My step sister, Liz, brought her daughter, Savannah, over today to play today while she went to get a facial. Savannah is 13 months old which is such a super cute age, she can sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm (the EIEIO part), and dances, and she loves her big boy cousin Ethan. When she first got here they crawled around on the floor together for at least 10 minutes, both cracking up laughing. Then we played soccer outside, I was holding Savannah while running after the ball and kicking it back to Ethan and she thought that was pretty hilarious. Then we had lunch and Ethan fed Savannah while I was in the kitchen getting his lunch ready. After lunch we went on a walk with Savannah in the stroller and Ethan on his bike. It was really fun having her over and made me think how neat it will be to have another baby one day and what an awesome little helper Ethan will be/already is.

Ethan had his last T-Ball game of the season on 15 November, and the team went to DoubleDave's afterward to celebrate. That pizza was out of the question, of course, and Ethan was quite a good boy, enjoying his buckwheat pancakes with peanut butter. Meredith had the same food, and I ate loads of pizza. For the evening, we wanted to make pizza that we could enjoy as a family. What are the ingredients? Read on...

Pizza Dough

How easy is it to make pizza dough without flour, yeast, eggs, or milk? I know what you're thinking... that seems impossible! We tried, on Barb's suggestion, to use a mix based on tapioca flour, tapioca starch, and baking powder: Chebe All-Purpose Mix. The recipe calls for eggs, so we had to substitute. Barb recommended using oil and water. I found another substitution: use flax seeds So we tried both. The flax seed method worked better, but I found both to be gummy.

What can we do next time? I'm guessing that we needed more of some kind of starch to feed the baking powder so that it rises. Maybe we'll add buckwheat flour to it. This tapioca based bread made me think more of a very thick pudding than a pizza crust.

Tomato Sauce

Ethan is allergic to tomatoes, so we tried to make pesto. I found this Easy Vegan Pesto recipe. Meredith is allergic to yeast, so no Nutritional Yeast. Meredith and Ethan are allergic to garlic, so we tried asafoteda, which can substitute. Oh, and I didn't have pine nuts, so we used almonds.

I blended the recipe together, and what did I have? Weird funky almond butter with a hint of basil. Yuck. We spread it on some of the pizza and threw the rest away. If we try again, we'll use pine nuts, and less of them.

Cheese

Did you know that they make cheese out of rice? Galaxy Foods makes this stuff called Rice Shreds. It wasn't bad at all. Too bad it did have some milk proteins in it, so Meredith was feeling it. Anyway, we piled this stuff on, and it was a welcome success.

Sausage

Meredith and Ethan are allergic to garlic. It's difficult to find sausage without garlic, but Whole Foods did have some Chipotle Chicken sausage. Not bad!

Onions and Bell Peppers

This was the only easy part of the recipe. They worked out well!

Conclusion

We had limited success. I am not used to weird substitutions, so my criticism of my own creation here was not as positive as how Meredith and Ethan felt about it. I know that Meredith can't do something as elaborate as this on a regular basis, but that won't stop me from trying.

I have had visions of painting Ethan's room since before we got married and this weekend all my dreams came true. After many hours of removing old cracked 27 year old caulk, taping, re-caulking, and painting it was all finished. We had a good time doing it. Ethan helped for the first 10 minutes then was off to spend the night with Mimi. He came to his finished room this morning.

-Meredith

This is perhaps the most interesting area of the allergies so far. When I first met Meredith, I saw this buckwheat thing that she and Ethan did with the Levins family and found it very weird. I've come to like some parts of it and dislike others. I've also learned to embrace the grand little seed and give it a chance.

We buy our buckwheat groats from The Birkett Mills, a company I found early in our marriage. The Levins had previously relied on HEB and Whole Foods to stock buckwheat groats. The supply was from China, and prices and availability have made it harder to buy. Even though the Levins had already researched it and found that shipping costs made mail order unsuitable, I set out to find it wholesale and stumbled on The Birkett Mills. For about $80 I can get 50 pounds of the stuff, and its quality appears to be better than what HEB and Whole Foods has. There are some foreign particles in it, but Meredith takes care to pick them out.

For now, I believe that we will continue to buy from Birkett Mills.

How do we use our buckwheat? Here are some ways:

Buckwheat Pancakes

• 4 cups buckwheat groats, soaked overnight, rinsed
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder

We soak buckwheat groats in water overnight to aid digestion. Blend the above mixture in a sturdy blender. Our Blendtec blender does the trick! Cook the pancakes on a cast iron skillet or non-stick pan. Add honey, molasses, or agave.

Since Meredith is sensitive to corn, we cannot use most baking powders. In fact, even the Rumford baking powder that Meredith liked could only be used on Saturday, the magical corn day on which we are able to eat that vegetable whose forms find their way into all sorts of food. Meredith thought we could omit baking powder, but I just wasn't a fan. Last week I bought some potato-based baking powder from Whole Foods. It turned out well, but since Meredith and Ethan are sensitive to potato, that only helps so much. Today was the first time that we used just Baking Soda and Cream of Tartar instead. 1 tsp baking powder = 1/2 tsp cream of tarter + 1/4 tsp baking soda Meredith says that it turned out well. I will see. Update: Brent liked it!

Buckwheat Bread

By pouring the above pancake mix into a shallow (1" deep) baking pan, we can make a bread that has the density of cornbread. Ethan loves it. We had stopped making this after discovering that baking powder has corn in it, but maybe we can make it again.

Cooked Buckwheat

This is more boring. Put olive oil and soaked buckwheat into a pot and cook for a little while. Then add water and cook until the water is gone.

-Brent

To start off this blog, I'd like to describe where we are with food allergies. When I married Meredith and took on Ethan as a son, I had no idea how encompassing the effort was to work with them in the food allergies. To me, that means giving of myself in order to support Meredith as she keeps her and Ethan on the straight and narrow. Now there are times when she makes exceptions, but it is not my place to determine these times for her.

So here is the current list of allergies:

• Ethan and Meredith are both allergic to: egg whites, garlic, gluten, watermelon, wheat
• Ethan is also allergic to: asparagus, avocado, cantaloupe, cashew, celery, eggplant, grape, lemon, lettuce, pea, sweet potato, sesame, soybean black tea, tomato, black walnut
• Meredith is also allergic to: crab, cow's milk, baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, oats, peanuts, salmon, sole, tuna
• Ethan and Meredith are both sensitive to: black pepper, carrot, coconut
• Ethan is also sensitive to: baker's yeast, bell pepper, blueberry, broccoli, oat, orange, peach, strawberry, white pepper, white potato
• Meredith is also sensitive to: almonds, corn, lima beans, pea, safflower, soybean

Yikes! God does not have us down an easy road! But we know that He will provide for our needs. Thankfully, we live in a world where there is an abundance of alternate foods and other people who go through the same things. We are blessed to be close to the Levins family who also shares many of our allergies. Meredith and I both believe in homeschooling for other reasons, so we are able to keep Ethan on the diet. We also have family and friends who support us through this.

Why do we know that these are allergies? Meredith and Ethan have both been tested for antibody levels in their blood. The "allergic" items represent one threshold of the antibodies that means that we should cut the foods out completely. Not doing so will produce allergic reactions. Doing so may remove the antibodies from the bloodstream. The "sensitive" items represent another threshold that means that we should limit consumption to about once a week.

Apart from blood testing, they have seen various symptoms, both mental and physical, that indicate when foods give problems. Ethan's face can become red. Meredith gets foggy, irritable, and tired. Ethan gets a little hyperactive. They can both have diarrhea. Meredith itches. It's not good, and we have to work through these issues.

Why do these allergies come? We're not clear, but we know that Meredith and Ethan are somewhat celiac, meaning that the villi of the intestinal wall are damaged. So they have to maintain a gluten-free lifestyle. Furthermore, they both have a compromised gut. We're not sure why, but the current theory is that food particles pass through the intestines that shouldn't and cause antibodies to form.

So what does this mean for us? It means these things:

1. We have to avoid wheat and other things that have gluten. Bread, wheat cereal, milk, etc are out. We do eat a lot of buckwheat. (Insert Little Rascals references here.) I will write later about our experiences with this.
2. We rarely have pre-processed foods. Exceptions to this include sausage (no garlic or sulfites), corn chips and tortillas (corn, water, lime, salt, and limited oils), and other things that promise to be free of our allergens.
3. We rotate food, having a weekly regimen of foods spread across the week. We have one fish day, two beef days, two chicken days, and two pork days. We have one quinoa day, one red potato day, two rice days, and three buckwheat days.
4. Seasonings tend to be simple. Dishes tend to be focused around their ingredients and don't have much fluorishes.
5. Meredith and Ethan have conflicting allergies regarding dairy: Meredith can't have dairy, and Ethan can't have soy. There are a few rice-based dairy items (milk, yogurt).

So this blog will continue to talk about our journey in this area. I hope that it serves to journal our experiences as we try things.

-Brent