldest is in Pre-K daily, I thought I would post his lunches as often as I can.  We are doing fairly well with somewhat of a variety and I thought maybe this would be helpful especially to those looking for new ideas in the food allergy world.  Could easily be adaptable to all sorts of allergies or no allergies for that matter.

where to start

How do I start my blog? There are so many ways I could introduce this blog, but I figured giving some general information of what we go through may help.

My 4 year old son Sam has multiple food allergies and eczema. The food allergies are tolerable. It's easy! You just avoid the foods! (that may sound facetious but it's not, once you learn the ropes of how to adjust to alternate food options, it's not bad at all!) The eczema is awful, it affects his daily living and we try everything for him! He is a happy and playful little boy during the day, but at night, he struggles to sleep through the night. He is up at least 2 times each night, crying because he is itchy... He has slept through the night no more than 5 x in his entire life!!


Sam's night time routine without a bad flare up, just typical night:
shower
immediately put Vanicream lotion on while still wet(lately we have been using Neopsorin's eczema lotion, it works v well too!)
followed by dad's wet tube socks on Sam's legs and arms
then footed PJs.
(when eczema is out of control, we add the steroid creams and add aquaphor).

The socks truly do wonders for him! We used to do 1 pair of wet PJs followed by 1 pair of dry PJs, but we noticed the socks concentrate the water better and for some reason this works!

Right now it's the middle of the summer, which means we get to go swimming often! His skin does so much better when it is exposed to the chlorine. In fact, during the winter months we use chlorine baths 1 x per week.

Although we have a pretty good routine, it's not perfect and I am always open to suggestions and am always open to try new oils/lotions/creams any day!

I have often thought of taking Sam to National Jewish in Denver, since they are the world experts on eczema care..and when we are talking world, Denver doesn't seem that far away!

------
update, I wrote that original post over a year ago and Sam's skin has made dramatic improvement. The only thing that truly works wonders, is the tincture of time.  All of those parents with children who have severe eczema, I hope that you can hold onto the fact that it almost always gets better with time!

Wild Kratts party

For my oldest son's 5th birthday we did a Wild Kratts party! Basically it was super easy b.c Wild Kratts uses animals of all sorts on their shows, so we did quite a bit of wild safari type of decorating, but decided to do a cool coral snake birthday cake.

 For the goodie bags, I bought these bags at Amazon and inside I had the animal print note pads, then raided the $1 store for simple things, like animals or small snakes.  I actually found a neat book on animals that I put in each bag too.

For the snake, we used 2 bunt cake pans. Cut each in half, for a total of 4 segments, then added them all together. I frosted the bottom of the foil lined cardboard, to keep the snake in place since it was so big!  For the grass, I just bought coconut shreds and added green food coloring.  We made a tongue with a fruit strip.   For cake mix, I used Betty Crocker GF vanilla mix.  I use flax goo to make it egg free. I feel that binds better than any other egg substitute.

Caterpillar Birthday Party

I thought my first post should be a fun post...so I thought I would start w. Charlie's first birthday party. We did a Caterpillar theme and it is truly amazing how much products have improved w.i the past 3 years from my older son's first birthday. We are keeping everything free of the top 8 allergens in our house (gluten/milk/eggs/nuts/peanuts/fish/soy/shellfish). I never would have thought a cake could turn out so cute being free of basically all ingredients I previously would have thought I needed to make a cake!! Anyway...

The birthday cake is made out of CherryBrook Kitchen GF Chocolate Cake Mix.

If egg sub is ever needed in cakes or cupcakes, I tend to use 1/2 cup of applesauce. Sometimes I also add the 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. But for Children's Cakes, the straight up sub w. applesauce works fine. For decorating the caterpillar, I bought the Wal Mart brand fruit snacks. They make small circle fruit snacks and they have come in quite handy for foodie crafts. The mouth is made of Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. The eyes, (googly eyes!) were originally fruit snacks, but googly was so much cuter. For the antennas, I used 2 twirly birthday candles. I have used Veggie Straws in the past (we did a trial run for dad's birthday :) )

The marshmallow pops are totally unrelated to caterpillar but I think they are so cute and fun to eat! We use Bakers Chocolate Baking Squares (the red box is dairy free!) (you can also use Enjoy Life Foods Chocolate Chips) but honestly the Bakers Chocolate Squares are a fraction of the cost. So for dipping foods in chocolate, we tend to use the Bakers Squares.

Caterpillar kabobs:

Strawberry heads & grape bodies (had to add some fruit in the party somehow!)