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

[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.