Trade Joe's Chicken Breakfast Sausage (uncooked)

I happened to pick this out at the shelf in search of what I previously bought. Good buy and juicy good tasting sausage. My son loves them. Easy to prepare. I love it because all the ingredients are organically grown, gfcf and no artificial flavor/ingredients.

GFCF but Nevertheless, Good!

Since I tried different chips from health food store including Lundberg Rice Chips, chips have never tasted so healthy and so good!! From time to time, I get to eat Doritos on my break but my taste bud can tell that this isn't satisfying for me. Well! I have gone from those regular chips we buy at the grocery store to this lines of healthy chips and I must tell you that not all healthy chips aren't good! You just have to keep trying different brands. For our family, some of our favorites are Lundberg Rice Chips, Pita Chips (not GFCF) and Food Should Taste Good brand.

Exhausting Day

I find this day very exhausting!!! After 7 hours of being out hopping from 1 city to another, my husband and I got home around 6:45 pm. Of course, we missed the kids! They spent their time home watching tv and doing some arts and crafts while my sister look after them. My daughter wanted to go to the beach for 3 weeks now but the weather wasn't permitting. She brought that topic again and of course, I've promised her next weekend if the sun comes out early then we'll jump out of bed and head to the beach fully geared!

My day didn't go as planned. I was supposed to stop by the new market in town down in Woodland Hills to see what gluten free products they have but my migraine attacked. Henry's Farmer's Market that is. Now I am still thinking of what to prepare for snack and lunch for my son tomorrow. Adding to my migraine, my son nibbled a piece of Popcornopolis that I immediately took away from him. He then went to another room and found my daughter's fish cracker and nibbled another piece. This has gotten me even more disappointed!!! Poor him! I felt like depriving him of everything in life!! But on the other side, I just poured my thinking of how he gets better without gluten. Living without gluten isn't easy!

Updates

I haven't been blogging lately because of our busy complicated schedule between work & kids and between kids and therapies and special trainings, school and IEP, summer vacation and summer camps and all that stuff. This weekend I need to organize my thought on what to prioritize first. I want to blurt it out here in my blog since it helps me to remember things when I write them. Two more weeks and school is over. My son will go on a 2-week vacation before the Extended School Year begins. I'm trying to figure out what to do on those two weeks that he will be home. One of his therapists is cool about working around our schedule and going outings with my babysitter and kids. That makes me lucky since I don't plan on enrolling him in Summer Camp until after ESY is done which will be in August. Not to mention I have my little girl who is also going to be home for the whole summer. He will also be going to private Speech Pathologist for 20 hours. (hopefully he gets a spot on 1 agency I am looking at!!) We also plan on involving him in the kitchen. Since he likes cooking/baking we will have some moments in the kitchen stirring bowls and baking some GFCF food. Besides thinking about the camp, we plan to be out under the sun during the summer. First stop, the beach, then a choice of Universal Studios, Disney or other theme parks. I have five different books that I got from different places that I wanna use to do my research on and plan for the summer. And guess what? I haven't started reading them seriously.

Birthday party is also coming for my fairy prince who's turning 7 on September. Basically, I have to months to plan ahead and hopefully by that time we will have a very nice special place to celebrate this special day.

Before I forget, I have one more lab work for him to do and all the test will be done for now. The other one that we sent to Paris, France came already with a not so good result which I have yet to discuss with his doctor when we go to our appointment sometime in July hopefully.

It seems like it's never ending!! Being a mom isn't simple. It requires alot of skills and time to do all these. And for those moms out there who really do everything for their kids, you guys are super heroes!!!!

Good Snack but not GFCF

I would recommend this Popumz to be in your kids lunch bag because they are so good. If you look in the package you will see the healthy benefits it has in a bag like omega3, source of protein and fiber. The best thing is they are organic and contains 0 Trans Fats. My daughter loves this but at first she refused to eat. I also take one of this in the office for snack. This is from Whole Foods by the way.

Tougher This Days

I'd gone out for just grocery shopping today and prices sure hit my pocket. I couldn't
imagine how 3 bags of groceries could cost over a hundred bucks and yet they're not
filled all the way to the top. Being on GFCF diet is a tough decision to make. And for the last 3 years, I had been contemplating on getting my son on the diet and finally, I decided once and for all to put him just this year. Being on the diet means you have to never eat gluten & casein ever again. And once he accidentally eat just a tiny bit or crumbs of food with gluten, I have to be prepared to suffer the consequences of it. That means 3 days of negative behaviors. It takes about 3 days to get that gluten out of the system even if it is a tiny bit of it. And today, is my first experience of him eating a gluten in the form of a cookie since February. He'd been wanting to eat it as soon as he saw his sister munched on it. Just a split second of me having turn my head back, he got the culprit into his mouth. I should have asked him to spit it out, but because I panicked I wasn't able to think fast of what to do. I was so disappointed and felt all my hardwork were wasted. I kept thinking if I should put all of us on a diet. I don't know the answer yet. Sometimes I think I should not, considering the economic situation and sometimes I think I should. While some families embraced the diet, I am still not prepared to do so.

Magazine I Love

Yup! I've been looking for this all over the stands and finally I got them. All good stuff & alot of resources. They have good recipes that I am thinking of trying once I get my hand on that Kitchen Aid mixer. I love to read health magazines not that I am a healthy living person but just because I want to know what's good & bad, learn new things, homeopathic & kid's stuff. I stick them in my brain for my own use or for someone who needs an eco friendly advice.

Groceries Today

After dinner my husband & I went to the grocery store to pick some items on my list. Some of the things I bought today includes my kids' snacks for the week.

Glutino Cinnamon French Toast
Edamame
Organic Sweet Corn
Organic Strawberries
Organic bananas
Organic Apples
Milk
Honey
Lundberg Brown Rice Penne Pasta
365 Pasta Sauce
GF Sesame Teriyaki Sauce (wonder what kind of recipe I'll use this for)
Yo Kids yogurt & Chocolate Drizzle Crisp cookies for my daughter

I wasn't paying attention while the lady was scanning. When we were in the car, I started reviewing the items on the receipts & found 1 item I didn't expect the price to be that much. I was gonna go back, but what the heck..it's freezing cold out in the parking lot, then I had to walk about 15-20 feet & I was wearing thin pants. I had to step back into the car & forget about it. I'll just make sure to put my eye on the scanner & the monitor next time so it won't happen again.

Maria's Italian Kitchen

Today we had dinner with the whole family at MIK. Before I left the house, I had to figure out what I should bring for my son. I realized I didn't cook anything but rice, monggo soup & fish for our lunch. I didn't have any choice but to pack the left overs and bring it with me in the restaurant. When we got there, the first thing he opened was the lunch bag. He found some cassava chips..thank God I brought some chips for him to munch on while waiting. Then it was time for me to pick my food. I glanced through their menu and found gluten free section which includes spicy shrimp and roasted corn risotto. I quickly asked the server if they can make it without having to use any butter, cream & red chilli. She then proceed to ask their kitchen and came back in a minute telling me that they can do it and they cater to some people who have allergic reactions to food. I was released!

Seeing my son looked at us while eating spaghetti & meatballs made him asked for it but I was glad he didn't make a big fuzz about it when I said they're not gluten free. He ended up eating all the shrimps and a little rice on the risotto and drank his HONEST KIDS juice I bought from COSTCO. This juice was the only brand I've seen that has less sugar than the rest in the grocery store and they are free of gluten & casein too. NO HIGH FRUCTOSE!!

Breakfast on Saturdays

Here's an old time favorite of my daughter. She wakes me up on late Saturday mornings with "Mommy can you make me a pancake and milk?". Makes my life easier when I'm trying to relax. We like TJ's pancake coz it's all natural ..NO PRESERVATIVES!!

Shopping for GFCF Snacks

Yesterday, I went to Trader Joe's to buy some snacks for my son. It was not pretty bad coz I went to the branch near our place but the parking was really compact. I picked up some bananas and went searching for some good gfcf snacks. I found gf tj kettle popcorn in pink bag which my son really like so I picked 3 bags. This costs $2.49 each not bad considering all ingredients are natural/no preservatives. I grabbed gf vanilla meringue and some pretzels for my work snack and 2 bags of brown rice penne pasta for my son's spaghetti. I did not find any oreo looking & tasting like cookies like he always asks for in school. So, I went back home and tried to search internet for this. I found kinnikinnick website & voilahh! I have never thought I would actually find this website. Now the only thing I need to do is place my order. I still have to do alot of research on gfcf foods/snack and experiments the likes and dislikes. He just got on the diet beginning the 1st of February. But I'm really happy that I get alot of resources and support around me.