Adding Foods
It's looking to be a fairly peaceful day today. Baby E is definitely on the mend, though her nose is still quite runny. The older two girls seem to be coming down with the cold. They're a bit whiny and snuffly, but so far not too ill.
AJ and M&M are making and cutting out Thanksgiving decorations. After we do some schoolwork, we're going to roll and cut out gingerbread cookies. I made the dough last night, so it's nicely chilled by now.
I'm going to have to come up with some other treat that Baby E and I can eat; maybe I'll try to modify a banana bread recipe.
The sun came out a few minutes ago, and it looks like a beautiful fall day. We might have to take a walk later.
This morning we're eating bananas and fried lamb's liver for breakfast. The older girls also had toast and scrambled eggs.
##################
All three kids tried the liver and didn't dislike it, but weren't crazy about it. AJ and M&M both said after one bite that they liked it, but were full and didn't want any more. Baby E ate her first few bites happily enough, then decided to stash the last few pieces in her ear.
I like it. It's definitely milder and sweeter than the beef liver we had last year. It's extremely tender, and has fewer veins to work around. Best of all, it's much smaller. The two lamb livers we got are less than half the size of the huge beef liver we had last year.
We also got 5 lamb hearts, because apparently nobody else who got lambs this year wanted the hearts. They're all soaking in salt water in the refrigerator right now.
If lamb heart or liver are foods any of you readers eat, I'd love to hear how you like to prepare them.
We didn't get any tongue this year, which was disappointing. That's my favorite part. But the heart and liver should certainly help fill in some of the iron and other nutrients we're missing from our diet.
We finally bought a used freezer from one of DH's coworkers. It's a full-sized upright freezer; very nice. Soon it will be full of meat.
We're buying a lamb and half a beef this year from a local farmer my grandparents recommended. They're raised naturally on pasture land, with just grass, hay and grain to eat. The local butcher uses no additives in the processing or the packaging. They simply hang the meat, cut it up, wrap it in freezer paper and freeze it.
DH and I had a talk last night, and decided to alter our diet plan a bit. My original plan was to establish a baseline with the minimum 5 foods. Then I had planned to add several foods at a time of the foods we're fairly sure Baby E doesn't have a problem with, adding a handful of foods all at once every few days and watching to see if she had a problem with any of them.
My naturopath advised that instead of adding several foods at a time, we keep it to only one item every 4-7 days. That makes sense for the foods that might possibly be problematic for Baby E. But it seems it might be a bit of overkill for the foods we're fairly sure she's already been tolerating well.
So we did a cost-benefit analysis.
If we add new foods a few at a time, and she has no reaction, we've just cut several weeks off our elimination diet process, added a lot of variety to our diet, and made my life much easier and less stressful. If she does have a reaction, we'll know which 3 or 4 foods are likely to be the culprit, back off, and reintroduce each food in the group one at a time.
I'm glad I cut us down to just a very few foods at first. That allowed us to establish a baseline and verify that there was indeed something in our diet that was bothering Baby E.
At this point, though, I don't think it's absoutely necessary to add just one element at a time to our diet. It seems there's more benefit than risk to adding several foods at a time, especially at this early stage when we've been eating only 5 foods for what seems like forever.
The things we're adding at this point are foods we're pretty sure she's not allergic to, anyway. If we could even add 5 foods in the next week or two, that would make a huge difference. We really need more of a variety of foods in our diet as soon as possible just for nutritional reasons, besides the obvious monotony factor.
So we're going to at least give that a try. Can you hear my huge sigh of relief echoing across the internets?
Why make life any more stressful than it has to be?
AJ and M&M are making and cutting out Thanksgiving decorations. After we do some schoolwork, we're going to roll and cut out gingerbread cookies. I made the dough last night, so it's nicely chilled by now.
I'm going to have to come up with some other treat that Baby E and I can eat; maybe I'll try to modify a banana bread recipe.
The sun came out a few minutes ago, and it looks like a beautiful fall day. We might have to take a walk later.
This morning we're eating bananas and fried lamb's liver for breakfast. The older girls also had toast and scrambled eggs.
##################
All three kids tried the liver and didn't dislike it, but weren't crazy about it. AJ and M&M both said after one bite that they liked it, but were full and didn't want any more. Baby E ate her first few bites happily enough, then decided to stash the last few pieces in her ear.
I like it. It's definitely milder and sweeter than the beef liver we had last year. It's extremely tender, and has fewer veins to work around. Best of all, it's much smaller. The two lamb livers we got are less than half the size of the huge beef liver we had last year.
We also got 5 lamb hearts, because apparently nobody else who got lambs this year wanted the hearts. They're all soaking in salt water in the refrigerator right now.
If lamb heart or liver are foods any of you readers eat, I'd love to hear how you like to prepare them.
We didn't get any tongue this year, which was disappointing. That's my favorite part. But the heart and liver should certainly help fill in some of the iron and other nutrients we're missing from our diet.
We finally bought a used freezer from one of DH's coworkers. It's a full-sized upright freezer; very nice. Soon it will be full of meat.
We're buying a lamb and half a beef this year from a local farmer my grandparents recommended. They're raised naturally on pasture land, with just grass, hay and grain to eat. The local butcher uses no additives in the processing or the packaging. They simply hang the meat, cut it up, wrap it in freezer paper and freeze it.
DH and I had a talk last night, and decided to alter our diet plan a bit. My original plan was to establish a baseline with the minimum 5 foods. Then I had planned to add several foods at a time of the foods we're fairly sure Baby E doesn't have a problem with, adding a handful of foods all at once every few days and watching to see if she had a problem with any of them.
My naturopath advised that instead of adding several foods at a time, we keep it to only one item every 4-7 days. That makes sense for the foods that might possibly be problematic for Baby E. But it seems it might be a bit of overkill for the foods we're fairly sure she's already been tolerating well.
So we did a cost-benefit analysis.
If we add new foods a few at a time, and she has no reaction, we've just cut several weeks off our elimination diet process, added a lot of variety to our diet, and made my life much easier and less stressful. If she does have a reaction, we'll know which 3 or 4 foods are likely to be the culprit, back off, and reintroduce each food in the group one at a time.
I'm glad I cut us down to just a very few foods at first. That allowed us to establish a baseline and verify that there was indeed something in our diet that was bothering Baby E.
At this point, though, I don't think it's absoutely necessary to add just one element at a time to our diet. It seems there's more benefit than risk to adding several foods at a time, especially at this early stage when we've been eating only 5 foods for what seems like forever.
The things we're adding at this point are foods we're pretty sure she's not allergic to, anyway. If we could even add 5 foods in the next week or two, that would make a huge difference. We really need more of a variety of foods in our diet as soon as possible just for nutritional reasons, besides the obvious monotony factor.
So we're going to at least give that a try. Can you hear my huge sigh of relief echoing across the internets?
Why make life any more stressful than it has to be?
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Posted by purple_kangaroo at 10:00 AM[Permanent link]
4 Comments:
the only thing that comes to my mind for comment is that I was trying to eat more liver earlier this year (w/ a recipe including bacon grease, lemon juice and flour) until someone commented that why would you want to eat the organ that filters junk out of the body? EW!
Do you grill much?
Colleen :-)
We have a grill, but hardly ever use it. I don't even know how to light it. We'll probably use it more in the summer when the weather is better for cooking outside.
A healthy, young animal raised without pesticides shouldn't have a lot of toxins built up in the liver. The liver filters out toxins; a healthy liver shouldn't store the toxins inside it.
Storing toxins in the liver happens mainly if the liver isn't working right, I believe. That's probably unlikely for a healthy, organically-raised lamb.
Liver has been eaten as a health food for centuries. It's particularly high in vitamin A, iron, and several other nutrients that have been lacking from our diet lately.
All things in moderation, though, of course. :)
Here's an interesting page on liver.
Thanks! I'll have to keep my eyes open for organic liver! Colleen
Hi Purplekanga,
I just realized that you found the liver info on Weston a. Price foundation's website! I knew a lady through CCL in Cinci who was really into their nutrition guidelines. What do you think about their opinion on cow's milk and Weston's work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration? He basically has a theory that our diet has affected the shape of our dental arch and increased dental problems... as a dentist, he traveled around the world with his wife to primitive communities.
http://www.tartanplace.com/tartanhistory/price.html
I'm very interested in hearing your opinion! Everyone I've talked to about this just raises their eyebrows and writes it off as genetics.
Colleen
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