~seizure FREE me~

~seizure FREE me~

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Almond flour bread recipe!!!

Bread recipe! Just in case someone stumbles across my blog and happens to be on the Modified Atkins for Seizures diet {or has a kid on it, or knows someone on it...} I've got an awesome recipe for you! I adapted a recipe from "the gluten-free almond flour cookbook" by Elana Amsterdam. It's a really great book for ideas, but the recipes have to be changed to make them work on Atty's MAS diet.

Here is the MAS recipe:

3/4 cup creamy roasted almond butter at room temperature
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons flax meal with 2 tablespoons water, let it sit for a couple minutes to thicken.

1/2 cup blanched almond flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground flax meal

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 7 by 3 inch loaf pan with grape seed oil and dust with almond flour.

In a large bowl mix the almond butter with a handheld mixer until smooth and then blend in the eggs and {2 tablespoons}flax seed mixture. In a medium bowl combine the almond flour, salt, baking soda and remaining 1 tablespoon of flax meal. Blend the almond flour mixture into the wet ingredients until thoroughly combined. Pour into loaf pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes on the BOTTOM rack of the oven until a knife inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Let the bread cool in the pan for 1 HOUR, then serve.

Each loaf contains 6 grams of carbs {every 2 tablespoons of flax meal is 4 grams of carbs). Slice the loaf into 12 even slices so that each slice is .5 grams of carbs or round up to 1 gram of carb per slice if you are more comfortable with that. Remember to always ask your dietitian about every new recipe before trying it. :) To store wrap the bread slices in a paper towel, place then in a resealable container and refrigerate. Stored this way it will keep for up to six days.

With this recipe for bread you can now enjoy things like tuna fish sandwiches, french toast or just toast with cashew butter {Atty's favorite}.

ENJOY!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Harvest party, fun for all!

We had an AWESOME Harvest party!Besides the fact that I almost had a complete melt down at the grocery store the morning of the party...Atty's almond flour didn't make it on time so I had to get that, among other things, at the store. The store I always shop at, the store that always has almond flour...except for when I {desperately can not live with out it, child with be crushed, and party ruined} need it. There is nothing else I can make his baked goodies with and he can't have any other goodies...I was FREAKING out. As in I started to lose it in the store, had to talk myself out of sobbing right there in the aisle. I know it sounds dramatic, but it's not like I can say "oh well, didn't have the ingredients to make his cookies, guess I'll just buy some". Last time I checked they don't make almond flour anything anywhere around here. I had no idea where else to get it from. Anyways to make a long story {read emotional meltdown} short I finished my shopping then sobbed my way to another store where thankfully...they had Almond flour. Relief. Of course one pound was 15 bucks!! ack!!! Oh well, that's what I get for poor planning. I then rushed home and whipped up a batch of muffins and a batch of cookies. First time trying this cookie recipe {that I'm adapting from a different recipe} and it actually turned out pretty good. I'm going to try it again with the good almond flour that finally showed up on my door step today.


Then four o'clock rolled around and the party was on a roll!


It was a dress up party to keep it fun and Halloweenie, and wow were these kids cute! Thanks to some really great friends who elected to skip trick-or-treating to hang out with us and have some fun...and we had all kinds of fun! They started out being wild and crazy like little kids are and so we sent them outside to get some wiggles out, then they came in and watched The Great Pumpkin, a classic. After the movie we moved on to games.

A favorite game of ours for this holiday is the mummy game. It involves toilet paper and lots of giggles. Everyone took turns getting mummified. I think this is one of the cutest mummies ever!

My dear friend brought over a board game, Harvest time, and the kids really enjoyed playing that with her. It was hard to drag them away for dinner time! Not that they were all that hungry after all the good snacks we had set out. So far I've not had any problem with food that is set out for others to eat, he stays away from it and/or asks me if he wants anything. Plus his brothers sound the alarm if he is even standing to close to food he can't have. It has the potential to be adorable and annoying at the same time. I did end up keeping the food separated, Atty had his own special food and the rest of the guest had what we were serving. I was thinking about serving food that Atty could have too, like the home made chicken fingers with almond flour breading but since I didn't have hardly any almond flour to begin with I changed my mind. It would have been a lot of extra work anyways. I knew that none of the foods were going to bother him and made sure I had his favorites available. Thankfully he's not had a problem with this so far. He's really into cashew butter right now and likes eating it by the spoonful...so I let him eat spoonfuls of cashew butter to his hearts content. :) He didn't even bat an eye at what everyone else was eating.

After dinner it was time for our treasure hunt. My lovely sister made up all ten clues and hid them around the house. Then we turned off the lights and searched for the clues by flash light, fantastic! At the end of it all the kids each got a little gift bag full of toys and trinkets.

Then we read a spooky story by flashlight, "What Was I Afraid Of?" by Dr. Seuss. Followed up with pumpkin cookies for the kids with ice cream and whipped cream and special cookies for Atty with butter frosting. Yummy! The night ended up being a huge success thanks to my good friends and some really great kids. Not a single piece of candy was involved. We even passed out trinket to the trick-or-treaters that showed up at our house. We will definitely have to do this again next year, I enjoyed it so much {and the kids really seemed to also} that I think I might be done with trick-or-treating from here on out. Never liked it all that much anyway.