On the allergy front

We're making some long-awaited changes on the allergy-front here at our house. When we had Anna at the allergist recently (everything came back negative) I learned that the allergist doesn't take a lot of stock in IGg allergy testing (the type that we have had done on the boys, which alerted us to their sensitivities). Her questioning of the testing sent me doing some more research, but it only confirmed what we believed from the beginning...immune system dysfunctions can arise from food intolerances.

Almost a full year ago, we had both boys tested for IGg food allergies, and they are both allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, and citrus. Jacob also to peanuts, Andrew to lima and kidney beans.

Let me just make the understatement of the year: Feeding my family has been the ultimate challenge of the past year.

(If you're new here, and have nothing better to do than watch snow fall, you can get the background story here. And some follow-up to it here).

The recommended time frame for removing culprit foods was 3-12 months. Just about to 12 months, so we had planned on having them re-tested. Due to combined factors, we simply don't have the extra $500 we need to have them tested.

SO...we've decided to go ahead and start the rotation diet. (Side note: In looking at the paperwork from their test results, we realized that Jacob really didn't have enough of a reaction to tomatoes to pull them from his diet. But in our zealousness to rectify health situations a year ago, we removed tomatoes. We're sorry, Jacob. May you always continue to take the same enthusiastic delight in your ketchup-consumption as you have this week).

A rotation sounds so simple. And it's so NOT. I have a spreadsheet that I've been working on, with a full-month menu plan. First, as a family, we created a list of meals that we've missed and would like to rotate back in. (Top of the list: Pizza!). And I created a list of all the stuff I've made up over the course of the past year. I could publish a mini-cookbook. Then, I plugged in meals that I wanted to have in the Crock-Pot based on schedules, and other easy-meal nights based on evening activities. Then I started plugging in the allergy-laden meals...no more than one meal in each restricted food group every four days. I basically went with once a week, taking into account church pot-lucks, etc.

I color-coded the allergy foods, so I could see at a glance my spacing. Okay...we want REAL pancakes on Saturday? Make sure there's no meal with wheat, eggs, or dairy after Tuesday. Oops...let's shuffle these around-can't have pizza on Monday and then breaded chicken two days later. You get the idea. Finish filling in the spaces with the allergy-free recipes, and add in b'fasts and lunches.

There are a lot of things that won't change around here...dairy was relatively easy to do without, and the substitutes work well. They'll still have rice milk instead of regular milk on cereal. I'll still use coconut oil to bake with instead of butter. If I don't have to include one of their trigger foods for a recipe to make it work, then I won't. But I can plan for holiday gatherings, too...just don't feed them from any of their groups the week before a holiday meal, and they should be fine eating like "normal" people. We just need to be vigilant about keeping track of symptoms like ear-aches, sleeplessness, and constipation.

All in all, I'm very excited to have this done. I've been wanting to be more on top of our grocery budget and time anyway, so this was the final nudge. Tomorrow night I'll tackle the month's grocery list.

And is this not the longest excuse for not blogging that you've ever read? Hello, anyone still there? *sigh* Can't blame them...even I'm getting bored by this drivel, too. Back to my list...