Dessert ideas!

Especially with a young child, dessert might be the hardest time to have LPLD.  Making sure Monica feels included in a special treat at holidays, family gatherings, and weddings, is almost always a source of stress for me!  So here is a list of our best ideas to make desserts feel special:

• Fresh fruit with sugar to dip in - by far the easiest for a restaurant or a wedding caterer to pull off, especially when it's a special rare fruit (strawberries!)
• Apple slices dusted with cinnamon and sugar and DELICIOUS
• Sherbet or sorbet - be careful, sherbet is sometimes fat free, sometimes not!  Serve with chocolate syrup, sprinkles, cherries, and/or marshmallow fluff
• Marshmallows!  Roasted over a campfire (s'mores can work with chocolate syrup instead of a bar of chocolate), or assembled with toothpicks into a 'snowman'
• Apple (or other fruit) 'pie' without the crust (or the crust removed)
• Fat free brownies (I'm still working on an imitation of Trader Joe's mix that's been discontinued)
• Angel food cake frosted with fat free whipped cream (or whipped topping), fresh fruit, or sweetened nonfat yogurt
• Fruit juice popsicles (buy them, make your own in dixie cups; maybe even with fat free yogurt, like a frozen smoothie)
• Merengue cookies are one guaranteed fat free cookie!
• Snow cones, either with a fancy snow cone maker or use a blender to crush ice, then cover it in sugary fruity syrup
• popcorn or kettle corn - easy to make on a stovetop, or airpop some popcorn, melt some honey with cinnamon, and toss the popcorn with the sticky delicious result.  I made about 8 cups of the stuff last night thinking it would be a sweet snack for the week.  Monica and Mary ate it all. in. one. night.  !!



So sick of Frozen, but it makes everything more special these days

What are your reliable dessert options when you need a sweet treat?

Snack ideas!

If you have the time and patience to walk through the granola bar and cookie areas of your grocery store and look at the nutrition facts of every box there, there may be a surprising number that is LPLD-safe!  Well, surprising if you're like me and you expect there to be ZERO, ha!  We let Monica have bars that have up to 3 g of fat per serving as snacks at school, since our school says it's too much of a hassle to require every Kindergarten parent that brings in snack to make sure it's Monica-safe AND we don't quite have the time and energy to bring in fresh cut up fruit and vegies every single day for snack AND lunch!  So there's actually a wide variety that she has in her own personal 'snack bag' at school for when the snack provided is too high fat (or the teacher isn't sure if it's too high fat).  Monica's favorites are the ones with chocolate!  But as for day-to-day, we like to stay away from snacks that come in bags and never ever seem to go bad.  Here is a list of our favorite snacks:

(Fat free) yogurt with jelly

(Fat free) yogurt with honey

(Fat free) yogurt with a tiny amount of granola or chopped nuts

Popcorn!  air popped or cooked in a small amount of coconut oil

Popcorn with salt

Popcorn with honey

Popcorn with salt and sugar (I am ALWAYS burning this kettle corn lately, sigh)

Carrots with fat free ranch dip

Kiwis cut in half and peeled

Apples with peanut butter dip

Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, any berries!

Even better if you pick them yourself!

Frozen peas (crunchy and tastey, have you tried them??)

Peeled oranges

Other sliced fruit, especially with yogurt dip (yogurt, honey, and vanilla extract)

Sliced fruit with peanut butter dip

Edamame (look with frozen vegetables in the store)

Cucumber sticks

Pickles! Lots of varieties, all non fat!

Cherry tomatoes

Sliced tomatoes dusted with a little salt

Pea pods

Cauliflower

Broccoli

Sliced bell peppers

Fat free tortillas with lunch meat and nonfat cream cheese, rolled up and held with a toothpick

Cubes of fat free cheese (with grapes and apples to be extra fancy)

Low fat muffins!

Dates (super sweet!)

Honey/jelly sandwich

Honey/banana (or other fruit) sandwich

Jello jigglers! from a mix or from this recipe from Kitchen Stewardship

I was so happy with how these candy corn Jello things turned out!

Bean dip (mashed up canned beans, maybe with a little yogurt to make it more dip-y) with fat free tortillas (add cheese to make little quesadillas!)

Brown rice with pasta sauce

Applesauce!

Fruit smoothies with fat free yogurt

Raisins and other dried fruit

Egg white with a few vegies sauteed in

What else do you have to add to this list?

School Lunch Extravaganza!

We are into our second year of packing lunch for Monica every day for school, and have yet to wish we could just pay for hot lunch provided by the school. In part, because its just not an option! My husband volunteered weekly last school year to help prepare and serve lunch for Monica's school, and he was dismayed at what the kids were being served, its unappetizing and unhealthy lack of freshness and variety.  I wonder how often we would buy hot lunch if Monica didn't have LPLD! But just because hot lunch isn't an option, doesn't make packing lunch every day an easy task.

A lot of my inspiration for these ideas has come from Kitchen Stewardship. She has many posts on how to make school lunch healthy and easy, but I found this post the most helpful.

Bran muffin, jelly, sliced apples, almonds, yogurt in a Squooshi!

My #1 tip is: Don't let your child throw anything out! No trips to the trash at all. This is threefold: one, because for the sake of the environment we use all reusable lunch ware and it is so expensive, you do not what anything thrown out by accident! This way, we don't even risk the container being thrown out with the uneaten food. Two, you get to see exactly what your child ate, which is super helpful for estimating their fat intake for the day (and guessing as to whether they can have a slice of avocado on their taco for dinner, that sort of thing.) Three, your kid gets that much more time to eat instead of having to spend time at the crowded trash can with everyone else. I don't know about you, but my five year old cannot be rushed through a healthy meal. She is more likely to starve then to scarf food down, she needs every precious moment!

Yogurt, wrap with jelly and fat free cream cheese, pickles, 'trail mix,' juice!

Our favorite reusable lunch options include: this bento box, these squooshies for yogurt or applesauce, dip containers, and bento type forks and toothpicks to make it more fun, then add a stainless water bottle (sometimes with water kefir instead of water), a few plastic or metal forks, and a cloth napkin. Don't forget silverware!! When you forget those, your kid can spend half their lunch time finding some, and time is crunched as it is.

Muffin, yogurt, almonds, yogurt, half a banana!

When we have the energy, we try to make Monica's lunch extra fun. I guess I figure if your kid can't eat the most fun food, at least make it look awesome sometimes! We use cookie cutters on sandwiches, fun notes, and colorful toothpicks when possible. Though Monica reported that kids are mostly jealous of when she gets popcorn for part of her lunch. Popcorn is whole grain, fun to eat, and very low fat! Winner!!

One thing we embrace for lunches is giving her leftovers. We will often ask Monica at dinnertime, if she seems to be particularly enjoying it, if she would like to eat it for lunch tomorrow as well, and she is frequently enthusiastic! She is fine with not warming it up (my kids prefer their food cold, anyway, sigh) and although I imagine it to be a little weird or embarrassing to have a small casserole full of vegies while your peers are eating hot lunch pizza, Monica loves it and hasn't complained. Try to remember to put it right into the lunch container after dinner to minimize thinking and packaging later. Just one more step to make life easier!

Sometimes we make lunches of just snack type foods, and those are some of Monica's favorites.  I can't say I would be thrilled with a lunch of cherry tomatoes, orange slices, pickles, almonds, fat free cheese cubes, and popcorn, but it hits all my food groups (fruits, vegies, protein, dairy) and Monica gobbles it up.

Kiwi, hard boiled egg, yogurt, noodles with our homemade pasta sauce!

Are these pictures helpful?  Should I provide some more for inspiration for you?

What is LPLD?

What do you tell your friends?  Family?  New teacher at school?  Restaurant server?

Here's a run down of my basic responses:

30 second answer – for waiters, ice cream scoopers, the mom giving me a funny look when she overhears me telling my daughter that, no, she can’t have the cheese everyone else is having for snack – but I’m peeling this delicious orange for her!

My daughter has a sort of allergy to fat – she can eat very small amounts of it, but any more than that will make her very sick and put her in the hospital.  So it's important to know what she eats.

Short answer – for the slightly more than casual acquaintance

Monica has a rare disease, one in a million chance of getting it, where she is missing an enzyme that supposed to be in every tissue of her body that lets her body use fat for energy.  So instead, the fat builds up in her blood and can make her pancreas very sick and put her in the hospital.  This hasn't happened yet, but we are very careful that she eats no more than about 10 grams of fat per day.

Teachers and parent friends - here’s the actual letter we gave to Monica’s teacher this year, both for her edification and to pass out to other parents in class.  So far, we’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback.  I know I sometimes feel like a burden, unnecessarily complicating people’s lives by asking them to provide foods that my daughter can eat, but I am constantly surprised by how much people DO want to help even a single little girl to feel included!

Feel free to copy this and use it yourself!