A Tale of Three Pizzas

Most of you know that Gabriella is allergic to all dairy products and that she also has a life threatening allergy to peanuts. Many of you know that Juliana started to display many allergic symptoms (including failure to gain weight) at only a few weeks old. Working along with our pediatrician and a lactation consultant, I cut a lot of foods out of my diet in order to continue to breastfeed. More specifically, I cut out all of the top eight allergens. Recently, I have trialed wheat back into my diet and so far that seems to be going well.



When people hear about my restricted diet, most of them ask... "What on earth CAN you eat?" Truly, most prepackaged items are out for me. Soy is particularly terrible for appearing in everything. We do have to read each and every label, but we were already in that routine because of Gabriella's allergies. It was a pretty bumpy start to cut so many things out at once (and unlike Gabriella I actually know what cheese tastes so the lack of it gets to me much more than it does her), but right now it is a pretty livable routine. I started off my day with some Special K "red berries" in rice milk and for lunch we all had pizza. We made three pizzas actually. Jonathan's was a pretty traditional canadian bacon/pineapple on a Bobolis individual serve pre-packaged crust. Gabriella had hers on a whole wheat bagel sans cheese (she can't have the Bobolis because of milk ingredients.) My pizza was Gabriella style, but on an organic spelt tortilla... which is one of the few grain products I could find prepacked without soy and of course had to be purchased from an organic foods store. So maybe all of that is a bit complicated, but like anything else you get used to it and make new routines. Jonathan has been great about trying out new recipes. Last night he made AMAZING Mongolian beef. I can't tell you how excited I was to have chinese! I can even take a small part in that victory because I actually made the soy sauce substitute (although Jonathan found the recipe.)

Probably the second most frequently asked question is, "Are you losing tons of weight?" In short, no. I've pretty much ditched all the pregnancy weight, but you won't exactly be seeing me in a bikini this year with a shockingly slim figure. You see, I have developed a love affair with olive oil. A lot of fats are out of my diet, but this lovely little "healthy fat" has moved right on in. I add italian seasoning and dip homemade bread in it, I drizzle it on broccoli and roast it in the oven and Jonathan uses it in cooking a ton. Between that and my discovery of coconut milk ice cream... there is little danger of me wasting away.

Since most of you probably just come here for pictures of my cute children and were extremely disappointed by the pizza shot, I'll add these gratuitously....











I will warn you though that Food Allergy Awareness week is coming up soon and you'll probably see something here about that.