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

[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.