Elimination diet, week 1

I've never successfully stayed on an elimination diet, and I suppose this one is no exception.  Despite all of my preparation, it turns out soy has been leaking into the diet in the form of bread and crackers.  Beware of vegetable oil (it usually contains at least some soybean oil), soy flour, flour improver 472, and lecithin, which sneak into store made food.  In a few weeks we may have to eliminate wheat, and then we won't have to worry about having soy in our bread or wheat crackers, but for the time being I'd like to find alternatives that don't involve making my own bread.

Ignoring the soy problem, which I'll deal with when I do the shopping tomorrow, I've been surprised by how easy this has been.  The two cookbooks mentioned in my previous post on the elimination diet have a huge number of not only tasty, but surprisingly easy, recipes, and I'm sure this experience is making me a better cook.  Here's a sample of some of the dinners we've had over the past week:

• Pan fried fish with butter and garlic
• Lamb noisettes with pear glaze
• Yogurt chicken
• Roast rack of lamb
• Golden chicken (marinated in golden syrup and grilled)

All of our meals have been accompanied by at least two vegetables, usually steamed, but sometimes sauteed.  I've discovered that steamed red cabbage is buttery, and that swedes can be cut lengthwise to make a nice compliment to green beans.

For dessert, or sometimes for afternoon tea, we have natural yogurt with pear, which is a combination we enjoyed before we knew about this diet.  On Saturday, I made poached pears with sabayon, which didn't come out quite the way I expected, but were still extremely tasty.

I'm finding that recipes are unusually easy to follow because the list
of allowed foods is so small that I have all the
ingredients for many of the recipes in the cookbooks, which makes cooking by recipe easier than usual.  I also feel less concerned than usual about how I allocate the vegetables we have, as long as they all get used by the end of the week.

Only once during the past week have I craved something I wasn't allowed to eat, which was chocolate.  I resolved this by making a batch of carob fudge that I've been enjoying ever since (though I must admit it is a little too sweet and the recipe will require some fudging to get right).  My son has been pretty good too.  The first day he was a bit out of character to refuse all of the nice food I gave him, and all he wanted to eat was rice crackers.  But since then he has been quite willing to eat everything and has rarely asked for food he isn't allowed to eat (even though he doesn't actually know that there are foods he's not allowed to eat).

We had our first big social challenge when we attended a birthday party this weekend.  The father of the birthday girl had prepared an all organic spread that could put any caterer to shame: mini quiches, homemade sausage rolls, skewers of fruit, flap jacks (they looked a lot like granola bars), meringues, chocolate coated cream puffs, and a chocalate mousse roll with strawberries for the birthday cake.  I explained that we were doing an elimination diet as soon as they
offered us food, which was pretty much as soon as we arrived, and they were very understanding.  Fortunately, I had anticipated there would be a little food and a cake, so I came prepared with pear slices, crackers, and meringues (since I had eggs left over from my poached pears with sabayon of the night before), but it was a little hard looking at all the beautiful and carefully prepared food and not be able to eat any of it (especially since it was probably the highest quality food we will encounter at a birthday or Christmas party this year).  The merengues had vinegar in them, the flap jacks had coconut in them, the sausage rolls were made with pork, the quiches had vegetables in them, the birthday cake had chocolate in it.   Finally, we worked out that the cream puffs were okay, except for the chocolate on the top, so I ate the bottom and gave the top away, just so I could partake in some way.  My son was even better than me.  He was happy with two slices of pear and one of my home made meringues.

Now we come to the big question: is all this inconvenience worth it?  Is his eczema improving?  The short answer is that it is too early to tell.  According to Sue Dengate's book "The Failsafe Cookbook," as well as our dietitian, we should expect withdrawal symptoms anywhere from four days to a week after starting the diet.  We're still in that range, so we must withhold judgment for the time being.

I don't think either my partner or I would have considered our son, who is nearly two, to be any less agreeable than your average two year old.  However, both my partner and I have noticed he has been less negative and more resilient in the past week than usual.  Whether it is the diet or coincidence, we don't know.  I suppose this may be exposed when we get to the challenge stage.  I'll keep you informed.