All I want is a SANDWICH!

I have heard this statement (or demand in a few cases) all week. My poor baby is not adjusting well to his new gluten-free diet. Actually he's doing better than I expected, but it's really hard to explain to a 2 1/2 year old why he can't eat goldfish, peanut butter sandwiches, and cake. "But I LIKE _____!"

I gave in a couple times this week. He had a small cupcake at school on Thursday because it was a friend's birthday and his teacher didn't have the heart to not let him have one. I didn't either. She came and asked me before she gave it to him and I told her to go ahead. Then on Friday I let him have a small bite of a sandwich. That was his first bread in 7 days. Then we went to a birthday party on Saturday where he got his hands on a large piece of strawberry cake and ice cream. We all paid the price for that one (or maybe it was that he finally reached his threshold). The good news is that he's starting to make the correlation between, if I eat this, my tummy will hurt. Which in my opinion is something that he's going to have to learn on his own so that later on when he's tempted he will be able to weigh his options. I can enjoy this cake now, but I will pay for it later.

So I have been on a quest this weekend to make or find him some bread so that he can once again enjoy a sandwich. On Friday night, I tried making some bread using a gluten-free baking mix that I picked up at our local HEB. The problem is I also have to eliminate the eggs and figuring out which egg substitute to use is going to be trial and error for a while. Currently I am using potato starch, but I hope to just order some egg substitute on the internet so that I can try that. So back to the bread. It was hard as a rock and tasted like play-doh. That went straight into the trashcan. Today I headed over to our local (ha, ha - it's 45 miles away) Whole Foods hoping to find some bread machine mix and some egg substitute. Surprisingly they didn't have the egg substitute but I was also not the first person this week to ask for it, so maybe they will consider it soon. But I was able to find some bread mixes as well as some frozen gluten-free breads. There were 3 or 4 varieties made from various types of flour which made it difficult to choose. I ended up selecting the pecan rice bread and figure I can try some of the others in the future.

The gluten-free white sandwich bread mix is currently in the bread machine. I will report on that later. Let's hope it tastes a little better than the stuff I made on Friday...which also makes some gritty little pancakes, but Kyle was just so happy to have pancakes this morning that he ate them all up (doused in syrup of course).

I also picked up some almond butter and soy butter to try. I'm hoping this gets easier as we get used to it so that I am not having to experiment all the time. I actually saw some almond butter that was $11.99 a jar! I didn't buy it, but the one I picked up was about $6. Gasp! This is getting way too expensive! And wouldn't you know, I stirred it all up (the oil separates from the butter so it looks really disgusting when you open it) and did a little taste test and yuck. The soy butter won the taste test which surprised me, but it seems like soy has a knack for picking up whatever flavor you want it to have so I guess that makes sense. So I just made myself a tiny little soy butter and honey 1/2 sandwich on pecan rice toasted bread. It wasn't too bad. Let's just hope Kyle agrees. I wonder if there will ever be a day when Kyle will be able to order something like that in a restaurant.