Can someone help me with meal plans please??

[mumat39]

I need to feed my DD who has multiple allergies and DS who has so far had the same diet as his sister. I know this isn't right but I find the whole food thing overwhelming and have done this to both keep DD safe and also to stop me from going mad. I don't cope well at all with all of this and just need to get over myself and deal with this.

DD starts full time school on September, so I need to prepare her for eating with other kids and the fact that they'll be eating things she can't eat.

At the moment both my kids basically eat meat and rice or meat and pasta as neither are keen on potatoes. The dietician at the allergy clinic told me to avoid frozen and tinned veg. I'm really not a very good cook and no nothing about nutrition so if anyone can help me that would be great. Or if someone knows of some I could hire to help me that would also be good.

I used to, many moons ago, love food and cooking and following recipes, but with DD reaction to most things I give her in the early days, I live in fear of a reaction and play it safe.

DD and DS have nutramigen 2 and I'd love to get them off this but need to ensure they are getting all the extra vitamins and minerals and essential doo da's in their food.

DD 4.5 is allergic to the wheat, eggs, Tree Nuts, Peanuts and other legumes (lentils, mung beans, chick peas, kidney beans, soya), Sesame, Rapeseed Oil, Oats as well as cats and pollen. I also suspect other foods, including celery and leeks and garlic.

The GP tried to refer me to a local dietician but she said she didn't want to get involved as we were already under the allergy clinic dieticans care.

So I'm feeling like I'm between a rock and a paralysed by fear place. I need to just get over it but don't know how to plan meals for both my kids that keep them well fed and keep DD safe. Also, I would need to introduce DS to new foods gradually so would need help dealing with that too.

Sorry for the long and whiny post. I really do just need help.

Many Thanks in advance.

sorry, so many silly typos s!!!

Tinned and frozen veg are much better than no veg and in some cases batter than fresh veg that has got a bit old. I'm not sure why your dietician would have advised that.

It is hard getting used to providing an allergy friendly diet, but if you can start with a few dishes and add a new one every week or so to build a repertoire of dishes that you can rotate.

Have you tried different types of potatoes, as your DD can't have wheat it would be useful for her to eat potatoes?

What about rice noodles?

I'm afraid that most of the things I cook my kids are potato based, but I'll have a think and come back with some ideas later tonight.

Thanks Trixy (love the name by the way

Honestly the dieticians do my head in and make me more scared of trying things. I contacted Birdseye by email about their tinned sweetcorn and they said that this is only canned in a place where the only other foods handled are peppers. So this particular dietician must just be one of those that believes fresh is best. I already spend alot of time thinking about what to cook and alot of time actually cooking the same things that I do everyday so any help is really appreciated.

Re the potatoes, I've tried mash, cubes of potato fried in a frying pan, chips which I tried to deep fry but came out soggy and chips in the oven which came out soggy too. They will eat potato crisps, so I think it must be something to do with the texture. They've both been like it since I weaned them where the just plain refused potato and sweet potato. I'd made up batches of it so tried a few times but they just didn't like it.

I think if you imagine a useless cook and then imagine someone worse then that's me.

Thanks again.

I don't know whether this will be any help to you, or whether you've already tried these coping strategies, but when things get overwhelming for me this how I cope. At the moment this strategy is working, and it avoids me having to actually devise a menu plan every week. DS has the same allergies as your DD except he is also allergic to milk and not allergic to soya, oats or rapeseed. The allergy to pulses is an extra dose of bad luck which we really don't need! Anyway, this is what I do to cope:

• arm myself with about 4 allergy-friendly cookbooks. Latest discovery is Tanya Wright's I'm Hungry (Easy Family Recipes free from Milk, Egg, Soya, Wheat, Gluten). Check this link on how to get a copy.

-choose a few websites to check regularly for inspiration. My current favourite is piginthekitchen, but I also follow some American and Canadian blogs as they seem to be amazingly clued up about allergies there (I spent a morning googling and browsing the internet and chose about 5 to follow on twitter)

-on pay day I order a whole bunch of stuff from goodnessdirect and ocado (mostly for baking)

-devise a formula instead of a menu plan. This makes it easier to be flexible. So, for example: Breakfast is always either rice krispies with Kara or gluten-free bread with Vitalite and jam. Morning snack is always fresh or dried fruit and crispbread (Amisa buckwheat crispbread, Crimble's corn crispbread, etc.). Lunch is always sardines and gf bread or soup and bread (this is good for packed lunches as you can keep the soup hot in a thermos food flask). Afternoon snack is always something home-baked (e.g. flapjack from Tanya Wright's book -- amazingly easy to bake and can be made with buckwheat flakes instead of oats) and an apple. Dinner is always meat and carbs (rice, pasta or potatoes). He is offered fruit as pudding after lunch and dinner. I don't stress about veg as he has fruit and a multi-vitamin supplement and I feel that if he refuses broccoli it's for a good reason! And he has a bottle of Pepti every night. With this formula I think he is getting plenty of iron (fortified cereal, dried fruit, sardines and meat), calcium (fortified cereal, Kara, sardines, Pepti and supplements), carbs (every meal and snack), fat (home-baked stuff and Vitalite on or in everything) and vitamins (fruit and supplements).

• always have three favourite standbys in the freezer (a red-meat based dish like bolognese sauce; a chicken dish like Annabel Karmel's mulligatawny chicken made with gf flour which is awesome; and a vegetable sauce). When I run out of any one of them I always prioritise making a fresh batch of that dish.

• I aim to cook or bake something every evening (alternating cooking and baking) immediately after DS has gone to bed, when I still have some energy left (except for two nights a week when I have a break and try not to think about allergies). Sometimes I cook the same old stuff (e.g. bol sauce) and sometimes I try something slightly new (but in small amounts in case DS doesn't like it -- then if he likes it I make a huge batch the next time!)

Not sure whether this is of any help to you, but after a year of struggling I now feel slightly more in control with this approach, despite being still very nervous about new foods...

Hello Garliclover.

Sorry to hear that you also have so many bloody allergies to deal with.

It sounds as though you've got a good plan there.

I'll definitely look at the Tanya Wright book, and I also love the piginthekitchen blog.

I've never tried my kids on fish as I have a nasty shellfish allergy and the smell of fish is actually a bit difficult for me. I have actually got some of the youngs free from fish fingers in the freezer but am too scared to try them. I have separate pans for DD and I worry that if I cook the fish fingers and she does react then does that mean I can't use the pan again? In the early days it took me a long while to figure out that DD was affected by cross contamination from saucepans so I keep them separate from our food. I drive myself mad with all the thinking.

I cook most days and at weekend try and bake biscuits and I'm usually so tired of all the thinking it would be great if I could come up with a way of coping like you do. I just need ideas for a bit of variety.

If you would be happy to recommend any other allergy cookbooks that would be great. I've spent alot of money on delivery charges ordering loads of Amazon, but they have never been any good, so I've always sent them back.

I admire you for cooking in the evenings. My kids don't go to bed until about 8 no matter how hard I try to get them to bed early and after I've eaten, I'm usually ready for just zombying in front of the tv or on my laptop.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Try this site: whatallergy.com/