Several months after my oldest daughter was born, we discovered that she had life threatening food allergies. I talk about this in my book From Anaphylaxis to Buttercream.
The story goes something like this; 20 years ago my oldest daughter was anaphylactic to dairy and eggs, and allergic to about 7 other things.
We literally didn’t have eggs in the house.
Now she can eat eggs and dairy - all through the power of desensitization and energy work, enhancing health using, nutrition, education, digestion, and absorption. I know, right?!
(Ironically, although we now have eggs in the house, the rest of us have given up dairy for other reasons.)
As you’ll learn in my book, I started taking classes at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition and again at The School of Applied Functional Medicine. I learned to cook up a storm using whole organic ingredients. We’re talking from scratch!
Cooking with Purpose
I started cooking with purpose - and meal planning for my family’s nutritional needs, taste buds, allergies, food sensitivities, stages of independence, dietary changes and preferences. I collected stacks of recipes.
I often see what ingredients I have in the fridge, then figure out what to do with them.
My husband does meal planning differently. He prints a recipe and then goes to the store to purchase the ingredients before he starts cooking.
I just improvise.
Everyone is different and has different preferences, and needs. And seasonally things change too.
In the summer we have a garden and belong to a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture). I often come home from the farm with freshly picked organic veggies and have to figure out what to do with them.
As a result of this fresh and seasonal eating, when meal planning I'll often go on the internet and search for “recipe with kohlrabi, onion, carrot, etc…” and see what comes up.
Cauliflower, sweet potato and lentil curry was born in my house that way!
You never know what color lentils I’ll use or which veggie I’ll add to make it just a little different in that week’s meal planning.
One year (during Covid) our garden produced more butternut squash than I’ve ever seen in my life! So butternut squash apple soup was born, along with wild rice stuffed butternut squash.
Another year we had zucchini coming out of our ears! It was growing so fast I didn’t know what to do with it. So in my meal plan we had zucchini banana pancakes or zucchini fritters at least once a week throughout the summer.
To be honest, both these recipes were the only way I could get everyone to eat zucchini! I froze as many pancakes as I could make, and some shredded zucchini, so these recipes could be incorporated into my meal planning during the winter.
Meal Planning Resources
Part of the reason I was able to help my daughter through this difficult time was because of meal planning. Having a way to manage and plan out our food was incredibly important to her health - but also, I realized, for the health of my entire family.
I’m so passionate about this topic, I’ve even created some free resources for you: including a meal planner, food diary and recipe guide.
In the meantime, we can also get together to talk about strategizing your meal planning, dive deeper into any symptoms you’ve been having, and discuss your health goals in a Discovery Session.
I look forward to meeting you!
In good health,
Holli