Thursday, April 28, 2011

Week 1 Menu

My new shopping and cooking day will be Friday, so this is for 3 nights and 4 days only.

Breakfasts:

- Weetbix

- Ricebubbles

- Toast (bakers delight) with butter, pear jam (homemade - no peel), magic spread (like lemon curd - recipe in Fed Up) or golden syrup

Lunches/snacks

- Sandwiches (Baker's Delight Bread) or Original Sunrice rice cakes with any of the above toast options or phili cream cheese

- Marshmallow slice (like LCMs - 120g Pascall's white marshmallows, 60g butter microwaved together at 50% power until melted and then stirred into 6 cups ricebubbles, pressed into a slice tin and set in the fridge - yum)

- Pears in syrup (snack packs if I can find them) These will be for Em's 'fruit break' at school. It is normally a piece of fruit brought to combine in a share-a-plate but I have discussed this with her teacher already.

- Pikelets or lemonade scones (2cups and 2tbsp SR Flour, 2/3 cup cream, 2/3 cup Schwepps bottled lemonade (the rest and cans have preservatives))

- Parkers pretzels

- plain kettle chips

Dinners

This is my major downfall!!

- Failsafe sausages (from Rode Meats at Chermside - $12.99/kg made fresh 4 times a week and REALLY yum!) with mashed potato, green beans and swede

- Chicken Cabbage Alfredo minus pepper and with pasta

- Sizzle steak sandwiches - Baker's Delight bread, garlic salt*, iceberg lettuce and homemade mayo if needed

- Chicken wraps - Golden chicken from 'The Failsafe Cookbook' with iceberg lettuce, mayo (if needed) in either Mountain Bread or homemade tortillas

* I phoned Masterfoods about their Garlic Salt as going by the ingredients list, it should have been okay. The only questionable thing was 'vegetable oil'. While it is an allowable oil (canola) is contains unlisted antioxidant 319 so is not failsafe and is used in all of their spices. I have been told that Woolworths Garlic Salt is failsafe, but I had since made my own with straight garlic granuals and salt in a 1:5 ratio.

Drinks:

- water

- milk

- magic cordial

Wish me luck!!

Our 'Failsafe' Journey

Tuesday is D-Day. Diet Day. Failsafe Diet Day. For those not familiar with the Failsafe Diet, it basically means that you undertake a strict elimination diet until you reach a baseline and then re-introduce types of foods to see what causes a reaction and in what levels. See the Fed Up website for more information.

In the front of the Fed Up book, it has a list of symptoms that can be attributed to food sensitivities. As a family, many of these relate to us:

Me:
Eczema/hives/rashes
Hayfever, blocked or runny nose (constantly!)
Snoring (shh don't tell anyone!)
Sinusitis
Frequent tonsillitis, colds, flu (more as a child)
Frequent ear infections (more as a child)
Joint pain
Heart palpitations
Headaches and migraines
Tinnitus
Tiredness (although I do have a 3 month old lol)
Anxiety
Depression (previous history - doing okay over the past few years)
Vague or forgetful
Unable to concentrate
Unmotivated
Disorganised
Easily distracted (oh look - a butterfly . . .)
Poor coordination
Frequent accidents
Insomnia (at times)

Emily (Nearly 5):
Snoring
Frequent ear infections
Bad breath
Growing Pains
Headaches
Unexplained tiredness
Easily distracted
Vague or forgetful
Difficulty falling asleep
Frequent night waking
Nightmares/night terrors
Mood swings
Uncooporative, argumentative
Overreacts to small incidents
Temper tantrums and outbursts
Constantly says 'NO'
Break rules
Blames others
Deliberately annoys others
Angry, resentful, defiant
Spiteful

Zoe (3 yrs):
Eczema and other rashes
Headaches
Unexplained tiredness
Mood swings
Uncooporative, argumentative
Overreacts to small incidents
Temper tantrums and outbursts
Constantly says 'NO'
Break rules
Blames others
Deliberately annoys others
Angry, resentful, defiant

Abby (3 months):
Eczema and rashes

Of course I am not saying that they will become little angels after this - they are still 3 and (nearly) 5 - but lately I am feeling totally overwhelmed with their behaviour If by changing what we eat we can get them to a managable level I will be happy!

I think that Abby's most recent and awful rashes were caused by me drinking Sunkist, which has colour 110 in it as it is the only thing that I had really changed and we bought a carton of it while on special and hd drunk several cans before I put it together.

Menu planning for the first week now . . .

Quick update before the main event!

Wow! Okay so it has been over a year and a half since my last blog. Hmmm. I was about to start a new blog mainly for my own sake to track our failsafe journey, but figured why not pull out this old one. Some things have changed in our family in the past year and a half, many have not.

Firstly, we've had a new baby :D Abby Elizabeth joined us on 12th January in the middle of the Brisbane floods. I thought we'd never get to meet her after my induction was put off for 3 days due to the flooding - but we got there in the end.

Emily has now started prep and is going great guns with her learning. At home she is a completely different child though - more on that in the next post! Zoe is at kindy 2 days a week while I work on my little home based business - PuggleBunz

Okay that is the catch up, now onto the next post!