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!

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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.