Tag Archives: ASD

So, What Happened?

Posted on by findingmykid
2

What happened? How was Thanksgiving? How did my terrific organic vegetarian-, pescatarian-, and GAPS-friendly plan turn out? Did I rock the holiday table?

Here’s what happened Thanksgiving week.

Sunday afternoon, and again on Monday, my mother and I went shopping. Dried cranberries sweetened only with apple juice. Bunches of kale. Hazelnuts. Farm eggs. A bag of almost-ripe avocados. Fresh rosemary, and sage. Everything the menu required, we had. Except for the fish. The fish we were to purchase Wednesday.

Monday evening, three days before Thanksgiving, my brother Rudy and his friend arrived from California. Adrian and I stayed home while my parents retrieved the new guests at JFK. I fed and bathed Martin, got him to bed, missed the last step coming downstairs, and stubbed my big toe, hard. (That will become relevant. Really.) With Martin asleep, we adults sat down to a nice dinner.

By the time dinner ended, my toe had swollen and bruised, and I could hardly move it, so I took some ibuprofen. Other than the toe, I felt fine when I went to bed at 10:30 pm.

Around 1:00 am I woke, perceiving that something was terribly wrong but unsure what. My toe throbbed, a pain that radiated to my knee, and I felt as if my body were empty, without muscle or energy. I hobbled from bed to the bathroom and lay on the tile floor, bewildered. I didn’t need the bathroom. It just seemed like I belonged there. I don’t know whether I fell asleep, or whether minutes passed, or more. The next time I came to my senses, I was shaking. I crawled several feet and collapsed onto the shower mat, thinking it would keep me warm. When the shaking turned to convulsing, I realized I needed help.

This is a blog about Martin’s health, not mine, so I’m going to fast-forward past the dreadful rest of Monday night and Tuesday morning, and the circumstances that had me sent from a doctor’s office to the hospital Tuesday afternoon, and leave it suffice to say: Thank God my mother was visiting. Without her, Martin might’ve gone unkempt and unfed, and who knows what would’ve become of me? Some virus took hold and wrung me good: fevers, dehydration, dangerously low potassium. Doctors and nurses prodded and monitored me all night Tuesday, then released me from the hospital early Wednesday, after I had stabilized.

By Wednesday evening, the night before Thanksgiving, I was able to get out of bed. But I wasn’t going to be doing any cooking.

The elaborate menu of three breads, two entrées, four side dishes, and three desserts fell entirely upon the shoulders of my long-suffering mother, ably assisted by my stepfather. And what do you know? Despite doing her simultaneous best to take care of me, to feed my husband and stepfather and brother and friend, and to amuse Martin, she managed to prepare everything other than the pumpkin poppers and raw kale salad. To be sure, there were minor snafus. Instead of fresh fish, she prepared Vital Choice salmon from my basement freezer. The zucchini bread turned into zucchini muffins. The cauliflower, when mashed, produced about one-half the expected volume. Still! Hey! Thanksgiving dinner for everyone! (Everyone except me. I still wasn’t up to eating.) Martin particularly loved the zucchini muffins. He’s been eating them for breakfast ever since.

I am going to say that I felt pretty darn thankful. Thankful that if I had to get sick, at least I had my mother in the house. Thankful that everyone arrived safely. Thankful for a meal we all could eat together. Thankful that Martin conversed fluidly with the guests, that he’s doing so well.

Thankful that, along with the CAT scan and ultrasound, the hospital took the time to x-ray my big toe. It was bruised but not broken.

Bruised but never broken. That’s us.

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Let Us All Gather at the Table. How?

Posted on by findingmykid
3

Sorry to be posting so much about food lately. Recipes. GAPS. Quinoa. Goldfish. Goldfish. Food and diet are what people ask me about the most. And now Thanksgiving is here, hands-down my favorite holiday. Like we did last year—since we have a house in the suburbs, we might as well use it for something—Adrian and I are hosting Thanksgiving in our home. At the table, along with me and Adrian and Martin, will be my mother, my stepfather, my brother Rudy, and a friend of Rudy.

The dietary breakdown—

Rudy’s friend: eats all foods.

Adrian and my parents: pescatarians, i.e., eat dairy, eggs, and fish, but no fowl or red meat.

Rudy and I: vegans, i.e., avoid all animal products, including eggs and dairy.

Martin: GAPS and casein-free, i.e., eats fish, meat, and eggs, but no dairy, grains (except for a smidgen of quinoa), refined sugar, or starchy foods like yams or potatoes.

Also, Rudy is allergic to most tree nuts. He can eat almonds and hazelnuts.

Try menu planning for this crowd. Go on, try! After much contemplation, I have decided that I will, for Thanksgiving, eat recipes that contain eggs. Rudy has agreed to do the same. With that, I think I have come up with a decent, if non-traditional, menu. Some of the recipes came from The Heal Your Gut Cookbook. Others I found on-line, on “paleo” or “no grain” websites, and modified the ingredients as necessary. The lentil-nut loaf calls for a special shout-out to The Simple Veganista and Oh She Glows. Finally, a couple recipes (mashed cauliflower and roast Brussels sprouts) are favorite old creations of mine.

My aim was to ensure (1) that everyone was happy and satisfied, and (2) that Martin could partake in every food on the table. Without further ado, here are the dishes I plan to serve, with ingredients:

Breads

almond flour zucchini bread

ingredients: almond flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, eggs, honey, banana, shredded zucchini.

coconut butter bread

ingredients: coconut butter, eggs, coconut oil, sea salt, baking soda.

pumpkin poppers (mini-muffins)

ingredients: coconut flour, sea salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, eggs, cooked pumpkin, cooked carrots, coconut oil, honey, vanilla.

Main Courses

fish (for the non-vegans)

ingredients: not yet known; what fish I buy, and how we prepare it, will depend on which Martin-safe(r) fish is freshest and available.

lentil-hazelnut loaf (for the vegans, and anyone else who wants some)

ingredients: brown lentils, vegetable broth (I make my own), flax meal, olive oil, fresh garlic, onion, red bell pepper, carrot, celery, gluten-free oats (not GAPS-compliant, so I may look for a substitute), hazelnut meal, thyme, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Side Dishes

quinoa stuffing

ingredients: quinoa, squash, onion, celery, bay leave, fresh garlic, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, fresh sage, apple, raisins or dried cranberries, chopped toasted hazelnuts, apple cider vinegar, fresh parsley, cumin, olive oil.

garlic mashed cauliflower

ingredients: cauliflower, olive oil, salt and pepper, garlic.

raw kale salad

ingredients: curly kale, olive oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, pumpkin seeds, red onion, avocado, salt and pepper.

roast Brussels sprouts

ingredients: Brussels sprouts, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, garlic.

Desserts

carrot cake with vanilla ice cream

ingredients: coconut manna, honey, carrots, cinnamon, shredded coconut, sea salt, baking soda, vanilla, eggs

ice cream: Raw Ice Cream (this has some raw agave and so does not comply entirely with GAPS; also, Rudy can’t eat it because it contains cashews).

chocolate pudding pie

crust ingredients: hazelnut meal, salt, baking soda, palm-coconut shortening, honey, vanilla

filling ingredients: avocado, honey, cocoa, apple cider vinegar.

Yes. I am going to try to prepare that menu. My mother and stepfather have already arrived from Texas, so I will get help from them. Still, if by chance I fail to blog any day next week, you will know why. When I ran the menu by Adrian, three nights ago, he said, “That sounds fantastic! You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think if you’re going to pull that off, you’d better start cooking now.”

Journey

Posted on by findingmykid
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When we first started recovering Martin, I envisioned an end date. I’ve written on the topic, that is, “How will I know when we’re done?” Four years ago I thought we might be “there” by kindergarten or first grade; the mother who got me started on this journey pretty much recovered her son by age six. That seemed doable. (Martin is six now, in first grade, and far along but nowhere near typical.)

This year, in conversation with parents whose kids are, for all intents and purposes, recovered or very nearly indistinguishable from typically developing peers, my understanding of this path has changed. I don’t think there will be an end date.

This is not to say that I don’t think Martin will recover. I do. This year Martin’s language and social skills have come so far—almost daily, neurotypicality feels achievable.

I foresee a time when Martin will leave self-contained special education for a mainstream classroom. I foresee a time when physical therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy will no longer be offered to him. I foresee a time when he will make friends without a parent-engineered play group. Little by little, these needs that Martin has will fall away.

Yet there will be more to do. Martin has lost a significant portion of childhood to autism, and he will always need to catch up in some regard. Moreover, the damage to Martin’s immune system is likely to affect his health even after the biggest strikes are resolved. What I do for Martin may naturally shift behind the scenes as he ages and heals. That doesn’t mean I won’t stop working.

As of today, I see recovering Martin as a permanent part of my parenting journey. It’s like dividing a number half by half by half. You never reach zero, but you get infinitesimally close. Even when Martin is 0.0000000001% away from typical (and therefore more “typical” than most any kid?), I’ll still be lurking around, trying to keep him healthy, giving him what he needs to become the man he was born to be.

Every parent’s adventure is different, and I guess this is mine.

ASD Recovery Recipe: Goldfish Crackers, Even More Complicated

Posted on by findingmykid
3

When you read my exciting recipe for goldfish crackers, did you think I was crazy? Did you think, “This blogger spent two hours to make a couple trays of goldfish crackers. I’m going to do that, too. That fits right into my life.”

Guess what? I made more goldfish crackers, and I made them even more complicated still.

Nuts are GAPS-legal, provided they start raw (you can brown them yourself). The best way to eat nuts GAPS-style is to soak/sprout the nuts and then low-temperature dehydrate them, for digestibility.

Last time I made goldfish crackers, I used store-bought almond flour. This time, I thought: I’ve got raw macadamias. I’ve got a sprouting jar. I’ve got a dehydrator. Let’s party.

I used the same recipe (doubled). Instead of using commercial almond flour, I soaked several cups of raw macadamias in Fiji water overnight.

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The next day, I drained and rinsed the nuts and transferred them to my dehydrator.

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They took forever to dry at 115 degrees. I had to leave them in the dehydrator more than 24 hours.

That brings us to day three. I removed the soaked and dried macadamias and started grinding them in my Vitamix . . .

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. . . which didn’t work out so well. The stuff at the bottom turned into pasty nut butter before I could pack down enough of the sides to become flour. After a quarter-hour of arguing with the Vitamix, I decided to finish the job with my trusted coffee/nut/seed grinder. I could grind only, like, ten nuts at a time, but the easier access to the blades and bowl made the job manageable.

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When the process was finished, I had about three cups of macadamia flour. It was still kind of creamy, and not powdery at all; if I hadn’t been using it immediately, I would have refrigerated the product and not kept it more than a week. In order to make a double recipe of goldfish, I needed four cups of flour, so I supplemented with Bob’s Red Mill natural almond meal, which is a good product but neither organic nor sprouted. (Hint, hint, Bob Moore.)

At last I was able to mix my goldfish dough. Then, sprinkling more almond meal to prevent sticking, I turned my counter into a goldfish factory again.

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This round, however, I did not bother making eyes and mouths on the goldfish. Etching those details with a wooden toothpick consumed so much time, and I’m pretty sure Martin, as he chewed goldfish by the handful, never noticed whether his crackers had faces.

Total prep time: two days, plus three hours grinding, mixing, rolling, and cutting.

Total time goldfish crackers lasted before Martin ate them all: one week.

Next time, if I need to supplement the flour that I make, I will try using Blue Mountain Organics sprouted almond butter instead (there are various sprouted nut butters available commercially; usually I select the one I find first), and maybe decreasing the olive oil to compensate for the oilier product. As healthy as the current batch is, I can always do better.

(Now might be when you revisit the final paragraphs of “My Beef With the GAPS Diet Author,” wherein I asserted that my mental health is strong . . . .)

Bucketful of a Good Thing

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2

It has been 22 months since Martin constructed his first “why” question: “My daddy, why he don’t come home?”

Since then, the why question hasn’t really come up again, much. As I’ve written, Martin’s development bounces that way; a skill emerges, hides, and then—explodes.

Boom! Over the past two weeks, the sky has filled with why questions and they’re raining all over me. Martin is asking both standard, practical questions (“Why can’t I ride in the grocery cart?” “Why do I have to take a bath?”) and the maddening questions I don’t know how to answer (“Why do the months go from January to December?” “Why are the clouds made of water?”).

The ancestral question—“My daddy, why he don’t come home?”—was a “why not” question. Despite the recent onslaught of why questions, I had not heard another “why not” until this morning, when Martin asked, “Why is a softball not soft?” (Here I can’t resist a pun: That question was no softball to answer.) Now that “why not” is back, I’m already anticipating the arrival of “why can’t I…” questions.

As I understand human development, most typical kids pass through a “why” phase around age four. Martin is six. That’s not so far off.

My favorite why question so far? Sunday morning, we were driving to church when Martin asked, “Mommy, why is the man in the garbage?” I looked and saw a maintenance working standing in a trash can, a rake lying nearby. I said, “I thinking the man’s using his weight to pack fallen leaves into the garbage. Isn’t that silly? A man in the garbage!” Then Martin and I shared a good laugh, which if you have a child with autism is an achievement in itself.

Picture Shock

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Reply

My laptop’s “sleep” mode is set to play a rotating photo montage. We got our first digital camera to take baby pictures (kitten pictures?) of our cat Levi, early in 2004, which was 11 years ago and, you realize, also one million years ago. That was the advent of digital photography in my and Adrian’s life. The thousands of photos stored in my laptop have been taken over the past decade or so, including during Martin’s childhood before autism.

When I take a two-minute break from working and return to find pre-autism Martin on the screen, my first feeling is usually sadness. My son at twelve months, fourteen months, sixteen months, looks directly at the camera and smiles naturally. He shows us what he’s doing. In one beautiful photo, he’s lifted high on Adrian’s right arm as both of them point toward me, the photographer. Within six months of that photo, Martin got lost in himself. His eye contact, pointing, and connectedness disappeared. He stopped meeting milestones for social development. The repetitive behaviors began.

I try to use the sadness from seeing those photos and turn it to resolve. Slowly, Martin is returning. By now he points again. His eye contact is not as sustained as it should be, but it’s there. He wants to connect, not only with me and Adrian, but with peers. We have come a long way.

Yet we still have to far to go. When I think about that, I become angry—angry at all we have to do to reclaim that easygoing little boy, anger at a toxic world that stole him.

Maybe I should change my laptop’s sleep setting. But no. There’s no use in avoiding reality.

TWIFU

Posted on by findingmykid
10

TIFU. Know what it means? Click here (at your own peril) if you don’t.

Now take the T (“today”) and substitute TW (“this week”), because the events I’m about to describe happened on Monday.

In yesterday’s post I talked about starting Heilkunst. Martin’s first two clears arrived last week. I waited to start them, because I hadn’t had time to peruse the instructions for the clears, or to revise Martin’s daily supplementation sheets to include the clears and the accompanying drainage formula. Monday I had the time, got everything prepared, and decided to start Martin’s first clear.

By Monday we also had been waiting more than a week, since our visit to Dr. Zelinsky, for Martin’s new glasses to arrive. Martin, with characteristic precision and fierceness, had said he wanted his glasses to arrive “on Saturday, November 1 and no other day!” They didn’t. So when the glasses finally appeared on Monday, November 3, I was eager to present them to Martin and let him start wearing them.

Here’s what happened after the school bus dropped Martin off Monday afternoon:

3:50 pm. Martin put on glasses for the first time, agreed to wear them generally.

3:50-4:20 pm. Martin played, read, and drew pictures, wearing glasses. He took his afternoon supplements.

4:20-6:20 pm. We went to social-skills group. Martin wore glasses. On the way, he drank his camel milk. The group leader reported that Martin had a great session and participated well.

6:30 pm. Driving home from social-skills group, we pulled into Stop & Shop for Martin to pick out his own Lärabar®. Even though we have Lärabars at home, Martin takes great pleasure in going to the store and choosing one. (No doubt he also likes that Stop & Shop stocks “cherry pie” and “pecan pie” flavors, which I don’t keep at home.) Martin, glasses on, seemed energized, if not decisive. He ran back and forth between the standard Lärabar display and a temporary rack of “seasonal” flavors like “pumpkin pie” and “gingerbread.”

7:00-7:30 pm. Martin sat at the dinner table. His dinner was bone broth and pasta with squash and cauliflower. While Martin sipped his broth, I assembled and administered his evening supplements, including for the first time the Heilkunst drainage drop and a Heilkunst clear. He took them without issue.

7:30-7:45 pm. Although Martin loves pasta, after just a bite or two he pushed the pasta bowl aside and said he wanted to finish only his soup, which he did. He also requested dessert and ate a small piece of chocolate. Then he said he didn’t want to wear his glasses anymore, didn’t want to take a bath, and was going to get ready for bed.

8:00 pm. In his room, teeth brushed, pajama-clad, without glasses, Martin scrunched himself into froggy position on the floor and said his belly hurt. Did he need to return to the potty? I asked. Could I get him a drink of water? Would he like more soup? No, no, no, Martin answered. He climbed into bed and asked me to read him a story.

8:20 pm. Martin was in bed, lights out. From the kitchen, I heard him calling me. I walked down the hall to his doorway. “Mommy, my tummy hurts,” he said and smacked his lips. I realized what probably was coming and started toward his bed. Too late. Within seconds, Martin, his pillow, his sheets and blanket, several stuffed animals, and a small part of the mattress were splashed with vomit. In the mess I saw several undigested supplements, along with the few bits of pasta he’d eaten.

Martin almost never pukes. I think it’s happened maybe two or three times in his life.

And I didn’t know what caused it Monday. That was the TWIFU. I know that I should separate new supplements, treatments, therapies, and even vitamins by at least two-to-three days, in order to pinpoint the cause of any reactions. I know that. What did I do Monday? Without a second thought, I let Martin wear new glasses for several hours and started the Heilkunst. When he reacted, when he puked all over poor Curious George, I couldn’t isolate the cause. Was wearing glasses too much stimulation for Martin’s brain stem? Did he get dizzy? Or did the first Heilkunst clear cause his body to reject something? How could I tell?

I’ve been working at Martin’s recovery for four years. You’d think by now I’d have a clue.

P.S. Because of my carelessness, I had to undertake some additional investigation. By the time I finished cleaning Martin, washing linens, and doing my best with the mattress and pillow, it was late evening. (Admittedly, I would have been awake anyway. The Rangers went to a shoot-out.) I didn’t want to bother Dr. Zelinsky or Rudi Verspoor at that hour. Instead, I texted with another Dr. Z mom I know and posted an inquiry in a Heilkunst group on-line, which generated immediate responses. By the time I went to bed, I was 90% confident that the vomiting was unrelated to the new glasses and instead was a proper reaction to the first clear, which was a clear for the coxsackie virus Martin had two years ago. I was even more confident when Martin woke the next morning with a slight rash on his hands, a much lighter version of how he’d looked during the virus. Still, I can’t be 99.99% confident, and that bothers me.

So Here’s Something Else New We’re Doing

Posted on by findingmykid
19

We have started Heilkunst, a form of sequential homeopathy. We’re working with Rudi Verspoor of Ottawa’s Hahnemann Center.

Four years ago, when we started the process of recovering Martin from autism (as opposed to helping him live with autism, through traditional therapies), Adrian and I resolved not to go too far “out there.” The first MAPS doctor we brought Martin to is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency at Massachusetts General. These credentials were important to us, because we didn’t want to be dealing with, as I put it, “a graduate of the Pacific School of Holistic Touchy-Feely Medicine.” (Let me also add that Martin’s first MAPS doctor is empathetic, intuitive, and utterly knowledgeable, and that we switched doctors only because that one moved to California.)

We’ve been through a lot in the years since Adrian and I resolved not to go too far “out there.” We’ve used two homotoxicologists, one in New York City who did not work out well—part of the problem could have been me not understanding homotoxicology at the time, and her not explaining the process in a way I could grasp—and for the last two years Lauren Lee Stone in Connecticut, with more success. Martin has participated in craniosacral massage, muscle testing, naturopathic assessment of food allergies. He’s drinking camel milk daily. He’s slept on a grounding sheet, inside an RF-blocking tent.

I suppose I’ve strayed pretty far “out there” with Martin, and Adrian hasn’t stopped us. When your son stops running in circles, and starts talking, and stops thrashing around in his bed, and starts realizing when you’re in the room with him, then you pretty much go where the journey takes you, and go gratefully. I still care, a lot, about credentials and science, but you could say my horizons have expanded.

On an “out there” scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being ABA and MiraLAX® for autism, and 10 being having Reiki vibes telepathically sent from Mongolia, I would put Heilkunst at about an 7.73. In their book Autism: The Journey Back, Rudi Verspoor and Patty Smith describe Heilkunst as a “comprehensive, integrated system of Western medicine based on the principles of natural law regarding the removal of disease (cure) and the restoration of balance in our functioning (healing).” As I understand the process, Martin will progress through a series of homeopathic “clears,” one every two or three weeks, to alleviate the insults to his immune system, from pre-natal development through today. The insults to Martin’s immune system have been many, from his traumatic birth to vaccinations to living in a home under renovation. I had to list all this out in order to begin Heilkunst. It was not a fun process.

Now, let me add this: Scoring Heilkunst an 7.73 on the “out there” scale does not mean I don’t have faith in the process. To the contrary, Heilkunst is energetic healing, and I am administering it to Martin, and I think my faith therefore is necessary to its success, and I would not have proceeded if I didn’t expect results. I’ve talked to many families whose children have progressed with sequential homeopathy. I’ve witnessed their progress. Plus, sequential homeopathy makes sense to me. I know many of the factors that affected Martin’s immune functioning; I’m eager to help him work back through what happened.

I’m also glad we did not start Heilkunst sooner. We needed first to get the biggest stuff under control: his digestion, his ability to rest, his communication skills to participate in the process.

And we had some mental blocks to remove. Mine.

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Less-Meat GAPS (With Photos!)

Posted on by findingmykid
2

I received this inquiry: “The GAPS diet is so meaty. If Martin is eating only one meat serving per day plus broth, what all is he eating?”

Fair question.

I’ll use today as an example, and as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that, depending on how you define “meat serving,” he might have had two.

For breakfast, Martin drank a 12-ounce glass of homemade bone broth and ate a small dish of fermented vegetables—today, eight string beans. Some weekday mornings Martin takes only broth. I prepare a full breakfast only on the weekends, when Adrian eats at home and we have more time.

Martin’s school asks that we send two snacks each day, and a lunch. Today I packed both snacks into one container. The morning snack was homemade protein bars. That recipe varies every time; this version had organic SunButter, chia seeds, coconut flakes, cacao nibs, honey, and sea salt. For afternoon snack, he got gummy treats, which I made by heating and pureeing strawberries, then adding pure bovine gelatin and pouring the mixture into silicone candy molds.

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Did you catch that? Bovine gelatin in the afternoon snack. If you count that as meat, because it comes from a cow, then Martin had two meat servings today.

As for Martin’s lunch, if you read yesterday’s post, you already know what it was: meatballs that were actually half-vegetable.

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When Martin arrived home from school, per his custom he immediately wanted another snack, which he was allowed to select from his snack drawer. Today’s snack choices looked like this—

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Martin went with a cappuccino Lära Bar. (Yes, that has a small amount of coffee.) Per my custom, I asked Martin to finish his camel milk before eating the snack. I added cinnamon to the camel milk.

An hour later, when we were leaving for his piano lesson, Martin demanded yet another snack. As I rushed to get him out the door, I came up with some leftover freeze-dried blueberries. He arrived at the music school with purple hands and a purple face.

For dinner, I gave Martin the choice of pasta, which I would cook with veggies and olives, or “cheese and crackers.” He decided to have the latter, Dr. Cow fermented nut cheese paired with New York Naturals kale crackers. With dinner he had another 12 ounces of bone broth.

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Then, of course, it was time for dessert. Martin got a quarter-cup of “chocolate ice cream,” a cashew-based product sweetened with raw agave. Agave is not GAPS-legal! But there was very little agave, and I decided we would all survive the experience. While I was serving the ice cream, Martin asked, “Mommy, why don’t you put some chocolate chips on it?”, which I did, in the form of raw cacao nibs.

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Throughout the day, including at school, Martin drank Fiji water from a Lifefactory bottle, into which I mixed a splash of juice and his MitoSpectra powder.

No day is perfect. Today Martin had too much sugar (from honey, strawberries, dates in the Lärabar, blueberries, juice, and “ice cream”) and one non-GAPS ingredient (raw agave). And it’s probably apparent that I don’t have big oxalate concerns at this time; with all the nuts and cocoa, it was an oxalate-heavy menu. Still, he had his camel milk, 24 ounces of bone broth, and veggies in reasonable quantity.

Then he went to bed, and I had wine.

Sneakin’ and Foolin’

Posted on by findingmykid
11

What’s this picture? Any guesses?

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It shows the makings for meatballs. More specifically, it shows tiny pieces of carrot, garlic, onion, and parsley.

I, like many parents, at least the kind of over-the-top parents I hang around, use meatballs as a vessel for veggies. Martin loves when I send meatballs to school for his lunch. He finds many ways to tell me how much he loves when I send meatballs to school for his lunch. For example, last night after his bedtime, I returned to the family room to find that he’d written “MEATBALLS FOR LUNCH?” on a balloon and left it on the toy chest.

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If nothing else, he’s subtle.

So meatballs it is. But I shall insist on concealing veggies in those meatballs. I process onions, fresh garlic, and whatever else I have on hand, then mix them with ground beef, maybe a 1:1 veggie-meat ratio, or slightly less.

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Then I form the mass into balls and store them in a glass container.

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For the next three mornings, I will cook meatballs in olive oil, add strained tomatoes (from a glass jar), and pack them, hot, in a stainless-steel container for Martin to take to school. (I also fill the container with near-boiling water for five minutes, then empty the water and add the meatballs. This helps keep them warm.) As I mentioned on October 29 (see the paragraph numbered (3.), which begins, “I’m an empiricist”), I have Martin down to one serving of meat daily, not counting bone broths. For the next three days, the meat serving will be meatballs at lunch, and I’ll be happy to think I’ve snuck in almost the equivalent of a side salad. If I could find a way to keep the veggies raw while cooking the meat, they would be more salad-like still.

Time for a confession: Martin’s not the only one getting fooled these days.

Although Martin has been gluten-free for almost four years now, I’ve never made our household gluten-free. I like bread, and occasional seitan. Adrian likes to take a sandwich to work each day, along with crackers for his hummus or raw-milk (over the top!) cheese. This summer, after reading a few opinions and reviewing my own experience, I became more concerned about cross-contamination between our gluten-containing products and Martin’s foods. Although I have separate toasters for gluten and gluten-free bread, they both leave residue in the cabinet. Although I wash the cutting boards between uses, it’s not like I never find a few bread bits clinging to the edges. Crumbs are untamable. They fly everywhere! Cheese and yogurt, the two dairy products that Adrian likes, so we have them at home, are much easier to subdue.

I knew I should make our house gluten-free. I also knew that I’d be pushing it with Adrian if I told him my plan. Adrian is super-duper supportive about what we do for Martin. That being said, Adrian works long, tough hours and hates to have his little pleasures denied. I can see his point, or the point he would have made had I told him that the house should be gluten-free: How necessary is that? Is it too much to ask that I take a sandwich to work as part of my lunch? That I have toast with weekend breakfast? Enjoy a plate of cheese and crackers and grapes when I come home late?

So I did what any sensible autism-recovery mom would do: I kept my mouth shut. Over a couple months, I searched for the best tasting gluten-free products that I could substitute without Adrian realizing. Crackers were easy; he’s always liked good-quality rice-, quinoa-, and seed-based crackers. The challenge was bread; most varieties I found were crumbly, or dry and nutty tasting, or both. (The chicken-and-egg bread I make for Martin is not an option, because Adrian doesn’t eat chicken.) Finally I found a variety at my local Stop & Shop that is almost indistinguishable from gluten bread. It is less dense and the slices are smaller. Other than that, hard to tell. It’s been more than a month since I’ve brought gluten into the house. If he’s noticed, Adrian hasn’t said anything.

Wait! you might say. This post has just gone public. Isn’t Adrian about to discover his unwitting gluten-free lifestyle?

He doesn’t read my blog every day.

Maybe I’ll get lucky.

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Two of these products (I won’t say which two) are more processed and full of ingredients that would never be in my kitchen if I were baking. The other two are pretty good, and products that I would consider for Martin if he weren’t on the GAPS diet. Adrian is getting all of these. He can take it.