Salad and cheese news

We had such a full weekend in the best way!  It seemed like there was hardly a spare moment, but it was with really mellow stuff so it didn’t feel overwhelming or chaotic.  Of course I didn’t get to any housework, which is kinda hard for me, but for some reason I didn’t even stress about it.  I’ll tackle it eventually…summer has me laid back for some reason.  Maybe the absence of school (and thus set time schedule) has me feeling like there’s a lack of urgency in our schedule?  We still have activities with set start times, though, so I don’t know.  Whatever it is, it’s freeing.

We still ate at home both Saturday and Sunday.

First up, Saturday’s bowl of quinoa, chicken, greens, parmesan, roasted pecans, and dried cranberries.

The instant pot saved me again because I didn’t have anything planned, and then I pulled frozen chicken from the freezer and had it cooked and shredded within the hour.  All the while doing a bunch of other things that weren’t heating up my kitchen.  Insane.

I used the leftover chicken stock as the liquid to make quinoa right after the meat was done.  So easy.

I added pecorino romano to mine, but the rest of the fam had parmesan.  P loves parm and loves when I give it to him as his dose.  2 tbsp of parmesan is all he needs to meet his 4 g protein quota.

By the way!  With regard to dairy dosing…

P had new blood work done at his allergist’s request because at his most recent OIT follow up, Dr. Jain was so pleased with his progress since his graduation.  I wouldn’t say he freely eats dairy these days, but it’s pretty close.  I keep an eye on the amounts of dairy he has at any given time and it has gotten as high as 7 g (that I am able to calculate), but lately I’ve been loosening up with regard to how frequently he has dairy AS WELL AS how rigidly I enforce the rest period (since he had string cheese mid pre-school on the reg all last year).  He hasn’t had any reactions in sooo long, even minor ones, so all that led Dr. Jain to believe that new bloodwork was warranted, despite the fact that he’d only been in maintenance for 11 months.

[Every OIT allergist has different protocol, but ours said that waiting a couple – or more – years to check IgE levels would be best.  At which point he would expect a ten fold decrease from his previous amounts.  That would indicate OIT was working and it was trending towards a TRUE desensitization.  And as more and more time passed in maintenance, it would get more and more likely that he would outgrow his allergy entirely.]

Guess what?!?!

His pre-OIT dairy IgE was 9.37 (class III) and this one was 0.92!!!!  <—WOW

This was such thrilling news to get.  I could have cried right then and there!  I may have teared up.  Or screamed.  I can’t even remember I was so excited.  Anyway, this made me very happy and very willing to loosen up the reigns insofar as letting him eat things with a lot of dairy that I can’t calculate the protein content of.  Which leads me toooooooo…

The Davis Co-op teaching kitchen summer classes.

I’ve blogged about these classes before, but they are super cute.  Aimed at kids aged 3-6, they make a few things following some kinds of theme and the kids get to sample everything along the way and then eat their final product.   V is old enough to do the classes now which makes my life way easier (because they get jealous when only one kids can do certain activities).  So I signed them both up, which means they will be making their own lunches every Friday this summer.  🙂

This week’s theme was broccoli, which every kid in the class already loved, so that was good.  They read this book to start and then got to cooking.  They have a rule that “you can’t yuck someone else’s yum” so as not to create a domino effect of picky taste buds, but  in this case it didn’t matter because every kid was begging for broccoli – raw, cooked, whatever – the whole class long.

On the menu was “wheels and trees”, a take on macaroni and cheese, but with a twist to fit the theme of the book “Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli” and broccoli croquettes.  I had notified the teachers in advance that P had a peanut allergy, but didn’t mention anything about dairy.  Sure enough, there was milk and three (!) kinds of cheese in the recipes.  Gulp.  This is what we train for.

They let them sample and and every thing they want as they are making the food – be it raw leeks or steamed potatoes.  P had a major amount cheese before he even got to the finished product, but I still didn’t stop him or say anything.

Truth be told, I was trying to be as hands off as possible because I wanted them to take ownership of their cooking skills and try to do as much as they were able to solo.  The teachers helped a tiny bit, but they did a great job all by themselves.  Mess is part of the process, but that’s why it’s nice to have it be in a kitchen that’s not my own!  And boy were they proud!

They loved everything they made and had seconds and thirds of the mac n cheese…and P had NO REACTION.

I even gave him his peanut dose on the way home and his body handled it all, no problem.

SO encouraging!  Now I’m going to try to work up the nerve to increase his peanut dose little by little so that a year from now we will get the same downward trend in IgE blood work for peanut.  Fingers crossed!