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Country Girl

July 7, 2014 - 8:00 am | July 7, 2014 Food Trials, Our Lives, Real Food

Well, y’all, I’m bushed.

My whole life I’ve been a city girl, but now I think I’m finally getting my stripes as a full-fledged country girl!

And let me tell you – it is exhausting!

The last five days I’ve been doing things I never, ever, in a million years, would have imagined I would do, and worked harder than I ever have.

To start with, Thursday was procurement day for us. In the SAD (Standard American Diet) world, this would be called “grocery shopping”. In our world, it’s a little different.

It began with a trip to the health food co-op, where I picked up potatos. You remember how I buy those, right? In 50 pound bags?

Then it was off for blueberries. My mom called and asked for the name of the place I’d found that had organic blueberries. In all the frantic-ness of June, I’d completely forgotten to go pick blueberries!

By the time I called that day, they were already done for the season.

So were all the other blueberry farms I called, except for one. And I couldn’t get a person on the phone to ask if they were organic or not, just a recorded message saying they still had berries.

In the end I decided to just drive over and ask in person.

The lovely teenager working the sales booth on the farm was sweet, but didn’t know the answer. He did have some different phone numbers for me to try, though.

I called those, but wasn’t able to get any answers. Just voice mail.

It was crunch time, y’all. I HAD to hit the road to make our next appointment, and this farm was going to be done selling blueberries THAT DAY.

So I decided to buy blueberries. Whether they turned out to be organic or not, they’d be okay for Jed and Darrel to eat, at least.

Some quick calculations and I figured 10 gallons would give us enough to last me and Zac a whole year if they turned out to be a safe food.

And if they’re not a safe food, well, we won’t have to buy blueberries for a really long time!

The boys really wanted to help the young man measure out our blueberries, and he was very sweet and indulgent of them.

We left the blueberry farm and headed off to one of my new sources of goat milk. She’s a very nice lady, and her home has a horse, goats, a big dog, kitty cats, kids, a trampoline, and lots of toys to play with!

Why, yes! My boys DID cry when we had to leave…how did you guess?

When I arrived home that day, this was what my “procurement day” looked like:

I’m just sayin’…that’s not your typical grocery shopping expedition! 50 pounds of potatos, 10 gallons of blueberries, and an ice chest with 2 gallons of raw goat milk.

July 4th found me and Darrel frantically freezing blueberries as fast as we could. The boys considered the bags of blueberries on the floor a ‘really nifty cool squishy pad’ to walk on, you see. We probably lost half a gallon to little boy foot steps before we got them all put away!

Saturday was going to be the day Darrel tilled up a new bed for the tomatos (that are almost not worth putting in the ground at this point in the season), but my parents told us over our cookout the night before that they’d decided to go ahead and butcher their chickens the next day and needed our help.

So we trekked over to my parents house to help instead.

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(If you’re a vegan, vegetarian, or especially squeamish, you should just stop reading RIGHT NOW. Pictures of the chicken butchering are coming up and I don’t want to upset anyone who would be bothered by that. Consider yourself warned!)

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I’ve never participated in killing a chicken before, so I didn’t know what to expect. My parents hadn’t ever done this as adults, either, and their memory of doing it as kids was a little hazy!

So they’d done research, and their awesome neighbor offered to come over and help. She used to be a chicken inspector for the USDA before she retired, so when it comes to chickens, she knows what she’s talking about!

They had a really cool set up arranged.

First, the chickens were tied upside down to a tree branch. Then they cut the heads off. The chickens would flap around (hence the saying “running around like a chicken with your head cut off”) but would eventually still, and then everyone would wait a bit until the blood drained out.

Then they’d untie the chickens and take them over to a turkey fryer that had been set up with boiling water.

A 10-15 second dunk in the boiling water, and then over to another tree branch where they were tied up and plucked.

Once the chickens were plucked, they were passed over to my Mom at the table, where she removed the feet and guts.

Mom kept the gullets and livers, but didn’t want to eat any other parts of the inside, so those went into a bucket for their neighbor lady’s pigs.

Then the chickens went in to an ice-filled ice chest until the chest was filled, at which time they drove it down to the house and put the chickens in the fridge.

The boys really enjoyed pretending to drive the lawn mower with the trailer of ice chests!

All told, they butchered 25 chickens on Saturday.

After the job was finished, the neighbor left with her pig food and we went in to the house to cut the chickens up for freezing.

Mom and Dad were really nice and gave us 12 of the 25 chickens to take with us; it’s the perfect “next protein” to trial on Zac since it will be over 24 months since his last exposure to chicken.

For Mom and Dad, they wanted all evidence of the feathers removed. These were black feathered chickens, you see, and the place where the feathers grow out of the skin has small little bits of black remaining once they’ve been plucked.

The neighbor informed us that it is safe to eat; in fact, she said, we all eat it if we eat store bought chickens! It’s just the store-bought chickens are all white feathered, so you don’t see it or notice it when you buy the birds.

My parents know it’s safe to eat, but it just sort of bothers them to see bits of black on their chickens. I can’t say I blame them, but after we pulled all those tiny little bits of feather out of two birds, I told my dad he needed to grow white chickens from now on!

For me and Darrel, we didn’t care. I typically boil whole chickens and shred the meat for use in other dishes, anyway, and the skin just falls right off when you do that. Which means no little black feather problems for us!

So I did the bare minimum to our chickens; just cut off the wings and leg quarters so the whole chicken would more compactly fit into a bag for freezing. (Did I mention my freezers are getting scary-full?)

Mom and Dad went all out on theirs; they made baggies of legs, thighs, breasts, and so forth for specific chicken parts, and kept the rest for stock.

That’s another beautiful part of just boiling the whole chicken and shredding the meat: you make stock at the same time! Fewer steps in the kitchen! But Mom and Dad like to fry and bake their chicken, so it makes sense for them to package theirs differently.

When we got back from chicken killing, Darrel and I went to work trying to finish the cauliflower.

It took until the next morning, but we finally got the last of this years cauliflower cleaned and cut up! There’s one last dehydrator full running right now, but then…we are DONE with cauliflower!

Until next year.

Oy vey.

All told we now have 139.5 pounds of cauliflower either frozen or dehydrated.

Every night while this insane amount of work was going on, I remembered to scoop the cream off the milk we got from our second source of goat milk.

This lady has Nigerian Dwarf goats, and they are known for their high butterfat content.

I didn’t know what that meant, until the second night we had the milk when I opened a lid and saw thick, rich cream across the top!

Well, ladies and gents, that right there means BUTTER.

(Oh, God, I’m drooling. I haven’t had butter in almost two years…)

So I’m collecting the cream off the Nigerian Dwarf milk for butter, and then we’ll drink the skimmed milk. We’re just drinking the other milk, which comes from LaMancha Goats.

Preserving, butchering, and butter making…this is all a big change for a gal who was raised in a city!

Not quite the same skill set as driving in rush hour or taking the subway, doncha know?

For the boys part, they loved every minute of this weekend! They both caught slight summer colds, Jed more so than Zac, but that hasn’t slowed them down one bit!

I’ll admit to a little concern when we went to my parents house on Saturday. I wondered if maybe watching the chickens being killed would be upsetting to the boys in some way.

Eventually, common sense won out. We don’t eat like “typical” Americans. We eat real food, from real food sources. When we finally trial a fish, odds are it will be a fish we caught and cleaned ourselves. Jed has already gone to deliver and pick up cows from the butcher. Now that it’s time to trial chicken, they need to understand where our food comes from and respect the animals that provide it for us and the effort put forth to obtain it.

It’s part of living close to the land and being a part of the food supply. They have to get used to it at some point; better to make it something they are just used to from the beginning, rather than an adjustment later on.

We restarted the apricot trial on Zac Saturday morning, and so far, it’s going beautifully! We’re going to push it a bit, and if he stays perfect throughout today, we will start a cucumber trial tomorrow.

I finally have my first cucumbers ready to pick! If apricots are safe, and cucumbers are safe, Zac will have EIGHT safe foods! Woo-hoo!

And we can both munch on some yummy, fresh-from-the-garden cucumbers for another couple of months. Yay!

How was your 4th of July weekend?

Brown Thumb Gardener – Baby Purple Podded Pole Beans

July 3, 2014 - 8:00 am | July 7, 2014 Brown Thumb Gardener, Living With FPIES, Living with Fructose Malabsorption, Living with Histamine Intolerance

3 Comments

When I got home from work, it was almost midnight on Sunday. Monday evening, I went out to say “hi” to my garden, and my purple podded pole beans looked beautiful! They finally had some little buds on them.

Last night, while watering the garden, I looked at my beans again. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I saw this:

Little baby purple podded pole beans! Yay!

I had no idea these little beans would grow so fast. It’s truly amazing.

Something tells me that July will see lots of bean canning on my schedule. Good thing I just ordered more pint sized canning jars!

Other than the pole beans, the garden is doing just about the same. The carrots are looking fabulous, the potatos seem to be doing well, and the basil is bushing up more by the day.

I did lose one basil plant that just didn’t seem to transplant well. That’s okay; I still have 16 more in my garden!

The swiss chard and collard greens are obviously trying to make a comeback, but the critter keeps nibbling away at them. I need to decide if I’m going to get an electric fence to try and save them, or just write them off for the year.

Honestly, I don’t know which way I’m going to go. At this point, I doubt I’ll be able to grow enough to stockpile a years supply for Zac, so I may just call it a loss and move on…carrying the lesson into next summers growing season, of course!

There was one interesting thing I ran across recently: a new magazine in our area called “Edible Ozarkansas“.

It’s quite a lovely little magazine, with some useful and amusing information.

The thing that caught my eye, though, was a nice spread they did on “A sampling of what typically can be found available fresh in the Ozarkansas region during July, August and September”.

Of course, my antennae immediately perked up; this could be a handy guide to things that grow well in my area for next summers garden!

I had to laugh when I read it, though. Here, I’ll list off everything they shared was typical for my area, and next to it the reason why we can’t eat it:

Apples	Fructose
Basil	Waiting to trial
Blackberries	Accidental ingestion/reaction
Black-eyed Peas	Fructose
Blueberries	Waiting to trial
Cantaloupe	Reacted via BM
Corn	Not on your life!
Cucumbers	Waiting to trial
Edamame	Not on your life!
Eggplant	Hmm…worth looking in to
Figs	Fructose
Grapes	Fructose
Green Beans	Major FPIES trigger
Lettuce	Fructose (depending on type of lettuce)
Okra	Fructose
Peaches	Fructose
Pears	Fructose
Peppers	Hmm…worth looking in to
Potatos	Can’t trial on Zac when they’re so vital to my diet
Purple Hull Beans	Waiting to trial (see photos above)
Summer Squash	Major FPIES trigger
Sweet Potatos	Major FPIES trigger
Tomatillos	Hmm…worth looking in to
Tomatos	Hoping to trial, but potential fructose issue
Watermelon	Fructose
Zucchini	Major FPIES trigger*** Maybe

I didn’t even share any potential histamine problems on this…only the things that popped out off the top of my head!

Out of 26 possible foods that I can easily find in my area, only 8 have any potential as a trial food for Zac. 3 of those 8 I don’t know enough about, so I may discover they are a potential problem via FPIES, fructose, or histamine!

So really, only 5 potential foods for Zac at this point in time off that list.

I’m amazed at how something so basic and fundamental as eating can be such an obstacle when a body doesn’t function in a typical fashion.

Well, on the bright side, I guess that still helps me winnow down my gardening options for next summer. Right? (I have to find a silver lining in this somehow!)

How is your garden doing so far? I really would love to hear any gardening stories – especially from folks who haven’t grown much before!

__________

***It was brought to my attention that zucchini actually has a high success rate for FPIES kids. All I can say is that either I remembered information incorrectly, remembered it correctly and it was outdated information, or I just lumped zucchini and summer squash together in my head when I first wrote this. Just goes to show – no matter how far down the path of FPIES you go, there’s always something to learn! Thanks, Jamie!

Cucumber-Basil Summer Salad

July 2, 2014 - 8:00 am | July 1, 2014 Real Food, Recipes, Salad, Side Dishes, Top 8 Allergy Free

FPIES Changed My Parenting Rules

July 1, 2014 - 8:00 am | June 30, 2014 Living With Food Allergies, Living With FPIES, Our Lives, Parenting

11 Comments

When I was pregnant with Jed, I was super nervous and excited. I wanted to read everything I could about my growing baby, so I signed up for the BabyCenter weekly pregnancy emails.

You know the ones…”your baby is the size of a kumquat and is doing _______”.

What it didn’t realize about signing up for those emails was that they wouldn’t stop once I gave birth!

I’ve gotten emails every month since Jed was born describing what he “should/could” be doing at each month of his life.

I’ve considered unsubscribing to these emails, as I know so many of my friends have, but every now and then I like to click on the links to see if he’s roughly on track.

A few months ago I got a new email: Your Budding Picasso.

It talked about how to handle my nearly four year olds growing art skills and creativity, and it was very disappointing for me to read.

The first year of Jed’s life, he watched exactly ZERO minutes of television. I was adamant that he be given time for his brain to develop properly, without the reported disruptions of infant brain development brought on by frequent television viewing.

I spent all day, every day, or his first year of life interacting with Jed; teaching him things, showing him how to “help” me do tasks around the house, letting him explore and play creatively.

It was exhausting at times, but so rewarding. Plus, I had the self-satisfaction of knowing I was doing the “right” thing for my son.

I was very smug, y’all.

Then I got pregnant with Zac, and I got “first trimester tired”.

It’s just about the only negative pregnancy side effect I ever dealt with during either of my pregnancies; I never had morning sickness, weird cravings, insane mood swings, or any of the other things so often reported by pregnant women.

I just got bone weary tired during the first trimester.

So tired that I found myself turning on the TV for 1-2 hours per day just to allow myself the chance to sit in the recliner with my feet up, while Jed played by himself and watched Thomas and Friends.

Still, I was only slightly outside the “recommended Screen time allowance” set forth for children Jed’s age, so I still felt smug and proud of my mothering skills.

The TV watching continued throughout the pregnancy, because even after my energy returned I found my body just didn’t have the stamina to keep up with Jed. He’s a very high energy child.

My goal was always to return to a “no TV” lifestyle, and I managed to reduce our screen time considerably once Zac was born.

Then we got our FPIES diagnosis, and my lofty goals all went to hell.

Crayons are dangerous. Markers are dangerous. Bubbles are dangerous. Dang near every art supply out there is either certainly a trigger or likely a trigger for Zac.

And Jed, in his 3 and 4 year old enthusiasm, does not easily remember to keep his art supplies in our designated safe zones.

I simply cannot police art supplies while cooking nine meals a day.

Every time we’ve brought out art supplies, Zac has managed to get a hold of something and had a mild to severe reaction.

Every. Single. Time.

So I’ve mostly given up (for now). And to keep the kids occupied while I’m cooking those 9 meals a day, the TV is on in my house almost constantly.

Recently I got fed up with the constant TV watching (honestly, I dislike having background noise in my own environment) and turned the blasted thing off.

My clever son, however, had other ideas. He taught himself that he can put a new DVD in the player, and it will automatically turn on and begin playing. So after 1-3 hours of quiet, independent play in the living room, I will be started by the sudden noise of the television starting a movie.

I’ve been foiled by a three year old.

Instead of living the way I’d intended, with a kids movie being an infrequent treat for my children, I find myself living the exact opposite.

It is now a special treat for Jed when I pull out art supplies and let him create.

It kills me.

On the plus side, I’m very strict about what they can watch on TV. Jed is the only four year old I know who uses words like “pteranodon” and “diplodocus” in his imaginative story-telling (thank you Dinosaur Train!), and he is learning from the educational programs he is allowed to watch.

It’s just not ideal, and not what I’d had in mind when I was growing that little bundle of energy and attitude in my belly.

I keep trying; I bought Jed some beeswax crayons for his Easter basket and so far they have not been problematic for Zac. That’s a win!

In the lose column, however, were my efforts at bubble blowing.

The speech therapist suggested blowing bubbles as a good exercise for Zac to begin moving his mouth in different ways for better/more speech, so I decided to try a supervised session.

Jed loves blowing bubbles, but this was Zac’s first time to do so. He kept grabbing the wand and pressing it all the way on his lips.

Despite my quick lip-wiping every time he did it, within an hour of blowing bubbles he had a red rash around his mouth, and that night had a screaming fit where his whole body became rigid and he was inconsolable.

It was a minor reaction, but I just don’t see the joy of half an hour of blowing bubbles as worth a rash that lasted days and an hour of pain for Zac.

FPIES has changed my rules of parenting.

At least for a while.

One day Zac will be able to safely play with art supplies, and by God, when that day comes, my kiddos will be given every art supply known to man to get their Picasso groove going!

Until then though…”Jed? Do you want Dinosaur Train or Thomas today?”

What ways have food allergies and/or FPIES changed your parenting rules?

Open Highways

June 30, 2014 - 8:00 am | June 30, 2014 Flight Attendant Mama, Living With Food Allergies, Our Lives

To feel alive and full of hope.

Since FPIES came into our lives, I’ve sort of forgotten that feeling.

Real Life has a way of holding you in a vice grip and not letting you up for air long enough to remember the joy of hope sometimes.

Since I’ve been so stressed out lately, I’ve been trying to find things that help me relax and come up for air (so to speak).

I’m quite surprised to discover that my best antidote for the blues is a full tank of gas, some excellent tunes on the radio, and a wide open highway in front of me.

Alone.

See, I’ve been on the road quite a bit since the kids were born. We frequently hit the road to visit my parents, Nana, and Aunt down in Texas. But somehow taking babies and toddlers on a road trip isn’t quite the same as hitting the road alone, or with your friends or husband.

Babies and toddlers have a funny way of needing diaper changes, needing to be nursed or otherwise fed, or just get cranky and scream after being trapped in a car seat for too long.

Kind of a “I’m free and loving to drive!” buzzkill, you know?

So maybe I need to leave the family behind and go on a road trip every now and then?

Of course, I may have felt young and free, but I most certainly am not 16 years old any longer! Thanks to two pregnancies and childbirth, I had to stop for bathroom breaks a LOT more often than I ever did in my teens. Driving at night was rougher on my eyes than I remember it being, and I definitely felt a little stiff after 5 or so hours in the car.

Still. Bathroom breaks and stiffness aside, I feel refreshed. Even though I’m back home and back in the routine, I feel excited about the possibilities before my family again.

Life really is pretty good.

__________

What’s your best way to remember being young and full of hope? What crazy things did you do as a teenager that made you feel alive and joyful? I’d love to hear your stories!

Practical Preserving: How to Freeze Cauliflower

June 27, 2014 - 12:22 pm | June 27, 2014 Living With FPIES, Practical Preserving

6 Comments

I was all set to share a tutorial on freezing cauliflower as a Frugal Friday post, when it dawned on me that it’s really not all that frugal an activity.

Oh, it’s not terribly expensive, especially if you buy organic frozen produce, but it isn’t exactly going to save you any money.

That’s when I realized I’m also sort of running out of frugal tips to share.

There’s lots of frugal tips out there, but I only want to share the ones we use; the ones I know work.

And I’m drawing a blank.

You know what my brain is FULL OF these days, though?

Preserving food.

So I’m shelving Frugal Friday for now, and introducing a new series: Practical Preserving!

Since I’m frantically trying to preserve foods this summer as they come in to season to trial on Zac throughout the year, I figure I’ll share what I learn about how to set foods by with you.

Why “Practical Preserving”?

The definition of “practical” says it all:

relating to what is real rather than to what is possible or imagined
likely to succeed and reasonable to do or use
appropriate or suited for actual use

It’s all about what works, what’s realistic, and what is – hopefully – easy.

So for the first Practical Preserving post, it’s all about cauliflower. Specifically, freezing cauliflower.

It’s really easy.

One thing I’ve learned with all this food preservation stuff, is that the first step to any process is to CLEAN YOUR KITCHEN.

(I know. Captain Obvious here.)

But I learned the hard way that you’ll need all the counter space you can grab, and you’ll get irritated if you keep having to work around, over, and by dirty dishes or spills.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Still, I wait to start any food preservation until I’ve fed the family and cleaned up from breakfast.

With the cauliflower, you’ll want the freshest cauliflower you can get. Farmer’s markets or your own garden are ideal.

Take that lovely cauliflower and chop off as much of the stems and leaves as you can. If you have a safe salt to use, you are in luck!

Organically grown, pesticide-free is actually code for “be prepared to jump when you accidentally touch a worm while chopping up this food”.

I actually squealed a little the first time it happened to me. But I don’t really like worms that much, so maybe you won’t be quite as wimpy about it.

Make up a nice big pot of salt water and soak the cauliflower in it for about ten minutes.

Since we don’t have a safe salt for Zac, yet, I didn’t actually do this step. From what I’ve read, though, all the little buggies squatting on your produce will just float away in the salt water bath.

Very cool.

Then just rinse the cauliflower well in fresh water and move on to the next step.

If you don’t have a safe salt, get ready to dig through that cauliflower with your bare hands to manually pick off as many bugs and worms as you find. (Yes, I wore gloves. Did I mention I don’t like touching worms?)

Anyway, whichever way you go with that first step, the next step is to get that head of cauliflower into smaller pieces suitable for freezing.

I’ll be honest, when I started with our cauliflower prep, my florets were nice and small, uniform in size, and quite gorgeous.

After 30 or 40 pounds, though, my cauliflower pieces got a LOT bigger. Since that didn’t seem to affect the quality of the blanch, I’m not worried about it.

Ideally, though, the cauliflower should be chopped into roughly equal sizes that are relatively small.

Once you have a pile of florets, go ahead and set up your assembly line.

On one side of your stove, you’ll have your big pile o’ cauliflower.

On the stove, a pot of boiling water.

On the other side of the stove, a bowl of ice water and another bowl with a strainer for draining.

The process here is to blanch the cauliflower. Without blanching, it can turn colors and the quality will diminish in the freezer. With blanching, the frozen cauliflower will taste as good as fresh when you finally use it.

So don’t skip this step!

I invested in a couple more small strainers to make this faster and easier for me. So heres what you do:

Fill one strainer with a handful or so of cauliflower.

Drop the strainer in the boiling water and start the timer for 3 minutes.

When the time is up, grab the strainer (with a potholder, if yours doesn’t have a handle) out of the boiling water, shake off as much excess water as you can, and dump it in the ice water bath.

Originally I was just putting the whole strainer into the water bath. That was the neatest, tidiest way to do it…but it used up ice faster than I could make more!

I quickly learned that keeping a second strainer in the cold water bath and pouring the hot cauliflower in it, then returning the hot strainer to the boiling water, was the best approach. The ice lasted much longer that way!

Let the cauliflower chill in the ice water for 3 minutes.

Actually, it should be “time in the ice water=time in the boiling water”. That way, in case you get distracted and leave the cauliflower cooking for a tad too long, you can remember to let it chill for a little longer, too.

Once it’s been in the ice water long enough, shake off excess water and dump it into the strainer over an empty bowl to let it dry as much as possible in three minutes.

With everything set up and ready to go, I kept up a steady line of cauliflower for blanching. Each bowl of florets just got shuffled down to the next bowl according to the timer, until it ended up in the draining colander.

Once it had drained off most of the water, I dumped it onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet to freeze.

Laying it flat on a cookie sheet means the florets won’t all freeze in a gigantic clump, so when you want to reach in to your freezer bag of cauliflower and pull out just a cup or so, you can!

After giving it a minimum of 3 hours in the freezer, you can bag the cauliflower up.

In a pinch, you can use Ziploc Freezer style bags and suck/squeeze as much air out as possible, but I strongly urge anyone who is serious about food preservation to invest in a FoodSaver vacuum sealer.

Air removal is one of the key elements to long term food storage, and these little babies do an excellent job of that!

See?

For our purposes, I portioned the cauliflower into 16 ounce bags (1 pound) for approximately 5 cups per bag.

Once they’re vacuum sealed, I labeled each bag and tossed it in the freezer.

I’ve had to toss a LOT of bags in the freezer. This is just one small side of our freezer:

As of this morning, our freezer had 93.93 pounds (or 438 cups) of cauliflower frozen and sealed.

There is an additional 3 gallon bag’s worth in the fridge needing to be processed and frozen. And we’re buying more on Saturday.

Once you’ve hit 100 pounds of any food to preserve, I think you can consider yourself an expert at it, right?

Well, that’s basically it: how to freeze cauliflower safely and tastily.

It really is easy, but as with anything, the larger the quantity the more laborious it will be. I feel like all I’ve done the last 3 weeks is freeze cauliflower, though I know that isn’t true. At least we have enough cauliflower to last Zac for an entire year!

Happy Preserving!

Have you ever frozen cauliflower? Any tips or tricks that work for you?

Brown Thumb Gardener – June Update

June 26, 2014 - 8:00 am | June 26, 2014 Brown Thumb Gardener

Fructose-Free, Dairy-Free “Just As Good” Cake Icing

June 25, 2014 - 8:00 am | October 9, 2014 Cake, Dairy Free, Dessert, Egg Free, Fructose Free, Gluten Free, Holidays, Our Lives, Parenting, Real Food, Recipes, Soy Free, Top 8 Allergy Free

7 Comments

A while ago I shared how to make a cake or cupcake icing with no fructose and no dairy, and said it was awesome.

I was mistaken.

It was just okay.

THIS is awesome! Spectacular, amazing, stupendous, delectable, perfection.

Okay, I’m running out of adjectives. So here’s the story:

Last weekend was the ~~double~~ triple birthday party for my boys. Jed turned 4 and Zac turned 2 a few weeks ago.

I knew Zac couldn’t have a traditional birthday cake, and planned to make him a variation of the banana quinoa breakfast bake. Once again, though, I was determined to provide something resembling a normal birthday cake for my cow-milk-free, fructose-free, soy-free, egg-free son.

Running short on time this year due to insane amounts of cauliflower freezing and returning to work, I accepted that I would simply make my previous cupcake recipe.

At the last minute I decided to make a cake instead of cupcakes.

I really don’t know why; despite years of tutelage from a mom who could make a living off her stunning wedding cakes if she so desired, I – quite frankly – suck at making pretty cakes.

They always taste delicious, but look like they fell off a truck.

I’ve tried, but I could never seem to do what mom was telling me to do. It was like I had “cake block” or something.

For whatever insane reason, though, I figured I’d give it another shot.

The allergy-free cakes came out of the oven and were laid out to cool. It was time to make my icing.

Traditional buttercream icing is powdered sugar, butter, water, and whatever coloring or flavoring you want to add.

Jed can’t have large quantities of sugar, can’t have cow butter (and I don’t know if goat milk butter would perform as well – even if I had made enough for the icing!), and we avoid petroleum based food anything at all costs.

So how do you make icing with those restrictions?

Creativity.

Take some dextrose and arrowroot starch and grind it in a coffee grinder until it has turned into powdered dextrose. It looks just the same as powdered sugar.

Dump that in to your mixing bowl, and then grab your fat.

In my previous icing recipe, I used chicken fat. It’s what I had, and it worked okay.

This time, I didn’t have any chicken fat. But I DID have some beautiful, freshly cleaned tallow in my fridge!

I set it out to soften at room temperature and used that instead of butter or shortening.

Why would I not just use that lovely vegan palm shortening you can buy pre-made instead?

Two reasons: one, it’s apparently really horrible environmentally, and two, some fructmal people have a hard time with Palm and coconut. Jed is one of them.

So tallow it is!

I added cold water and vanilla and turned on my mixer, and lo and behold, I got icing that looked every bit like the icing my mom used to make me out of butter and sugar!

Not only did it look identical, it performed the same!

For the first time in my life, I got a crumb coat to work!

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Once I had the crumb coat done, the cake went in the fridge to set up and I went to bed.

The next morning I got up and made more icing. Then I finished icing the cake.

It was really hard to not break out into happy dances in the kitchen while I iced the cake, because every step was coming out PERFECT.

NEVER in my life have I made a cake that looked remotely edible!

It’s the best birthday gift I gave myself this year!

Even better was when I was able to let Jed partake in the traditional kid activity of licking the beaters! Just days shy of his 4th birthday, it was the first time he’d ever really been able to do that!

When I was done with the cake, I decided to go one step further and color the remaining icing to write “Happy Birthday Jed” on the top.

Again, though, we don’t use food coloring.

I used beetroot powder, instead.

I’ve been experimenting with other things in my kitchen lately, and one of those experiments required I dehydrate beets and powder them up. So I just happened to have some laying around!

I started with 1/2 T of beetroot powder for about 2 c of icing. That made a fairly nice pinkish-mauve color.

I added another 1/2 T and got a definite pink.

Another 1/2 T and it became a pinkish-purple, and I called that good enough.

With adding 1.5 T of powder, I had to add a bit more water to the icing to keep the consistency right. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly how much I added, as I was just dribbling drops in as I went.

If you use powdered veggies as a food coloring, just keep in mind you’ll need to increase the liquid content as well. Add slowly, stirring as you go, to keep the consistency of the icing firm but spreadable.

For the first time in his life, my son got a real birthday cake that looked gorgeous and tasted great that I made for him from scratch!

To my chagrin, I noticed that almost everyone left icing behind on their plates when done eating. After all my hard work, I had to know WHY? Why didn’t my family like the icing?

Turns out, my family is not a fan of the so-sweet-it-hurts-your-teeth traditional buttercream icing.

For years, without my knowledge, Mom had added one extra thing to her icing to make it sweet, but not sickly so.

Lemon juice.

Apparently adding 1 T of lemon juice or so to the icing when you make it cuts the sweet just enough.

Curious, I put a little of my icing on my tongue and – Holy Moly! That’s way sweeter than the icing I remember from my youth!

So now I know to add a little lemon juice to my icing for a sweet we can all enjoy.

If you also need to keep the sugar content down, and avoid food dyes, and can’t use dairy, I hope one or all of these tricks will help you make your family gorgeous birthday cakes!

Happy baking!

Fructose-Free, Dairy-Free "Just As Good" Icing

Prep time

30 mins

Total time

30 mins

You won't know the difference when you taste this cake icing made with no fructose, dairy, or artificial colors! A must-have addition to and FructMal or butter-free kitchen!

Author: Cradle Rocking Mama (Carrie Summers)

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 3 cups

Ingredients

2⅔ c. dextrose
2 tsp. arrowroot starch
6 T. cleaned tallow
1 T. lemon juice
½-1 T. vanilla
3-7 T. cold water
powdered veggies for coloring (optional, to preference)

Instructions

Using a coffee grinder, grind the dextrose and arrowroot starch until you’ve made a “powdered sugar” texture powder.
Add powdered veggies to the powdered dextrose and sift together well. (Optional. If you need white icing at first and only want to color a small amount for lettering or decoration, you can add this later.)
Add the tallow, lemon juice, vanilla, and 2-4 T. of the water and begin whipping the ingredients together.
Add more water as needed until it reaches a smooth, spreadable, but firm texture.
Enjoy having a “creamy”, fructose free, dairy free frosting for your cake!

__________

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Dependency

June 24, 2014 - 8:00 am | June 24, 2014 Living With Food Allergies, Living With FPIES, Our Lives, Real Food

17 Comments

I’ve read that our nationwide grocery stores operate on a 3 day food supply.

That means that they have a constant inflow of new food deliveries that only supply the stores with enough food to sell over a 3 day period.

That thought scares a lot of people (though this article is a very well-reasoned dismissal of those fears and worth your time). It’s a tiny little bit nerve-wracking for me, if only in the context of the fact that I lived in Houston during Hurricane Ike and saw the store shelves nearly emptied the day before the hurricane hit.

This is one reason why I prefer to keep at least a couple of weeks worth of food and supplies in my house at all times.

But unless you’re a dedicated “end of the world as we know it” Prepper, you’re likely to be dependent on others for most of your needs.

Whether that means you are dependent on a grocery store, a local farmer, a local rancher, or your own backyard garden is irrelevant.

In the end, we’re all dependent on something outside of our control for our survival.

Heady stuff, in my opinion.

I had this brought home recently with two jarring developments.

As of right now, Zac has 6 safe foods. Specially raised goat milk and chicken eggs are two of them. I don’t think it is exaggerating to say a steady supply of his safe foods is imperative to his survival.

Last week, on my birthday, we had to do a goat milk run. Our wonderful goat milk lady had some news for us; her out-of-state daughter is having a baby – the first grandbaby for Miss Lois! That’s wonderful for her, and I’m thrilled for both of them.

However, Lois intends (as all good Mothers and Grandmothers should) to be present for the birth, and to stay for a couple of weeks afterwards to help out. All in all, she’ll be out of town for about a month.

She can’t find anyone to milk her goats while she’s gone, so she’s left with no choice but to dry up her girls by the middle of July.

So from July until next spring (when the goats have more babies and therefore more milk), I have lost my supplier of one of Zac’s only foods.

The second development came from my Dad. He’s been raising chickens on special corn and soy free feed so Zac can have the eggs.

A few weeks ago, one of his chickens became broody and decided to sit on her eggs. That’s great, because they’ll have more chicks! It’s lousy because it leaves him one layer short for the time being. (The chicks hatched last Saturday – 7 new chicks! Yay, Ethel!)

That didn’t deter us too much; it’s normal for a chicken to hatch her eggs, after all. What did deter us is what happened next.

Last week two of his free-range chickens didn’t come home to roost at bedtime. Some animal, probably a fox or coyote, ate the birds.

With Ethel happily sitting on her eggs, that left Dad 3 birds short for egg production.

Since Daddy had 6 layers, being 3 short meant a 50% reduction in egg production.

Instead of 3 dozen a week, he’s only getting 1.5 dozen eggs a week.

I’ve been rationing eggs. I no longer eat eggs, as it is far more important for Zac to have eggs to eat.

Dependency isn’t exactly a new concept for us: even in my garden I see signs of it. I mentioned how DE stopped bugs from eating my plants; varmints, however, have taken up the slack.

I have almost no collard greens or Swiss chard to use, as apparently it has become in-ground rabbit food.

(Strangely, the carrots have been left alone…so what’s with that stereotype?)

Back in January, when bad weather ripped through the nation, our regular monthly delivery of quinoa was delayed.

By two weeks.

We ran out of quinoa. Darrel and I desperately ran all over town, scavenging boxes of quinoa wherever we could find them, and at whatever price we could find them.

So what’s the point of pointing out our dependency? Is there really anything that can be done about it? Aren’t we all sort of at the mercy of others?

Well, yes…and no.

Yes, we are all dependent on others in many ways, but there are ways to seize some control.

It’s all about problem solving.

With the quinoa, I’ve since bought an extra case every few months so that we won’t run out and be desperate if a shipment is 2 weeks late again.

With the eggs, I plan to revisit some earlier reading I’ve done on ways to save eggs long term. I know I’ve read that you can freeze eggs, though I don’t remember the particulars, and I’m sure I’ve read something about another way to preserve fresh eggs without freezing that I should probably search out again.

Then, when egg production is back up high, I can set aside a few eggs per week so that if Daddy suddenly loses a few layers and production drops, I won’t have to worry about how we’re going to keep Zac in eggs during that time.

With the garden, I need to seriously look into the suggestion posed by my friend Ruth and seek an electric fence to keep critters out of my veggies.

Goat milk is a two-pronged approach. In addition to trying to find new suppliers of goat milk so that I can buy from two sources (hedging my bets against one of them running out or drying up), I’m also going to start buying more than we currently need and freezing it.

I’ve read that you can freeze goat milk for up to 6 months with only a slight diminishment in taste.

This is doubly important because, raw milk noob that I am, I didn’t realize that most goat milk providers do NOT have a year round supply of goat milk to sell!

So even if Miss Lois were not drying her girls up in July, we would still be faced with the unpleasant winter months where her goats would not be producing milk at all.

Ack!

Buying an extra gallon of two per week and freezing it in small jars will take up a lot of space in my freezers, but it will ensure that Zac and Jed can continue to drink goat milk throughout the dry months.

Speaking of goat milk, I’ve got a few leads on potential new suppliers, but nothing lined up yet.

Anyone know of a raw goat milk supplier in northwest Arkansas or southern Missouri that barely grains (or doesn’t grain) their goats? I’d sure appreciate the info!

Being dependent isn’t entirely a bad thing; it simply means that you must know the potential problems that may appear in your particular dependent relationship, and create a backup plan for how to solve those problems.

I didn’t know the “no milk in winter” thing about the goat milk. I didn’t anticipate that Daddy’s chickens would get broody or eaten. I didn’t think UPS would screw up our delivery for two weeks. I didn’t realize my veggies would be so tempting to critters.

Now, though, I DO know.

So now I can make plans for how to best provide for my children within the limitations of our dependencies.

Where and on whom are you dependent? What’s your plan for how to address any problems in supply?

The Triple Birthday Party

June 23, 2014 - 8:00 am | June 24, 2014 Flight Attendant Mama, Food Trials, FPIES Reactions, Living With Food Allergies, Living With FPIES, Living with Fructose Malabsorption, Our Lives, Parenting

3 Comments

Last Wednesday was my birthday, and I spent it flying home from work and doing another goat milk run once home.

Then I passed out at 8:45pm.

I know. I’m such a party animal!

That day was also the first day of the apricot trial break. Zac has been having strange symptoms since beginning apricot; mucousy poop, slight redness on his heinie, some appetite disruption, and a definite cranky attitude have shown up and hung around for far too long for my tastes!

However, he is also getting in all four of his 2 year molars simultaneously, and the other FPIES moms report that funny, “almost-mimic-chronic-FPIES-reaction” symptoms have been present for their little kids during the 2 year molar teething time.

Over the scheduled three day break, those symptoms didn’t go away. They didn’t get worse, but they didn’t recede.

If it was an apricot reaction, I would have expected them to go away, or at least diminish after 3 days without the food.

So we decided we will wait through the teething madness and refrain from food trials until those teeth are firmly in place. There is too much confusion present with teething to do food trials with confidence.

In the meantime, this weekend was the boys joint birthday party!

I suppose it was a triple birthday party for me, too, since I got a couple gifts as well.

As I mentioned, we bought the boys a swing set for their Big Birthday Gift.

Walmart did it’s best to wreck my kiddos birthday, but they failed. Sears saved the day!

Our swingset from Sears arrived Thursday, so Friday Darrel leveled the ground where the set was going and went to pick it up.

Unfortunately, this is NOT an easy swing set to put together, so it was not finished and in place by the time of the party.

Fortunately, Jed and Zac were so excited to be getting a swing set that they didn’t care! They had a blast hanging out with Daddy, Grandma and PopPop while they built the thing.

It helped that we were able to get their new kiddie pool in time for their birthday.

My boys ran around buck naked all weekend, hopping in and out of the pool and “helping” put the swing together!

For the party, I made Zac a modified Banana Quinoa Breakfast Bake, so he was able to have a birthday cake with candles! Yay! (Take that, FPIES!)

For Jed’s cake, I went all out and it was gorgeous! (More about that on Wednesday.)

We also had banana ice cream, which was basically my only birthday treat. But that’s better than I’ve had in a long time, so I’ll take it with a smile!

Jed has finally reached the point where he understands birthdays and gifts, and it was very fun to watch and listen to him open his gifts.

He got several little things that he loved, but, as anticipated, the BEST gift (other than the swing set) was a new Thomas riding toy!

Well, that and the helium balloons my Mom brought over.

Really, we could just forget gifts for Christmas and buy the boys about 20 helium balloons and they would be thrilled beyond belief.

Maybe get them a big cardboard box, too, and it would be “creative kid heaven”.

The morning of the party, of course, the kids and I cleaned out the Farmer’s Market of cauliflower again. This time my free gift from the farmers was a bag of fresh cucumbers. Yum, and thank you!

That meant that Sunday, while Darrel, Mom and Dad finished building the swing set, I was back in the kitchen processing cauliflower.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I only hope Zac finishes teething soon so we can resume the apricot trial and move on to new foods.

I may have to simply pick out new foods to trial while they’re in season and preserve enough for a year, just in case.

Won’t that be fun?

How was your weekend?

Country Girl

(If you’re a vegan, vegetarian, or especially squeamish, you should just stop reading RIGHT NOW. Pictures of the chicken butchering are coming up and I don’t want to upset anyone who would be bothered by that. Consider yourself warned!)

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Fructose-Free, Dairy-Free “Just As Good” Cake Icing

Dependency

The Triple Birthday Party

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