The last few days have been a whirlwind, leaving me very little time for blogging. However, our quest to become an alkaline family has continued, although, I am realizing very quickly that this is going to be a much longer and slower journey than I had originally thought. The alkaline foods have been quite heavily protested, and I just don't feel like I can make each meal a tortuous event for my family. So I have been trying to go more main stream with alkaline things being thrown in heavily. I am still happy that we are eating much better than we used to be, and the vegetable is no longer the after thought that gets forgotten in the dinner rush, so I think we are still doing okay.
Well, after my last post about eating the fish and surprised that some of my kids actually ate it, the worst thing of all happened....we got a stomach bug and my oldest two girls got sick that night. Do they contribute it to being January and the fact that everybody around us is sick? No! They insist it was the fish and swear it did not come up good and they would never, ever, ever in their entire life eat fish again. So all gains in that area are lost, and I think I will have to do some pretty heavy bribing the next time fish is on the menu.
So that led me to a new dilemma. What on earth do we eat that is good for upset stomachs, gluten-free and alkaline? I thought I came up with a pretty good menu and the kids seemed to be satisfied and I was satisfied that it had vegis in it.
Breakfast--Green Smoothie
We actually have these quite frequently and my kids like them most of the time. We have a pretty standard recipe that we like.
4 cups fresh greens (we generally do spinach or kale, although my kids like the spinach better)
2 cups Orange Juice
2 cups frozen fruit
1 banana
Blend until smooth and enjoy. We just throw everything into the food processor and it takes two batches to feed my crew.
Hints that helped my kids eat green smoothies:
1. Blueberries--It changes the color from green to purple and they like it much better this way, it is amazing how color can affect them so much.
2. Straws--Everything is better with straws. This makes it something special instead of just a normal drink.
3. We also have been known to call it ice cream, and the little ones find this particularly exciting.
Lunch--Chicken Pot Pie over toast
Choice: They could put the chicken pot pie on the side or on top of the toast. If on the side, they could dip the toast in it or eat it by itself.
This is a really great recipe. http://www.food.com/recipe/delicious-chicken-pot-pie-10744
We substitute the flour with half that amount of cornstarch to make it gluten free and of course mix it in with some reserved cold chicken broth to add in at the end. I also add some frozen peas, and this time I added some frozen corn because I needed to use it up. We never put it in a pie crust, sometimes I will make gluten free biscuits to go on top, or put mashed potatoes and cheese on top, or do like we did today where we serve it over toast. I like it any way.
Dinner:
Still keeping the upset tummies in mind, we just made a great big bowls of mashed potatoes, gravy, corn and then tried a new way to eat spinach. I used a new gluten-free gravy recipe that was quite delicious http://www.food.com/recipe/gluten-free-brown-gravy-279601
I liked it because it added vegies to our meal without the kids even knowing. It seemed like it would be a lot of extra work, but it really wasn't because I just made that first and let it cook while I was making everything else. Everybody seemed pretty happy with it.
The spinach was not a success at all. I tried a lemon garlic spinach to go along especially well with our alkaline theme, but I think the problem was the recipe called for the juice of 1/2 of the lemon, but my lemon was particularly large, so it was way too lemony. I ate a bunch, but it was difficult. I think it has potential and next time I will limit the lemon juice to a couple of teaspoons and see if that makes it better. http://www.food.com/recipe/spinach-saute-with-brown-butter-garlic-110043
By the end of the day, everybody was feeling better and relatively happy with the food choices of the day and I had found a good new healthy recipe for gravy, so we will call it successful.
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