Help Please! Food suggestions ?

[CageFreeFamily]

We've been a TF family for several years but have recently had to cut out gluten, dairy, onions, cabbage family veggies, chocolate, coconut products, prepared gluten-free breads, apples and nuts. My 5wk old daughter seems to have food sensitivities and we're trying to eliminate the possible culprits.

We're doing fine with dinner, but I'm really struggling to find foods that I can have for breakfast, lunch and snacks. We can't always cook things because there just isn't time/space with three young kids and everything that goes with them.

I would keep soup on hand, but our access to acceptable chicken is mail-order only and they are too expensive for more than one meal of soup each week.

Any suggestions for breakfast, lunch and snacks would be greatly appreciated!
I'm so hungry!!

[Ruthla]

Make a list of the things you CAN eat. Are beans OK? If so, you have lots of options: cold cooked beans in salads or smushed up for pate/veggie dip, vegetarian bean soups (or bean soups with a tiny amount of meat in the broth). If you can't use onions, then sautee up whatever savory veggies you CAN eat for the soup bases- ginger, garlic, celery, etc.

Breakfasts can be leftovers from the night before, or things that are typically thought of as "lunch" or "dinner" foods. It looks like you can still have eggs? Scambled, fried, boiled for quick cold snacks. How about canned fish? Salmon and sardines are low in mercury and fairly easy to find.

[CageFreeFamily]

Eggs seem to be okay, and I've been having sardine salad on rice crackers for lunch everyday.

I'm not sure about beans though. Truthfully, I've been afraid to try. I made hummus one evening and she screamed the whole next day.
I could have been a coincidence, but man! Colic is a kick in the butt, but with two other small children, it makes life impossible. The whole house falls into disrepair on her colicky days.

I haven't had any trouble with veggies, though I haven't tried any from the cabbage family in about 4 weeks.

I've been having bacon or sausage and eggs for breakfast every morning. I'm just a little worried about having so much egg in my diet with this and mayo at lunch.

I'll tell you what though. This is really challenging me to work through any emotional attachments I have to food! I miss dairy and nut butters desperately.

[Koalamom]

Sounds a bit like our diet due to my kids allergies. I have to be really careful with my nursing 5 month old.

We have beans alot since meat is an allergen for us. Lentils are pretty safe to start with. Just make sure they are soaked or even sprouted prior to cooking and it will be easier to digest.

We have been having injera for breakfast, and it sits so well. Fermented teff cakes.

Potatoes and/or sweet potatoes with bacon is so good for breakfast.

We don't do gluten at all and we have made sucessful GF saourdough bread. Hit the spot for mising bread.

Have you tried all types of dairy, like raw, cultured, goat, or sheep dairy?

Have you visited the allergy forum? I have found lots of help there and are even (very slowly) managing to get the the root of the issues.

[Koalamom]

PS- just checked out your blog and I love your house, just beautiful! Sound like the opposite of dh and I. We left the south in a diesel camper van traveling the country to VT to settle a off grid homestead. Not sure why you would want to leave this beautiful state.

[CageFreeFamily]

We never made it to VT. We left from Austin TX, traveled 27 states and wound up settling in NM instead of VT. We simply couldn't find an affordable option in VT. We're in for some seriously hard trials growing food here at 8200 ft, but we couldn't beat $600/mo for 300 acres in the mountains by an artist community.

It has it's downsides for our food values, but we're hoping to get a good flock of chickens and some dairy goats in the spring. We have two livestock guardian dogs, so hopefully we won't have too much trouble with the coyotes and elk.

[Koalamom]

Funny! We left near Dallas and ended up in VT. Still renting though, but we will probably be getting land and a house within a few months to setup a self selficient homestead and herbal apocathary.

That is a pretty good price for 300 acres!

[Koalamom]

About colic, my 5 month old has been the worst. I have eliminated so many of my favorite foods and was just barely getting by with fennel, fenugreek tea, but just the other day I got some digestive enzymes, and he is not colicy at all, and last night he slept sooo good. I mean 8pm-8am waking up only twice! That is instead of our usual of waking 10 times.

In another month I am going to trial our "colic trigger" foods as i take the DE and see how he does.

[kjbrown92]

Breakfast smoothie (fruits, carrot juice, etc.)
Popovers (recently figured out how to make these gluten-free). Yum.
buckwheat waffles (make a double batch when you have time, and then you can just pop them in the toaster to reheat)
we do millet porridge a lot (but we use coconut milk in it, not sure how it would be without that creaminess)
hot buckwheat cereal (bob's red mill)

What about possible culprits: soy and corn (those are two of the top 4)?

other non-"breakfast" things we like:
salad
veggies with mashed avocado
broth to sip
rice cakes
sweet potato chips

[krankedyann]

Roasted chickpeas for a snack. I like mine with herbamare.