When all else fails....FRUIT!

That has been our mantra for the last 3 weeks. When Levi spent 3 days with his Granny and Poppa in Owensboro, we told them the very same thing. "When all else fails...... FRUIT!"

Spaghetti & Meatballs

Pasta has always been one of Levi's favorites. It kind of threw me for a loop when we decided on the GFCF diet for him because I hadn't really checked out the availability of GF items since my grandmother was diagnosed with celiac five years ago. At that time, GF food was very hard to come by, and more times than not, pretty terrible. So I was so thrilled when I discovered not only rice pasta, but corn pasta as well. Whole foods carries a nice variety of gluten free pasta, and Levi really doesn't seem to notice a difference. He really likes the angel hair, but also loves the penne.

We have made an effort to fix the same meal for all of us, trying to minimize the difference in ingredients. The only time we really do fix two different dinners is when the ingredients in Levi's GFCF meal are a lot more expensive than the non-GFCF alternative. So I made 2 pastas, and used 2 different sauces, but I was only going to mess with one version of meatballs. Levi & his Dad have always loved my meatball recipe and I was kind of at a loss on how to modify my recipe to make it GFCF (no parmesean, no bread crumbs). No biggie. I just left the cheese out and substituted the bread crumbs for crushed up Puffin's rice cereal. Not only did it still make a great meatball, but the subtle sweetness really complimented the organic marinara we used. Levi loved it, it was pretty inexpensive, and no more difficult to make than the alternative. Success!

$100 Trip to Whole Foods

This is what a $100 trip to Whole Foods looks like when your toddler is on a strict gluten and casein free diet. We are trying like heck to keep his meals as similar as possible to what he was eating 3 weeks ago. This week we are planning on making him spaghetti & meatballs, pizza with Bob's Red Mill gluten free pizza crust mix, quesadillas with corn tortillas & roasted red pepper hummus, hamburgers (on tapioca bread) & french fries, and lots of other yummy treats. I'm even thinking about trying to tackle a GFCF strawberry shortcake for dessert one night. I'm going to chronicle all of this on this, our new blog. I will test recipes and try some improvisational techniques to turn all of his favorite meals GFCF.  Some will be awesome, some will be total flops. I'll rate it all based on ease of preparation, availability of ingredients, and of course, Levi's reaction to the final results! Thank you for checking our our blog. Please feel free to forward this along to anyone you know who keeps their family GFCF!

-Levi's Momma