Ah, for the love of almonds....

I've been doing a lot with almonds lately, in an effort to give my 8 year old some different food options that do not involve grains.

It turns out that after tightening up his diet...taking out wheat, sugar, preservatives and most grains, he has turned into an angel once again at school. 

Remember I was complaining about his turdyness? Well, his teacher says he's calmed down a lot and is behaving beautifully. Now, it's not like he used to eat a lot of junk, but the wheat had crept back in to a certain extent and with a certain wheat product was preservative 282. 

Hmmmmm. No real mystery is it?

All of which meant I was scrambling to find school lunch solutions that he would be happy to eat in front of his friends. One of the things I came up was a 'milkshake'. This has raw, organic, full cream milk, avocado, a pastured egg yolk, cocoa powder, a couple of dates, a baby spinach leaf or two and a small amount of rapadura. I whiz it up in my thermomix, pour it into a shaker with a leak proof lid and it goes in his insulated lunch box with a freezy pack and a straw.

I'd give him this every couple of days or so and then my preppy started wanting one too. No problem, just we started going through a lot of milk and it's not cheap. Almonds again to the rescue, I tried making some almond milk. Very easy to make, and lovely and creamy. I wrote up how I make it, with pictures, if you want instructions.

How to make almond milk.

(Yes, clearly I cannot pour straight...)

Actually, if you look at the messy kitchen picture in my previous post, you can see jars of almonds lined up on the windowsill. I also have been using the almonds to make grain free brownies, grain free banana bread, almond butter and grain free cereal. We are lucky enough in Australia to be able to get raw almonds, and you can probably source truly raw almonds in many other countries too, but not in the U.S.

In America all almonds are pasteurized but growers/manufacturers are still allowed to label them as raw.

But the only way to get REAL raw almonds in the U.S. is to buy an imported brand.   

Ok, enough rambling. If I don't post again soonish, you'll know my house has been taken over by almonds. 

Or more likely, the school hols are kicking my butt......

What a whole foods diet does to the kitchen.....

Whole foods cooking

Life has been crazy busy lately and the pockets of time I have at home during the day see me mostly in the kitchen. Making a giant freakin' mess. See below...

(The sun is coming in that huge window over the bench, hence the flare in these pictures, sorry.)

For some reason when I cook or bake, I leave whatever kitchen cabinets I've opened, open. My husband loves this trait, as does my eldest son now that he's tall enough that he can't walk under the open cupboard that houses plates and bowls without bashing his forehead.

These photos don't show you the dehydrator sitting on the deep freeze behind me waiting to be loaded again or the massive sack of coconut that sits on the floor because it's too big to go anywhere else. 

Notice the stick holding the oven door closed?

Ever since a small person opened the oven one day (when it was off....!) and sat on the door, it hasn't quite sealed properly.

All that said, it only took me a max of about 15 minutes to get the kitchen to a semi-reasonable state again, as everything has a place. Well, except the coconut. Hmmmmm.

What crappy food does to an 8 year old

My 8 year old son has been a bit of a turd lately at school, culminating in Monday when he was a complete turd. Oh, and he was fairly poopy on Sunday at home too.

Funnily enough, on Saturday afternoon we'd been hanging out with extended family and over the course of about 7 hours, my boy ate 3 pieces of cake (homemade), 1 chocolate 'muffin' (boxed mix), chocolate mousse (boxed mix), store bought ice cream, regular store bought grainy bread, bread made in a breadmaker (from a boxed mix) and a handful of wheat crackers.

Hmmmm. 

Not wanting to be a mean mum ('cos I'd already nixed the soft drink) and ya know, a little bit huge amount won't hurt, right??? And it's hard to be a hard arse when all the adults around them are getting stuck into this kind of food, so I let it go.

But clearly I shouldn't have.......

I've been a bit slack with what he eats lately, giving him ordinary old wheat wraps in his lunch sometimes, the odd tim tam here and there, and the like. Add in birthdays in March and April and all the resulting cake that's been stashed in the freezer and slowly doled out....

Which culminated in the Saturday arvo feast. 

His behaviour had been getting a bit ordinary lately at school, argumentative with the teacher, touchy and grouchy. And then Monday.

I am hoping with a wheat free/refined sugar free/preservative free diet again, things might calm down.

So far so good. I immediately implemented the clean eating on Sunday, bright and sparkly.

He was awful on Sunday at home and Monday at school. Less awful on Tuesday. Apparently less awful again today, but I haven't completely followed that up.

I am HOPING the food is the cause of his turdyness, because otherwise it means he's just being a turd.