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.

[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...

[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

[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.

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.