Cooking for all

As Chloe gets older (she is now 17 months) and gets more teeth, I'm starting to cook differently.

Not that differently than before, because I've always enjoyed making things from scratch, and my husband appreciates it when I cook meat separately from other things, namely vegetables.

But now we've been living with the diagnosis for a few months, and she's getting older and wanting to get out of her oatmeal-tamales-rice noodles rut. At least, I do. I think Chloe wouldn't turn down a bowl of oatmeal, as long as there was a little brown sugar in it, any day of the week.

Winter is a great time for shoving things into the oven for an hour or so. It's my favorite way to cook because prep is minimal and you don't have to monitor the cooking, only the delicious scent. Here's an example:

One small chicken, sprinkled with seasonings of choice
Eggplants sliced 3/4 inch thick and salted
Red peppers
On the side: whole potatoes and yams
Serve with salad or fruit, or not

If you had a vegan, a food-allergic person, a dedicated carnivore, a picky three-year-old and an omnivore in triathlon training all sitting at the same table, you could all eat what you wanted of that and be happy.

With the chicken bones I made chicken soup. Into the pot went a few zucchinis that were crying out for attention, some frozen spinach (now we've got a nice green-colored broth), carrots cut up into small pieces, a can of garbanzo beans and a can of small white beans. And you have an allergen-free, healthy soup. For the non-allergic eaters, I served cheese toast on the side (slice bread, preferably homemade, lay slices of sharp cheddar on top, and broil for 3 minutes). Instead of giving Chloe the soup straight in a bowl, I picked out some of the choicest solid bits and ladled them, along with a tiny bit of broth, over some rice noodles.

She refused to eat any of it unless she was sitting on my lap, but that's another story.

The point is, allergen-free cooking is really not that hard. And I'm finding that it's inspiring me to cook even more healthy than before. Lots of veggies go into the roasting pan, and even more different kinds that don't roast as well, get cut up and microwaved in a lidded ceramic bowl.

Here's another example, one my husband didn't like so well because it was--how shall I say it--too leek-y.

One ham butt with bone, layered in crock pot on top of cut up leeks
mashed potatoes made with olive oil and rice milk
blueberry crunch (with vegetable oil instead of butter to bind the topping)

If you're talking about traditional food like pizza and casseroles and cake-y desserts, well, that's definitely a problem. There's really no substitute for a yeast crust pizza smothered in mozarella, and I'm not about to mess with it unless Chloe asks me to at a later age.

Because we live in what could officially be termed The Boonies, and therefore have no access to grocery stores with gluten-free and allergen-free sections containing packaged products, and because I have no time to mix three different flours and three different things to make an egg substitute, I end up chopping fresh ingredients up and putting them into the crock pot, roasting pan, or skillet; in other words, cooking from scratch.

Here's one more example I'll leave you with:
white rice
onion, eggplant, and orange pepper slowly sauteed until flavors blend and the veggies are soft
leftover crock-pot ham, this time leek-free
microwaved broccoli

See, my husband could eat the ham and rice, my nephew would eat that plus the broccoli, my three-year-old son would eat the ham and one spear of broccoli, calling it a "tree," and of course Chloe could have any or all of it depending on her mood and if she'd rather feed it to the dog or dump it on the floor.

Easy as (allergen-free) pie.