You Can Make a Pancake Out of Anything

Calling all moms with vegetable-hating kiddos! In the time that I have been away from blogging, I have been developing a plethora of new recipes! I took out all 31 (!) of Emma’s allergies out of her diet. In the process, I had to find completely new things for her to eat. I know that Emma loves hamburgers, pancakes, and popsicles, so I had to transform these usual foods to something wackier (ever heard of quinoa?).  I invite you to experiment…

Basic Pancake Recipe – yield 15 pancakes

2 c. wheat, quinoa, oat, or any other flour

1/2 c. steamed broccoli, cauliflower, zuchinni, etc.

1 c. applesauce, blueberries, banana, peaches, etc.

2 eggs or egg yolks*

2 tsp. baking soda

Milk, yogurt or water to consistency you like

Spices to taste:

cinnamon

vanilla, etc.

Chocolate chips (for extra motivation)

Butter for frying and serving

Maple syrup for serving (grade B is best)

To make these extra-digestable, add 1 c. milk, water or yogurt to the 2 c. of flour, cover, and leave on the countertop overnight.  To make these extra-quick, skip this step and add dry then wet ingredients to your food processor.  End with the milk, water or yogurt so you can tell how much liquid it needs.  I always do 1 tester pancake before I make a whole batch.  Make sure it’s not too thin, it rises properly, etc.

Make the whole batch and freeze them so they’re ready next time!  Pop them in the toaster frozen and you have an instant breakfast!

Remember that even if YOU don’t like the taste, put a little syrup on it and see if your kid will eat it.  The object is to get veggies in your kid.  If kiddo won’t eat his greens, he has to eat green pancakes.  Since you’re eating salad for lunch today, you get to eat white sugary fluffy pancakes if you so choose.  If you start your kid small eating orange, green, and purple pancakes, they aren’t likely to protest anyway, especially if there’s a chocolate chip in there.

*If you are dealing with an allergy, the eggs can be omitted completely with a still desirable result.

A Letter to My Readers – About This Blog

Dearest Readers,

I could spend hours and hours right now trying to get this to look all pretty, but I really just want to get into the food!  How about you?  I will be updating and working on a more beautiful blog, but in the mean time, I want to tell you about my food journey…

As some of you know, my dear Emma (almost 3) has been diagnosed too much since birth.  It started with eczema, sensitive skin, atopic dermatitis.  Then it was “toddler’s diarrhea” at 9 mos.  At 1 year, she had allergy testing done for the first time, and it came out positive for more than 15 food allergies.  She’s also suffered from recurrent ear infections throughout all of this.  Just after her 2nd birthday, the diarrhea got a lot worse and she went to the Pediatric Gastrointestinal Doctor.  It was after this appointment (5/09) that I lost patience with the whole doctor and laboratory scene.  I found a common thread with each doctor we had seen to date, and that was that they all treated the symptom and didn’t address the underlying problem.  Why were we emptying our healthcare funds for this, anyway?

So I got to work and got praying hard, determined to find my own answers.  I read books, blogs, websites – anything I could find.  Things that sounded true to me or linked to other true things I read I kept, until I found a body of information that can heal my daughter and protect my son from having the same problems.  I discovered along the way that I have my own bit of digestive issues as well.  What I’ve found is astonishing.  It’s changed everything about me.  And I’m a pretty simple person.  (I think about husband, kids, and food all day 🙂  The journey we are all on is still developing, and none of us are 100% healthy yet.  But, I know that I have the TOOLS to make us reach that goal over the next couple of years.  For any of you out there with health problems, I have to mention a couple of things:

The Lord wants you to be healthy.  Your body is a temple, pure and clean, and it should function that way.  Even seemingly trivial things like gas and heartburn are cause for review.  Probably half of our diseases and illnesses as a country can be healed simply by healing the gut through proper nutrition.  But it’s a slow process, and there is not a miracle pill or solution for all.  Diet alone is enough to flip someone’s world upside-down.  Believe me, I know.  When the Doctors told me that Emma was allergic to corn, wheat, rye, soy, and rice,  I was DEFEATED.  But I got back up after I prayed and cried on my knees.  And each of us, regardless of religion, race, demographic or status can do that anywhere in the world.  As I started my journey with her, I started reading books by some of the top specialists in the U.S.  For a couple of weeks I was adamant that we HAD to get her to one of the doctors that wrote my book.  But eventually after I calmed down, this thought came to me – it’s not your doctor that’s going to heal you.  It’s a treatment of some sort that’s going to heal you.  And that treatment can be found in ways other than spending the $ to go to the Doctor.  Heavenly Father will help you if you pour your heart out to him.  He helped me.

So now you know how I got hyper-connected to my food, let’s get to the meat and potatoes – the food.  This blog is all about nourishing food.  So what that means is food that’s good for you and that is mostly based (about 80%) on the principles found in what I like to refer to as food scripture, or Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.  Lucky for me, most of the Mexican food we already eat didn’t have to be changed at all.  Which is very interesting, but that’s for another post.  The typical American diet is mostly being rejected in this book because, well, does anyone disagree that super-processed foods like sugary cereals and snacks are good for you?

Each week I will post the note-worthy meals and their corresponding recipes.  Emma is on a special diet most of the time so what she eats will mostly be excluded, unless you guys want some low-carb/alternative grain meal ideas for kids. I am hoping that ya’ll will comment with recipes or techniques you have as well.  Hopefully we’ll be one jolly recipe-exchange, equally benefiting each other. So let the games begin!

Love,

Michelle