Brendan pizzas

[celticdragonfly]

I have achieved dietary nirvana for Brendan. Brendan-safe pizzas.

For those that don't know, Brendan is high-functioning autistic, and we have found he functions MUCH higher on the GFCF diet, which stands for gluten free, casein free. That means no wheat (or barley or a number of other grains), no dairy products.

Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds. Actually, it's much worse than it sounds. You have to learn to REALLY read labels. "Modified food starch" is my least favorite phrase. Add that to how fussy an eater he is, and there's just not much left.

One thing I'd found for him was gluten free frozen waffles. We used to just serve them to him with dairy free margarine and real maple syrup. Then lately I tried them on him with the good organic peanut butter (nada but peanuts, so I know that's safe), and he loves it. I've even made toasted waffles-and-peanut-butter sandwiches to take with us places. (The downside of a church potluck, I always have to pack a dinner for him.)

Then recently I found an unopened jar of pumpkin butter in the pantry, that I'd bought for selenite, who loves pumpkin bread so much, and loves toast, and I thought he'd enjoy it on his toast. He'd never opened it. Shows how much he appreciated that, hmph. Brendan loved pumpkin bread, too, so I tried the pumpkin butter on his waffle. He scarfed it down and asked for more.

That left ME doing secret hidden happy parent dances. "Look! He ate a vegetable! Pumpkin, main ingredient, member of the squash family! YESSSS!"

So the other day I was eating some pizza, and Brendan was coming over and being sad about it. I've managed all sorts of "Brendan-safe" foods for him, the "Brendan-safe" brownies, cookies, etc. So he often asks me about "Brendan-safe pizza". I've looked, really. I've found dairy free pizzas, easily. Gluten free is a lot harder. The combination seems impossible. There I was, apologizing to Brendan once more for not having found any, 'cause if I had, I'd buy him some, honest.

Then it clicked. We had pepperoni, we add it to our frozen french bread pizzas. I knew I had some boboli pizza sauce packets in the pantry somewhere. And we had the increasingly versatile waffles. So we toasted a waffle, covered it in the pizza sauce - which goes down into those waffle holes beautifully - covered it with pepperoni, and put it back in the toaster on broil for a while.

(Forget cheese - there is NO good cheese alternative. Even the 'vegetarian' soy cheeses have casein.)

He loved it. We just made him another one tonight. I feel pretty good about this. The rest of the family subsides on pizza for a great deal of our diet, it feels only fair that he gets some, too.

I've been driving down to Central Market to get these waffles. I'm going to try to get down to the local health food store soon, and ask about them getting them for me by the CASE. I have more pumpkin butter on order. Gonna try him on apple butter next, or see if I can talk him into trying strawberry jam.

Comments

[dartpoly.livejournal.com]

strike up convo w/ jnork about that diet and it's effectiveness with another autistic child.

Whooo Hoooo

[meerkat1.livejournal.com]

Waffles and Pumpkin Butter sound yummy even to me. =-)

Hugs from the land of the lost in stess of the Meerkat

[catsoul.livejournal.com]

Yeah, been there, done that. In Mariel's case, she's mostly gotten over it (though the behaviours can manifest if she's pushed too hard, like vanilla cream capiccinos at Starbucks, which are little casein bombs).

First of all, I'll have Blanche give you her recipe for GFCF pizzaoid. It wasn't as good as real pizza, but it was acceptable. Or I'll forward it, or whatever.

Second, Mariel likes fries, but be aware that some fries come coated with flour (to prevent sticking when they're frozen) or may be cross-contaminated when they're cooked in the same oil as breaded products. McDonald's fries are good, as are Boardwalk fries (at least, at the local Boardwalk's). We can spot flour-coated fries a mile away... they have a bit of a crunchy look to them. Don't bother asking the waiter if they're coated, he won't know. Don't believe him if he says no definitively.

But here's the kicker. Look for a product called Serenaid. It's an enzyme complex, a bit expensive, we've had to buy it on the 'web, but it's wonderful. You can put it in food, but heat destroys it, so you can't cook it in. We found we had to put it in her juice, that worked best. It tends to break down stuff in the juice, too, so the juice has to be thrown out after an hour or two. Orange juice particularly. We usually gave her lemonade which lasts longer. Takes two or three capsules for an average meal. It does change the colour and flavour of the juice, but it's not usually unpleasant.

Giving her Serenaid was a PITA, but it let us let her eat just about anything she wanted. The first night she had pizza, she enjoyed it, but remember she'd been eating a reasonable pizza substitute. Second night we let her eat Mac 'n' Cheese. I'm still kicking myself for not getting out the camcorder... she would pick up one macaroni, laugh in utter delight, eat it, and repeat. It was an absolute joy to watch her.

Here's a link, it's just the first one I found, but it seems to have a lot of information. I'm not endorsing this particular source, I don't know anything about it.

Vital Life Vitamins (http://www.vitallifevitamins.com/serenaid1.html)

Interesting, their recommended dosage is much less than we used. We used at least two and often three capsules per meal, and sometimes for snacks.

Anyway, there you are.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Yep, I know about the fries. Makes me nervous taking him out to eat, as hamburger (plain with no bun) and fries is about the only thing we can come up with. I know to not let him touch Wendy's fries. And he will react to fries that way - the ex told me about a time at his aunt's when he'd relaxed his vigilance, then saw Brendan acting weird that night, and went back and dug the package for the frozen french fries out of the trash, yep, gluten.

Way back when we were just looking into the diet, I was going to try the enzymes. If I recall, I sent the bottle with him on a visitation holiday week, and the ex lost 'em. Expensive buggers. It's part of what made me give up then, and I didn't come back to trying diet changes for some time. Although by then I understood them better.

I'd be very wary about changing him off the diet now. We recently had a minor infraction - I'd bought some of these Luna bars, they'd said milk and wheat free, and I was pleased at the idea of something high protein that he'd willingly eat - the kid is small! And I didn't check closely enough. We started getting calls from his teachers, asking what was wrong, was he off his diet? And he started having toilet training problems again. I finally thought to check the bars, and sure enough, barley products. Darn. That was what convinced selenite that the gluten really mattered as much as the dairy did.

[catsoul.livejournal.com]

Then please allow me to emphasize: those enzymes made our life tolerable. Sorry to hear the ex lost them, that's terrible, they cost so much. I recommend dividing your supply up anyway. I used to keep a small jar of them in my buttpack, my wife did the same in hers, and we kept the main bottle at home.

Barley malt was one of the things we kept our eyes out for. I don't remember Chex in particular, but it seems to me that Rice Crispies were about the only Kellog's cereal that didn't have any of the Big Four in any form. Maybe they've started adding it since then? There were a few cereals that didn't have anything we knew about, but had "natural and artificial flavours," which I was always suspicious of. I did try some multi-colored cereal once that didn't seem to affect her. Maybe it was OK. Fortunately, food colors aren't a problem for her. :)

Size has been a problem here, too. For a while we were feeding Mariel a chocolate protein drink for breakfast. When we found out about the gluten/casein problem she changed the powder she used, but I'll be hanged if I can remember what she changed it to. She's out of town, I'll ask when I get a chance.

I've got the old recipe below, be aware that the N-R-G drink contains evil. I'll get a correction up when I can.

[quiva.livejournal.com]

I used to babysit a boy who had to be on a gluten-free diet and we made pizzas with corn tortillas or rice flour bread. He liked stir-fry a lot too so sometimes I'd get him rice paper and make spring rolls. Hmmm, now that I think about it I had a ton of references for gluten-free dieting. I'll see if I can find them...

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

If our kiddo would eat stir-fry I'd be thrilled.

There's more and more gluten-free stuff out there, but you gotta check CAREFULLY if it's also dairy free, and vice versa. The combination is tough. I can get gluten free mac & cheese. I see vegan dairy free (although I BETCHA it has casein, I didn't check, since it's wheat pasta.) The combo, no.

[quiva.livejournal.com]

Ok. I didn't have to worry about dairy free.

So, tofu cheese probably has casein in it then...

I'll check my stuff anyway.

So the checklist is:
gluten free
casein free
doesn't like veggies

Anything else? ;-)
Is that what I should be looking for "casein"?

btw- Did you know you can puree broccoli, add it to pizza sauce and it doesn't change the flavor? It even makes the sauce thicker so that it stays on the pizza better ;-)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Tofu cheese generally has casein in it, yes. Can't speak for EVERY kind of it. Casein, milk, milk powder, whey, butter, cream, anything that looks like it's derived from the word lactose.

The kid's just generally incredibly fussy. I remember Busting My Butt to make GFCF meatloaf - hey, hamburger, ketchup, he should love this, right? I used crushed gluten free corn flakes instead of breadcrumbs, and did the seasoning by hand instead of cheating with the onion soup mix, and was sure it was fine. I expected him to love it. He turned up his nose.

There's various recipes I make for the family that I COULD make GFCF, but I don't bother, because experience tells me that he'll refuse it anyway.

I did make GFCF pumpkin bread for him the weekend of ConDFW, and he loved that. So that I'll do again. Sometime soon. When I'm feeling less frazzled. Sigh.

[catsoul.livejournal.com]

Oh, and just for the record, Mariel's behaviour improved more going from a GFCF diet to a "normal" diet supplemented with Serenaid. Apparently there were still traces of the stuff that the enzymes took care of.

- Dad

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Looking through the LJ and her webpage - one thing I noticed that might have been the source of the traces, did you ever find out that Rice Crispies, Corn Chex, and such, DO have gluten? It's that "malt flavoring" - it's one of the sneakier ones, and it's in LOTS of stuff. I've managed to find a brand of chex-style cereals that doesn't have it at Whole Foods, and he loves those.

[castiron.livejournal.com]

Cool idea! I hadn't thought about trying tomato sauce on the waffles; I'll have to give that a whirl and see if Thomas likes it.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Boboli makes these little individual sauce packets for small pizzas that are JUST the right size.

Vegies in the Brendan Boy

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

Yes, pumpkin AND pizza sauce - TWO vegies!

If you want a pizza-like crust, use a rolling pin to flatten a gluten-free bread, then lightly toast it before adding pizza sauce.

Re: Vegies in the Brendan Boy

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

The gluten-free breads have not gone over very well at all. But the waffles have. They seem to be replacing bread for him. This is fine by me.

[catsoul.livejournal.com]

Potato Buds make a great breading substitute for chicken nuggets, if he likes those. A quick look at the ingredients show potatoes and preservatives, nothing that looks suspicious.