Food and Frustration

My kids have gone through spurts of being picky eaters and then spurts where they aren't. Currently my six year old is ready and willing to try anything (she loves sushi - particularly eel). My four year old will try something new if I force the issue but generally she'd rather have goldfish, chicken nuggets and chocolate milk. My one year old....well she doesn't get to consciously choose to be a picky eater. Her body is doing it for her. So far we've had two semi-scary allergic reactions of egg and one fairly scary allergic reaction to peanut (her one and only exposure). I have an epi-pen with me at all times.

When we went to the allergist when she was 10 months old, the skin test showed egg (which we knew), peanut (which she had never had), and wheat (which she was already eating). The allergist suggested that maybe it was a wheat allergy that was triggering her eczema. So we took away all wheat from her for three weeks. At that time, it wasn't too difficult. She just went back to eating mostly baby food. She didn't love it but she didn't know too much else. The eczema didn't improve so we went back to eating wheat.

Now the eczema won't improve - we've got prescription steroid creams, lotions, oils, etc. Nothing helps for more than a week. In addition, she has been having difficulties with her bowels. So we're back to thinking gluten might be a problem after all.

I've learned that going off one food for one family member is really difficult. As a result, my family is pretty much living peanut-free and egg-free (as much as possible). Eating out is really difficult unless I bring food for the baby. And doesn't that defeat the purpose of eating out in the first place? Besides which she's old enough to see what everyone else is eating. That's what she wants. She won't eat something different.

So now how to go gluten-free for my whole family when my older kids don't have to and probably don't want to do without their bread and goldfish. I make all our bread anyway but I'm finding that many gluten-free bread recipes need more stabilization so they call for, you guessed it, eggs. And egg substitution is hit and miss. There are several things you can try but there is no one solution. Things like Egg Beaters are made from eggs so those are out. I've seen flax-seed with water, egg replacer (ore egg remover as my oldest calls it) with water, applesauce, baking soda with vinegar...but it's all trial and error.

There's my frustration for today. I like to cook and I love to bake and this has been difficult for me. For all of us.

Looking for egg-free recipes that are actually good. And possibly gluten-free (or at least smaller amounts of gluten) recipes as well. I'll be talking the doctor about all this again when we go in a few weeks.

The recipe search is on!