Alyssa's science experiment

Alyssa had to do a science experiment and of course, she wanted to do something with Feingold.

The pictures stopped at day 10 but I'll let you know that after this point all of the chemical plants stopped growing. The control is still going strong and is about 8 inches tall with an amazing root system. The kids wanted to see how long they could keep this experiment up but my card reader died so I can't post pictures. I think that the root system is especially interesting. The colored roots wouldn't even hold together as we took them out of their containers. The pictures are harder to see than in reality but the strands of wheat grass were also so tiny with the chemical plants. Thin and spindly.
This was all achieved with 2 oz of water, only 10 drops of food coloring and one packet of aspartame (Equal). The water was reverse osmosis in case the chemicals in tap would have affected the experiment also.
The seeds were hard red wheat that were soaked in the chemical water for 4 hours before planted in regular soil.
The question for this experiment was, "Do petroleum products hurt living things?" and the answer was most definitely, "yes".
Now,  if you want to make a change in your diet, here is my very favorite, #1 book to understand how food works with our bodies and how traditional cultures stayed healthy.

Epsom Salts

http://www.feingold.org/DOCS/EpsomSalts.pdf

I found this article interesting. My daughter has been taking magnesium sulfate orally for acne and it has had amazing results. I understood that it helped with liver detoxification. This explains a little about why it helped and why it's a possibility of helping with food reactions also.

Reader Questions, dairy and how long does a reaction last

"We are trying to go petroleum free. For now we have discovered all the kids are lactose intolerant. And that red dye SERIOUSLY affects my daughters behaviours. Her Grandma snuck her some candy that had that darn red dye. That was yesterday at lunch. Today she is still very agitated and aggresive and keeps having what we call "freak outs." Could a chemical or dye still be causing a problem after that long or could it be something else? Thank you for your help."

Oh yes, dear reader, a reaction can easily last for 3 days or longer. This is especially true when you're talking about red dye or other colors. And, when you add the lactose intolerance or other intestinal issues you compound the reaction times. If the intestines are working slowly they aren't removing the problem (dye) effectively.

As for the lactose intolerance, have you tried raw milk yet? My kids and are are terribly lactose intolerant but we can drink raw milk just fine. We do much better on raw milk than any milk substitute. To find a store in your area look here http://www.realmilk.com/

"my mind is going crazy"

My heartstrings were just tugged and I have to write this post. I have a feed logger and can see what people search for before they get to my site. I saw that someone 4 days ago searched for this, "children says mind is going crazy, uncoordinated, severe mood changes, 5 yr. old".

It really hit me because that was one of our deciding factors to try petroleum free eating. I remember it so well. Andrew said that to me. He said it a few times. "Mom, if just feels like my mind is going crazy and I just can't stop." That was a scary statement. But you know, now that I've been petroleum free, when I sneak, that's exactly how I feel. Especially with red. I feel like my mind just won't settle down, it runs and runs and won't quit, I am fearful and angry with colors, I want to lay on my couch and read and when someone comes near I want to yell. Then, I go to bed and have restless leg syndrome and panic attacks and can't get to sleep for hours.

I want to cry when I read that a 5 year old feels the same way because I know that most of the world doesn't understand and they keep pumping the chemicals in. After all, the FDA does say it's safe...right?

menu #5

Well, the last post seemed to work out well with adding as I went. So, here's menu #5...

Sunday

B-Pancakes and a pink smoothie for Valentine's Day

L-sandwiches with the very last of the roast (Just a note here, the roast was $1.99/lb and has provided us with many meals and sandwiches. Rather than balking at the $3.50 for 6 oz price of natural lunchmeats we feast on roast beef or real chicken sandwiches)

D-new batch of crock pot chicken and rice in the rice cooker, green salad, raw whipped cream fluff (probably craisin and pecan with real almond flavoring)

Monday

B-oatmeal packets

L-chicken salad sandwiches with leftover chicken

D-pizza, homemade

Tuesday

B-approved cereal, raw milk, banana

L-peanut butter sandwiches

D-spaghetti with natural sausage, salad

Wednesday-

B-pancakes

L-homemade lunchables, cheese, crackers, lunchmeat

D-leftovers

Thursday

B-omlettes

L-chicken sandwiches with leftover chicken

D-burritos

Friday

B-homemade doughnuts, maple bars, and raw milk

L-pasta and leftover chicken with broccoli and alfredo sauce, in thermoses

D-peanut butter sandwiches, apple slices, homemade cookies

Saturday

Brunch-waffles, fruit syrup, whipped cream, oj, bacon

D-hamburgers, salad, ice cream

menu #4

If there is no recipe please assume it's Feingold approved and on the current list. Make sure to be familiar with the always approved items.

Monday:
B-whole grain cereal and raw milk, peach smoothie with fresh/frozen peaches, raw milk, raw honey, spirulina, golden flax, ice

L-rhodes rolls with farmer cheese, homemade Lara bars, water with root beer flavored stevia drops, peaches

D-whole wheat bagels with sliced roma tomatoes and whole milk mozzarella (walmart brand in the square, not the rectangle), salt, pepper, and garlic, toasted for 5 minutes under the broiler and a big salad with mixed greens, avocado, tomatoes, and one package of McDonalds newman's own ceasar dressing. They'll sell extra dressing packets for a quarter so we save them. One package is all we need for a whole family salad. Sparkling apple cider.

Tuesday

B-approved cereal, raw whole milk, banana

L-last night before bed I started brown rice, millet, and golden flax with braggs aminos in my timed rice cooker to be completed at 7am. Then, in my crockpot went a package of chicken thighs (tyson all natural for .49/lb), a cup of water, and an herbal seasoning with some salt. In the morning I layered the rice, chicken, and strong broth that it made into our short, stainless thermoses for the kids. I left mine, Russ's, and Ana's in the rice cooker and crock pot so we could eat it hot too. In addition we had a salad and water. The kids also got an approved sucker, and a tiny container with gummy vitamins and pumpkin seeds.
The importance of clean water is huge if your kids are away from home. Our water here has flouride besides the normal chlorine. We've noticed if they drink more than a sip from a fountain we see behavior issues. We use reversed osmosis here in general.

D-Bajio kids meals (bean and cheese burritos with green salad and sprite), FYI this is not FG approved...we just normally find it ok and it's been a hectic day.

Wednesday-
B-premade oatmeal packets (the kids chose tropical with dried fruit and coconut

L-whole wheat bagels with cheddar cheese, cottage cheese and mandarin oranges, flavored stevia water

D-crock pot potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beef roast (some for tonight, some for a later lunch), fluffy salad with whipped real cream, cottage cheese, mandarin oranges, and a bit of pineapple juice concentrate
Note: usually when we have meat meals we go sparingly on the meat, lots of veggies, and save the meat and broth to use later.

Thursday
B-omlettes and herbal tea

L-rolls with peanut butter and honey, an orange or a banana, water, nuts and craisins

D-leftover roast, rice noodles, broccoli, combined and simmered in a sauce made from braggs, sugar, apple cider vinegar, and corn starch for a beef and broccoli like dinner

Friday

B-purple smoothie (fruit like dark berries makes spinach or kale smoothies purple)

L-leftover roast and baked potatoes

Saturday

B-yogurt and cereal

L-roast beef sandwiches (using leftover roast), fruit

D-chicken and vegetable won tons (using leftover chicken, in the food processor with veggies)

Christmas cookies

Click on the pictures to make them larger.
mmm, we made Christmas cookies today and I had to share the decorations. I was happy with white icing but the kids really wanted some color so we were inventive. They put green spirulina powder in some and made some light green, then they took acceptable fruit gel bars, cut them up, and used them for more decoration. We also had some acceptable chocolate chips. Powdered sugar "snow" topped it all off. Interesting to say the least, LOL.
A sugar cookie tip to share with you all, whip up the fat, sugar, and eggs a TON till they look like frosting, then add the rest of the ingredients and just stir enough to incorporate. chill that for at least an hour before rolling. They turn out so good. Same with the frosting, beat the heck out of it.

pumpkin pie candy-so easy! let the kids play with it

I don't know why but I'm having problems with these pictures today. One is the dough straight from the mixer, one is the dough after it was kneaded, which made the texture much better, and one is a few finished pieces.

I just had an extra sweet potato and I didn't want to feed it to the chickens so I invented something instead...YAY a new recipe! This was so fun and the kids are playing with it right now. It feels like a playdoh and tastes so yummy.

1 sweet potato
powdered sugar
pie spices such as cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, etc.

stuff to roll it in, optional, chopped nuts, coconut, cinnamon sugar

in a food processor or just smoosh it up if you don't have one,
mash up the sweet potato (cooked well in the jacket tastes best, it naturally carmalizes) then add powdered sugar slowly until you have a very stiff dough. Add spices to taste.

For my size of sweet potato (med) I used about 2 lbs of powdered sugar and about 2 tsp of a pumpkin pie spice mix that I made before.

I used the food processor until it began to get a little too stiff, then I moved it to the mixer with the dough hook. The kids took it from there. They're making balls to roll in chopped pecans, coconut, and cinnamon sugar. These are very rich but I'm going to have a hard time not eating them all.

Heather's meals

Some recipes from my friend, Heather...as always, remember to use approved oil or sub butter or coconut oil instead. For gluten free, sub tinkyada noodles and gf flour

Okay here are a few to start with:

To make the following recipes, you will need to know how to make a roux (Most of you probably know how to do this, but I understand these recipes might go into a cookbook for young women, so I'm including the instructions). It's easy - melt one stick (1/2 C) butter in a pot over medium-high heat (I use the 7 on my elecrtic stove). Once it's melted, whisk in 1/2 C white flour and let it bubble for a minute or so. This is your roux. If you want to double these recipes, you should also double your roux - it's always equal amounts butter and flour.

"White Soup"
(Chowder base)

roux
about 8 cups of milk

Once your roux has bubbled for a minute or so, keep the stove on medium-high heat and add about 1/2 the milk. Whisk it in and then stir just every now and then until it starts to bubble. The soup needs to bubble a little, but not boil, in order to thicken. Stir it all the way down to the bottom so it doesn't burn or stick to the bottom. When you notice it start to thicken you can add the rest of the milk - keep it bubbling and keep stirring.

With this chowder base you can make all kinds of different chowders. Cook your other ingredients in a seperate pan and add them to the chowder base when it's ready. These recipes are the way I make them, and you can add or subtract anything you want.

Basic Potato Chowder:

4-5 potatoes, diced
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 pkg bacon, chopped small (use approved or omit)
1 can corn
seasonings to taste (salt, pepper, celery salt, garlic, etc)

Cook the bacon first - then you can either drain the grease or cook the other ingredients in it. Add the potatoes, celery, onions and seasonings and cook until the veggies are done. Add the corn, then add the whole thing to your chowder base. Let it all simmer together for at least 10 minutes.

For Clam Chowder, add 2 cans of clams. I like to use the juice as well, but you run the risk of getting sand in your chowder :) If you don't like that idea you can dump the juice and rinse the clams first. You might also add some spinach to the recipe.

For Chicken Chowder, add 2 cans of chicken, or cook and chop at least 2 chicken breasts.

For Hamburger Chowder, use at least 1/2 lb of ground beef and don't use the celery or celery salt. Flavoring the meat with Worchestershire sauce and seasoning salt while it's cooking is very tasty. I like peas or spinach in this chowder, in addition to the corn. Corn is a chowder classic.

And since I think it's a crime to eat chowder without corn bread, here is an excellent Western corn bread recipe (as opposed to a traditional Southern corn bread "cake" that is made with bacon fat and sometimes fried on the stove top):

Homesteader Cornbread

1 1/2 C cornmeal
2 1/2 C milk
2 C white flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 C white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, combine cornmeal and milk; let stand for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Mix in the cornmeal mixture, eggs and oil until smooth. Pout the batter into a greased 9 X 13 pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

The next recipe also uses the roux, and comes with a story :)

This is called "Wild Horses" in my husband's family (and now ours), but it's really just biscuits and gravy. They call it "Wild Horses" because whenever the kids would come into the kitchen while my mother-in-law was cooking and say, "what are you doing?" she would give some ridiculous answer, like "wrestling greased pigs" or "rising wild horses." In the case of this recipe, the name "Wild Horses" just stuck :)

No, they don't have any recipes called "Greased Pigs" ;)

"Wild Horses"

roux
about 4 cups milk
seasonings to taste

Make it the same way you make the chowder base, but you want it much thicker so you don't use as much milk. Cook your other ingredients in a seperate pan and add to your "gravy" when it's ready.

Some of our favorite "Wild Horses":

scrambled eggs and sausage
tuna and peas
hamburger and corn

Once your gravy is ready and full of yummy things, you break up biscuits in your bowl and pour the Wild Horses on top. It's very hardy and warm and filling.

As an added bonus (lol) here is my favorite drop biscuit recipe:

4 C white flour
2 Tbsp. baking powder
2 Tbsp. white sugar
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 C oil
2 C milk

Preheat oven to 450. Combine dry ingredients, then stir in oil and milk just until it's all moistened. Use a spoon to drop the dough onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 450 until the biscuits are golden brown around the edges - about 8 to 10 minutes. Makes about 32 biscuits, depending on size.

Leftover biscuits can be used for dessert, warmed up in a bowl in the microwave with butter and honey, syrup, jam or brown sugar and maybe some fruit on top. MMMMmmmmm.....

I'll post more recipes later - I just got a houseful of visitors :)

- Heather McKay

a success story from Christina

This is a great success story from Christina on the yahoo Feingold group.

My son is in 1st grade (barely 6 and the youngest in his class). He testes above
grade level in all subjects and reads as well as his 8 year old sister.

However, we had him tested at the teachers request for autism and they
officially placed him on the autism spectrum. He has a slightly modified
schedule where he gets to leave class for 30 min. and take his work to a smaller
classroom to work on it without the classroom distractions. He also has
permission to do his work laying on the carpet when he needs to.

He has been a very extreme child. He gets upset easily and cries easily about
the smallest things. He is socially immature and groups have a tendency to
completely overwhelm him. He has always loved trains and when we filled in the
aspergers questionaire I was convinced Aspergers was our diagnosis. We also have
tourettes on my side of my family (my father and brother) and have seen the
beginning of what we believe to be TS.

Back on 2 months....we started him with chelation the middle of October. Within
2 weeks, we had eye contact (where previously we had had NONE ever...), he was
calmer, able to read for content, left his trains behind and joined friends and
his sister in almost any game. He started falling asleep quickly instead of
kicking the wall for an hour each night to calm himself down. We rarely have any
temper tantrums, although he is still easily upset, he now calms down quickly.

We started soccer this year and the first couple of games resulted in him
melting down in only a few minutes and sitting out the rest of the game. You
could sometime hear him screaming 2 fields away. It was the end of soccer
season, and we had a 2 week break due to rain, and on his tenth game (the last
one of the season) it was a NEW kid. We had started "watching" artificial colors
and flavors at this point but had not started Feingold at that time. He ran when
he needed to, walked and waited for the ball to come toward him. Previously he
had never been able to slow down and would exhaust himself within 5 min chasing
the ball...and then meltdown. He played 2 quarters with NO time outs or
complaints. When it was his turn to sit out, he said "Oh man, I want to help my
team!" and then did the 4th quarter perfectly. He stopped midplay to ask a
little boy if he was okay when he fell. Usually he would leap over the hurt
child, or be oblivious to them, or worse step on them. We had never seen empathy
on the field and had only noticed some recently at home. Needless to say we were
totally amazed. The assistant coach's wife and several team moms came over after
the game and said that if they hadn't seen it themselves, they wouldn't have
believed it. They wanted to know what in the world we had done differently. I
told them about chelation and removing the artificial junk from his diet.

We went for another IEP meeting at the school last week, and although there have
been many many improvements he is still somewhat overwhelmed in group situations
school. He has difficulty sitting in his chair for more than a few min. at a
time, and interacts with most of the kids in an immature way. He is frequently
LOUD and blurts out answers instead of raising his hand. He is clumsy and most
things he picks up he drops. His handwriting is the poorest in his class. Large
motor skills he's great. He learned to ride a bike with no training wheels at 4
and is really good at soccer (now:), but small motor skills are severely
lacking. He has also suffered from eczema on his legs and arms, since he was a
baby.

He has come soooo far, but we still have more to do. I bought a copy of "Why
can't my child behave" and was furious by the end of it. I believe now that the
FDA is not on our side, but is in allegience with the food and chemical
companies! We started Feingold officially last month with Stage II...but I
wasn't seeing as much difference as I would like so 3 days ago we backed up to
Stage One. Basically we took out his grapes, raisins, apples etc. The last two
days have been intermittently HARD. He has alternated between the sweet little
boy we have come to know and being very grumpy and defiant. I am thinking that
maybe this is a salicylate withdrawal period.

I am not much of a cook but have been making most everything for him by scratch.
Luckily, he is not a picky eater and except for missing his grapes and chili, he
is doing fine. I am hoping that on this site there is a recipe list for kid safe
recipes. Changing brands has been pretty easy but we have easily spent upwards
of 500.00 switching out our foods to FG safe brands. I went a little fanatical
and just this week started eliminating detergents and toothpaste etc. I even
bought a natural bristle toothbrush!

I looked back at the Aspergers booklet I filled in, and where I checked him off
as being "highly probable Aspergers", his answers now qualify him as "not
likely". I really can't say that any of his behaviors at this point are autistic
at all. His counselor called me last week and asked what was different. He was
demonstrating eye contact and empathy and appropriate responses to most every
social scenario she tested him on. The beginning of the year he tested "little
to no eye contact" and last week he tested "normal eye contact".

I attribute his success so far to REMOVING the toxic heavy metals from his
system as well as removing all the Artificial colors, flavors and preservatives
from his diet. I expect to see more changes as we continue with Stage I. I am
looking forward to the day when they ask to remove the label of "autism" from
his classification at school.