Our journey with the SCD

Well me being on a diet (for Alex's allergies) just wasn't enough :) Now I've roped Biju and Ajay into a diet, also. It's the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Not "low" or "no" carb, but specific. The idea behind it is to only take in simple carbs, and not the complex carbs, and not have any starches or sugars. I have a link to a website that talks more about it on the left hand side of this page. That site deals mainly with how the diet helps children with autism, but the diet helps those with Crohn's and other bowel issues, ADHD, Schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, Allergies, and other illnesses. It's the gut-brain connection. What you eat really does affect your mood/mind! Anyhoo, I won't go into more here. If you want, you can read more about it on the pecanbread website, or check out the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall (they have a website, too http://www.cobbler.plus.com/btvc/index.htm).
We did the intro part of the diet on Saturday and Sunday. Then Sunday night we bagan Stage I. There are 5 stages, each one you get more (and better!) foods. There are tons of recipes out there, I'm finding. It's all very healthy food for you, so cutting out all the complex carbs, starches, sugars can only be a good thing. I'm already noticing a difference in Ajay (it is Tuesday night as I post this). He is very hungry and is eating very often - but my mentor told me to expect this. (My mentor is a friend I met on the internet who has 3 children with multiple food allergies) Ajay has tons of energy, I can't keep up with him!! He's not having the sugar high/crash from all the other foods. Tonight he actually did what I asked him to do! Biju is on second shift tonight, so it was just me and the kiddos during bathtime. I gave them both an epsom salt soak, had story time, and now they're both in bed. Alex is snoozing away (he's already had his first wake-up of the night, but is out again) and Ajay is talking to himself in his bedroom. He's starting to quiet down tho....
I emptied our cabinets of all the no-no's and this is about half of it:

A lot of that we didn't use on a regular basis - had around for random baking, or we'd forgotten it was up there. It's nice to get it out anyway.
As I mentioned above, you find all sorts of recipes for foods you CAN have. I found one for chicken pancakes. You just take one boiled chicken breast (with whatever spices you want, but no garlic powder or onion powder, as those are usually mixed with some sort of starch to avoid caking), you grind up the chicken in the blender, then add 3 eggs and blend again. Looks just like pancake batter! Cook it up on the griddle. Yum! Ajay gobbled these up. I'm sure it'd be nice w/ a dip of some sort. But I attepted homemade mayo and it didn't work out. I'll try again another time. (There is a recipe for chicken nuggets, too, take ground up cooked chicken breast, mix it with the mayo, dallop it onto cookie sheets and bake!)Here is a shot of the pancakes:

Since Alex is allergic to eggs at this time, I can't have anything with egg, but Biju and Ajay can, so it's nice to have these things on hand. Hopefully after some time on the SCD, Alex will be able to tolerate eggs and I can start eating them again!
I also made up applesauce!! Biju was kind enough to peel, de-seed, and chop up about 5 apples for me. I put them into the crock pot w/ a bit of water, a squirt of honey, and let them go for about 6 hours. Then I put them into the blender and presto chango - homemade applesauce. I think I'll do something similar once (if) I get around to giving Alex apples. Of course I'll omit the honey, tho! Here is the applesauce (The jar was an old instant coffee jar we had around waiting to be recycled. Pretty handy!)

Thats all for now, but I'll try to mention the diet now and then when I think of it :) If anyone is interested in more information, please e-mail and I'll help however I can!!