Will you hold my hand through modified TED meal planning?

[nalo]

I did a TED before so I know how to do that but I think I need to do a modified TED in order to get to the bottom of things. For some reason my brain will do better cutting out lots of things rather than just corn which is the current number one suspect. Dairy and gluten are out already. I just can't bear to cut out corn for a week and have no change and then be grasping at straws for what the heck it is. So...it will be better to cut out lots, keep fingers crossed for improvement and go from there. 2 main issues: meal planning for me and what to do with DD. She eats lots of solids and I just can't cut too much from her diet obviously. I mean, a 16 month old can't do a true TED, she'd starve to death. So...how to balance cutting from my diet and cutting from hers as well? If I can get 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2 dinners and 2 snacks I'll be fine. I can eat the same thing over and over as long as I like it. Snack 1: all natural potato chips with oil, sea salt, pepper. That's about the extent of my planning thus far . DD always eats hot cereal for breakfast (GF oats or amaranth or quinoa flakes) with coconut milk, cinnamon, flax and raspberries. For lunch, dinner and snacks she currently eats...lentils, chicken, turkey, white potato, yam (she hates sweet potato and is currently refusing squash), avocado (favorite food), banana, homemade applesauce (apples, cinnamon), pear, plain brown rice cake (just a little - it's a treat to her), broccolli, carrots, peas, mango and papaya (but they're starting to not be good around here), various spices, onion, garlic, almond butter mixed with a tiny bit of raw unheated honey, refried black beans....I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. With the "simple removal" of dairy and gluten my normal breakfast is one egg, a few pieces of Wellshire Farms pepper bacon and one or two GF frozen waffles with jam. Applesauce too if I have some made. For lunches and dinners I've been doing mexican (when I though corn tortillas were fine), soups, roast chicken with potato wedges, GF pasta with store bought and homemade sauce, chicken and rice, lots of salsa...So I guess I need help deciding on maybe 10-12 foods to continue eating and what I can make with those ingredients and also what to allow DD to eat. I SOOOO thought I was past this point.

ETA: I'll be writing which foods I think I want to add here so feel free to comment...

1. brown and white rice
2. turkey
3. chicken
4. white potato
5. pepper, sea salt, olive oil, ghee
6. bacon
7. apple
8. banana
9. avocado
10. lentils
11. almond butter
12. honey
this list doesn't work to make enough meals but it's my first thinking

[Mamato3wild ponnie]

How about grilled chicken on salad w avacado...i love that for a quick lunch.

[nalo]

that's a good one - what dressing though? and...just chicken and lettuce?


oh yeah....and I definately need something sweet in the rotation and something to flavor my water a bit so I drink enough. tall order, eh?

[springmum]

I don't know if this is a possibility for you, but if you can swap (or add) butternut squash or sweet potato you can do what I do:

roast either one with olive oil
puree with a little water

pan fry chicken(or other meat) to brown it
add pureed squash/sweet potato
simmer until cooked

All I add is sea salt, and I find it has plenty of flavour thanks to the roasting.

Don't know if that would work with what you had in mind...

Shoot....I re-read you post and saw the "no sweet potato, or squash" thing..... sorry...I'm no help!!

[nalo]

Originally Posted by springmum

I don't know if this is a possibility for you, but if you can swap (or add) butternut squash or sweet potato you can do what I do:

roast either one with olive oil
puree with a little water

pan fry chicken(or other meat) to brown it
add pureed squash/sweet potato
simmer until cooked

All I add is sea salt, and I find it has plenty of flavour thanks to the roasting.

Don't know if that would work with what you had in mind...

Shoot....I re-read you post and saw the "no sweet potato, or squash"
thing..... sorry...I'm no help!!

thanks for the idea. it's DD that's not keen on those things but I could try this. She is also more likely to eat them if they are purreed with chicken and a little onion or garlic.

[Mamato3wild ponnie]

Can you use fresh lime juice..from a lime of course? Lime juice and salt is a great dressing or vinegrette.

[nalo]

Originally Posted by Mamato3wild ponnie

Can you use fresh lime juice..from a lime of course? Lime juice and salt is a great dressing or vinegrette.

Yeah, I often use lemon juice, a little olive oil and pepper as a dressing but I was thinking maybe no hard core citrus like that for this ED??

[Chinese Pistache]

It seems like you've got lots of fruits, but not many vegetables. Can you swap one out? That would help with preparing meats, imo.

Ideas:
1. Green salad (if you're doing lettuce) with chopped up chicken and apples.

2. Hash of cooked rice and chicken or turkey topped with avocado.

3. Turkey meatballs over rice (make gravy with some chicken stock, and rice flour to thicken if you want).

4. lentils cooked with bacon over rice or potatoes

5. rice "pudding" mixed with almond butter and honey (could use as an oatmeal replacement, too and add apples)

6. Oven baked potato wedges/fries with turkey patties (pretend it has a bun around it)

[kjbrown92]

So what are you taking out besides corn?
And what do you know is bad (just dairy and gluten)?

The unofficial intolerance list is (in order): dairy, gluten, corn, soy, wheat, eggs, white potato, apple, barley, coconut, oats, orange, peanuts.

The bottom of the list of intolerances (only 1 reaction out of 32 respondents): asparagus, blackberry, blueberry, broccoli, brussel sprouts, eggplant, fennel, grapes, kelp, peach, pineapple, romaine lettuce, winter squash... in case you want to add one of those.

So if I were you, for the trial, I'd take out the white potato, the apple, and the ghee. And put something else in from the less likely portion of the list.

Let's broaden your list though....
You say bacon, I say pork (which means you can do pork roast, pork chops, prosciutto, ground pork to make better meatballs mixed with your ground turkey)
brown & white rice gives you rice, rice cakes, rice noodles, cream of rice, you can thicken drippings and broth with rice flour to make gravy, puffed rice cereal
chicken and turkey give you the meats, plus meatballs, plus broth, plus gravy, soup
You say almond butter, I saw almonds, almond butter, toasted almonds, almond flour

You can make a smoothie out of banana, honey, almond butter and ice
If you add lettuce, which someone else suggested for salad, I've just been mashing avocado and putting it on my salad as the dressing (you could probably even thin it with a little olive oil if you want)
rice pudding sweetened with honey (can even add some diced banana in there)
rice cakes with almond butter

[nalo]

thanks for the ideas - it's always helpful to remember all the variations of a certain food. bacon is actually the only "red" meat that I eat. I don't eat any beef and I can't stand anything else from a pig - just bacon. I also forgot that I'm definately keeping coconut milk in, as that's what we use for our smoothies. I didn't list many veggies because I'm super picky about them (it's horrible). I fix DD way more veggies than I eat myself.
to answer your question about what else am I removing besides corn.....god I don't know. I feel like a total scatterbrained idiot. For some reason I feel I'll be more likely to stick to an ED if it's stricter (even if the other removals are slightly random). I realize that makes no sense. I am pretty certain dairy is still bad and that is only intollerance that has ever really been confirmed. I think gluten gives DD lots of gas but nothing has really changed since removing it again a few weeks ago so I don't know if it's kind of okay or if it's bad but there is just something else or multiple things I am missing. thinking all of this through for the last few hours I think I can do fine for myself. I just need to make sure I think this through for DD so there's enough left that she likes a lot in order to get enough calories into her.

[nalo]

Okay, new plan starting today.
No...
dairy (including ghee)
gluten
tomato (because I eat a lot of it)
soy protein (except I already made a small mistake on this one today)
corn
egg
peanut butter
oats

currently I am going to keep apple, coconut and white potato from the unofficial intollerance list. I eat very little potato so I really don't think that's it. I remain nervous about avocado and coconut because DD eats both of these things every day. However, I can't fathom taking them out right now so they stay for now - we'll see how this elimination goes. Wish me luck. And, on a side note, almond butter and raw honey on a salted rice cake made a surprisingly delicious treat this morning with my bacon!

[Chinese Pistache]

I hope it works out

[kjbrown92]

I'm one of those people that actually loves rice cakes. DD and I munch them all the time in the car for a snack. I like peanut butter on mine (though it's been giving me heartburn so I'm avoiding it). When they watch a movie, I break one up and put it in her bowl so she can pretend she has "popcorn".

So the only thing on your list that my DD can have is peanut, and she doesn't have it very often. So want my menus?

Breakfast: puffed millet, or Koala Crisp cereal (a sweet treat for me -- you didn't say you were giving up chocolate...), rice chex or buckwheat waffles or sorghum scones, or rice chex, coconut milk yogurt (sometimes with fruit on it), bacon (Jones sausage are safe too, in case you get tired of bacon)
Lunches: leftovers, rice cakes with almond butter or mashed avocado rolled up in turkey. We use Thumann's deli turkey (no additives).
Dinners: chicken soup (broth, chicken, carrots, broccoli), chicken marsala, chicken mirabella, sweet and sour chicken, stir fry chicken over rice, chicken and gravy over rice

Do you just not like the taste of pork? besides bacon, I mean. My brother thought he didn't like pork because he thought it was all like my mother made when we were growing up -- pork chops grilled to death until they were dry and dusty). I made him pulled pork and he loved it. He said he didn't know pork could taste good. I also do pork chops with saurkraut in the slow cooker, and Transylvanian goulash.

[nalo]

Originally Posted by kjbrown92

I'm one of those people that actually loves rice cakes. DD and I munch them all the time in the car for a snack. I like peanut butter on mine (though it's been giving me heartburn so I'm avoiding it). When they watch a movie, I break one up and put it in her bowl so she can pretend she has "popcorn".

So the only thing on your list that my DD can have is peanut, and she doesn't have it very often. So want my menus?

Breakfast: puffed millet, or Koala Crisp cereal (a sweet treat for me -- you didn't say you were giving up chocolate...), rice chex or buckwheat waffles or sorghum scones, or rice chex, coconut milk yogurt (sometimes with fruit on it), bacon (Jones sausage are safe too, in case you get tired of bacon)
Lunches: leftovers, rice cakes with almond butter or mashed avocado rolled up in turkey. We use Thumann's deli turkey (no additives).
Dinners: chicken soup (broth, chicken, carrots, broccoli), chicken marsala, chicken mirabella, sweet and sour chicken, stir fry chicken over rice, chicken and gravy over rice

Do you just not like the taste of pork? besides bacon, I mean. My brother thought he didn't like pork because he thought it was all like my mother made when we were growing up -- pork chops grilled to death until they were dry and dusty). I made him pulled pork and he loved it. He said he didn't know pork could taste good. I also do pork chops with saurkraut in the slow cooker, and Transylvanian goulash.

Thanks for the menu help, I appreciate it. I've never really liked chocolate before but over the last year it has started growing on me a lot. I like popping safe chocolate chips for a sweet treat and I do love Koala Crisp too although I don't buy it often because I'll eat the whole box in like 2 days. I really don't the flavor of pork at all. I try it on occasion thinking I must like it and I never do. I use to eat it as a kid and then I was a vegetarian for a long time so part of it is that is also kind of grosses me out (don't ask me how bacon is any different, I have no idea) but I do try it sometimes and always end up hating it. However, when I was pregnant we went to a party at DH's work and there was Chinese BBQ pork. I SCARRFED it! I couldn't get enough. But that was a one time preggo thing. Our local HFS carries turkey that is safe and that I love so that is good - it's just a bit far away so I don't always have the luxury of deli turkey. Hey - thanks again for the menu lists. It's quite helpful.

[kjbrown92]

My deli turkey source is 40 minutes away, so I go once every couple weeks and it doesn't last long. Though they say you can freeze deli meat (which I did try this summer and it came out fine).
Personally I love bacon (and Canadian bacon, and prosciutto - which is more like bacon than ham/pork).
Oh the other day, someone made dates with bacon wrapped around them, and grilled. They were supposed to have cream cheese on them but she made some for me without. They were soooooo good. Sweet and salty. Yum. It was a potluck and I brought bacon-wrapped scallops so I had a lot of bacon that night (since those were the only 2 safe things I could have, besides my rum cake -- Yummy).
I'm a milk chocolate person myself. Don't like dark chocolate. But Koala Crisps are good (I got them through amazon.com so they were a good price).

[nalo]

Today is day 2 of the new ED. Poop is different already. It kind of was yesterday too but it seems like yesterday was a transition poop and today was fully a new poop. God, these sentences are ridiculous sometimes . Very soft and squishy. No hard balls, just a big smash of formed poop in the dipe. Good sign I think. She has also been fussier than usual the last 2 days. Teething could be it but I am also thinking a bit of detox??? Nights have not been better though. I fear even if I'm eliminating all the bad stuff now I won't see a change in sleep that will indicate that to me because she is SO USED to waking at night I think she may continue even if there is no pain/gas involved.

[kjbrown92]

Poor sleep was the main symptom for my DD. The first night she slept through the night (after I found all the triggers), I kept checking on her to make sure she was okay. I got used to it. Believe me, I got used to it!!

[nalo]

Yeah, I think I won't sleep at all the first few nights DD starts to sleep again - even a 5 hour stretch or something. I'll wake up engorged and panicked.

[changingseasons]

Oh man- I'm almost disappointed for you, because that means that there is something else bothering her. BUT- it also means that you're on the right track figuring it out.

And I do think the sleep can get better, even if she's used to waking up. We don't get to that point often... but when DD's symptoms are really low and she's healing up nicely, I sometimes get a FIVE HOUR STRETCH : of sleep at night!!! So there is hope.

[nalo]

Originally Posted by changingseasons

Oh man- I'm almost disappointed for you, because that means that there is something else bothering her. BUT- it also means that you're on the right track figuring it out.

And I do think the sleep can get better, even if she's used to waking up. We don't get to that point often... but when DD's symptoms are really low and she's healing up nicely, I sometimes get a FIVE HOUR STRETCH : of sleep at night!!! So there is hope.

Ha! I know. I'm starting to have a very sinking feeling. I mean, I KNEW there had to be something else not good for her but I'll still pretend I'm naive and that maybe it's tomato or something else instead of corn, even though that's what my instinct is telling me. Arrrrrgh. She is sooooo dependent on nursing to sleep (initially and through the night) which is our next hurdle after we finally figure out all the foods but if I could get a 5 hour stretch once a week even, that would be fabulous. How pathetic is that? I've been wondering lately how tired I really am and how much lower my energy is than normal. I am really interested to see how I change and feel different when I am finally sleeping well again. And DD....will she change at all? She's a pretty darn happy girl but I wonder what might be different if she were to sleep really well on a nightly basis.