Hi there!
So, my family has stomach problems. They get it from their father. :)
Seriously, though, diarrhea is just a part of our life. Stomach pain? We're not even sure what life would be like without it! My number 2 daughter has been complaining about her stomach hurting regularly for...a long time. She keeps asking me to take her to the doctor and I keep saying 'no.' That might sound horrible, but I've been to the doctor for kids' stomach pains multiple times before, and it is just not helpful. They charge me hundreds of dollars to tell me that I will have to use the trial and error method to find out what's causing their pain myself, and then avoid it. 'Wow. Thanks. I never would have thought of that myself.'
For some time I have been learning about the so called Traditional Diet, and I have wanted to try it, but it just...sounded really intimidating. Let's be honest, changing our diet is changing our lifestyle, you know? Besides, I had tried to keep sourdough/natural yeast and it just...well...I haven't mastered it. So that leaves me with only soaking or sprouting my grains, and I didn't think we could make actual loaves of bread, that way. And without any bread...what would we eat on a daily basis?
But I have been actively researching on Pintrest ;) and once I had found enough soaking and sprouting recipes, I decided to dive right in. I spent the first week only making soaked recipes, and in the mean time, I worked on sprouting some wheat to use for the second week of the trial.
Those of you who have kids know that you can't change anything about their diet without them freaking out and thinking you're trying to poison them. This was no different. In the hopes that I can save you some trouble, here is a list of some of recipes I tried, and how my kids took to each of them.
Soaking Method:
Cream of Wheat --My husband and kids have stomach allergies with oats, so this is the only hot cereal we do. My older two girls love cream of wheat, but my younger two kids won't touch it, so I didn't even try to make them. I LOVED how simple this recipe was and I thought it was perfectly tasty! My kids, on the other hand...were weeping and wailing like it was the end of the world! It took number 2 a full HOUR to eat it! (She's the one who I finally decided to do this diet for, after all, and if I let her not eat her food, she would go to school hungry and probably get an "emergency snack" from her teacher which would probably have unsoaked grains, so then we would never be able to tell if the diet was working...so...I just made her finish it).
Waffles --These had a bit of a sourdough taste to them, but without having to master sourdough (score!). My kids were not fans, but number two finished a whole one with minimal complaining. The other three struggled to finish half of one each.
Tortillas --I didn't actually make my other three even try these, since I felt like it was a lot of work for only a few tortillas, and...well, I'm kinda lazy. But number two loved them! Yay!
Pizza Dough --The whole family ate this homemade pizza without ANY complaining! Hooray!
Rice --Uhh, my kids are used to white rice, so...the whole brown rice thing didn't go over very well with a couple of them, although number 2 and number 4 at this just fine! So...50%! Ha!
And finally, the recipe that gave me courage to officially start this diet in the first place: BREAD!--This was not my kids' favorite bread (translation: it can't compare with white bread), but the entire family will eat it without complaining! HALLELUJAH!
Sprouted Method:
Sprouting wheat is not hard, but, in some ways it's kind of annoying. It's annoying that I constantly have multiple jars of moist wheat berries laying sideways by kitchen sink. It's annoying that I have to pull out the dehydrator every couple of days to dry the sprouted wheat out. And then I still have to grind them before I can use them. BUT, although it's annoying to actually sprout the wheat, it's so easy to make food with, once it's sprouted, dried and ground up.
I made Cream of Wheat, pancakes (with sprouted flour, they tend to be a little flatter, especially when overcooked even a little bit, so watch and make sure to flip and remove before over cooking at all), waffles (with the sprouted flour, the top and bottom of the waffles tend to rip apart when opening the lid, so be careful when opening and removing), and pumpkin bread with all my normal recipes. All I had to do was substitute sprouted wheat flour with the normal wheat flour. And all my kids happily ate all of those things without a word!
I also made this Banana Bread with sprouted flour, which my kids also devoured.
And these Tortillas --which we ALL decided we liked better than the soaked tortillas (plus, I had an easier time rolling these out).
I tried this Pizza Dough --which was a total bust. None of us liked it.
So, I guess the take away is that, other than bread and pizza dough, we prefer sprouted over soaked. But the soaked bread and pizza dough are both great! And I have been able to use sprouted flour in most of my normal recipes, so I can still make a variety of foods without too much trouble.
Check back later for my adventures with sourdough!
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