Do you cook seperate for someone in the family? Do they have special dietary restrictions or needs?
My son has a dairy allergy. I say an allergy because it appears that if we avoid it all together we have a sweeter life. We’ve never had an official test, but doctor’s have said why test you already know what works. If he gets ANY dairy during a day, he’s fine, but come 2:00 in the morning life is much more…hmmmm…trying to come up with a nice word….sour. He screams and scream and screams all night even through the morning. So we found out early on if we avoid it all together we can sleep through the night.
So this brings us to our next issue. My son, due to his Cerebral Palsy, isn’t able to eat food that is not pureed. Do you know how hard it is to puree meet? I mean really to get it to that creamy/pasty texture is very difficult. I don’t want to add water to the meet as it adds no caloric value to the food. Water is an empty calorie food which doesn’t help us to add fat to his diet (fat is mostly made with dairy <God help me>). Weight is an endless battle, he burns off calories due to his spacticity, so we’re constantly trying to put weight on him. We had finall hit 35 pounds last July, only to be admitted for pancreatitis in August…do you know how they treat that? starve you until your pancrease calms down…iv diet…then re-intro fluids to your diet and check your numbers to make sure they’re going down….so we lost some weight during this time. Now my son’s doctor wants me to give him a antihistomine that should increase his hunger. Well I really don’t want to do that, my son is thin, but you can’t count his ribs. He eats, sorry to say baby food from jars…but he eats 5-6 of them at a time. He’s always been a gourmet baby. So recently I ordered some new foods online, as I needed to get food from the store, but wasn’t able to get to the store. So I did my shopping online. I ordered almost $300 worth of baby foods, stage 2 & 3 variety since we hadn’t tried many of the varieties before. WELL~ He loved it! He loved that food, it was more textured, it had flavor, but yet he was still eating 4-6 pouches at a time. I was actually surprised on how well he did with the textures. There were some foods that I thought he was going to sputter with…but he ate them like they were going out of style. Well here we are 3 weeks later & and the very end of the food…I had to place another order…as when I tried to feed him a couple jars of food that I found in the cupboard…he yelled at me, he became quite vocal. So it’s apparent that jars are not going to do it now. The packets are not sold around here so I can order them again. This time, in an effort to make it last a little longer…I have ordered a little bit more…almost $400 worth of food. Free shipping after $49, so I should be a favorite customer!!! I don’t spend that on food for me & my husband in 2 months but i’m trying to avoid a doctor that wants him to gain and gain. .. but then she’s not carrying him up the stairs to go to bed. or lifting him and carrying him around a house that really isn’t practical.
You may think i’m nuts. I can see that, I could puree food for him, but without dairy we have to cook seperate for him. I’m dont have much time, I’m usually tending to mother and homeschooling my son. So really it leave NO time to cook and prepare foods the way he needs them. Often my meals are whatever I find to throw together to make a “meal” which has often been a bag of veggies from the freezer that have been steamed in the microwave. but you got to do whatever you have to do.