Coconut Candy

Usually when I make my daughter coconut custard (see Oct. 23), I scoop out the top layer while it's still warm. I use coconut manna so the "milk" isn't completely smooth and the grains float to the top as it cooks. Last week I made it when she wasn't going to eat it and put it in the fridge before scooping out the top. The next day the entire top layer had hardened. I chipped it out and it came up in squares like a candy bar. It was really good so I let her have some and she loved it. It looks and tastes like a white chocolate coconut bar.

Cookies - No baking soda/powder

My daughter doesn’t do well with baking soda/powder so I tried several times to make a cookie for her that had a nice texture without using either of those. These cookies are very light, almost like small, thin cakes.

1 egg

4 tbs sugar

2 tbs canola oil

½ tsp vanilla (skip this if you’re not sure it’s safe for your LO)

1/3 cup quinoa flour

Separate the yolk from the white of the egg. Put the white in a container that you can use to whip with an electric whisk or mixer. Put the yolk in a bowl. To the bowl add 1 tbs sugar, the oil, and vanilla. Mix thoroughly. Beat the egg white until soft peaks form. Add the remaining 3 tbs of sugar slowly, continuing to beat the white until you get firm peaks. Fold the whites with the yolk mixture then fold in the flour slowly. You want to be gentle about mixing this. The only thing that’s going to make your cookies puff a little is the fact that the whites are full of air.

Using a spoon pour cookie size amounts on to a cookie sheet (line it with foil or parchment paper). Don’t pour too much in to each because the batter will be thin and you don’t want it all to blend together. If you have a muffin top pan that works well as a mold. Place the cookies in the oven and turn it on to 300. Let the cookies bake for 10-15 minutes, until they’re golden and a toothpick placed in the middle comes out clean (not that they’ll be too deep). Let cool and serve!

Gravy

            My daughter isn’t fond of the texture of beef. It keeps her from eating it well. If I give it to her without a sauce of some sort she’ll just chew it and then spit it out. That’s what made me think to try putting it in gravy. Her only safe flour so far is quinoa so that’s what I use, but I’m sure you can use whatever flour is safe for your child.

            To make the gravy you’ll need some flour and about a cup of stock. What I usually do is simmer her beef or pork in water until it’s very tender. Then I use the broth that created to make the gravy. Sometimes I use the leftover liquid from when I make her beans. If your child is okay with a lot of vegetables you can make a vegetable stock too.

            Heat a frying pan on medium heat, don’t add oil or anything else. Pour in about a tablespoon of flour. If you have more than a cup of stock, or if you want a thicker gravy you can add more flour. Spread the flour on the bottom of the pan and let heat for a while. Stir it occasionally until it starts looking golden, or like its beginning to toast. Don’t leave it too long once it changes color a bit though, you don’t want burnt gravy.

            When you flour is done get ready to stir and watch out for steam. You need to pour in the stock (which should be warm) quickly and very quickly stir the flour as you pour, that will keep your gravy from getting too clumpy. Although I can tell you with quinoa flour it’s pretty easy compared to wheat flour, it’s so fine that it rarely clumps. Let the liquid simmer until it thickens to the desired consistency. That’s it. It’s pretty easy and makes a great sauce to mix meats in or to dip French fries or veggies.

Beans

            My daughter loves beans. I was hesitant to try them at first since I thought they would upset her tummy but when she was 9 months she was diagnosed as anemic and at 12 months it still hadn’t gotten better, even with supplements. The doctor recommended beans for their iron content. I keep hearing people say that beans are hard to cook. I even had a lady at the supermarket ask how to make them, lol. It’s actually very easy, it’s just that it takes a while.

            The first variety of beans I tried was small red beans. To make them you need to soak them first. You can soak them overnight if you remember the day before, just fill a large bowl with water and pour them in. They’ll be ready to cook by morning. If you forgot to soak them though, no worries. Put them in a pot of water and bring to a boil. Let them boil for 2 minutes then turn off the heat. Cover the pot and let them sit for one hour. Whichever method of soaking you use, I recommend you wash the beans first in a colander and shift through them to make sure they all look good. Take out the ones that are too wrinkly or don’t look right.

             Once your beans have been soaked put the pot on the stove and bring them to a boil. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to a simmer. Let them simmer for about an hour and a half. DO NOT add anything to them until the hour and a half is over, especially not salt. If you add the salt before they’re fully cooked they won’t be tender and the skins will probably be hard.

            After they’ve simmered until cooked, add salt to taste. Since this is for FPIES kids you don’t really need to add anything else, but if your child is okay with olive oil you can add a bit of that. If your child has a safe meat add a few chunks of that meat to the pot and let it simmer for another half hour or until the meat is fully cooked. Adding a meat gives the beans a really awesome flavor. I usually put in some beef or pork. If your child is okay with potatoes cut some up and put it in at the same time as the meat so it can all cook. If your child is okay with onions or garlic, fry a bit in a separate pan and then pour it in to the beans and let simmer a while. I haven’t tried onions or garlic yet with my daughter but when I make beans for the rest of the family I add them in. You can also add peppers and I’ve seen some people put in chunks of squash.

            If your beans are cooked and you have a lot of liquid still that makes them more like soup, save it. You can use it to make a yummy gravy. I’ll put that recipe next.

Meringues

I made these so that my little one could have a treat for Halloween and wouldn't be left just watching her sister eating candy. They're very easy, you just have to watch them cause depending on the size they'll toast quickly. When they're fully cooked you can stick a toothpick in and they'll be crunchy all the way through.

2 egg whites
3 tbs sugar

Beat the egg whites until you get soft peaks. Add the sugar and beat some more. For best results use an electric whisk or mixer to do this. Prepare a pastry bag with a flower or pencil tip, fill it with the batter. Squirt small amounts of batter on to parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Put in the oven then turn on (don't preheat) to 300. Bake for about 15-20 minutes.

Coconut Custard/Ice Cream

This custard is super easy to make. This recipe is for a small batch since it's mostly for my daughter. I bake it in a disposable mini loaf pan. You can use ramekins too.

1 egg
1/6 cup sugar
dash salt
3/4 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup coconut milk (I use 1/3 Nutiva Coconut Manna + 1 cup water to get the milk and then just use the 3/4 cup, but if you have a safe coconut milk I'm sure you can use it)

Mix the egg, sugar, salt and vanilla. Whisk in the coconut milk. Put into a mini loaf pan and place the pan inside another, larger pan. Fill the larger pan with water so that it reaches to the middle of the mini pan. Bake for 1 hour in a preheated 325 oven or until it looks set. Serve warm or cold.

For Ice Cream:
Let the custard cool in the fridge. Remove the crust on top unless you prefer the shredded coconut in the ice cream. Blend it until it's smooth and then put it in to an ice cream machine.

Quinoa Souffle Cake

This cake is very fluffy and easy to make. You just have to be careful of your egg whites. Do not preheat the oven otherwise the cake won't fluff or cook right.

2 eggs, yolks & whites separated
3 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla (you can skip this if you're not sure your child can eat it)
1 tbs quinoa flour

Place yolks in a small bowl and whites in a larger one. Beat the whites with an electric mixer or whisk until peaks form. Do not over mix them. As soon as you see them getting firm stop mixing. Add 2 tbs of sugar to the whites and beat a bit more. To the yolks add the vanilla and remaining 1 tbs of sugar and mix. Pour the yolk mix in to the whites and stir gently until you have a uniform light yellow batter. Fold in the tablespoon of quinoa flour.

Pour the mix in to a pan. The amount here is perfect for six muffins but you could also make a small cake. Place the pan in the oven and turn it on to 300. Let bake for 30-40 minutes. You'll smell the cake easily when it's about done. Once it's golden insert a toothpick to make sure it's cooked through, the toothpick should come out clean. Let the cakes cool without covering otherwise they'll get a sticky top.

This was the recipe I used for my daughter's first birthday cupcakes. It's based on a wheat flour recipe that my mother uses all the time. I'm guessing you could probably use any type of flour that's safe for your little one and it would still work well.

Quinoa Crepes/Pancakes

1/2 cup quinoa flour
2 tbs sugar
A dash salt
1 egg
2 tbs canola oil
1/2 cup water

Put a pan to warm on medium heat (b/w 4&5 on my stove). Grease with canola oil. In a bowl mix the sugar, flour and salt then add the egg, oil and water and whisk together . (I add a tsp of vanilla too but it's not essential if your little one isn't ok with it). The batter should be very thin. Add more water as necessary. Ladle like pancake batter, it's going to spread out very thinly. Let cook until small bubbles form all over the crepe, flip and let cook a little longer. Serve alone, with fruit, or maple syrup. If you make these without sugar you can use them as burrito type wraps.

If your child is okay with baking soda add  about a 1/2 tsp and a bit less water cause yours can be thicker, I make mine more like crepes since my daughter doesn't do well with baking soda. If your child's okay with corn or if you have corn free baking powder that would be even better.

My daughter prefers these slightly fluffy so I just pour and don't turn the pan the way you would with a crepe, but personally I love them crispy like that, it makes them taste almost like waffle cone. For a crispy crepe pour a small amount of batter on to the pan then quickly lift the pan by its handle and twirl it to make the batter spread very thinly. When they're ready to flip you'll see the edges looking toasty.

Storage Tip: When I've made too many crepes for my daughter to eat in one day I place the leftover crepes on silver foil, two to a pile. I fold them up in the foil and freeze them. When I need them again I put the package, still sealed, in the toaster oven for about 5 minutes. That way they just heat up but don't toast since they're covered in foil. I don't know how long they can stay frozen for cause I've always used mine within a few days, but it's helpful to have some already made sometimes.

Eggless Quinoa Cookies

These have a crisp outside but the inside is the texture of maybe raw cookie dough or of marzipan. I made them based on a shortbread recipe since that doesn't require baking soda and my daughter hasn't done well with it, not a full FPIES reaction to baking soda but somehting has always been off when she's had any.
You can't use quinoa flour as a straight substitute for wheat in a shortbread recipe because it has no gluten and won't bind well, especially since the recipe has no eggs. To keep them from being crumbly I used cooked quinoa flakes which are very sticky. Prepare the flakes ahead of time or use leftovers from breakfast. I'd say about 1 cup of water to 1/3 cup flakes to get the thick consistency you need for the recipe.

3 tbs canola oil
3 tbs sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup quinoa flour
3 heaping tbs of prepared quinoa flakes (very stiff, not liquidy)
1 tbs maple syrup

Whisk together the sugar and oil then add the vanilla and flour. You'll get a mix that looks like crumbs. Add the prepared flakes and the syrup. It should all have a consistency half way between rolled cookie dough and oatmeal. Drop by the teaspoonfuls on a pan coated with canola oil and quinoa flour. Flatten them down a bit with your fingers so they are about 1/4 inch tall and round, they will stay the shape you make them. Bake at 350 for 12- 15 minutes until golden brown.

Quinoa Pasta

            This is a good recipe for when you’re ready to move on to foods that are a bit more solid but don’t have many ingredients to work with. Ancient Harvest makes quinoa pasta that you can buy at the store, but it is made with corn so my daughter couldn’t eat it. I thought of trying buckwheat pasta but it is made on the same equipment as rice pasta. I really wanted something for my daughter to eat that was a bit heavier than pureed vegetables. I know that sounds funny since most people try to keep baby meals light, but my daughter (like many other FPIES children) was low in weight and needed more calories. It occurred to me that if I could buy buckwheat pasta I could probably make it. I looked online and found a recipe, well if you could even call it that since the only ingredients were buckwheat flour and water. The thing was, I wasn’t sure if my daughter could eat buckwheat and I couldn’t find the flour so I decided to just try it with quinoa flour. I had to adjust the water because quinoa flour is a bit different, but it worked. I'd guess you could try this with any flour that's safe for your child to eat. My daughter loves these noodles served with pureed squash, but you can use any safe vegetable as sauce. I sometimes also puree beef into the squash for a more substantial meal.

            Start with ½ cup quinoa flour and 1/8 cup water. Pour the water into the flour in a bowl. With your hands mix it to get a bunch of crumbles. Add a tablespoon of water more and mix some more. Keep doing this just until you get the flour wet enough to form a stiff ball like molding clay. Knead it until it’s smooth. Put it in the bowl and cover with a moist paper towel. Let rest about half an hour. Put water to boil. Take out the ball and roll it out very thinly on parchment paper dusted with quinoa flour. If it starts to crumble wet your hands and knead it again. Don’t get it too wet, you don’t want it to turn sticky. Once it’s very thin cut the pasta shapes you want. Salt your boiling water and add olive oil (or any oil safe for your child). Pour in the pasta and cook about 5 minutes. Drain, then drizzle with olive oil or with sauce.

First Foods

            Parents are often told to start solids by trying cereals such as rice or oats. For FPIES kids, those are the worst things they can eat. So what now? How about quinoa?

            Quinoa is a pseudo-grain from South America. It’s more of a seed than a grain. It’s becoming more popular in the US so you can find it easily online. You can also find it at Whole Foods markets, at least in my city. Actually, they even have some quinoa products at my regular supermarket.

            Not all FPIES kids are okay eating quinoa, but it is easier to digest than more common grains. From what I’ve seen on unofficial survey results and from reading through FPIES forums, many FPIES kids eat it without problems. My daughter loves it, and actually I use it in several of her dishes. I make everything from pancakes to gravy using quinoa.

            To trial quinoa I recommend Ancient Harvest Quinoa Flakes, *see note on brands 10/8/2011. You can cook them like hot cereal. The package says to boil a cup of water and add 1/3 cup of flakes. For a small baby I’d go with a cup of water and maybe 2-3 tablespoons of flakes, any more and the cereal will be stiff and sticky.

            If you’re anything like me though, you might be scared to try even a pseudo-grain. I know that after watching my daughter vomit both rice and oats, I was not too keen on the idea of trying another cereal. Actually, I wasn’t too keen on trying much at all. She reacted to the first four foods she had: rice, oats, sweet potatoes and green beans. I wasn’t really sure what to do next. I decided to go with the simplest thing I could think of: applesauce. I bought organic apples, peeled them, chopped them and steamed them. Then I put them in the food processor until they were very smooth. Apples were my daughter’s first pass.

            I tried pears next and that went well also. When I decided to try quinoa, I actually cooked it with some apples in it. I didn’t think that the flakes by themselves would be appealing to a small baby. I boiled an apple in a cup of water for about 10 minutes then added a tablespoon of quinoa flakes and cooked for another two minutes. Then I used my hand blender to puree the entire thing. I started with just a tablespoon of flakes because I didn’t know whether she’d react to the quinoa and I always start a new food in small amounts. Luckily, she passed it and she also liked it! A food doesn’t do you much good if the baby won’t eat it.

            I’ve also heard of people trying buckwheat first. The brand I’ve used is Poconos. It takes a bit longer to cook than quinoa flakes and is more like grits than oatmeal.

            Whatever you decide to try first, just be sure to start slowly. For the first day of a trial give maybe a teaspoon. The next day two teaspoons, then add more as you see your baby doing well with the new food.

**NOTE on Trialing Foods

This is all my opinion not official medical advice or anything but if your baby doesn’t seem to be doing well with a particular food don’t push it. FPIES can build up and a little bit of spit up today could lead to full vomiting tomorrow. If your baby has a bad reaction to something, make sure to give him several days to get back to normal before trying something new. Once his system is upset, it will be more sensitive so it’s best to get him back to what FPIES parents refer to as a “base.” Base is the point where your baby is acting normally, not waking up at weird times, having normal bowel movements and not being fussy about anything. Just from personal experience, I don’t recommend trialing anything if your baby is sick or teething or having some other upset that will keep you from knowing whether it’s the new food upsetting him or not.

*NOTE on Brands

I’m going to be putting in brand names of foods I use because I found it very helpful to get that information from other parents. When you have an FPIES kid you have to be very careful of cross-contamination and different companies have different standards when it comes to processing food on shared equipment and shared facilities. I have found that some brands I used did not suit my daughter well so I don’t use them anymore. If a brand I mention doesn’t suit your child you can try a different brand and see if that works better.

Getting Started

            If you’re new to FPIES, you probably haven’t tried too many solid foods yet. It’s hard to know what to try when your child has reacted so badly to foods that seemed so safe. If you’re not sure what to try check out this link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewanalytics?formkey=dEZMYWh2ZXdhZVQyQ3UtbUFMWFgybXc6MQ .

It shows the results of an unofficial survey of several parents of children with FPIES. Look for the foods that a lot of them have tried but haven’t reacted to. I find it helpful to look at it when I don’t know what to try next. Of course keep in mind that every FPIES child is different. One kid might be okay eating apples and peaches while another won’t be. But it’s nice to have some sort of reference since even most doctors can’t tell you what to try.

            I also recommend checking out the online FPIES forums. The parents there can be very helpful when you’re trying to figure out whether your child is okay with a new food. It’s nice to have support from people who know what you’re dealing with. My favorite is the forum at Baby Center: http://community.babycenter.com/groups/a4859345/fpies_food_protein_induced_enterocolitis_syndrome

There is also group on Facebook you can check out. For information on FPIES in general go to the FPIES Foundation’s page: http://www.thefpiesfoundation.org/

Introduction

I’m starting this blog in order to share my family’s experience with FPIES. Like most people, I had never heard of FPIES. It wasn’t until my younger daughter started showing symptoms that I became aware such a condition existed. When she was five months old her pediatrician gave us the okay to start trying solids. The first thing on the list was rice cereal. My older daughter had started eating rice cereal at five months and never had a problem. In fact, as far as I know, she has no food allergies. So it didn’t occur to me to worry about my younger daughter starting to eat rice.

            We started with about a tablespoon and she ate it happily. She seemed enthusiastic about this new form of food and I was happy to see her take to it so well. About three hours after eating it she started to spit up a lot. I was a little worried because usually the major spit up happened closer to when she’d eaten. She had always been big on spitting up. She had been drinking breast milk exclusively before being given the rice cereal and she always spit up at least a little.

            I decided it must have been a fluke and gave her rice cereal again later that week. This time she didn’t just spit up three hours later, she started to vomit. It was very quick and I almost doubted whether it had been vomit, I was so used to seeing her spit up. But this time had been different, her face was different. She looked like she was gagging.

            I was very confused. I looked at the ingredients in her rice cereal and noticed it wasn’t just rice. There were a few other things in there. Perhaps I should try a different variety of cereal. I got some organic rice cereal and tried again. This time when she began to vomit my sister was with me. She agreed that it wasn’t just spit up, the poor child was gagging and coughing.

            I thought maybe she’d gotten a stomach flu. My older daughter had been sick the week before. Maybe it just took longer for the baby to get it. I took her to the pediatrician and explained what happened. The doctor said she didn’t think it was a flu, stomach viruses had much faster incubation periods than a week. She thought my daughter was allergic to the rice. She told me not to give her any more for the time being.

            I did as she asked but I couldn’t really believe her. I mean, who’s allergic to rice? I thought maybe the other ingredients in the rice cereal were to blame. Some of them were derived from corn, maybe she was allergic to corn. At least I’d heard of people being allergic to corn. Except that when I tried oat cereal, I got the same response. Three hours after eating it she vomited. Same thing happened when I tried sweet potatoes. I was beginning to get very worried.

            I went ahead and typed in the things she was throwing up in to a search engine. The acronym “FPIES” popped up several times. I read through the description and thought that it couldn’t be right. The articles said that children with FPIES would vomit to the point of dehydration and that would send them in to shock. My daughter had been fine after vomiting. She always seemed fine right after. What I didn’t realize was that FPIES builds up. The reactions can start small the first time a child eats a food but then it gets progressively worse.

            I decided to just avoid the foods she’d tried already and move on to simpler things. I started with steamed, pureed apples. Those seemed to go down fine. I tried pears. Those were okay too. Squash was next and she ate it all up, no problems. I started wondering whether I had exaggerated her reaction to the other foods. Maybe she’d been too young. She was a few months older by now, I figured I could try something heartier.

            After speaking to the pediatrician I decided to try a meat. Chicken seemed reasonable so I got some at my local Whole Foods. With all the problems she’d had so far, I wanted organic chicken so I could avoid reactions that might be caused by additives or whatever else. The first time I gave her chicken she seemed fine with it. I only gave her a tiny bit. The second time I gave it to her mixed with butternut squash. A few hours later she spit up a lot of squash colored guck. I started to get worried so I stopped the chicken. For about a month I just gave her squash, apples, pears and her breast milk.

            Since she had always been a big spitter I had started a journal of what I ate so that I would know if perhaps a certain food made her spit up more. I had noticed that she always seemed to spit up a lot after I had eaten my favorite fast food meal: grilled chicken, rice & corn. Before I knew about the rice allergy I had thought perhaps I was imagining the pattern, but afterwards I realized it must have been the rice. I didn’t really think it was possible for a kid to be allergic to chicken.

            I was wrong. After a month or so of avoiding chicken, I decided I was being crazy. I bought her some chicken and put it in her squash. That was the worst thing I had done in a long time. Three hours after eating it she started to vomit profusely. She wouldn’t stop. Hours passed. She’d seem okay for about twenty minutes then start vomiting again. I was on the verge of taking her to the ER when it finally stopped. A few hours later she seemed fine again.

            That was it for the chicken. It was also the last time that I doubted myself. From then on, whenever I’ve given her a new food, if she spits up even a little I don’t try it again. She hasn’t had any more major reactions yet, but I’m guessing that’s because I have been very cautious. Every time we start a new food I only give her about a teaspoon to begin. If she spits up, if she wakes up crying at night with no explanation like a tooth coming in or an illness, I stop the food.

            She is 20 months old now and we have gotten a pretty good list of safe foods. She can eat eggs, russet potatoes, Yukon potatoes, quinoa, beef, red beans, apples, pears, peaches, bananas, squash, spinach, carrots, sugar, maple syrup, canola and olive oils. I haven’t tried any spices yet but that’s on my list of to-dos. My main goal is to find good foods she can eat.

            As you can imagine, feeding a 20-month-old such a limited diet can get difficult. She gets bored, she doesn’t like some things. She wants to eat the foods her sister eats. I know it’s only going to get tougher once she’s bigger and can tell me exactly what she wants but can’t understand why I won’t give it to her. It’s going to be tough but that is part of the reason I decided to start this blog. Every day I think of new things I can give her. I try to cook them in different ways. That’s going to be the main focus of this blog: sharing the recipes and ideas that I’ve come up with, many of them inspired by other parents of FPIES children. I hope that if you’re reading this and you have a child with FPIES you will find the recipes and ideas helpful.