A Quickie But Cutie…Children & Food Intolerances

My 3YO told her teacher at playgroup today that she couldn’t have ‘cow milk’ because ‘I’m electric to it’.

Simply had to write that down so I don’t forget it!

My Young Jedi is Learning…

3YO DD really impressed me this morning…  I was preparing her lunch box for playgroup, & showed her the tomatoes, cucumber & kidney beans I was mixing to put in some pitta bread. ‘Looks lovely’ she said (good girl). Then I told her I was adding olive oil so it wasn’t too dry. ‘But you won’t need it’ she said immediately, the tomatoes are juicy so it won’t be dry’.

An utterly banal domestic moment (like the rest of this blog is so earth shattering…!) but I thought that really showed she was thinking about the food & the tastes & textures. I added the olive oil anyway, when she wasn’t looking, plus a bit of black pepper… it was pretty good.

And whilst I’m *thrilling* your day with the minutiae of my mine… when she came back, she looked at me rather coyly & said, ‘Mum? Shall we have just a cheeky little piece of chocolate?’

Oh go on then.

Feeding The Kids Around Southern Califiornia!

Having neglected my millions of readers (that’s you, Dad…!) for so long, I felt the urge to post a few pics of my little treasures on their recent trip to sunny Southern Ca., sampling the pleasures of BBQ corn, sushi &, um, tripe… (even I was gagging a little there).

But I guess if you don’t tell them they won’t like it… they just might. And they did!

They had spicy beef sandwiches from a Vietnamese bakery somewhere near Anaheim in LA ( probably not free-range, but you know, when in Rome…);  Sushi at Laguna beach (whilst watching the beautiful people); Dim Sum (3 times) at the fabulous China Max, near Mirimar San Diego (Grandpa’s favourite); as well as Mexican, All-American pancake breakfasts & a *small*, healthy dose (actually it wasn’t at all healthy, but it was kinda fun) of pure junk…

In the Dim Sum restaurant,  2YO DS shouted “Bit! Bit” as the trolleys trundled by, demanding a ‘bit’ of every pork bun, potsticker, Chinese broccoli drowning in oyster sauce & garlic-y shrimp.

His 3 YO sister did however take the prize for her penchant for tripe in chilli sauce… Strange child. You know when maybe you think you may have taken a principle too far?

Both were big fans of the jasmine tea – which has translated at home to frequent requests for redbush tea without milk, or (very weak, before I get lynched for caffeine-ating my children) green tea.

It would have been easy to make assumptions about what they would or wouldn’t at least try. Most adults would have turned their nose up at the sight of dim sum selections of dubious animal origin, or at the mere thought of TRIPE with their noodles. But lacking in the organisational skills to have packed a bag of  familiar treats ‘just in case‘…  there wasn’t really an option.

Without second guessing them, they were happy to try pretty much anything – the slimier & spicier the better!

And just so you don’t think I deprived them of the ‘Real’ American cuisine – here’s my little angel at Disneyland. Junk and all. (Yes we did of course have an organic WEEK to make up for this meal )

*Secret Tip for Feeding Kids*: Don’t TELL the children they won’t like it!

Thought I’d share my lunch with you today (figuratively speaking of course)… as its inception goes some way to explaining the reason why you’ll very rarely see me post a ‘recipe’ but more a ’sort of idea I had’. This was also a lesson to self not to assume your kids won’t like anything till they (& you!) have tried it!

I opened the vegetable basket & saw: 4 beetroot with leaves still on, 3 carrots & a red onion. Pretty inspiring huh?

It was past midday, & I had 2 pretty whingy kids already so figured there was no time to boil or roast (usually my favourite) the beetroot. I remembered I’d once seen a recipe in a Jamie Oliver book about a beetroot salad, so flicked through some tattered indexes till I found it. It was for ‘Beetroot, Pear & Feta Salad with lemon dressing’.

Delicious!

Slight hitch.

I didn’t have any pears, feta or lemons.

Undeterred, I had found what I was looking for, which was reassurance from a proper chef that it was OK to grate or slice beetroot raw, & an idea. So in the absence of pears I found an apple, my feta became a pack of halloumi cheese, & my lemon… 2 fairly tired-looking satsumas & a lime.

Beetroot & carrots scrubbed, topped & tailed & grated (or you could use a mandarin or chop into matchsticks), beetroot leaves washed & ripped / chopped, apple cored & cut about the same, & half the red onion thinly sliced… (this honestly took less than 5 minutes). I squeezed the satsumas & the lime, & put the juice in a jam jar (no jam . You knew that. Just saying.) with a few large glugs of extra virgin olive oil & some black pepper. Shake the jar, & then pour it over the veggies & toss. (Fairly frantic tossing by this point actually as 21 m.o. was hanging off my leg screaming).

I grilled the halloumi (it’s cheese… which of course you knew, but I’m making sure this really is food-phobe proof…) – put the slices in a hot frying pan or griddle with no oil, & turn after a few minutes – you want it just brown on both sides. Obviously the feta crumbled over would also have been fab, as would any other sheep or goats’ cheese.

So, back to my salad  which is a very pink, crunchy bowlful of veggies, tossed with dressing & with grilled cheese on top. (Sorry Jamie, this is now bearing no resemblance whatsoever to your original, but you were the inspiration!).

On the side we had some fresh spelt bread dipped in the rest of the dressing. Dipping… we all know how kids love to dip. But this sort of dipping isn’t just for adults & gastro pubs you know – kids love it & extra virgin olive oil (cold- pressed please), with or without some balsamic vinegar, makes a nice change from fishfingers & ketchup.

My kids (21 months & 3.5 years) found it sheer genius that Mummy had made apple go bright pink, & thought the whole thing was delicious. The fact that they also had red teeth to bear at each other was an added bonus ( not to mention the *hysterical* red wee a few hours later).

Now I have to admit, I did think that even I might be pushing it with 2 very young tummies & my citrus-y, oily dressing & raw beetroot concoction, but with no ‘you probably won’t like this’ preamble… they ate it with gusto. If I’m honest, it probably wasn’t my finest culinary hour, but it was zingy & tasty, as well as being fresh, different & full of nutrients.

Don’t second-guess your kids, or assume they won’t eat something,  until they have. I have seen parents nervously place something in front of a child, over-zealous in their cajoling to ‘just try it’ & with the fishfingers on stand-by…

…They can SMELL YOUR FEAR Dear Parent!! ) And they will react as you expect them to – by rejecting it. Similarly, there is really no need for a carnival fanfare & promises of trips to Disney just because they DID eat it.

Calm down.

Eat.

Have a laugh.

Leave what you don’t want. (I know your grandparents said it, but I’m afraid the starving children in Africa really WON’T benefit by your clearing your plate… Give to charity instead.).

Please tell me about your experiments – the ones that do work & the ones that don’t!

Have confidence, Dear “I-just-can’t-cook” Parent! You CAN feed your kids!

I know that many parents are great cooks: ‘foodie’, Goddesses who rustle up super-healthy casseroles & fresh, omega & antioxidant-rich meals for their children on a daily basis… But many are just, well, not.

I often hear from Mums who have the very best intentions, but simply struggle to think of what to feed their kids every day. They don’t know where to start, cannot see how to combine their own meal choices with child-friendly options, & so resort time after time to the same, boring stand-bys. Don’t panic if he/she isn’t interested today – stand your ground & leave it till tomorrow – nobody’s going to starve overnight!

These posts are for you. Have confidence! Take a few ideas  & guidelines, & go with it. It’s not rocket science  & children are really very easy to please – provided you don’t pass on any hang-ups!  – They love to get involved with preparing & making food, they don’t care if it goes wrong, & if you are relaxed & keen to try new things, then so will they be.

Mealtimes should not be battlegrounds, & many issues & problems with weight & food in later life stem from a stressful or unhappy relationship with food as a child. A parent’s preoccupation with fat, calories or body image is all too easily passed on to her child – so try to make the relationship with food in your home a happy one!

Remember, food is not the enemy, it’s just food. Make it the good stuff , relax & enjoy discovering it & eating it WITH your children. Good luck !!

Child with eczema? Consider food intolerances or antibiotics as the culprits, & FOOD, not creams as cure

My now 3 yo DD used to have really rough, red cheeks & patches of very dry skin on her arms & legs. Everyone would comment on her ‘lovely rosy cheeks’  but up close they were actually sore & shiny-looking… I would diligently (& very expensively!) buy the most organic, gentle creams & balms I could find, avoiding harsh soaps, & any other other chemicals. It helped, but it never cleared it up. The doctor wanted to use a steroid cream… which I couldn’t bear to put on her paper thin, delicate skin.

I figured eventually that something inside, not what was being applied on the outside, was the root of the problem, & so had her allergy tested (a strand of hair is sent to the lab, along with detailed food diary analysis). It came back with a diagnosis of ‘leaky gut syndrome’. Sounds gross doesn’t it? As for the cause, well we passed with flying colours on the ‘was she breastfed?’ ‘does she eat vegetables & essential omegas & seeds?’ & all that stuff… but then came the question ‘ has she ever had a large dose of antibiotics?’. Well yes, at around 18 months she had received a lot of antibiotics for an ear infection when we were on holiday in the US.

Turns out, this was the culprit. Antibiotics had destroyed all the bad bugs, but all the good bugs too – essential for gut & digestion health. Common allergens or digestive irritants such as dairy products & wheat, were over-working her already depleted digestive system , & the outward manifestation was eczema.

The solution was to give probiotics (prescribed by a nutritionist – not just one of those yoghurt drinks), whilst also cutting out all wheat & dairy. Within 2 DAYS her skin was clear! We carried on being strict with the diet for a month, & then relaxed a little. Ongoing, she has very little diary (no cows milk) & occasional wheat. Every other month or so, she has the probiotic powder each morning for a week to repopulate the good bacteria.

We’re lucky – she isn’t ALLERGIC (i.e. there is no terrifying or serious reaction), she is simply slightly INTOLERANT & her gut finds it hard to digest these foods in any great quantity. We know if she’s had a bit of ice cream at a party because her cheeks flare up – no big deal, just time to play by the rules again for a few days.

With so much talk of cutting out wheat & dairy & other foods, I found it interesting that it wasn’t those foods that were the CAUSE of this particular problem, but rather that they were simply irritants causing strain to an already weakened digestive system.

I’m going to post again on dairy & wheat alternatives for kids (I’ve become a bit of an expert!) & will also come back to intolerances & allergies… but for now if your little ones suffer with eczema, it might be worth looking INSIDE for the problem, rather than applying expensive balms or, worse, harsh pharmaceuticals?

Sure pasta & yoghurt are good foods. Except when they’re not…

You know that list of foods you dish up at least a couple of times a week, as an alternative when something else is refused (see last post!), or when you’ve got other people’s kids over, or just for an easy life? I’m talking pasta with cheese, yoghurt, chicken, sandwiches, fish (usually of the fingers variety), chips & peas… the stuff that most mums agree all kids will eat, & anyway they’re good foods, right? Full of energy, calcium, protein, vitamins…? Well they can be. But then again, they can be not at all. Pasta can be lots of things, as can chicken, or a cheese sandwich. And not all of them are good.

Take pasta. If we’re talking wholewheat, buckwheat or spelt pasta, with a freshly made, tomato based, organic (preferably) sauce full of chopped fresh vegetables, & some good protein in the form of pulses, a little tuna or oily fish like sardines, or some grated organic, tasty (so you need less of it) cheese… then yes, that’s a great meal for growing kids. Slow burning carbohydrates for energy, protein, vitamins & minerals, antioxidants & calcium, omegas (if you went for the oily fish) – all good. If however by ‘pasta’ you mean white pasta with piles of ready-grated cheese of the sweaty, so mild it tastes of nothing rubbery variety, then that’s not so great. High GI, processed carbs for a blood sugar spike with a pile of additive-filled saturated fats on top.

Try fish & chips. We had these the other night. Fresh white fish cut into strips, dunked in egg & fresh breadcrumbs, potatoes scrubbed & cut into chunky chips, then roasted in the oven, served with some fresh green veg like broccoli florets or peas, or some salad. OR… ‘fish & chips’ could just as easily describe a plate of trans-fats, salt, sugar & colourings, plus a host of other preservatives & un-pronounceable additives of dubious ‘fish’ or otherwise origin.

Chicken – water-filled, hormone-injected & GM-fed? In a tub covered in some dodgy bloke with a beard’s secret recipe & bizarrely labelled ‘chicken popcorn’ (what IS that by the way? Cos it sure ain’t chicken). Or organic (or at least free range) real chicken cooked with vegetables, rice, potatoes, cous cous, whatever, so long as you can still identify how every ingredient started life & it hasn’t been pumped full of total rubbish to make it scarily cheap… BTW you know how they make it that cheap? What must they must feed a chicken (cheap GM soy from south America, grown on plantations where there used to be rainforests, that’s what… Sorry different rant), how it must live, how full of growth hormones & water must it be injected & fed, for it to be profitbale business to sell it to you for £2.50 / bird?

Now before I get lynched by the ‘I can’t afford organic chicken & fresh fish, I’ve got a family to feed & I’m a working mum’ brigade, hear me out. Because so am I. But if the food your family are eating is full of c**p, has had all the nutritional value sucked out of it, & is filled with water to make it look bigger than it is – is that really *saving* you any money? How about you have meat or fish one day less a week, make it the good stuff, fill out the meal with more fresh vegetables & know you’re all actually getting some benefit from the food you’re eating? Good protein doesn’t have to come from meat or dairy- you can make fabulous filling & child-friendly meals using chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans, cannellini beans… (incidentally if those suggestions leave you bemused & staring vacantly at an out-of-date packet of pearl barley, I’ll happily provide some extremely simple recipe suggestions in a future post!)

Couple more to finish off… yoghurt. When yoghurt is referred to by nutritionists as a great food, they mean natural (unsweetened), fresh, probiotic yoghurt – cow, goat or soy… (all these really should be organic). They don’t mean a pot of over-processed, very sweet gooey stuff with a few flea-sized portions of ‘real (well it was once) fruit’ in it.

Cereal… everyone knows this one I think. I read in a yoga book recently about ‘cereal’ being a key food, but somehow I don’t think it was referring to coco pops… Nuff said.

Read the labels on your food! Ingredients are listed in order of how much of that is in there. If sugar (remember sugar can also be glucose, glucose syrup, fructose, honey, high fructose corn syrup, & many more!) is one of the first listed – that means it’s one of the main ingredients. Even if it has got ‘low fat’ or ‘real fruit’ or pictures of the Tweenies on it.

But try to feed your kids (& yourself!) foods which don’t HAVE labels! Real food has a pronounceable names & bears some physical resemblance to a natural source.

Chicken popcorn anyone?

Fussy Eaters? Really, they’re NOT going to starve overnight…

Every parent’s been there: you put their tea in front of them (you know – that lovingly prepared organic all-nutritional-groups-represented, what-a-virtuous-parent-I-am kind of tea), & your little angel screws up their face, gives you a petulant ‘Don’t like it’ & refuses to let a morsel pass his/her lips. You feel snubbed, frustrated, offended & angry. And you have a few courses of action open to you… Option A: You could persevere, encouraging your child to ‘just try it’, probably with a bribe or teaser of some form of ‘treat’ to follow. Or, option B: exasperated, you offer an alternative – something you know they’ll eat (cheese sandwich, pasta, cold sausage, fruit yoghurt… you know the list). Or you could try option A for a while, before resorting to option B. Or, C, you could say ‘That’s your tea. If you’re not hungry, that’s fine, you may get down from the table. But there’s nothing else’

Most parents will resort to some form of bribery initially, & if even that fails to get your delectably nutritious offering down for at least a mouthful or three, then Option B, the ‘alternative you know they’ll eat’ is the exasperated end result. Because ‘well, they’ve got to eat SOMETHING haven’t they?’

Do they? Really? Even if it’s processed, nutritionally devoid, or what they’ve had every night for the last week? Well, assuming a ‘normal’ healthy child, Whats going to happen? Expiration by starvation in their sleep? Waking up ravenous & hallucinating in the middle of the night? Tantrums & hysterics for their ‘comfort’ food of choice? The latter, possibly. The first, absolutely not. The second, well there’s a slim chance they may wake up peckish, in which case you promise him extra porridge for breakfast & sing them back to sleep.

One of my kids went to bed hungry. ONCE. Slept like a baby, woke up, ate an enormous breakfast & hasn’t refused a meal since. If yours is used to being offered bribes or alternatives, then you may have to persevere more than once. But Be Strong fellow Parent-Doing-Your-Best! Honestly, really & seriously, going without one meal is not going to hurt. They’ll be FINE. And they’ll know for next time, that unless they at least TRY the food you put in front of them, there will not be an alternative.

The old ‘he only eats pasta’, ’she only likes it if its got cheese on it’ stuff… Don’t buy into it. WE create this belief – not them! ‘He only eats pasta’, because every time he turns his nose up at something different, he GETS GIVEN pasta. And since he likes pasta, & he’s FOUR (i.e. not necessarily capable of making a rational, nutritionally balanced food choice – that’s what you’re there for btw) & he knows that if the hissy fit goes on long enough – waahay, it’s pasta again!

I know, your little treasure is more determined than this, you say – he/she will hold out for a whole day without food. You know what? They’ll still be OK. And if you hold out too, they’ll realise that you mean it. And that horrible day will be over, & they’ll know you mean it. And they’ll eat your food.

I’m really not cruel or Victorian in my table expectations. I just want the whole family to enjoy mealtimes & food, & I believe that it’s OUR job to choose what, when & how much our small child eats – not the child’s. Because we can make more informed choices about what’s good for them… or we really should be able to. Ask a 6 year old what they’d rather have for tea every night, broccoli or ice cream? Hhhmmm says the little tiger, that’s a tough one. Crack out the Haagen Dazs.

If we can regain control of the meals in our home, & give our families healthy, balanced & varied food to eat, then the battle-field & the drama which define many a teatime might subside, we all get to calm down a bit (& we get to keep the Haagen Dazs for after the little treasures have gone to bed).