Anaphylaxis and my budget
For those who came by via Google here’s a link that may interest you.
In the first installment of the allergy journey of my son I mentioned some of his history with foods and food preservatives and additives. I know there is more history to share, but that is for a yet to be determined other time, in the future. I will put up a post about sharing more detail about his specific history later. I don’t know that my general readers really care that much about his food history and that’s OK. I’ve had some specific e-mails because of the first post so I want to try to be helpful.
Now, let’s move on.
Many years ago, six to be exact, when my son was four we changed a lot in the way we did things in the kitchen. We cut out a lot of foods we were buying and “allowing” our children to eat. The first thing we did was cut out all those prepackaged snacks like Little Debbie cakes and store bought chips and cookies. A little side note here: I still sneak myself a Little Debbie Swiss Cake Roll every now and again when no one is looking. Shhh. Don’t tell them. Please. We noticed a difference in how Goro’s behavior improved. He wasn’t a bad boy, just a bit more aggressive than most of his friends seemed to be. There were a few times he got left out of party invites and that really broke my heart, his too. But after we figured out that he seemed to have some behavioral reactions to preservatives and additives we started making changes.
Why is it that the healthier the food the more expensive it is? This is the heart of the matter for this post. On some levels the healthier foods are more expensive, but a majority of it can be balanced by just good old-fashioned-home-cooking. You know what I mean, right? Home-made meals. Everything from scratch.
I have always had certain foods in my pantry/freezer for those either last-minute meals or to make it easier for SmockDaddy to throw something together if I needed him to pitch in. I used to keep items like Hamburger Helper, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Stouffer’s, etc. around so that a hot meal could be thrown together really fast if needed. The biggest problem with these types of foods is that they are not healthy foods. They are also less expensive and much more convenient to keep around than the healthier counterparts. But when Goro was four and we discovered the vastness of what his little body was not able to tolerate I began the journey of cleaning out the pantry and only buying items that were fresh (fruits and veggies) or were pantry items that could be used to make something from scratch, home-made. The time involved with this process was incredible. Reading labels, researching new recipes, making new foods and tweaking those recipes until we liked them or decided to trash them all together, reading more labels, trying new things. It was all actually quite fun to learn these new things and try them out. But with it came a lack of staples to keep around in the freezer or cabinets.
I am a woman of convenience. I love convenient things. For example, I have breast fed all my children, but I have always kept that one lone bottle of formula in the diaper bag “just in case”. Breastfeeding is so extremely convenient! If I’m not there, that one lone bottle is convenient for the care-giver of the moment. The bottle I keep handy is a bottle of ready to feed formula - no water needed; it’s even more convenient if all that has to be done is poor and feed or better yet pop a bottle top/nipple combo on and go.
So all this making from scratch meant no more convenience foods, store bought spice mixes, or my favorite Pioneer mix for pancakes, waffles, and biscuits. Well, at least that was what I thought then. I know better now; I read and I learned over the course of that first year of some great ways to keep these things readily available anyway - make your own. DUH! Now, I keep this recipe (baking mix substitute) in the freezer at all times and use it to at the drop of a hat, ready to go. As I learned to do many more things like this I noticed that the grocery budget went way down. Seriously. Wow, healthier food that actually tastes way better, too, costing less money. Go figure.
Over time, however, and with Hurricane Katrina and now the gas prices the groceries have gone way up as well as the number of mouths we feed. I miss my garden back in Hattiesburg. I want a garden again. I want chickens for fresh eggs. We were blessed with friends in Hattiesburg that gave us some farm fresh eggs all the time. And here we have been blessed again with friends who do the same, but we are a lot of mouths, we eat a lot of eggs, and his hens haven’t been laying so much lately.
With Goro’s most recent allergy tests the doc’s prescription is to keep an Epi-pen handy at all times. Each of his reactions could trigger a larger, scarier attack than the one before. Take these pills nightly (and call me in the morning). And come back in a month. In the meantime and from now on . . .
Keep away from all things prepackaged, especially if they have any preservatives in them at all. While I have been able to find some items to keep on hand that are all natural and have no preservatives it is still hard to go completely this route in a normal, regular grocery store. I am so grateful that we (he) lives in an age of a return to organic life and all things breaking Green. This trend is making it easier and easier to find things for him to eat. Because I just don’t have the time to make chips.
At this point the doctor even suggested buying and eating only organic foods, not just all natural. Because the organics will also be mostly free from most pesticides as well and with all the other airborne allergies and environmental allergies that he has as well his system needs as little to fight as possible.
I read a few years ago that buying certain things organic is a waist of money - like bananas and oranges, etc. - we don’t eat the peel so why pay more for peel that is going to be thrown out anyway. And things like apples are going to be exposed to so many environmental products as they travel on the road to their distribution grocery stores that it negates the organic factor. I get that, I do. But I have also read a more recent article 1 about the pesticides getting absorbed into the produce as the plant/fruit/veggies grow through various means. So it seems to me that it is still better to go organic.
As a result my grocery budget has almost doubled. I don’t know how we are going to make it. We will; God is faithful (even when I am not).
I am researching new brands and ideas daily again - so much new stuff is out there. I ordered a 25 pound bag of organic soft white winter wheat before we left for our trip last week to Dallas. 2 It stayed in the freezer while we were gone and I ground ten pounds yesterday. This afternoon I will make up three fresh batches of our lovely baking mix and store it in the freezer. I’ll make up some batches of bread mix as well to make my bread making a bit faster, easier.
Our church has a pot-luck lunch every Sunday after church and we will no longer be able to attend these. At least not for a while as Goro’s system needs time to heal and cleanse itself with a diet I can watch carefully. As time goes on we will be able to allow him that once in a while cheat without major adverse affects. But this will take time. The really good news is we will all be eating some really great food and we all like spending time in the kitchen. And Goro wants to take an active role in learning about what he can and can not have 3
Next up in this series Food Allergies and Great Substitutes
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Categories: Health
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Wow, you are a wonderful mother. I’d like to be more independent, but convince always seems to win out.
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