After an exhausting flight home Kyle and I were so ready for the kids to sleep!! Because they’d taken no naps at all (ZERO) combined with the time change meant we were able to put them down for bed as soon as we stepped in the front door. That’s the silver lining way of looking at it. But they went down with relief, so that was good. Then food. Then unpacking.
I scrounged some barely alive kale and cabbage from the crisper drawer and added Caesar dressing and (imported) macadamia nuts for a decent meal. It was heavenly after a day of airplane snacks (popcorn, Kettle potato chips, and granola can, in fact, get old).
After dinner treats!! I found these Tiki bars at the Safeway in Lahaina and I couldn’t help but bring home a few different flavors.
The coconut was my favorite – it was the only one that really had the flavor it was named after! The ginger had no detectable ginger flavor and the macadamia nut had only a few crushed pieces in it. It was still good chocolate but I’m not that picky. It was a far cry from bean to bar, naturally, but what do you expect from something bought in the candy aisle at a national super market. It lasted me a few days.
Wedding favors were from the Honolulu Cookie Company. Kyle wishes we got 8302 times the amount above. They are his faaaaavorite.
From there on out it was unpacking (laundry!) until bed. The next day was Monday so we hit the ground running, trying to play catch up with grocery shopping and such along the way.
I planned ahead a little bit and froze some stuff so I wouldn’t be totally SOL with a bare fridge but we were definitely down to the last crumbs in the house (because I planned things out so well before our trip so prevent food waste). In any event, I definitely needed to hit up the store first thing Monday morning. P and V were totally amazing helpers through back to back TJs and WFs visits. They never had a trace of jet lag or time change adjustment issues either. Impressive.
We got back home and had a nice team lunch before naps (during which I cleaned every part of the house possible because somehow even being out of town means you still accumulate dust and grossness).
As you’ll soon notice, this week’s menu was heavily plant based. All but one day was vegan, which was purposeful. We ate sooooo much fish and meat-y Hawaiian fare over the previous couple of weeks, I was just feeling so blah. Spring produce was calling my name.
After one taste of Ancient Harvest quinoa pasta (a few months ago?), I ordered a bunch more from Thrive. It’s the best GF pasta I’ve tried to date so I wanted as many shapes as possible. The funny thing is, is that P just outgrew his wheat allergy. (YES I KNOW!!!!) More on that later. For now, we have a ton of gluten free pasta to enjoy.
I remember seeing a basil vinaigrette on some site (or magazine?) recently, so I based my dressing for the noodles off that. In a blender, I whizzed up extra virgin olive oil, basil, red wine vinegar, salt, and red pepper flakes.
Then I tossed it with shredded carrots…
And kale…
And let it chill in the fridge until dinner time.
Served with parm (for him) and nooch (for me and P).
DEEEEELISH.
The next day was a big deal for P.
My big three year old has his first pizza.
With home made wheat flour dough.
I made it the day before so it was fully ready on Tuesday.
I used daiya for his and mine but mozzarella and parm for Kyle’s.
Since I am terrible at rolling out dough, they were misshapen and bizarre, but I attempted to make a big one for Kyle, a medium one for me, and a smaller one for P. And a baby one for P and I to share later in the week for lunch.
Et voila!
Honestly, they tasted like heaven. I don’t have gluten too too often so it was a treat for me too. Now that P tolerates it though, it’s probably going to return in full(ish) force. Every allergen he outgrows bring us one step closer to plant based eating…and while he adores bacon more than any other human on the planet, I don’t think he’d notice or mind if meat were a very infrequent part of his diet. Only time will tell, but I’m super encouraged by the addition of (ALL) tree nuts and wheat. If you’d told me this day would come back when he was 9 months old, I would have been so scared to get my hopes up, but look at us now!!!! He eats tofu and pecans like they are going out of style.
We topped the pizza with basil and bell pepper – very simple. The return of basil makes me want to do a happy dance. Seasons be changing up in here!
He was thrilled to say the least.
I will get to the rest of the weekly menu soon enough, but here’s a teaser of the tofu rice bowl from the next night.
Congratulations!!! I totally understand the joy of outgrowing an allergen – although we’re still hopeful to rid ourselves of peanuts and tree nuts. Mason has a peanut challenge this summer and if he fails we start oral immunotherapy after his 4th birthday. Treenuts and sesame continue to drop though, so there’s hope. Curious – have you seen any change in his sesame allergy tests at all? Our allergist says treenuts and sesame are closely related so I wonder if P has outgrown treenuts which is already SO rare, maybe he has outgrown sesame? One can always hope!
His sesame IgE decreased a bit and is now a class II so that is definitely encouraging! I’d never heard that about sesame and tree nuts so that’s a great thing to know (and keep my hopes alive!). I will keep my fingers crossed for Mason too. Are you doing the oral challenges through your ped? Ours doens’t offer it, so we have to keep ours ears to the ground about any and everything local.
How exciting to eat pizza as a family!! I’m so happy for P that he will be able to know what it’s like to eat a bagel or good crusty toast 🙂 and that definitely opens the doors to seitan and tempeh too!
post vacation i’m always craving just piles of light fresh veggie meals too
Pure awesomeness that P has outgrown some of his allergens–I told you months ago in a comment that I knew he would. What a huge step forward for him and all of you as a family😀 Good for you that you are going back to more plant-based. I always did and everyone was happy. I made a tofu, kale, baby bok choy stir fry the other evening with a homemade tamari, ginger sun butter sauce with black forbidden rice and it was awesome. Plant based just requires flavor and a good kale or broccoli and I am in heaven. Your meals always look tasty. We eat very similar. Btw, tell P, in NYC his pizza creation would be called an artisan pizza and be thirty dollars. For me the odd shaped, crusty shapes bring me right back to having pizza in a piazza in Italy on the almafi coast. Homemade pizza is so much fun. Try topping with sautéed kale and some fresh colored tomatoes and then put chopped avocado and smattering of goat cheese–it’s awesome. I don’t do dairy but once in a while a drop of goat cheese calls my name. Have a great week!!
I can’t wait til summer hits for real and tomatoes are bountiful!! Hopefully working on the garden this weekend to get some new seeds in the ground. I’m with you – any meal with a brassica and I’m game!
We do the oral challenges through the allergists office. Mason’s skin and IgE have decreased for all allergens each year and we have successfully challenged 4 allergens to date! I’m very grateful for those challenges as they’ve opened up so much variety for us. He recently passed baked eggs so along the same lines as the results of the LEAP study – we have to feed him baked egg (muffins, quickbreads) to develop tolerance to cooked or raw egg. I sure hope P is enjoying eating all the wheat he can tolerate 🙂