Monday, June 29, 2009
A New Way
It's amazing the things you learn as a parent. For the last two years, Spunky has suffered from a constant, clear running nose and has always had digestive issues. Chalking it up to a big sister bringing in germs, daycare, the season, I finally realized that enough was enough when he started developing discoloured skin blotches on his face and made an appointment with our family's Naturopath to have allergy testing done.
After three weeks of waiting, we have discovered the results: gluten and dairy allergy. We suspected dairy, as this is something we went through with BananaMuffin as well, but gluten was a little more of a surprise. We're now learning a whole new way to eat. Luckily, having completed a cleanse earlier this year, we're quite familiar with alternative grains, but teaching a four year old that she can't have crackers because "they make Spunky's belly sick" or a sandwich on squishy whole wheat bread, it's difficult. But, they still swap food and so our diet needs to remain clean.
The trickiest part is the cheese: who doesn't love a homemade macaroni and cheese? Or a pizza? All of those things I can still do with alternative flours, but what to do about cheese?
I was at Local Source on Charles St. Saturday for lunch, and happened to chat with the clerk, who is vegan. Perfect. "What do you do about cheese?" I asked. She filled me in - cashew substitutes, nutritional protein, all kinds of things I had never heard of, along with this, the Uncheese Cookbook. I have to say, I love the times we live in. I'll be promptly ordering this book and learning to make uncheese dishes for all of us.
We'll probably all become much healthier as a result of this diet, and I can say after one week of being gluten free and dairy free, Spunky's health and disposition has improved significantly. It is tricky to keep his diet free while at daycare, and on certain days, I do take in pastas, breads, and soy yogurt so that he can still part take, but the cook at "school" has been wonderful, I can't ask for more.
I'm happy we're able to pinpoint the issue before his allergies developed into respiratory distress, and I've never been more pleased at my decision to treat myself and my family with naturopathic, homeopathic and dietary medicine first.
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