Chocolate Chunk Cookies

3/4 C granulated sugar
1 C brown sugar
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 TBSP ground flax seed
4 TBSP water
1/2 TBSP vanilla
3 C Flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 pkg Enjoy Life Mega Chunks (semi-sweet)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
1. Mix sugars together well in a large bowl with a hand mixer.
2. Add the butter and mix well.
3. In a small bowl mix the flax seed and water.
4. Add the flax seed/water mixture and vanilla.  Mix
5. In a separate bowl stir the flour, baking soda, and salt.  Add 1/3 of this dry mixture at a time mixing well.
5. When flour is all mixed in, stir in the mega chunks.
6. Using a small pampered chef scoop(or something similar), scoop tablespoons onto waxed paper covered cookie sheets(very important to use wax paper, not parchment--you'll get a different effect).
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown around the edges.

Success!

Taylor actually tried some soy free crackers and LIKED them!!!  Back To Nature Cheddar Cheese crackers are actually very good.  They are expensive, almost five dollars a box, and the box is little too.  I purchased them at Harmon's.  Hoping maybe I can find them on amazon and buy them in bulk and save a little.  We'll see. I feel really happy about this today!

Helpful website

This website was really helpful to me when I was searching for candy Taylor could eat.  It is nice that others take time to do lots of research and make it available for others.

http://surefoodsliving.com/

Good Trusty Recipes

I am grateful for some of the recipes that I have been making for a long time that Taylor can still have.  He seems to mostly want to eat the things that we had before he was diagnosed.  I think I make pizza once a week or every 10 days.  I have been making french bread since I was twelve.  My mother taught me this wonderful recipe!  Now I am even more grateful that she taught me to make it because I am making it 2-3 times a week.  Taylor loves this bread with no crust and lots of butter.  I figure at this point calories are calories.  Since his two best sources of protein are now on the bad list, I must be happy with whatever I can get him to eat.  Sometimes that is hard for me to accept.  My degree in college was Dietetics, and so I feel like I desperately need him to eat from all the food groups.  I always felt that even though he was small, he was getting a pretty well-rounded diet.  He liked many fruits, p.b. and eggs, broccoli... not too bad for a toddler.  I know that we will eventually reach a point where he will be old enough to realize he needs to broaden his menu, but for right now cereal and fruit snacks are our best friends.  I hope some of you can enjoy some of these recipes even if you don't have to deal with food allergies.  I promise they taste good.:)

French Bread

1 TBSP quick rise yeast
1 1/2 C very warm water, divided
1 TBSP sugar
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP olive oil
4 C flour

1. Pour 1 C warm water in a large mixing bowl.  Fill a measuring cup with the other 1/2 C warm water.
2. Put yeast in the 1/2 C water and stir until dissolved.
3. Put sugar and salt in the 1 C warm water in large bowl.  Stir until dissolved.
4. Add the yeast to the sugar/salt water.  Stir.
5. Add the oil and Stir.
6. Add the flour one cup at a time, stirring very well.  After all four cups are added, cover with a towel and let rise 10 minutes.  Stir. Repeat at ten minute intervals 3 more times(for a total rise time of 40 minutes).
7.  Roll out the dough onto a floured surface(I like to get some wax paper and flour that and then roll the dough onto that).
8.  Separate the dough into two pieces.
9.  Roll each half into a 9x12 rectangle.  Roll up from the long side(like you would to make cinnamon rolls).  Tuck under edges at each end.  Place on a greased cookie sheet.
10. Slash the tops of dough 3-4 times with a sharp knife.  Cover with towel again and let rise 30 minutes.
11. Bake at 400 degrees for 22-25 minutes.
12. When you take the bread out of the oven, brush the tops with melted butter.

Homemade Pizza Sauce

2- 8oz cans tomato sauce
1/2 C chopped onion
1 TBSP dried basil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dried oregano
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 tsp pepper

1. Put all ingredients in a medium sized sauce pan.  Bring to a boil.
2. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the onion is soft.

*This makes enough sauce for four pizzas
*I just freeze this in containers and it thaws nicely.
*This is from Better Homes and Gardens and altered only slightly(no canned tomatoes)

Easy Homemade Pizza Dough

3 C flour
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP sugar
2 TBSP olive oil
1 C warm water

1. Combine flour, yeast, salt, sugar in a large bowl.  Stir(a fork works great).
2. Add oil and water and stir until combined.  I sometimes use my hands to knead the dough just a little.
3. Roll out on oiled(or greased if you can have soy) pizza stone.
4. Put on homemade sauce, cheese, and whatever toppings you desire.
5. Bake at 375 degrees for 18-22 minutes.

Yummy Banana Bread

1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C brown sugar,packed
1/4 C butter, softened
2 1/2 TBSP water
1 TBSP ground flax seed
2 Lg. bananas
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 TBSP light sour cream
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 C flour
 1. Grease loaf pans(I use the disposable aluminum mini loaf pans) with butter or shortening(if no soy allergy)and then dust with flour.
2. In a large bowl, cream the sugars and butter with a hand mixer(that's what I use)
3. Mix the water and flax seed in a separate bowl. Add to the butter & sugars. Mix.
4. Add bananas, vanilla, and sour cream.Mix.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Then add to the other mixture a little at a time and mix.
6. Fill pans half full, then sprinkle with granulated sugar.
7. Bake at 375 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Times will vary depending on size of loaf pan and oven.
8. When toothpick comes out clean take out of oven and remove from pans and allow to cool on a cooling rack.
*Note:  I buy the ground flax seed at Costco on the cereal isle.

Our Family's Food Allergy Journey

My name is Emma. I have decided to create a blog where I can post about successes and failures as I try to find allergy friendly food to feed my four year old son Taylor. I am the mother of five beautiful children(whose children aren't beautiful to them?). They range in age from 12-almost 2. I have two daughters and three sons. They bring me such joy. Taylor has struggled his whole life with eating. Since the moment he was born I knew he had reflux worse than my other children. He was always so tiny. The medicine helped but by the time he was one year old he began choking on the stomach contents after he fell asleep. For the next six months until we could get into a specialist I hardly slept at all. I constantly worried that I wouldn't wake up when he was choking. After seeing the specialist and adding one more medication he improved a lot. He finally began to grow!! His specialist always suspected food intolerances, but since there was no dangerous reactions we opted to wait to test because it is expensive. Then about one and a half months ago he finally had a reaction and we scheduled the food allergy testing. We found out he was allergic to egg, soy, tree nuts, coconut, and sesame seed. They also said to stay away from peanuts right now too even though he didn't test positive for that. We will test again in June. It has been a great struggle for me to find things that he will eat. He is very stubborn and picky and isn't excited at all to try new things. That brings me to this blog. I wanted somewhere to record what recipes work. I hope that this will give me a chance to help anyone else too. I decided that our whole family would eat Taylor friendly for dinner, but other meals it would be okay to eat mostly normal. We did change some things because it would just be a pain to have two different items, for example two different loaves of white bread. I am not a blogger, so this is new for me. Hopefully, I can figure out how to put recipes on here and separate them into types of food. Here I go!