Cooking Frenzy

I decided to use the time this morning while waiting for Lainey's therapist to arrive and her big bubby was keeping her occupied to do some cooking. I had wanted to try a few recipes using KetoCal 4:1 powder. I used Sugar-free Jello raspberry flavored and KetoCal to make a pudding. I have read that the aspartame might be a problem for some kids, so I will try it and then see how it goes since Lainey has not yet achieved seizure freedom. Also, I am excited to try the Chia Pudding recipe from www.ketocook.com. Here is a step by step direction for this meal. My dietician had tweaked the recipe to Lainey's specs.

Gather ingredients. In this photo I show stevia powder, that is before I realized Truvia was calculated in the recipe. 

Here is what it looks like in ketocalculator

 

 

 

 

Measure all ingredients in SEPARATE bowls. So very important.

Mix everything together.

Refrigerate four hours or overnight. We will see how it turns out tomorrow!

I also made the macadamia nut pancakes. They were a little dry, so I am going to see how to fix this in the future. But Lainey loved them anyways. I was glad because this is one of the few meals she can practice feeding herself with. I am too nervous to let her use a spoon because she is a food thrower, flinger extraordinaire.

I stored them in the fridge, separated by nonstick foil.

KetoCal fudge, chia pudding, KetoCal pudding, KetoCal cobbler. Yes, I invested in some pyrex!!

Camping with Keto

Not even a month into initiating the ketogenic diet, we get the urge to go camping. I was a little hesitant in the beginning, especially after reading about other families being anxious to even go out to dinner. We had already gone out to eat with Lainey, bringing her food with us. So we got bold and planned a three day camping vacation to Mammoth Cave which is about 2 hours away from our home. We have a travel trailer with a full kitchen so I wasn't really concerned about preparing her meals. The week before I batch cooked some Keto blueberry waffles and Mac and Cheese (recipe on keto calculator). The day before I took individual containers and weighed each meal. In the keto calculator I chose three meals and two snacks and just repeated those for three days. Lainey doesn't mind repition in her meals. I chose meals that I thought were pretty easy and that I could easily incorporate her meds. Breakfast was waffles and yogurt, lunch was mac and cheese and applesauce, dinner was egg salad, strawberries and cream. Her snack was yogurt and cream and keto blueberry muffins I had made and frozen. I also brought extra cream and peanut butter to make a snack if anything should arise that was unplanned.

 I created a folder with the menu planner, recipes and my trusty keto book.

Amounts written out

Lunch

Snacks

Dinner

Packed and ready to go. The blue bag held a dinner and snack for the trip down and ICE. And the other cooler holds all her meals and menu plan.

Breakfast pre-packaged

This is what the keto calculator weekly menu planner looks like. 

And all my planning couldn't prepare me for what happened. We arrive at our campsite and go inside the camper to unload all the food. I notice that the refrigerator is still hot inside. It should have been cooling off on the way down. My husband assures me that it will just take a while to cool down and then we can unpack the food. I get a bad feeling and the panic sets in. Why did I think this was a good idea, maybe we weren't ready for a trip and other doubts. When several hours go by and it is late and the fridge is still hot, I jump into action. Well I actually just jump in the Suburban and head to the nearest Wal Mart for a big cooler and lots of ice. I unload all her food in it and figure if I keep the ice full then her food will be allright. Whatever it takes. The next morning I get up and go out to the cooler and start getting her breakfast together and just have a whim to see what the fridge is like and to my delight it is cold!!!! Hooray!!! I move all her food into the fridge and the weekend was absolutely fabulous! I would definitely feel comfortable going on another trip. Especially if there is wifi and I can get on ketocalculator.com in case something happens to her prepared food.

Happy Camper!

3:1

After a week of trying the 2.75:1 ratio we decided to bump Lainey up to 3:1. It took a couple of days but we finally got high ketones. She hasn't wanted to pee on the potty and has had some loose bowel movements in her diapers, which has made it difficult to check ketones twice daily. We had a date night with her on Saturday night. While the boys played at a gym, we went out to eat with Lainey to a really nice restaurant and sat outside. It was a really nice evening and since I had already fed her dinner before we left all I had to do was pack a snack. When our food arrived at the table and she got antsy, I fed her some applesauce and then gave her cream through a syringe. It took all of three minutes. Luckily, there was a lady sitting at the table beside us and she talked and played with Lainey while we finished our meals. After that we went to Whole Foods and picked up the ingredients I needed to make some KetoCal snacks. Today, I made blueberry waffles, no bake fudge, blueberry muffins and creme brulee. She ate the waffle at lunch. I was so nervous that she would throw her food or not eat it all, because it was a pretty large amount compared to some of her other meals. But she ate it all, hooray! Preparing the meals is really simple and we haven't found it difficult to pack her meals up and go places. Sometimes I wonder if I am doing something wrong because it just seems too simple. We also went by Williams Sonoma and picked up some glass mixing bowls and more mini spatulas. I was tired of doing dishes so much!

Batch Cooking and Melt Downs

Results of mac and cheese batch cooking

I attempted to batch cook the Miracle Mac and Cheese, the recipe is available on ketocalculator.com. It was tedious because you have to measure everything out separatly. It is not a dish you can just make a large amount of and split up. You have to do everything separate. I only had plastic bags and then one empty plastic baby food container. The plastic bags are not going to work because you can't scrape all of the butter out into a dish. My friend had collected a ton of the baby food containers so I am going to use those from now on. I also found a perfect spatula at Target. It is by Nordic Ware and for kids helping to bake in the kitchen and comes in a package of three, see below. But it fits well in Lainey's mouth and gets every last drop from a bowl.



WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

One of the boys left their cookie on the table within reach of Lainey. Big NO NO. This is going to be quite and adjustment for them as well.

Melt Down Story, Mine not Lainey's

Yesterday I had a source of nervous breakdown. Lainey had a seizure that morning, my house was a wreck, I didn't have any of her information organized. All of the keto recipes and her medical information was piled on my kitchen counter. I felt out of control and I needed to pull it together.  I needed my mom. Yep, sometimes I grown woman just needs her mom. But my mom lives an hour away and it just wasn't feasible to even ask. So luckily, my gracious father in law kept the kiddos for me for a couple of hours. I went and picked some supplies from the store, like the spatula above, mopped all the floors in the house. Put all of Lainey's keto information into a pink binder and recipes in plastic sleeves in the binder. I got myself organized and it felt great. For family members of someone either starting or on the diet here is a word of advice: offer to watch the kids so a mom can take some time to herself or do some extra cooking or cleaning, it would mean so much to them to be able to breathe in solitude!

Lainey goes to the nursery at Bible study

I need normalcy, Lainey needs normalcy, I strive to give my boys to normalcy. I love Bible study, I love to spend time talking with my girlfriends. Because of this I decided to take Lainey to the nursery at church during Bible study. Luckily, my church has great staff and they are very familiar with Lainey's condition. I was nervous, I am not going to lie. They give out cheerios during snack time. Kids walk around with their sippy cups, they are supposed to be filled with water. I told the ladies what was going on, "She is on a special diet to control her seizures. She cannot have anything to eat and only drink from her cup. It is really important she doesn't pick up any food and put it in her mouth." We then proceeded to use their Allergy Alert stickers, with NO FOOD written on them, and stuck them all over her front and back and covered her bag with the stickers. It did look a little extreme, but I know from working in the nursery that it can get hectic and I didn't want an accident to happen. It all went fine. I couldn't find the actual stickers online, but ketogoods.com has some specific for keto kids.

Praise Report!

This is cute!

Things have been going really well. The meals are easy to do with a little planning. For instance, yesterday I took the kids to the pool and when dinnertime rolled around dad brought Lainey's food in a separated plastic container, a cup with her cream and her meds. She did seem hungry still, probably from all the swimming. I just kept offering her cup of water.

We were having trouble getting her KetoCal formula. I know that it is not absolutely necessary to have this, but Lainey really likes it and it has what she needs for her ratio. I even have a snack created in ketocalculator consisting of ketocal formula and some fruit. Our insurance wasn't going to pay for it because she doesn't have a metabolic condition or G tube. The wonderful discharge nurses worked really hard to research other avenues to acquire the formula. Low and behold because Lainey is on Medicaid (a whole other story) we automatically qualify for WIC and they send the formula out for FREE! Otherwise, we would have to pay the $250 each month. I am excited to get the powder and make some of the pancake and muffin recipes from ketocal.com.

She is still having seizures, but we haven't managed to keep her at high ketones yet. Yesterday we increased her ratio to 2.75:1 and it has already raised them. I pray that once we get her ketones to stay at a high level over a long period of time we won't have any seizures. We are already weaning off Topomax, which I am so happy about. It has some bad side effects and she has to take a supplement with it. So that will be two less meds to administer two times a day.

I have also found a few other Web sites that are sooooo neat:

http://www.ketogoods.com/KETO_GOODS/HOME.html ---- super neat shirts and stickers to make your people aware of their diet.

http://ketocook.com/ ---- great ideas, resources and recipes

Our local support group is Keto Kids of Kentuckiana group on Facebook.com

From ketogoods.com

Moderate Ketosis

Lainey had moderate ketosis levels yesterday and today. I am going to call the RD tomorrow and I assume they will increase her ratio. Which they said would probably happen so I am not freaking out too bad. I am getting used to measuring out foods and I tried a new recipe this morning. I realized that based on what a meal consists of, she may or may not receive a lot of food. I made a flax and egg dish that was very small, but she has an avocado and veggie snack that is a little bigger than that meal. I enjoy making new dishes and I am having to reign myself in because she only gets to eat a small portion of what I fix and the rest goes back in the fridge. Right now I have four possible meals in tupperware from which to choose from. Since I don't want the food to go bad, I have to wait to try any new dishes.

My husband had a birthday gathering tonight and Lainey was eyeing the cake and ice cream. And I had to be on the lookout for anyone leaving their plate within her reach. I can see where it would be good to really stress the importance to the people that surround her how she absolutely can't taste or eat what they have, even by accident.

The ketocalculator is an amazing resource for planning meals. I don't know what I am going to do if my internet goes down!!! I am going to go shopping this week for little plastic storage containers, spatulas and a binder to stick recipes. Taking it day by day!