Where is it going?! (Weekly Tally)

My milk supply has been decreasing for the past few weeks and I have no idea why. I'm drinking enough, eating extra, and getting enough sleep and nothing seems to help. I've gone from 43 ounces a day to about 38. I'm still outpacing Little Man by a few ounces but it's frustrating. Fortunately, he's now eating some solid food although a few ounces of rice cereal or a veggie doesn't really have many calories anyway. But, at least we're on our way to me not being his only food source. He's doing very well so far with the food. We've tried rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and carrots and he sits nicely and eats very well. I've been making my own baby food which is surprisingly easy. We put a Cuisinart hand blender and I highly recommend it. Yesterday I made peas for him. I put the frozen peas in the container that comes with the blender, added some water, microwaved them, drained them a little, and then blended them. Aside from the time in the microwave, it took less than 5 minutes and made about 6 meals for him. Very easy and much cheaper than buying the little jars.

7/19/09-7/25/09
Total Pumped: 249
Total Used: 272.25
Surplus: 23.25
Average Per Day: 38.89

Have Crock Pot, Will Eat

When you have a new baby, are pumping, working, and feeding the family allergy free, the crock pot becomes your new best friend. Thank goodness I discovered the Crock Pot Lady's blog shortly after Little Man was born. She has tons of awesome, easy, gluten free recipes that allow us to put dinner in the crock pot in the morning and have it ready when we're ready. On days like today, I don't know what I would do without it. Today we're taking Little Man for his 6 month check up (6 month's already - I can hardly believe it!) and won't get home until close to his bed time. Plus, just a hunch, but I don't think he'll be his usual happy self after his appointment since he's getting a few shots. (Yes, we vaccinate. We feel the good outweighs the bad especially considering he's in daycare and therefore exposed to more. )

So today we made our very first roast in the crock pot. It's not one of Crock Pot Lady's recipes although she's taught me so much that now I can be a little more creative - not that a roast is creative. We prepped everything last night so all I needed to do in the morning was throw it all in. We added onions, carrots, and potatoes. My husband and I always laugh because people will say to me constantly "it's ashame you can't eat anything." My allergy free food is ten times better than what I used to eat before. If they only knew...

Making Baby Food

Little Man is almost six months old. We've been holding off on starting solid food until he's officially six months and we also want to see what both his pediatrician and the allergist say at appointments we have with both in a few weeks. But that means we need to start getting ready. I always knew I wanted to make my own baby food but now that we know he has allergies, I'm even more motivated to do it. I'm not against jarred food and will always have some on hand, but I make all my own food and use very little processed food so why should Little Man get anything less. Anyway, I figured I should probably dig out our food processor (it's an attachment for our blender and had never been used so no risk of cross contamination) to see if it would work. I boiled a bunch of carrots and then put them in the food processor. Well, it took about a half hour to get them pureed and that included me mashing chunks by hand. No good. We definitely need a new food processor if we're going to do this. The end results came out pretty good but it took way too long. I'm thinking it should take about 30 seconds to puree about a cup of carrots. Now I need to go hunt for a decent food processor.

Yum, Pizza

When I first went gluten free, I mourned the loss of pizza. Then slowly, I discovered I could make decent pizza crust and eventually found a pre-made crust that was really good. We even have an organic pizza place nearby now that makes really good GF pizza. All of these have eggs in them. So, when we found out about Little Man's allergies, I knew I would need to begin another search for good pizza. It didn't take long. I came across Rustic Crust Gluten Free Pizza Crust (check them out at http://www.rusticcrust.com/). It was only $3.99 for two personal pizza size crusts which is really cheap in the GF world so I figured I wasn't investing much if they were terrible. But, they were really good. We used Bertolli Garlic and Olive Oil sauce, Hormel Pepperoni, jarred roasted red peppers, and of course mozzarella cheese. We're also big fans of oregano and garlic powder so we added generous amounts of those. I was really pleased with the outcome and we will definitely be buying more of these crusts. One of the best things about them - unlike most GF products, they don't need to be frozen so they're always ready to bake. (And no, I wasn't put up to this by the company, I'm just excited to find good pizza that's safe for my family.)
Follow Up 6/28 - I sent feedback to Rustic Crust about how great their crust was and they let me know that coupons are available on facebook and twitter or at their website http://www.rusticcrust.com/ if you want to try it out. For those who can eat gluten, they have a full line of "regular" crusts too - no idea what they're like but thought I'd throw it out there.