Foods My Kids Eat

This is a list that I recently provided to my mother-in-law before going to visit her for a week. She has tried to provide for my daughter each time we've visited, but has struggled to know just what to fix. She really appreciated having a list ahead of time. She had a much better idea of what to fix each day!

Sweet potato- microwaved, baked, or deep fried

Potatoes- microwaved with salt and canola/veg oil;
sliced into fries and baked;(I use Kraft Honey BBQ, but any works as long as no wheat, dairy)
diced and cooked in skillet(with oil, salt, pepper, also sage and thyme are good)
mashed: I bake potatoes, then whip with water from the potatoes, sometimes some rice milk, then some oil and salt. Sometimes I add meat juice from whatever meat I've cooked.


Rice: vegetable stir-fry: vegetables and soy sauce(many brands have wheat, check)Great Value at Wal-Mart doesn't have wheat
rice and chicken bake: Rice, chicken thighs, and vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, carrots. Just use water(or chicken broth), and seasonings such as salt, pepper, onion, garlic, also sage, thyme are good.
Spanish rice: mix a can of tomato sauce into some cooked rice, also can add some blended diced tomatoes, and then add hamburger and some spices. (Garlic, onion, pepper, salt, maybe a little chili powder and cumin) Also can add some oil and some chicken broth.

Chicken drumsticks(can microwave or boil);
Chicken tenders(bagged frozen, plain chicken)
Chicken breasts: can put in a crockpot with salsa and shred, or cut up into strips and season with Season-All or other seasoning

Pork ribs or beef ribs, barbequed and roasted or broiled
Could have rice or potatoes on the side

Roast beef(ie crockpot with potatoes and veggies). No gravy needed(just use sauce), or gravy made with meat juices and water.
Tenderize and shred leftover roast beef. See the Roast Beef and Chimichangas post. My kids just eat the meat by itself. Basically, you just boil a roast with garlic, vinegas, and seasonings such as chili powder, oregano, salt, cumin, pepper; then shred the meat.

Beef steak. My husband experiments with various spices and cooks the steaks in Worcheshire, sometimes soy sauce, and some vinegar or lemon juice. It's different each time. Basically the kids love a steak as long as it isn't really dry.

Hamburgers: The kids just eat the meat alone, sometimes with some barbeque sauce. My oldest likes the hamburgers cooked with soy sauce. We usually bake potatoes(cut into wedges or slices and bake on a tray lined with oil) to go with the hamburgers. Then we have a fruit salad or fruit smoothie.

Bean soups: cook dry lentils with drumsticks, carrots, celery, and some seasonings(like pepper, onion, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, basil, or sage)
"many bean soup"- cook several varieties of dry beans with ham hock or chicken drumsticks. My daughter enjoys picking out different varieties and helping sort and rinse.

Hot dogs (check for wheat or dairy), can have with chips, rice and salt/oil, Baked potato, mashed potato with oil/salt
Spam or Vienna Sausages

Ham and potatoes

Quinoa: vegetable stir-fry or basil/chicken dish.

Juice: White Grape, Apple, Orange(they don't really drink this by itself much, but they love Orange Julius: Just blend orange juice concentrate, Rice Milk, sugar, and ice cubes together).

Breakfast and Snacks:

Kix, AlphaBits(Post brand), Rice Chex(Brand name), Trix(though I prefer something less sweet and with less artificial color). Always recheck labels-cereals change.

Bananas, Apples, Grapes, occasionally strawberries
Dried fruit: prunes, blueberries, 100% fruit twists or fruit sticks
celery or carrot sticks
soy yogurt(make sure it's dairy-free)
canned or bottled fruit including mandarin oranges, applesauce, peaches, fruit cocktail)
Garbanzo bean waffles(I have the recipe on my blog, we can make these if we get the ingredients, they're simple to make)
Muffins or "wholesome" cookies(such as banana cookies, pumpkin cookies, zucchini cookies)
Oatmeal- buy just plain Quick Oats or Old Fashioned oats- then I add some brown sugar or regular sugar, salt, and water.
Stax brand potato chips(Not Pringles)
Trail mix: mix together stuff such as sunflower seeds, raisins, coconut
Leftovers from lunch or supper

I don't fix desserts usually, but if you are looking for something special, they could have:

Jell-O
lemon pudding cups(one brand I know lemon pudding is made without milk, check label)
Fruit crisp(easy to make with apples, brown sugar, and oats)
Marshmallows(they love these as a simple dessert or treat- just make sure there are no eggs, wheat, or dairy)
coconut
raisins
fruit snacks

Items that are helpful to have in stock:

Oats(Quick or Old Fashioned, don't need instant)
fruits/vegetables such as green beans, applesauce, peaches - fresh, canned, bottled, frozen
Rice(brown and white)
dry lentils
variety of dry beans, such as pinto, kidney, lima, black, great northern
meat(beef, chicken, turkey,pork)
bananas, apples, oranges, grapes
carrots, celery
cauliflower, broccoli, frozen or fresh
sweet potato
red or russet potato
vegetable oil(we like canola)
dairy-free soft tub margarine
coconut oil
shortening

Baking basics, including: sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, vanilla, xanthan gum, tapioca starch, rice flour(brown and white), garbanzo bean flour or ground lentils, oats(if you can have oats-grind them into flour with a blender)

Whole Grains

There are several whole grains that are as nutritious or more nutritious than wheat.
I've prepared whole grain quinoa, teff, and amaranth by boiling in water. They each are very nutritious and each have unique flavors.

Amaranth is the strongest flavored. I haven't grown used to it to eating it in very large amounts. But it's not a bad flavor, just different. There are spices that can complement the flavor, I think I've heard. I think cinnamon is one. I've not experimented much with that.

Quinoa can be utilized in meals like rice. I've made yummy stir fries with it(vegetables, chicken, and soy sauce). I also like quinoa boiled in chicken broth and chicken boullion, seasoned with basil, garlic, and onion, added to yellow, red, and green peppers and chicken cut into strips. make sure you rinse quinoa thorougly before cooking. You can use a colander or sieve. I've just purchased quinoa flakes, and read on the box that it's great for infants and children. It can be used as a cereal, or used in baking.

Teff is good just boiled in water and prepared like cream of wheat, with sugar or honey and cinnamon added.

Amaranth can be purchased in a puffed form. I have come across a recipe for puffed amaranth that has a sweet, crisp glaze. I have tried puffed Kamut(an ancient form of wheat, which some allergic to wheat may tolerate), and enjoy it out of the bag, without an salt or sweetener added. Try some of these whole grains! There are many more, too. They can be used as hot cereals or ground into flour or cooked as part of a meal.

Send some recipes utilizing these grains or others!

My Toddler's Creation: "Turkey Wraps"

My two-year old daughter has been very interested in "wraps" lately. My husband and I eat a lot of wraps over the summer, and she's been fine with us eating the wheat tortilla wraps while she eats something else. But lately, she's wanted wraps, too. I haven't made tortillas for her yet that she's liked. But she's very interested in wraps! So she's been making up ways to have them. A wrap, to her, can simply be a rolled up deli chicken slice. But she does like something inside. Yesterday, I put lettuce and tomatoes inside a rolled up turkey slice. Today, as we gave her rice and some deli turkey, she decided she wanted a wrap. She creatively placed her rice inside the thinly-sliced meat and rolled it up. Pretty good! I also realized that nutritiously, her creation is similar to a wrap we eat, but inside-out. We eat the complex carbohydrate(the bread) on the outside, and the meat inside. She was having the meat outside and the complex carbohydrate inside!

Helpful Ideas for my Toddler's Meals!

I published a while ago that my 2 year old really doesn't care a lot about the new foods I try to bake for her, at least a lot of the time. She's cycled from being happy with lots of hot dogs, to lots of dry potato pearls, to lots of chicken drumsticks, etc. But sometimes she does seem to tire of the same foods. She does have little variety sometimes. Giving her much variety at all seems to take extra planning and time and can seem overwhelming, at least for me, when I have my hands full with a 2 1/2 year old and a 10 month old. So I was happy to read some ideas in a very helpful book I've been reading, " Understanding and Managing Your Child's Food Allergies," Scott H. Sicherer, M.D. On a quick side note, I highly recommend this book! Check it out from your library or buy it online. It's full of information about allergies and has several practical ideas for helping to manage your child's allergies, at home, school, and elsewhere.

Anyway, a toddler was a picky eater, and his diet was very limited to begin with. He was on a special formula, could eat one type of meat, and then several fruits and vegetables. He started to refuse to eat his sweet potatoes, which were always prepared mashed. The doctor recommended letting him choose his own utensils, plate, cup, and bowl. He also had plates with pictures that he could see as he got to the bottom of his plate. And the sweet potatoes were prepared in a variety of ways, including french-fried, diced, and even cut into cookie cutter shapes!

My two-year-old has been having a hard time eating very much food at all, at least at a time. I know that can be a typically toddler problem, but hers had gotten worse. I thought that she was tired of her same food, and could use variety. I tried the cookie-cutter sweet potato idea, and it was a great success! We cut out the shapes together. I sliced the potatoes and pressed the cookie cutter down, then she'd remove the shape and place it on a plate, then I'd deep fry a batch in a frying pan. I let her watch, taking care to keep her away from the hot oil. She loved the shapes! She ate a lot in one sitting(well, most of the time she was standing next to me as I was making them, and eating). She ate more food in one sitting than she had in a long time!

So, to get variety, you don't always need to find a new food! You can find various ways to serve the same item, and a toddler even gets some variety and fun out of choosing his own dishes!

"Your child is allergic to all that? WHAT does she EAT?"

My toddler was diagnosed with allergies to peanuts, dairy, eggs, and wheat when she was not yet 12 months old. It was good she was diagnosed so early, because she didn't know what she was missing when she saw someone with ice cream, for example, as she never had tried it. It was so frustrating, though, to see everyone else's growing babies and toddlers with little Gerber puff snacks(Veggie puffs, for example) or cheerios, or teething biscuits or goldfish crackers, and to read in the ingredient lists that each of these products had wheat or dairy! I found that MOST ALL of Gerber's baby products have wheat or dairy in them, other than the pure fruits or vegetables. Meat sticks? Contain whey. Sweet potato veggie puffs? Wheat starch. Arrowroot cookies? Wheat flour. Even many of the "dinner" combinations of stage 3 or 4 baby foods have wheat flour added, or have dairy products. Beyond baby foods, several products on the shelves have wheat added as a thickener, or have dairy of some sort, or have egg or nut. It can get so frustrating! However, I have found, over time, ways to get around these problems.

I discovered Gerber's apple wagonwheels(it's been a while, is that what they're called?) were fine for my daughter to eat. Also dried, dissolvable fruits or corn. I read the labels on several different brands of cold cereals, to find that Lucky Charms cereal had no wheat(note from Oct 2009- it Lucky Charms do have wheat currently), while any brand of Cheerios did contain wheat. Corn Chex has barley(which my daughter cannot have)(note from Oct 2009-Corn Chex is now Gluten-free, no barley malt) , but Rice Chex is just fine for her, as well as Kix. These, along with fruit snacks, became my daughter's little snack-on-the-go foods. I used cereal for snacks at home or even meals outside of breakfast.

As she got older, we had to find more foods for my daughter to eat. We found she really loved "potato pearls," a product similar, but different, from potato flakes. She loved to eat these dried potato granules in dry form! These were basically her staple food for awhile. And on trips away from home, these were so easy to take along with us for her stay at relatives houses. (note from Oct 2009, read labels carefully, at least one kind of potato pearls my daughter had did have an allergen, I think milk). My daughter likes oatmeal. Actually loved it every morning for quite awhile. (And she'd have it for meals other than breakfast, too). We also discovered she liked sweet potatoes. We would simply bake one potato in the microwave, dress it with olive oil and salt, and she'd eat it! Then she gravitated away from the sweet potato, but she likes regular baked potatoes, still with only olive oil and salt(now , at 2 1/2 yrs old, she uses barbecue sometimes, too). For awhile, my daughter ate a LOT of hot dogs, plain potato chips, cereal, and fruit. Not the greatest balanced foods, I know. Then she caught on to chicken drumsticks. Plain. All we had to do is boil them up for her, or even easier, just cook them in the microwave. No spices, no breading. She also enjoyed rice, chicken broth, olive oil(for added fat), and hamburger mixed together, for a space of time, as well as rice mixed simply with tomato sauce and sometimes hamburger. We discovered that she loves rice pasta(which is impressibly almost like the wheat version), though usually she will only eat it well when it's just been cooked. She really doesn't it leftovers of that very well. She seems to prefer it plain. Lately, she's not into it as much. I hear it's common for a toddler to really latch on to a food, then grow tired of it, or simply latch onto another one.

I was very happy when my toddler got used to rice milk. She wouldn't drink it at first. She would tolerate small amounts of soy milk, but we thought her frequent diarrhea might be connected to soy, so we stopped giving her soy for months. (We've brought it back and she seems just fine now). My husband got her to start drinking rice milk. She refused it until he brilliantly decided to drink it out of the carton in front of her and she mimicked him! I was, at first, a little upset that he drank out of the carton in front of her, but it actually got her to start drinking the milk! And then we got her to drink it out of a sippy cup. This was a good addition to her diet because we use enriched rice milk, which has calcium and various other important nutrients. Now that we give her soy, she also enjoys enriched soy milk and soy yogurt.

Basically, we have found foods for my toddler to enjoy, many of which are simple to prepare. As I've tried to actually cook or bake things special for her, she often hasn't cared for them anyway(ie: rice-vegetable stir fry, or pinto bean tamale soup). She didn't even eat cookies very much when I baked them, at first. I think she had to get used to the idea of eating cookies! What I'm trying to get at, is that it hasn't really done much for me to worry about cooking things special for toddler, other than staple whole foods. She likes simple foods. The motive and energy behind my learning to bake without her allergic foods was more for me, as I am breastfeeding her younger sister, and am going off of dairy, eggs, nuts, and limiting wheat consumption. I also wanted to combat my fear of "what if my children don't outgrow their allergies, how WILL they have nutritious, enjoyable diets?" And I wanted my child to start being able to experience the enjoyable treats other kids and adults experience. I don't know that my toddler will always be content with having fruit snacks instead of cupcakes at a birthday party. (note from oct 2009- my toddler as grown into a young girl who is open to trying new things, and eats well overall, with a very healthy range of nutritious foods from all four main food groups. She still likes simple, basic meals, like a complex carbohydrate(ie sweet potatoes, simply fried in canola oil), separate from a meat(like a hamburger simply cooked with wheat-free soy sauce, or a very lightly seasoned roast, which she likes to dip in barbeque sauce or ketchup), separate from a fruit(fresh, smoothie, juice), separate from a vegetable(she actually likes cauliflower(she grew to like it with soy sauce and now will eat it without as well), carrots, and cucumbers). She does like basic soups in which I cook ingredients together, for example, lentil, rice, drumstick soup with carrots and celery).

So, what does your baby or toddler eat, if they're allergic to wheat, eggs, dairy, and nuts? How have you dealt with efforts at providing balanced nutrition? I hear a lot about the importance of adequate fat in the diet before age 2. (Now that's a challenge without dairy, I welcome your ideas! note from Oct 2009- adding canola oil to vegetables, potatoes, etc is one idea. Also, I notice my little girl loves meat fat, and I don't hold her back from eating it) What has been your experience with your child and your doctors? Anyone have successful experiences working with a nutritionist? (I haven't gotten one for my child, but I wonder about getting one).

(note from October 2009- I have learned a lot about nutrition since this post- I strongly recommend Joneja's book "Dealing with Food Allergies in Babies and Children." I feel much more confident now in providing a nutritious diet for my children. See my front page on my blog, "recommended books."