Traveling on a TED Step 3: Cool Gizmos

 
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This is the third post of my series on “Traveling on a TED” – or, Total Elimination Diet. You can find the previous posts here and here.

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Once you’ve figured out what you can eat and gathered all your food, then you have to decide how you’re going to cook it on the road. 

I wish there were an easy way to do this, but in the end, it basically required I pack a traveling kitchen to take with me. Fortunately I had lots of good suggestions from the brilliant Flight Attendants in a group on Facebook started by the ladies at Galley Gourmet. I’m good, folks, but I’m not omniscient! These healthy-living Flight Attendants had already learned a LOT of what I now know – there was no need for me to reinvent the wheel! Go check them out for more tips beyond what I provide here.

To start with, I had to invest in some pretty cool gizmo’s to pack in my bags.

Part of my Traveling Kitchen

Part of my Traveling Kitchen

I mentioned in the last post about carrying a Pyrex dish with me to heat and eat out of on the road. That’s it with the red lid above. It’s oven and microwave safe, which makes it perfect for travel food. On top of that is a set of camping utensils. They’re plastic, but sturdier than your typical fast-food plastic utensils. Perfect for those times when no fast-food joints are handy, or you’re on the plane with no food service.

Rehydrating food is simple: you just need water and time. Hot water helps speed the process, and a tip I learned from some camping websites is to put your food and some hot water in a thermos. They said the pressure created in the thermos speeds up the process. So I bought myself a food thermos – and I can verify that it truly does speed up the process an incredible amount!

Right in the center of the picture are two bowls; one is a standard bowl, the other is a strainer. Both of them fold almost completely flat for packing! I love those bowls! See?

Folded flat bowls...love it!

Folded flat bowls…love it!

Those come in handy for the hamburger hash, in particular. After rehydrating the meal in the thermos, I strain it through the collapsible strainer and dump it in the bowl. Then I can add my oil and seasonings and stir it together well before cooking.

The bowl, obviously, also does double duty as a soup bowl when necessary.

When rehydrating food, I mentioned hot water speeds up the process. I also like to drink tea, and that needs hot water, too. So I couldn’t help myself when I saw this little gem at my grocery store a few weeks before I returned to work:

Awesome!

Awesome!

I am stunned at how quickly this thing heats water! It gives me a safe, cross-contamination-free way to heat up water on the road, and when I’m in hotel rooms and want to eat soup, I can just rehydrate and cook it right in the pot! Plus, it only weighs a POUND!!

Speaking of cooking, I have a few options. On the aircraft I can use the onboard ovens, which is very convenient. Unless you’re a Flight Attendant (or especially pleasant and nice to a Flight Attendant!), you probably won’t have that option. The alternates are to use a microwave somewhere along the way (hotels often have them available, for example), heat up just soup in your hot pot, or become truly self-sufficient and get yourself a Lil’ Skillet.

Guess what I did?

Oh, yes, I carry a 6″ Mini Electric Skillet with me now! It’s marvelous!  I can cook a full meal in it and it breaks down into small pieces to store in my suitcase.

To see all this in action, I took photos of cooking my food one night when I was at the airport in our crew lounge.

Seasoning and oiling my hamburger hash...

Seasoning and oiling my hamburger hash…

Lil' Skillet heating up...look how tiny it is!

Lil’ Skillet heating up…look how tiny it is!

Toss in the food...

Toss in the food…

And put on the lid!!

And put on the lid!!

Breakfast is ready!

Breakfast is ready!

Oh, and for reference: here’s my cooked and ready to eat hamburger hash next to a dehydrated hamburger hash.

It may not look like a big difference, but the weight and size difference is quite large!

It may not look like a big difference, but the weight and size difference is quite large!

Here are some other essentials in my traveling kitchen:

Kicking it up a notch

Kicking it up a notch

Left to right is onion powder, garlic powder, a camping salt/pepper shaker, sea salt, stevia, tea bags, and pre-cut pieces of aluminum foil. (Not shown is my wee spatula, perfectly sized for the Lil’ Skillet.)

Soap and Oil

Soap and Oil

And let’s not forget the olive oil! I wanted to make sure all my important liquids could come with me no matter where I went, so I found these little 2 ounce glass bottles at my health food co-op. I’ve used them before and knew they didn’t leak, so I filled them with olive oil and stuck them in a Ziploc bag. Next to them is a plastic 2 ounce bottle of dishwashing soap. I’m not 100% sure our dishwashing liquid is corn-free, but so far Zac has not reacted to it so I’m hesitant to rock the boat and use whatever soap I can find in hotels. Carrying soap was a wise choice!

In fact, on my Seattle layover I stopped and bought myself a sponge that I now keep in a plastic baggie in my food kit to make dishwashing even easier!

These photos were taken at the end of my second day at work, but here’s what’s left of my onion bombs and sliced carrots:

Two onion bombs and half of my sliced carrots

Two onion bombs and half of my sliced carrots

To carry all this stuff I have a fabulous lunch tote from eBags.com, called the Crew Cooler. I’ve had it for a few years, but after this first trip back I’m thinking of upgrading to another bag that some Flight Attendants recommended. It’s very similar, but a little larger. Still, my current lunch tote did a fine job!

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee?

The top zipper is a dry goods storage pocket. That’s where I put the seasonings, tea bags, foil, utensils, spatula, and a handful of pint sized Ziploc baggies (you just never know, right?).

The front pocket is another dry goods storage pocket. That’s where I put the olive oil, dishwashing soap, and stevia.

The center zipper is for the cooler part of the bag. In there I put my onion bombs, carrots, Pyrex dish, and, eventually, my pumped breast milk.

The ends of each bag have a bottle holder. I put a Kleen Kanteen in each of those with filtered water.

Speaking of water, I faced a serious challenge with that one. Zac is corn-sensitive, and most bottled water is corny. Either the bottle itself is made of corn ingredients, or the water is filtered through a corny filter (or both!). Unfortunately, many municipal water locations also use corny ingredients in their water purification processes, which means finding non-corn water was going to present a challenge.

Honestly, I never came up with a sure-fire, 100% guaranteed way to avoid corny water on the road. The best I came up with was to buy 3 of the 40 ounce Kleen Kanteens and a travel Brita bottle.

The city water wherever I wind up *may* be corny, but the bottled water everywhere I go WILL be corny…so it’s the lesser of two evils to simply filter tap water. I’m hoping that whatever corntamination I get will not be enough to bother Zac through my breast milk, but I would be a lot more paranoid about this if I had to give him the water to drink directly.

Other than the two Kleen Kanteens I kept in my lunch kit, the third Kanteen, the Brita bottle, and my thermos went in my inflight tote bag. This is where Flight Attendants store their work items, so it’s always readily accessible during the flight.

Oh, and for that lovely cooler section of my food tote? You have to have freezer inserts!

My hodge-podge of freezer inserts.

My hodge-podge of freezer inserts.

Whenever I found a freezer, I stuck these in there. To help keep my food and milk cold during the day, though, I’m going to share an awesome tip:

Oh, yeah, baby!

Oh, yeah, baby!

Medical ice bags.

Fill them with ice, stick them in your insulated cooler, and they will keep your food nice and chilly for a very long time! The best part is that they weigh very little until filled, and you can almost always find ice nearly anywhere you go. They’re an invaluable backup to the pre-made freezer inserts.

One other thing…don’t forget an extension cord!

I am SO glad I brought this with me!

I am SO glad I brought this with me!

You did notice my frequent mentions of breast milk, right? Oh, yeah, I was pumping every three hours throughout my return to work (well, except for at night. I let myself get a little rest then!).

Which means I had to carry a breast pump. And carry all that milk back home with me!

I bought a new breast pump in honor of my return to work (mainly because my old one finally died). I picked the Medela Pump in Style Advanced, in hopes that I could squirrel away the different pump components in my existing luggage and not have to carry an extra bag.

That didn’t work.

And the metro bag that came with the pump was not well designed for travel; the top doesn’t secure closed very well. So I bought myself a black, insulated bag that perfectly fit my breast pumping needs and provided a little extra cushioning around my very expensive pump to boot!

The Boobie Bag

The Boobie Bag

I was amazed at how well everything fit in there; it was as if it was made for the pump!

Zac's life-savers

Zac’s life-savers

I carried the pump, a drawstring bag with my hands-free pump bustier (get one, seriously), my nursing cover, lanolin, and quick clean wipes for the times I can’t wash the equipment after pumping.

I also carried the wall charger, the battery pack (and one full set of extra batteries – I may need to carry two sets of extra batteries next time! This thing SUCKS juice!), and a gallon sized Ziploc bag with a full set of pump equipment inside. Loose in the bag is three extra bottles with lids.

The gallon Ziploc bag means my equipment stays protected after I’ve cleaned it, so it’s ready to go next time I need to pump.

In the side pockets of the bag I had milk storage bags, a sharpie for marking the bags, and a quick steam bag for microwave sterilization of the equipment whenever I found a microwave.

Just for amusement, here’s me washing dishes and pump equipment:

The bowl also serves as a handy place to put your clean dishes until you can dry them!

The bowl also serves as a handy place to put your clean dishes until you can dry them!

My scrubbed pumping equipment

My scrubbed pumping equipment

A little sterilization...

A little sterilization…

I store the hot pot and the Lil’ Skillet in my rolling suitcase, as I usually don’t need those except when in hotel rooms. It’s also where I shove the collapsible bowl and strainer.

My life...in a bag...

My life…in a bag…

I used hand towels to wrap around the skillet lid and the actual skillet (in case I didn’t get it quite clean enough, I didn’t want any residual food on my clothes). Plus, they serve as extra padding around the glass lid to keep it from breaking.

Whew! That’s a lot! Want to see my insanely large caravan of luggage?

My Home away from Home

My Home away from Home

Doesn’t look too bad, right? How about a side view?

Holy Smokes!

Holy Smokes!

So that’s my rolling suitcase, with my inflight tote, the lunch tote on top of that, the breast pump bag on top of the rolling suitcase, and my purse holding it in place.

Hello, shoulder dislocation?

But next time you see a Flight Attendant march through the airport hauling a load like this behind them, just try to remember: we’re not allowed to check our bags, and she might be ME, having to carry her normal travel stuff AND a Traveling Kitchen AND a milk machine!

(Or, you know, she just might like shopping. A lot.)

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I hope this series has been useful for you! There’s a lot of work involved in following a strict diet when you travel, but I believe it is very possible to eat well on the road.

If you have any tips, tricks, or questions, PLEASE leave them in the comments! I love learning new things and your question might be one others have but won’t ask.

Talk to me, folks! What is your best tip for eating well while traveling?

Traveling on a TED Step 2: Preparation

 
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This is the second post of my series on “Traveling on a TED” – or, Total Elimination Diet. You can find the first post here.

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So to prepare all this food to go to work I had to do a lot of cooking, and I had my Excalibur running almost 24/7 for a few weeks.

To start with, I made a double batch of pot roast with potatos and carrots. Then I picked apart all the meat and portioned out single servings of meat and veggies into quart sized Ziploc bags. I carry a small pyrex dish with me at work, so I squeeze the food down to fit into that dish and freeze in that shape. Then it’s easy to rip off the Ziploc bag, plop the food in the dish and heat it up – whether in a microwave or oven. (Sorry I don’t have pictures of this step; I forgot to take LOTS of pictures as this was a busy time! Hopefully you can imagine what I’m saying.)

Then I had Darrel make a big pot of potato-carrot soup for me (recipe to come soon!). I use the bones from my pot roasts and steaks to make my own beef broth, so it’s a delicious, gelatinous broth that makes this soup extra rich and thick. Plus, the potatos sort of dissolve in the cooking process, thickening it up some more.

Soup ladled on the trays ready to dry...

Soup ladled on the trays ready to dry…

Consequently, this is not a watery, runny soup, and I can easily ladle it in individual serving sizes on to the silpat sheets on the dehydrator trays and dry it. It took about 16 hours to dry the soup.

Dried soup!

Dried soup!

Once dry, it’s nice and crumbly and I simply break it into small pieces and toss it in a pint sized Ziploc bag. Each bag will reconstitute into 1-1.5 cups of soup, depending on how much liquid I add, which is a full serving.

Then I made my Hamburger Hash. Just like in the normal cooking of hamburger hash, I cooked the meat first. In this case, though, I left out the onion and just cooked the meat by itself. Dehydrating ground meat is tricky; lots of people suggest rinsing it in water after cooking to knock off any excess grease or fat. The grease and fat can cause the meat to go rancid quicker, which is why a lot of dehydration experts will tell you it’s not a great idea to dehydrate meat this way.

For my purposes, and for anyone who is simply looking to make food that will keep for a short term purpose like travel or camping, I don’t worry too much about that advice. If I were to attempt to store my ground beef for longer, then I would rinse my meat. Besides, I’m using grass-fed and -finished beef; it’s so lean I usually have to add oil to it to make tacos! There’s not much to rinse off!

One good tip is to ensure you break it up as small and uniformly as possible. This will make it all dry faster and more evenly, and that’s a good thing, as Martha would say.

So I cooked the ground beef, which was about 1.5 pounds. For me, that’s 6 servings of meat for my hamburger hash. Then I laid it out on the trays and dried it, which took about 12 hours. After that I weighed it, divided that number by 6, and put the appropriate amount in a pint sized Ziploc bag.

The next step was the potatos, onion and carrot for the hash. Onion and carrot are easy; simply prep them how you want them – in my case shredded carrot and diced onion – and lay them on the tray to dry!

Onion and Carrot ready to dry

Onion and Carrot ready to dry

I put the two together because, well, why not? Saves time and electricity. I use about 1/2 of a carrot in each serving of hamburger hash for myself, and about 1/4th of an onion. So I just put the correct amount of each together on the tray, dried them (about 8 hours), and added them to the baggies of ground beef.

Onion and Carrot dried! This was a different sheet (which I didn't realize when I took the picture) but I promise these piles were the exact same size as the undried ones in the previous photo,

Onion and Carrot dried! This was a different sheet (which I didn’t realize when I took the picture) but I promise these piles were the exact same size as the undried ones in the previous photo,

Then the potatos. These are a little more involved; with potatos, you need to steam or boil them before drying to make sure they don’t discolor. I simply shredded a potato, dropped it on my steamer basket and steamed it for about 6-8 minutes. Then I laid the potatos out on the silpat sheets of my Excalibur and let it dry. This took about 14 hours.

Dried potatos; they were much thicker filled up the sheet when raw.

Dried potatos; they were much thicker filled up the sheet when raw.

These potatos didn't steam long enough; you can see the slight discoloration on some of them. I ate it anyway, and it tasted fine.

These potatos didn’t steam long enough; you can see the slight discoloration on some of them. I ate it anyway, and it tasted fine.

Once they were dried, I broke them apart into small pieces and added the to the baggies of meat, carrot and onion. Voila! Hamburger hash, ready to go!

These two bags hold in them: 8 Hamburger Hash, 8 Potato-Carrot soup, 5 bags of beef jerky, and 1 bag of sliced potato for mashed potato. Amazing, isn't it? And it weighed about as much as a large paperback book.

These two bags hold in them (with room to spare): 8 Hamburger Hash, 8 Potato-Carrot soup, 5 bags of beef jerky, and 1 bag of sliced potato for mashed potato. Amazing, isn’t it? And it all weighed about as much as a large paperback book.

While I was at it, I peeled a few potatos and sliced them evenly with a mandolin. Then I steamed those, laid them out on the sheets and let the dry. Once rehydrated, these were single serving mashed potatos ready to eat.

I also made a whole mess of beef jerky, exactly as I showed in the original recipe. For my nutritional needs, and understanding that I might be a little light on protein while at work, I portioned the meat out in 6 ounce servings. Once dried, it was considerably less than that! But it meant that for each baggie of beef jerky I was eating a full 6 ounces worth of meat. That helped keep my energy levels up while working. (It’s important to weigh your serving sizes before you cook or dehydrate them, as that’s what most serving sizes are based on.)

Then I made 8 onion bombs (again, recipe is coming soon!) and froze them. Two of those equals one meal for me, so that was 4 meals ready to just pop in the oven and eat.

For snacks, I mentioned raw carrots. The day I left for the airport, I peeled and sliced a whole BAG of carrots! They were certainly a good idea – I was easily able to squelch hunger pangs with a handful of carrot sticks until I could get my food cooked when working.

And right about then was when I ran out of time to make or do anything else. But it was enough for me to start work with, though I did find I was a little light on calories most days. I think I need to plan for more food than I took this first trip from here on.

As a nursing mother on an elimination diet, I keep track of my caloric intake. According to my “Lose It” app, I should eat about 2200 calories a day while nursing to maintain my weight and milk supply. I’ve found that I actually eat about 2800-3400 calories a day and my weight stays fairly stable and my milk supply is good.

While I was at work, I was almost exactly hitting the “Lose It” mark of 2200 calories a day, and by the last day at work I was barely able to pump anything. (If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I barely pumped anything the first couple times I pumped at work. I neglected to update that with the great success I had after the third pumping session – I brought home 78 ounces of milk in that 5 days!) But the last three pumping sessions were worse than the first three, and I think the lowered calorie intake contributed to that.

So that was how I prepared my food for work. I tried to make it as easy as possible while on the road, but it was still considerably more effort to eat than simply ordering room service or stopping at an airport fast food joint!

However, if you have strict dietary needs, it is entirely possible to eat very well with your own home cooking while traveling…you just have to plan ahead and prepare before you leave.

One important note: be sure to check the temperature on your dehydrator for each food item you dry. That is why I dried the meat and veggies separately; they each require different drying temperatures. So consider that when planning and preparing your food.

Of course, the question remains: how did I manage to COOK all that food while I was gone? That answer comes in the next post – all about cool gizmos!

Traveling on a TED Step 1: Planning

 
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Some people might be curious how I stay on my Total Elimination Diet while traveling non-stop for days on end. It’s a good question, and the answer is: lots of planning, preparation, and cool gizmos.

I started to write this as a single post, but it was just too involved to fit in a thousand words or less so I’m writing another series! I think this one will be invaluable to anyone who has to travel for work and has special dietary needs.

PLANNING

Leading up to my return to work, I first had to figure out what the challenges would be trying to combine traveling with a TED. I quickly realized:

  • I can only eat grass-fed and –finished beef. That’s pretty hard to come by in most airports and hotels!
  • I can only eat “safe” olive oil. That’s not usually found in airports or hotels, either.
  • Zac is corn sensitive. So far, he’s been okay on the water we use at home. But on the plane, we serve Dasani water which is completely corny! I would prefer not to drink that out of fear it will cause him to “slow burn” react through my milk.
  • Potatoes and carrots are safe for me to eat, but it’s not exactly healthy to eat nothing but those two things for days on end (not that my TED is a well-rounded nutritional plan, but you get the idea)…plus, they would take up a lot of weight and bulk in my bags.

So it seemed clear to me that I would have to carry every single bite of food I consume AND every single drop of liquid I drink with me when I go to work.

Oy vey.

Time to get creative!

To start, I thought of all the recipes I make that are safe for me and wrote down the ones I thought had potential to be made portable enough to take to on the road. For me, this list came down to:

Now I had to think of ways to make those portable.

Enter Excalibur!

Here is why I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOVVE my dehydrator! Beef jerky is dried already, so there’s one food item checked off the list. I took time over the last month or so preceding my return to work to play around with drying foods, and was reminded instantly of my deep love of my Excalibur.

Hamburger Hash dehydrates beautifully! Potato-Carrot Soup is also awesome dried! Sliced potatos rehydrate and mash up into perfect mashed potatos! Carrots darn near disappear they shrink so much when they dry…but when rehydrated they’re perfect to fry or bake and they taste just like fresh! (Pictures and details on this to follow!)

I Big Puffy Heart my Excalibur.

Then it was a matter of figuring out how much food I would need to take with me. Again, a list came in handy.

  • Three meals per day
  • Snacks for each day (sometimes I wouldn’t get the chance to eat a real meal, so a snack would have to suffice)
  • Water
  • Olive oil
  • Seasonings (garlic and onion powder, sea salt and black pepper)
  • Tea bags

OK. With my handy dandy list, I looked at my work schedule and saw that I would leave for work on Friday night and return home Wednesday morning. So that is:

  • 5 breakfasts
  • 4 lunches
  • 5 dinners
  • 5 days worth of snacks
  • enough olive oil to cook with
  • enough seasonings to work with

I decided Hamburger Hash was perfect for breakfast. So I knew I needed to make 5 of those (at least!). Lunch and dinner…well, I needed 9 of those at a minimum. I knew life would be easier if I didn’t have to rehydrate every single meal I made while working, so I planned on some Pot Roast and Onion Bombs pre-made and frozen. Those would be easy to just toss in the oven or microwave and eat whenever I needed. But those would only stay “fresh” and safe to eat for about two days of travel, since I can’t carry a refrigerator with me wherever I go and my ice packs were going to be vitally used to preserve the pumped breast milk I accumulated on the road.

Potato-Carrot soup fit the bill for a meal I could dehydrate and eat for lunch or dinner, and eating a full serving of beef jerky with some rehydrated mashed potatos sounded like a decent enough meal as well.

So 4-5 frozen meals, plus 4-5 dehydrated dinners on top of the Hamburger Hash.

Plus snacks, of course! Cut up, raw carrots would keep for most of the trip and I could snack at will on them, plus I figured I could carry one or two bags of my safe potato chips for the first day or so of work. Beef jerky could pull double duty as a snack and a meal when necessary.

So now that I had a Plan, the next step was to Prepare.

Part 2 comes tomorrow!

Back in the Boeing Again

 
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The sign in one of the shuttle van's we rode in this week. Cracked me up!

The sign in one of the shuttle van’s we rode in this week. Cracked me up!

I have now officially finished my first trip back to work.

Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. Pretty much my entire time away was a series of me thinking “I can handle this!” followed by “I can’t handle this!” – repeat ad nauseum.

It started with arriving in my domicile on Friday night, when I realized that this felt RIGHT. I was a Flight Attendant for a very long time before I ever met Darrel and had kids. My entire adult life, in fact, has been spent in airports, airplanes and hotels.

Walking through the airport in my uniform, dragging my insanely large caravan of bags behind me, felt so completely normal and natural it was eerie.

In the end, while I am many things in this world…I remembered that I am, in a very fundamental way, also a Flight Attendant.

This sort of job just gets in your blood and becomes a lifestyle. I honestly can’t imagine not being a Flight Attendant, even if only part time.

So I spent the night in the airport and reported for work Saturday morning, getting reacquainted with the new differences in my job and meeting my crew for the first time. This very first trip back to work I had to work as the lead Flight Attendant on the plane.

Yeah. I’ve been gone for 15 months and missed all the new things that happened, but I was in charge of making sure the flight ran smoothly and according to FAA and Company policies.

And you know what? I will boldly proclaim right now: I am damn good at my job. I know I dropped the ball on little things here and there, but overall I jumped into the deep end of the pool and swam like a fish.

It felt AWESOME.

This last year of dealing with so many uncertain issues in our lives, I often wonder if I’m doing a good job with any of it. So being on a flight and knowing down in my gut that things are going well and I’m doing exactly what I need to do was exhilarating. I was completely starting to believe “I can handle this!”

Then Saturday night, as I was just about to turn in and get some sleep, the phone rang. It was 2:00 a.m. It was Darrel, and Zac was screaming in pain in the background.

Long story short, I neglected to get rid of the milk I pumped between Zac’s birth and his hospitalization from the freezer and Darrel neglected to double check the dates on the milk he was feeding Zac when I left and so Zac was fed non-TED milk for the first 24 hours I was gone.

He was having an FPIES reaction. And I was in Boston. And I couldn’t do anything about it. And I felt alone and lost and angry and frustrated and bereft.

I started thinking through how I could get an emergency drop from the rest of my trip and how soon I could get back home, and completely started thinking that “There’s no way I can handle this!”

I lay in bed, unable to sleep, until almost 7:00 a.m. When I woke up in the early afternoon, Darrel and I spoke on the phone and he said Zac was much better now that he was eating safe milk again.

Crisis averted. Now to just survive getting back to baseline.

Sunday went well, and by the end of the day with Zac feeling better and my realization that I can “fake it til I make it” attitude and disposition-wise with the customers, I was back to believing “I can handle this!”

Monday was a long day, but I learned some disturbing things about my job. It seems that with the merger and personnel shifting that is going on, the base I’ve flown out of my entire career is being shrunk and slashed. If I stay where I am, I’ll wind up on reserve this fall.

I canNOT do reserve living.

For those unaware, reserve flying is where you are on call 24 hours a day for 20 days a month and have about 2 hours to get to the airport. When I was young and single, no problem. Married with sick kiddos? Not possible at all.

So I’m scrambling to figure out what to do. Ideally I could transfer to a new base with better flying and hold a good schedule for the month (because we all know the Summers family desperately needs the money), but my other option is to put in for a 5 month leave of absence the airline is offering this fall. Not a great choice, because we would then not have enough money to pay our bills, but then I could keep Zac alive…so, it is still a viable option.

I was struggling again, feeling like “I can’t handle this!”

And then the day ended with me in Seattle.

We went to the hotel, got settled in, and I went to sleep an hour past midnight. I didn’t set an alarm clock, thinking I would just sleep in. Turns out? My kids have apparently trained me to sleep no longer than 7 hours at a stretch. I woke up all on my own exactly 7 hours after I fell asleep.

Pre-children I would have slept 10 or more hours – easy. Oh, well!

So I got up, pumped, cooked my food, ate, got showered (without anyone screaming for me, joining me in the shower, or feeling any pressure to hurry it up because a child might need me at any minute – it was glorious!), dressed, and headed out to wander Seattle.

I love Seattle. I love the Pike Street Market, I love the weather, I love so much about just wandering around downtown Seattle. It’s a really great city and I always enjoy being there.

As it was my birthday (yes, I worked on my birthday – Happy Birthday, me! LOL), I treated myself to a mobile wireless hotspot to carry with me so I can continue to blog and stay connected on the road. (Thanks again, Liz! You’re awesome!) I meandered through the Pike Street Market and contemplated buying some fresh Alaskan Salmon before deciding I didn’t want to mess with that. I found an awesome toy store that I could easily have dropped a few hundred dollars at. Instead, I bought some supposedly “Safe” crayons for Jed to finally be able to color with!

I headed back to the hotel so I could pump and cook some more food before working the red-eye flight back to base, and I totally felt a spring in my step and a confident “I can handle this!” sink back in to my mind.

It’s felt a little schizophrenic the last few days.

As for the kiddos?

Jed apparently fell in love with “The Sound of Music” while I was gone. Zac ate about 50 ounces of milk per day. Darrel learned that the easiest way to get both kids down for bed at the same time was to take them on a car ride until they crashed out. Mom and Dad had fun (and got worn out) chasing the kiddos and teaching Jed how to fish in their new pond, shell peas, and even tried to start potty training him.

Both kids were excited when I called on the phone to talk with them, and Jed even asked for me to come home on Monday night! The best, though, was when I first talked to Jed on Tuesday morning and he said “HAPPY BIR-DAY, MOMMY!” Melt my heart, why dontcha, kiddo? So stinkin’ sweet!

And while all this craziness was going on, I made some phone calls and got some calls returned and finally managed to find a local source of lamb meat for Zac, which I will pick up as soon as my flight lands in Arkansas on Wednesday morning.

It was hard being back to work in a lot of ways, but the kids had a great time with Grandma and Pop Pop and Daddy. I had a great time talking to other adults in real-world settings. I enjoyed taking showers ALONE without PRESSURE to do a ‘boat shower’. And I’m earning a heckuva lot of money for my family, which, in its own way is a very distinct part of “taking care of my kids”.

So the truth about returning to work, y’all?

I can handle this.

Quinoa, Craziness, and Ear Infections

 
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<chirp chirp chirp>

That’s the sound of the crickets chirping in the silence of the last week here at Cradle Rocking Mama. I’ve been, as they say, out of pocket.

And out of my mind, but that’s starting to seem all too typical!

So, to ease any concerns I’m going to start by saying: quinoa is looking good!

Noshing away on a feeder full of quinoa!

Noshing away on a feeder full of quinoa!

I created a teething biscuit recipe for Zac out of quinoa, and while he’s not a huge fan of just plain, cooked quinoa flakes, he LOVES the crackers! He gnaws on them all day long and is thrilled to death to do so!

Even better? Because he’s got something to eat, his Roomba tendencies have greatly diminshed! The kiddo isn’t picking up EVERY SINGLE THING off the floor and eating it any more! (Now it has to be something that looks particularly interesting, which is still a HUGE improvement!)

And after the rocky start we had last week, there have been NO bad symptoms!

So we were planning on taking a quinoa break this week on Wednesday for 3 days and re-introducing it on Saturday to see how he handled it. If he did okay on it after another 7 days we were ready to call it SAFE.

Isn’t that a glorious thought? My son would finally have a safe food!

And then our plans went down the toilet.

OK, so I started with quinoa because that’s where I left off, but the last week was Cah-Ray-Zee around here!

The day of my last post, I got a call from work. Turns out they needed me to go to training – on FRIDAY. And I had to pee in a cup and get fingerprinted and do paperwork BEFORE I could go to training. Which meant the rest of Wednesday was spent scrambling like mad to be ready to fly down for all this insanity on Thursday morning.

It’s not so simple, you see, because NOTHING in my life can be simple!

Thursday was travel, return-to-work-stuff, and go to my parents house.
Friday and Saturday was training.
Sunday we were driving back to Arkansas…with all my parents worldly possessions packed in a 26 foot moving van!

So, you see, I couldn’t really cook down at my folks house because their house is all packed up for the move, and since I can’t eat anything I don’t cook…well, Wednesday was frantic, balls-to-the-walls cooking extravaganza as I prepared all the food I would need to eat for the next FOUR DAYS!

While I was darting like mad around my kitchen last Wednesday, I noticed Jed had a runny nose. Like “faucet stuck on low” runny nose. Not. Good.

By Thursday afternoon, when Zac and I were landing safely in Houston, Darrel reported that he and Jed both had coughs, sneezes, and incredibly runny noses, and that Darrel, at least, felt like crap.

I was grateful Zac and I escaped unscathed.

HA. HA. HA.

Friday Zac started up with his own runny nose and cough. By Saturday, he was worse, and my cough was starting. Sunday? We just kept the box of tissues next to me in the car the whole drive…it wasn’t pretty.

And on Sunday night when we got home, I saw Zac reach up and tap his head, then flip his ear, and I suddenly realized he’d been doing that a lot since Friday night. Then Darrel, who was holding him, turned a bit and I saw a HUGE wad of ear wax in his left ear. Like, horror movie ear wax! I had just cleaned his ears the night before! How was that possible?!

So yesterday morning I called the doctor to ask about it. It’s obvious we all have “summer colds”, and I know there isn’t anything you can really do for a cold. But the ear thing – was that some unknown-to-me part of having a cold or was it something to worry about?

They suggested I bring him in to be examined, so yesterday afternoon we were at the doctors office.

The doc came in, checked him over, then went to look in his ears.

Zac did NOT like that. AT ALL!

After physically restraining him so she could take a peek, she had to use those weird little scraper thingies to dig out the crap in his left ear. Two archaeological digs later, she had some nasty little piles of gunk out of the way and could actually see what was happening in his head. Yikes.

Sure enough, ear infection. One so bad that it perforated his ear drum (that’s what all the gunk and ear wax was from). He needs an antibiotic.

Big sigh. This…is a problem.

No matter how you cut it, antibiotics are rarely friendly to FPIES kids. (There are exceptions to this rule, as I’ve learned from my fellow FPIES moms, but the rule still holds.) Not to mention that Zac is INCREDIBLY corn sensitive! So anything we give him must be compounded to death!

The doc sent off a prescription to the compounding pharmacy, and we dashed over to chat with the pharmacist about how we could make this corn-free for Zac.

After over an hour of trying, we realized…we couldn’t. There was nothing the pharmacy had in stock, and nothing they could order, that would enable Andrew to make an antibiotic of the proper class for a child Zac’s size and age without corn-y fillers.

While this was going on, I was begging my fellow FPIES moms and Corn-allergy friends on Facebook for advice. Eventually, they reached a consensus: Rocephin. Antibiotic shots.

So I called the doctor back and asked if that was possible. At first, they didn’t know what I was talking about and wanted to look it up. By the time I made it back to the office, they had all the info. They can do the shots, but theirs is in a suspension of Lidocaine 1%.

Back to the internet I went with the ingredient insert in my hot little hands, trying to discover if the lidocaine had anything corny in it. I couldn’t find anything definitive, which I decided is a good sign. If it was a corny thing, the corn people would certainly have discovered it by now!

So, we gave him the shot. 

Now I have to take him back for the next two days at approximately the same time for the follow up shots. 

Thanks to antibiotics, we’re pulling quinoa from Zac’s diet for now. And…I really don’t know what to do next. Re-start the probiotic that we said wasn’t good for him (because while a slow burn reaction, the good buggies did benefit him and antibiotics could wreck that)? Leave quinoa off the table for a while after the antibiotics are done with and start a meat broth trial (if he is safe with the proteins of the particular meat we choose, the broth is very gut-healing)? Just re-start quinoa about three days after his last shot?

Not a clue! But a perforated ear drum puts this well beyond the range of garlic oil, so it is necessary to endure this insanity.

It’s just really ticking me off that this might set us back weeks – or even months – of our FPIES progress. It feels like we can hardly catch a break!

First things first, though. I want my babies well. I HATE when they’re sick! Just breaks my heart to hear Jed say “Blow Jed’s nose again” and have it sound like he’s underwater. (But isn’t it cute how he asks for it?)

Oh! And while we waited for the shot at the doctors office, I got another call from work. My background check came back clean and I’m cleared to return to work. So now I need to go pick up work assignments off the computer for the rest of the month.

ACK!

I knew it was coming, but I’m just woefully unprepared. I don’t have enough food ready, I don’t have my uniforms hemmed, and I’m still having anxiety attacks at the thought of going back to work.

However…a long time ago I learned a quote that is commonplace in the Flight Attendant world: “Ain’t nuttin’ to it but to do it”.

Usually this is in reference to getting back out in the aisle for the second beverage service, when we’d all prefer to sit down and take a break for a bit, but it applies to just about everything in life.

And especially this season of my life! There just ain’t nuttin’ to it but to do it. Like it or not, I’m heading back to work.

__________________

Anyway, I have some new recipes to share and other stories for you, but with this whole returning to work thing I have to say that posting might become patchy here for a while. I need to get my “air legs” back underneath me and I don’t know how well I’m going to be able to juggle all these new balls I’m being thrown. I’ll probably drop a few now and then.

So don’t be too worried about us if you don’t see anything new for a few days at a time. I intend to do my best, though! (And thank you for worrying already – this post was prompted by concerned messages from YOU! I feel all warm and fuzzy! HUGS!)

OK, Quinoa…I Don’t Think We’re Done With You Yet!

 
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I have to start this post with a gigantic THANK YOU. After yesterdays emotional ordeal, I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of support and encouragement! To go through a food trial for the first time is scary; to think it was unsuccessful is devastating. But to know that there were hundreds of people praying for us and wishing us well softened the blow in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

So, THANK YOU. You are awesome!

And I think I may actually have some heartening news to share! After much debate and deliberation, Darrel and I have come to the conclusion that quinoa may NOT be unsafe for Zac, after all.

So here’s how it works, in case you’re not “up” on FPIES. Typical acute reactions for an FPIES kid will show up 2-4 hours after food ingestion. They include vomiting, diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, lethargy and behavior changes.

Zac is a complicated FPIES child, in that he has acute reactions, but also has chronic reactions. And his acute and chronic reactions are not always “classic” – for example, even his acute reactions don’t show up in that 2-4 hour window. Usually they’re within 4-16 hours after ingestion.

For Zac, his reaction signs have always included some or all of the following: bloody stool, spit-up/reflux flares, vomiting, clinginess, sleep disturbances, eczema, developmental stalling, and sometimes acidic poop that gives him horrible diaper rashes.

So yesterday, when we saw the blood in the diaper, we naturally concluded he was having a reaction.

I reported our heartbreaking news to the other FPIES moms on the boards, and they all commisserated wholeheartedly with our quinoa loss. But then one mom, in an effort to be encouraging, asked if we thought he might just have an anal fissure. Sometimes bright red blood can come from that, as we have already experienced once before.

So we sat and talked about this idea for a bit, let it ruminate, and the more we observed Zac the more this new line of thinking made sense.

Yesterday, for the record, he had the best nights sleep he has had in many months. He taught himself to blow kisses at people. He started babbling again; something he had been doing but had stopped doing about a month ago (I was actually beginning to think he needed to be evaluated for Early Intervention!). He was not clingy in the slightest. He was happy and giggly all day. He had no spit-up or vomiting all day. And after that bloody diaper? He had no more poops the rest of the day.

Then, when I was eating mashed potatos at dinner, he screamed for the potatos and spent the entire meal trying to grab them from me! It suddenly dawned on me that mashed potatos probably look quite a bit like cooked quinoa flakes. Zac WANTED to eat quinoa!

Most FPIES kids are pretty good about not wanting to eat foods that trigger them. This isn’t an absolute, but a general observation a lot of FPIES Mama’s have made about their children. It’s so often true, in fact, that many moms will stop a food trial if their child refuses the food the second time they serve it to them, because many times when the child refuses the food it turns out to be unsafe for them!

So that’s a pretty good sign!

I really want to see him in a bib more often!

I really want to see him in a bib more often!

At bathtime, Darrel and I did our best to get a good peek into Zac’s heinie. This was made very difficult by the fact that Zac wanted to see what his brother was doing, and Jed was choosing to run around in circles. Consequently, there was an awful lot of rolling and squirming going on!

But it looked like there *might* be an anal fissure in there, which kind of makes sense considering he hadn’t had a BM for 5 days prior to yesterday! And quinoa has lots of fiber, so that could have “activated” his system to poop.

So, Darrel and I concluded that the quinoa trial is inconclusive! It still might be unsafe for him…but it is NOT YET a definite no-go!

We’re going to watch his diapers, and when we get a nice, clean, no-blood poop, we will re-try quinoa and see what happens then.

I worried, at first, that we were just clinging desperately to any shreds of hope. But FPIES is rarely cut and dried; this scenario makes just as much sense as the idea that he reacted to the quinoa – and it offers us a second chance at succeeding with a food.

As I’ve said before, sometimes with FPIES, HOPE is all you have! 

So thanks for being there with us through our sadness yesterday – and I hope you’ll stick around to see if our next quinoa trial proves us wrong!

__________

In other news, Jed is nearing the end of his early intervention speech therapy. They only cover him through 3 years old, and he’ll turn 3 in a few weeks.

So his beloved therapist is re-testing him with the same test she gave him during the initial evaluation. You know, the one that indicated he qualified for speech therapy?

Yeah. As of right now, his expressive speech is that of a FOUR YEAR OLD!!

And the receptive speech (what he understands) is still being tested (they ran out of time to finish that part of the test on Monday) and is already putting him at 4.5 years old!

Wowza!

I had no idea how effective speech therapy would be for him, but I’m ever so grateful for this experience. Having Jed chatting up a storm is breathtakingly fun; I LOVE to hear his little stories and finally SEE his thought processes in action!

The Summers’ Boys are not quite out for the count yet, folks!

Please pray for no bloody poop today, and another quinoa teaspoon tonight!

I am full of HOPE.

First Food Trial – Quinoa

 
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Last week I went to the doctor. For me, not the kids.

I’ve been having some strange symptoms the last 6 weeks or so. A strange “lightening” in my chest followed by the feeling that I’m suddenly standing on a mountain peak, having a hard time breathing the thin air. Woozy spells where my head feels like it’s floating.

It’s all very non-specific, but considering some family medical issues – and the fact that at 35, I’m no longer a spring chicken – I figured it was smart to get checked out.

Our GP, who I adore, said it sounded like one of two things: a heart problem of some sort, or anxiety attacks.

She gave me an EKG, which showed up perfect, of course. It’s just a snapshot in time, after all, and I wasn’t having any symptoms on that day. She took blood work, which so far has come back completely normal (no anemia or B12 problems at all, even on this TED – this was surprising!). The next step to rule out a heart problem is to wear what is basically a portable EKG for 48 hours and keep a record of every time I have an “episode” so they can rule out or confirm a heart problem.

I no longer think there is any need to wear the heart monitor. I’m convinced I’ve been having anxiety attacks.

Is it any wonder? I feel as if I’m being pulled in a million directions all at once! This month I return to work. My parents are moving. My baby has been reacting strangely to probiotics and I can’t find any answers. Finances are terrible. Anxiety seems just about right for my situation!

But the thing that proved to me I am not suffering from some strange heart condition happened last night. Darrel and I decided – at the last minute – to trial Zac on quinoa.

We took him off the probiotic last Monday, and after three days without it he suddenly began sleeping for 3-5 hour stretches all night long. Ever since April, he’s been waking up about every 1.5-2 hours to nurse all night long. That is a HUGE difference!

Plus, he hasn’t had any poops for 5 days. Back before all this started, that was just about normal for him.

So we are left to conclude that while the probiotics seem to be helping him, they’re also causing a low, minor reaction of some sort. Which means the probiotics are a no-go.

Crap.

So as Darrel and I sat discussing our next plan of action, it seemed clear the only choices were to trial a broth (a la GAPS), trial a new probiotic, or trial a food. Darrel was adamant that we needed to start a food. Zac is 1 year old now and still can’t eat anything, after all!

So I said “When? Tonight?” as a joke…but Darrel said “Why not?” And, after I picked my jaw up off the floor I had to acknowledge that, well, he has a point. You start food trials on kids when they’re healthy, not reacting, and doing well. Right at this moment, he’s healthy, not reacting, and doing well.

Um…okay! Sure! So into the kitchen I went, cooked up some quinoa flakes, and the food trial began.

From the minute we decided to do it, I started feeling a lightening in my chest. By the time I was feeding him with the spoon, it was getting hard to breathe. Ten minutes into feeding him, I had to sit down because I was getting so woozy.

And those symptoms didn’t let up for HOURS after the feed finished! Oh, and about an hour after we fed him, my stomach started cramping, too.

Food trials are really, really hard on me!

But, at least it makes it clear: this was a straight up panic attack that lasted for hours. So, no need to wear a portable EKG now!

Silver lining, here, y’all.

As for Zac, well…I have pictures to show how he handled his First Ever Food!

Zac got to sit in the high chair – with a BIB! He was very excited by this development…

Yay! I don't know what's happening next but this is new and I'm very excited!

Yay! I don’t know what’s happening next but this is new and I’m very excited!

But then he got a little nervous…

Um...what's going on?

Um…what’s going on?

And then we started feeding him…

The food goes in...

The food goes in…

Uh...I don't know what to do with this!

Uh…I don’t know what to do with this!

I think I'll stick my tongue out...maybe it will go away then!

I think I’ll stick my tongue out…maybe it will go away then!

But eventually he got the hang of it! Getting out the high chair tray and putting the quinoa on it so he could play with it and feed himself helped a LOT!

I guess this isn't so bad.

I guess this isn’t so bad.

I really like feeding myself, though!

I really like feeding myself, though!

After we fed him, it was shower time and bedtime. I nursed him to sleep, as usual, and then we waited.

While most “classic” FPIES kids react at 2-4 hours after ingestion, Zac has always been a bit more delayed. His reactions can take from 4-16 hours after an ingestion before the vomiting and diarhhea begin. So we waited to see…

And he slept for FOUR HOURS and 45 MINUTES before he woke up to nurse the first time! Wahoo!

This morning he woke me up with a smile and a grin, and so far sees to be just fine.

Whew!

So we’ll feed him some more tonight, and if that goes well, then tomorrow he can eat as much quinoa as he would like!

I’m feeling much better this morning, too. Keep praying that this works – we won’t really know if quinoa is a safe food for at least a month, but so far it seems as though we’ve made it past the possibility of an acute reaction and that is a big enough milestone to pass for now!

I am nauseous and nervous, but I am SO HAPPY I CAN FINALLY FEED ZAC!!! Celebration!!

Anyone else get physically sick when you fed your child for the first time? Tell us how it went, please!

_______________________

Follow-up:

I don’t have the heart to re-write this whole post. It was ready to go this morning, except for the video I’d planned to include. Our internet connection is very slow today, so it is taking an exceptionally long time for the video to upload to YouTube. So I waited to post this.

I waited so long, in fact, that we now know that quinoa is not a safe food for Zac. He had three diarrhea diapers this morning, and the third was full of visible, bright shiny red mucousy blood.

Darrel and I both feel sick to our stomachs, but Zac is just fine – except for the bloody poop. I’m heartbroken.

Lamenting The Cake

 
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I'm ONE!!

I’m ONE!!

When Jed turned one year old, we had a family celebration on his actual birthday and a party the following weekend.

At the family celebration, we served homemade spaghetti and garlic bread, and Darrel’s mom brought a cake for everyone (except me and Jed) to eat. At the party Darrel and I held, we had a dairy and egg free feast for Jed: safe hot dogs, chips, and homemade cakes for him to smush and us to eat.

It took effort, but it was wonderful!

Friday, Zac turned one. 

There was no family celebration. There will be a joint birthday party for both boys at some point in June, but as of yet I don’t know when.

Thanks to FPIES, Zac’s birthday had to go pretty well un-celebrated.

I’ve heard other FPIES Mama’s lamenting the lack of a cake at their child’s birthday party and – while I commiserated – did not share in their sadness. I truly believed that I had accepted our fate. It’s just logic; he’s one! He won’t remember the cake, so what does it matter? Right?

Besides, I’ve gathered lots of “food-free” party ideas for the boys’ birthday party. It will still be fun! Right?

I believed that way all the way up to about 10:00 a.m. on Friday. And suddenly, sadness started creeping in to my soul. 

Sadness for my son, who, while not actually able to remember his first birthday will one day look for photographic evidence of the celebratory joy over his first year and will find nothing.

Sadness for our family, for the normal things and activities so many take for granted that we cannot indulge.

Sadness for me, because I LOVE my kids and want to give them the world! And I can’t even give my son a gift wrapped in paper or a lick of the beater from making him a cake. I can’t “do” motherhood the way I always dreamt, because FPIES has made it impossible.

Sadness that even when we do have that party for the boys, Zac will not be allowed to toddle around and investigate all the new, exciting things and people in the room because the danger of an FPIES reaction is too real and too dangerous.

The birthday boy should NOT have to be physically restrained in someone’s arms during his own damn birthday party! It’s just…WRONG!

So Friday was an emotionally draining day for me.

I did my best to celebrate him as much as I could; I have a tradition to set an alarm to go off on my kiddos birth minute so I can sing them “Happy Birthday” at the exact moment they entered the world. I did that for Zac.

He loved it! He grinned and giggled and tried clapping his hands, running around the living room with glee.

At my aunt’s suggestion, I took the 1.5 ounces of breast milk I still had in the fridge and put it in a breast milk baggie in the freezer long enough to make it a slushy and fed it to him as his one and only ‘treat’.

He wasn’t as thrilled with that, though he was intrigued. Mainly he was tired and hungry, and being strapped into the high chair was NOT accomplishing his goals of Food and Sleep, so he did.not.like.it. But once the milk touched his lips, he did enjoy sucking on it a bit.

Jed saved me from a crying jag over that one by tossing all my freshly folded laundry onto the floor. It’s hard to be an emotional mess when you’re trying to prevent your toddler from re-covering the dining room floor in towels!

All day long I kissed and hugged on Zac, telling him I loved him, telling him how happy I was that he was born, how thrilled I am to be his Mama. I tried to get as much snuggle time in with him and his brother as I could.

I wish our lives were not diminished so by FPIES. Zac shouldn’t have just had his Mommy telling him how awesome it is that he was born…he should have had all our friends and family celebrating him!

Because that’s what a birthday is, after all. A celebration of the person.

I can’t celebrate my son the way I would like to because it will make him sick. 

So today, I get it. I get why the other FPIES Mama’s have lamented the lack of a cake at their kiddos first birthday party.

It’s not because the child will remember it, or will not be just as happy without it.

It’s because it is yet another symbol of the normality we all desire for our children being ripped from our fingers.

And we as Mama-bear Protectors can do nothing to protect our children from the “different-ness” that is their lives. It’s another missed milestone.

And it just sucks.

Homemade Stevia Extract

 
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The weather this spring has been weird. We had unseasonably cold weather until May! Even though I hadn’t planned on putting in a garden this year, a couple weeks ago the whole clan was at the garden center buying plants and soil. It sort of felt like the late frosts were a “gimme” from nature saying “Go on, you still have time!”

So we planted a ton of stuff…tomatos, basil, spearmint, carrots, onions, swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, and stevia.

I’ve never grown stevia before, but it seemed like a good idea. Stevia is my only sweetener of choice on this elimination diet, and while I haven’t seen any problems with the one I’m using, making things from scratch is almost always better!

So I was looking forward to later in the year when I could harvest some stevia and make some extract.

My stevia plants, on the other hand, had a different plan. One day when I was out saying “hi” to my garden, I noticed some blooms on the plants. I know you’re supposed to pinch back before they bloom so the plant will keep growing, so I started doing some minor pruning. These stevia plants were so sad looking when we put them in, and we got such high wind for a few days afterwards (think the remains of the Oklahoma tornados) that I guess it just was a bit too much for my little plants: whole stems broke off in my hands from the slightest touch!

Poor little breakaways...

Poor little breakaways…

So now here I sat with a mess of stevia in my hands and I wracked my brain trying to remember how to do this! Turns out, it’s insanely simple, and insanely tasty!!

It’s very similar to making homemade vanilla extract. So here’s what you do:

Pull off the leaves of the stevia plant and put them in a jar. Be sure not to use the stem; it makes the extract bitter!

Pretty little leaves

Pretty little leaves

Then cover the leaves with vodka. Be sure to use potato-based vodka if you have a corn sensitivity!

I actually added a bit more vodka after I took this picture.

I actually added a bit more vodka after I took this picture.

Swish it around quite a bit, and leave it alone for 24-36 hours.

24 hours later...

24 hours later…

Then pour the liquid into a saucepan, straining out the leaves with a mesh strainer and maybe a coffee filter, if necessary.

Straining the mixture

Straining the mixture

It will fairly well REEK of vodka, so you need to cook off the alcohol to have a sweet extract. Turn the fire on low or medium-low; do NOT boil this! Cook it at a low temperature for 20-30 minutes until it thickens and reduces.

Cooking off the booze

Cooking off the booze

Then pour that into a glass bottle and store in the fridge! Easy peasy!

Can you see it?

Can you see it?

A few notes:

I did this from memory; I’d read about making stevia extract over a year ago, before Zac was born but never had any stevia leaves to try it with! I went back to refresh my memory right before cooking it, and saw that I may have messed up from the beginning!

About half the tutorials I saw said to dry the leaves first. They claim it makes for a sweeter extract that way.

The other half that used fresh leaves bruised or even chopped the leaves first.

I, obviously, did neither!

And you know what? My extract was delicious! So I don’t know if those steps are necessary, but I’ll be willing to give them a shot next time I make it.

The other thing is pretty obvious: did you see how much vodka I poured into the pan versus how much extract is in the brown bottle? Yeah, this reduces A LOT. So unless you’re starting with a considerable amount of leaves and vodka, you will not get enough to even sweeten one tall glass of tea.

But it is OH so worth the effort! It was sweet without any of the typical stevia sweetened aftertaste!

In fact, thanks to this little experiment, I went out and bought three more stevia plants for my garden.

I’m thinking there’s no way I can possibly grow enough stevia. I’m in love with this extract!

Try it – I think you’ll like it!

Oh, and one little caveat: apparently, not all stevia’s are created equal. “Stevia rebaudiana” is the species of stevia you’ll want for this. It’s also called “sweetleaf”, for obvious reasons.

Happy extracting!

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