My Favorite Granola Bars

I LOVE Granola bars, but the vast majority of granola bars are not allergy friendly by any means. So while my husband was chomping away on his Nature Valley granola bars I decided that I really needed some so I scoured the internet and after trying a couple of recipes that I was not crazy about I found a great alerternative (and in my opinion they are better than store bought granola bars).

http://www.food.com/recipe/granola-bars-110421

Granola Bars
4 cups Oatmeal
2 cups flour
1 cup coconut (you can leave this out- it is not necessary for the recipe to turn out)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup honey (or 1/2 cup honey and 1/4 cup molasses OR 1/2 cup honey and 1/4 cup corn syrup)
Optional: raisins, chocolate chips, craisins

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add oil and honey. Mix well get your fingers in there and mix it until all is blended and sticky feeling. Add any optional ingredients. Firmly press in a 12 x 15 inch pan. Bake 15 to 20 minutes at 375 degrees (they will look puffy when they come out and don't let them get too brown). Cut immediately or they will be too hard to cut.

Fun Suprises at the Dollar Store!!!

We went the the Dollar Store today after church and while we were waiting in line I saw small individual bags of animal crackers in the snack aisle. I decided to check the ingredients and all they contained were wheat and soy, so I thought they would be perfect for my son's preschool snack bag. I also decided to look at the Moon Pies- which also only included wheat and soy (however they are produced in a factory with peanuts and treenuts, but since J's peanut levels are pretty low we have decided to start giving both of the older kids foods with this warning, but only if my husband and I are with them- we don't want to take that chance if someone else is watching them and is not familar with the epi). Next I checked out the fudge striped cookies, which also only contained wheat and soy (which was really shocking to me) and the E L Fudge chocolate grahams which also only contained wheat and soy. So we left the Dollar Store with four new snacks for the kids to try. After lunch we let the kids try the Moon Pies (did I mention that chocolate and marshmellows have to be their favorite foods) and they both loved them!

Winter Themed Preschool Lessons

One of my goals for this year is to start working more with my 2 year old. I try to work at least a few times a week with J- usually with reading or with handwriting, but it seems that my little princess has gotten lost in the shuffle and as with most middle children, I have not spent as much one-on-one time teaching her as I did with my first born. So to give her more time and to try to start teaching her (and to get her used to what she will be doing once we start homeschooling J this fall) I am starting her out with lessons on winter. I have decided to do a sensory box- this is a box filled with things related to winter and on the bottom I have put rice so she can practice pouring and playing with the rice. In addition to the sensory box I am going to do a snowman print-out where she will place the clothes on the snowman (and practice her cutting skills by actually cutting out the snowman). So far I have one book picked out to read (this is really a work in progress, but so far I am more planned out than usual) Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner. I am also planning on singing a snowman song and a polar bear song and making a peguin craft. To keep J occupied with the lesson I am going to talk about hibernation and arctic animals and do a science experiment on ice melting. Once I actually get my activities finalized I hope to link them up here.

Snack Pack Pudding

Yesterday while walking the aisles at Meijer (which is by far not my favorite thing to do!) I decided to check out the ingredients of the Snack Pack Pudding. All of their pudding has milk in it with the exception of the Lemon pudding. Of course I grabbed one for my little ones to try out. They have never eatten pudding- even Princess R who is not allergic to milk- I have never made it or bought it for her since her brother can't have it. Both children enjoy lemon flavored things so I thought I would give it a shot. J really liked it and almost finished it and Princess R ate about half of hers- so I think that the pudding was a success (they would have probably eatten more if they had not just eatten a hot dog and watermelon for lunch and my daughter was also very interested in watching tv too). Jell-o also makes some instant pudding flavors that do not have any of the top 8 food allergens, just check the label and substitute whichever type of milk you use- but I will caution you do not use vanilla flavored milk- the vanilla really comes through the pudding and that is all you taste.

**Update- after putting the remaining pudding away I noticed that the lids stated that they contain real milk (I did not notice this before I fed them to J and milk was not on the ingredients list) so I contacted Hunts. They emailed me back and reassured me that the lemon flavor does not contain milk.

A Weekend of Treats!

One of my favorite things to do at Christmas is bake cookies and make candy. Well this year, being that I am on an elimination diet I pretty much had to ditch all my favorite recipes (there was really no way to alter them without totally changing them). So this weekend I made four tasty treats. I made the kids sugar cookies with sprinkles (these have soy margarine in them, but can be made with Earth's Balance margarine if you avoid soy- sugar cookies aren't my favorite so I opted to use the much less expensive Fleishman's margarine)- this recipe is under my recipe tab- "Crisp Sugar Cookies". Second I made Cybele Pascal's fudge http://www.eatfreelyshow.com/. I have never tried any of her recipes before since they call for a lot of ingredients that I don't frequently purchase, but this was a good alternative to my normal marshmellow cream fudge that I make every year. Next I made Food Allergy Mama's Gingersnaps- which are always a hit http://www.foodallergymama.com/2010/11/19/dairy-egg-and-but-free-gingersnaps/. Finally, I made Food Allergy Mama's Cranberry Chocolate Chip cookies which if you are looking for a festive looking cookie these are great- but I will warn you- once you put them in a container they do get soft (I only made a few and froze the rest of the dough) http://www.foodallergymama.com/2009/08/19/dairy-and-egg-and-nut-free-cranberry-chocolate-drop-cookies/.

Our First Milk, Egg, and Nut- Free Gingerbread House

Last night I made a milk, egg, peanut and treenut free gingerbread house for J's Christmas party. The recipe I used was Food Allergy Mama's gingerbread cookie recipe http://www.foodallergymama.com/2009/12/13/dairy-egg-and-nut-free-gingerbread-kids/ (I did not feel like trying to alter one of my non-allergy friendly gingerbread recipes). I followed the recipe, but the dough was really sticky. I had to add a lot of flour to make it manageable. After adding all the flour, I think it turned out well. The next issue I had was putting the house together. While I could not use a traditional strong icing recipe because of the egg allergy I found another recipe for "edible glue". I boiled 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup corn syrup until it reached 300 degrees- unfornately mine went over 350 degrees and burned, but it still worked as really good food glue. In order to cover the "glue" I outlined the house with a safe icing made of powdered sugar, corn syrup and soy milk. I think it turned out well and my son loved it- he decorate it with snowman marshmellows, skittles, starburst, gummy bears and peppermint sticks.

Namaste Cookie Review

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My older son J had a Christmas party at his preschool today. There are two children in the class (including him) with food allergies. J has milk, egg and nut allergies and the other little boy has a gluten allergy. So in order to make sure that everyone could enjoy the party the other mother and I organized the food. I decided to make cookies and since I am not an expert in gluten allergies I bought a Namaste cookie mix. I had never tried any other their products before but they are free of many of the common allergens. The mix calls for two eggs, oil and water to be added to the mix, so I replaced the two eggs with 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce. When I purchased the mix I was not aware that it did not include any chocolate chips, but was a plain cookie mix, so I added Enjoy Life chocolate chips to the mix. The cookie mix was very oily and did not really resemble a regular cookie dough. While the cookies tasted good, the texture was a bit grainy and was almost like an oatmeal cookie. Overall, I will probably stick with my regular cookie mix (since I don't need to bake gluten free and since the mix, without the chocolate chips was 5.99) but all the children did enjoy the cookies.