When you have food allergies and have to eliminate one or more foods from you or your child’s diet, important nutrients can be lost and neglected. Anyone with a long-term restricted diet must find safe sources of nutrients to ensure a nutritionally-balanced diet for adequate growth and development.

Tips on Managing a Child’s Allergies

Can a dietitian help?

Maybe, or maybe not.

If you or your child is diagnosed with food allergies, a dietitian may be able help in planning your allergen-free diet to assure you get the nutrients you need. Since food allergy is not a topic regularly covered in the educational and practice training of most dietitians, ask your allergist to recommend a dietitian he or she may have worked with in the past and has a good relationship with.

If your allergist doesn’t have a preferred dietitian to recommend to you, ask for the contact information of a local food allergy support group. Support group are a wonderful source of referrals, information, first-hand knowledge and experiences. Plus, you will have the opportunity to meet local members who are going through the same struggles you are, and who can offer emotional support as well.

Learning to self-manage your diet.

If you’re struggling to find a dietitian in your area familiar with the needs of a food allergy patient, you can learn to self-manage you or your child’s diet by educating yourself through food allergy/dietary books, or with information from reputable websites on the internet.

The USDA website has a Food and Nutrition Information Center which includes a guide to the Dietary Reference Intakes: Recommended Intakes for Individuals, organized by age and gender. This guide is a comprehensive set of dietary reference intake tables for vitamins, minerals and macronutrients; including calcium and Vitamin D.

Food allergy advocacy and support groups like Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and Kids with Food Allergies Foundation are another valuable source of information. These sites contain nutritional articles written specifically for food allergy patients, food allergy management information, label reading guidelines, food allergy substitution information, recipes, and more.

If you choose to self-manage you or your child’s diet, be sure to keep a log of your dietary intake to share with your allergist and your primary care physician.

Managing a nutritional diet with food allergies is challenging, but with education, research, and support, a diet high in nutritional value can be achieved.

What food allergies does your child have? How do you manage your child’s allergies and make sure he/she gets the proper nutrition?

Photo courtesy of Flickr

Stacy is a wife, mother of three boys, school volunteer, card maker, mom blogger and writer.

Stacy and her husband Ken have been happily married for nine years and have three boys; Kaden & Logan (twins) age 5 and Colton age 1 year. In 2011, her youngest son was diagnosed with food allergies (at 7 months old) after suffering for months with severe dermatitis.

Learn more about Stacy and her life as a wife, mother of multiples and her journey learning to cook for here food allergy baby on her blog: http://stacymolter.com/about/. Find her on her Blog, Twitter , and Facebook.

Fast forward many years to when we had kids. Being that we both loved milk, we naturally assumed that we would have milk-drinking kids. And, as planned, our oldest followed in our footsteps. But then, we had child number 2 and everything changed. He is a water boy! He can’t down a glass of milk to save his life. We scratched our heads and wondered what we could do to ensure he drank an adequate amount of milk.

8 Tips for Getting Kids to Drink Milk

Here’s some things that helped our kids drink more milk:

1. For kids that prefer water or another beverage, entice them to drink a small glass of milk before giving them their preferred drink.
2. Choose meals you can add milk to: cereal, cream of wheat, oatmeal, etc.
3. Add extra milk to their bowls of cereal.
4. Identify special snacks that are perfect with milk and offer only milk as the beverage with that food. Some desserts, for examples, go perfectly with milk. When we have brownies and chocolate chip cookies, my youngest guzzles the milk!
5. Don’t be 100% set on having your child drink milk alone. Find ways to serve beverages that have milk in them: shakes, smoothies, and even chocolate milk are ways to disguise the milk flavor if your kids absolutely don’t like it.
6. Model the behavior. Drink milk in front of your kids!
7. Explain the benefits of drinking milk to your kids.
8. Make it fun! Get big crazy straws, having milk drinking contests, offer rewards, and take pictures of your family with milk mustaches.

Now excuse me while I make my way down to the expo hall at BlogHer, where I’m excited to join the #gotmilk team, get a picture in my milk mustache, and hopefully, enjoy a big glass before diving into the BlogHer fun this weekend!

Want to follow the fun online? Visit http://search.twitter.com and type in #gotmilk #blogher11 and check out the Milk Mustache Campaign page on Facebook or @MilkMustache on Twitter.

What are your tips for getting your kids to drink more milk?

One of my all-time favorite meals to enjoy the day after the massive feast is a Thanksgiving turkey sandwich. Piling shredded turkey on top of homemade cranberry sauce and topping it with stuffing and gravy all between slices of fresh Italian bread exudes all of the wonderful tastes of the holiday.

Turkey, Stuffing and Cranberry Sandwich

Ingredients (for one sandwich):

• ¼ cup shredded turkey
• 2 tablespoons stuffing
• 2 tablespoons gravy
• 2 slices fresh Italian bread
• 2 tablespoons of cranberry sauce
• Salt and pepper (to taste)

Directions:

1. Warm turkey, stuffing and gravy in microwave on high for 1 minute.
2. Top one slice of Italian bread with cranberry sauce, turkey, stuffing, gravy, salt and pepper.
3. Top layers with second piece of bread and enjoy.

For another great sanwich using the extra turkey, toss the turkey between slices of ciabatta bread and then press between two hot plates of a panini press. The final result will be a great tasting Italian-style sandwich that will knock your socks off all while using up your delicious leftovers.

Turkey Balsamic Panini

Ingredients:

• Two slices of Ciabatta bread
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Rosemary
• Cooked and shredded turkey
• Two tomato slices
• Spring mix salad
• Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing
• One slice Mozzarella

Directions:

1. Preheat a panini press to get the plates nice and hot.
2. Spread extra virgin olive oil on outsides of bread; sprinkle rosemary on top of extra virgin olive oil.
3. Place turkey, tomatoes, spring mix, dressing and mozzarella on one slice; top layers with second slice of bread.
4. Put sandwich on panini press and press down slightly; cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until bread is nice and crispy and cheese is melted.

Over the long holiday, it’s nice to enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers in sandwiches, appetizers and even main dishes. If you’re left with container after container of turkey, there are countless ways to put this delicious leftover to use. Huge chunks of turkey can easily be shredded and tossed into casseroles, soups, sandwiches or even this warm and comforting Turkey Pot Pie dish:

Turkey Pot Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 box refrigerated pie crusts (2 pie crusts total), softened as directed on the box
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup chopped onion (watch your fingers!)
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 1/2 cups shredded cooked turkey
• 2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Place one pie crust into a pie plate (as directed).
3. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently until tender.
4. Stir in flour, salt and pepper until well blended.
5. Gradually stir in chicken broth and milk, cooking and stirring until bubbly and thickened.
6. Stir in turkey and mixed vegetables and then remove from heat.
7. Spoon turkey mixture into crust-lined pie plate. Top with second crust; seal edge and flute. Cut slits in several places in top of crust.
8. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. During the last 15-20 minutes of baking, cover crust edge with strips of foil to prevent excessive browning.
9. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

When it comes to Thanksgiving leftovers, the possibilities are endless. What do you love to create using Thanksgiving leftovers?

Jen Tilley has an insatiable appetite for all things related to baking and cooking. She is the author, photographer and recipe developer on How To: Simplify, a blog that shares tips, tricks and recipes to simplify life in the kitchen. She enjoys sharing recipes that require very few ingredients and only a small amount of prep and cook time, all of which make time spent in the kitchen simple and enjoyable. Find her online at How To: Simplify and @HowToSimplify.

We’ve made some progress, but we still have a long way to go. It’s a journey. So many “picky kids” articles that I see are about how to get children to not be so picky. They focus on ways to foster more adventurous eating. And those are all great things. But one thing I found lacking when I needed it was how to get more nutrition into my son during his picky eating time, because it’s a process. He’s not going to be de-picky-fied over night.

So I thought I’d take the time to share some of my tips for how you can cope through the journey so that you can still get as much good stuff as possible in them through the foods they will eat.

Experiment with Different Grains

My son will eat almost any baked good I make. I’ve learned to use whole wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, brown rice flour, and rye flour (freshly ground using a grain mill). These grains are much more nutritious than all-purpose flour. And 99% of the time he can’t tell a difference. A favorite in our house is this Multi-Grain Banana Bread.

Snack on Nuts and Cheese

My son hasn’t eaten meat in 4 years. He’s just no into it. And I’m okay with that. We’ve found that he loves string cheese and cinnamon almonds. They’re both great sources of protein and good for snacking on.

Heavy on the Fruits and Vegetables

My son will eat a wide variety of fruits. We rely on fruits heavily for snacks and at each meal. Unfortunately he’s not so enthusiastic with vegetables. I like to put grated vegetables or purees in foods I know he will eat. I know I’m not the first to think of this idea. There are even two books written on the topic, but it’d definitely helped us—and not just with the nutrition aspect.

Muffins are a big hit with him so I experiment there a lot. When he’s eaten zucchini muffins, for example, and tells me how much he loves them I make a point to let him know there was zucchini in it. I’m not sneaky about it. Because that has given him the confidence to realize—hey, I might actually like zucchini if it’s good in this muffin! Pictured: Zucchini Cherry Muffins with Pecan Streusel Topping.

Cold Milled Flax

Cold Milled Flax is a great way to get the omegas in their diet if they don’t eat fish. I like to add two to three tablespoons to most baked goods (just take out equal amounts of flour). It can also be stirred into oatmeal, applesauce, yogurt, or blended in smoothies. Two tablespoons provides 3 grams protein, 4 grams fiber, and 2800 mg of Omega-3. Five Grain Pancakes with Flax are a regular request in our house.

Look for Healthier Alternatives to Typical Treats

Instead of fruit snacks or candy we like to purchase fruit leather for special treats. They’re made with 100% real fruit and actually count as a fruit serving. They still satisfy that sweet tooth, but without the empty calories and sugar overload.

But Don’t Ban Treats

Trust.Me. The second I tell my kids that they can’t have “x,” that’s ALL they want to eat. Let them indulge on occasion. A good diet is really all about moderation. It’s ok to have sweets once in a while.

And Remember Not To Stress

The picky ones can sense when you’re stressed about their eating, which can so easily become a power struggle. Our Doctor always reminds us to think of the small improvements we’ve made and to think of his diet in terms of a 7 day period, not just 1 day. Over 7 days his diet looks much more balanced than when you focus on one bad day.

(Disclaimer: This advice is not meant to diagnose, treat or replace professional medical advice. These are just a few tips that work for our family.)

This mother of two, believes that part of the goodness in life is sharing good food with friends and family. She’s a WAHM determined to make family meal time a priority while providing a variety of healthy and delicious food choices. Katie blogs at goodLife {eats}, where she shares what she finds good in the kitchen and in life. Katie also works as a freelance writer and food photographer. She has contributed to Craftzine, Paula Deen Online, Tablespoon, and the Skimbaco Network. She resides in New Mexico with her husband and children.

Pork BBQ Ingredients

• 5-6 pound Pork Picnic (aka Boston Butt)
• 4-5 Tbs your favorite BBQ dry rub (we like Head Country)

Instructions

• The night before, rub your butt (the pork one that is) liberally with the dry rub.
• Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place in the fridge. Now is that easy or is that easy?
• The next morning, place the pork, fatty side down, in a crock pot.
• Cook on low 10-12 hours until fork tender.
• Once cooked, take two forks and pull apart. Shredding the pork.

The Drunken BBQ Sauce Ingredients

• 1 bottle of your favorite beer
• 1 small onion diced
• 1-2 Serrano peppers, diced (add more for a spicier sauce)
• 1Tbs olive oil
• 1 cup your favorite BBQ sauce (again we like Head Country)

Instructions

• In a skillet heat oil over medium heat.
• Add peppers and onion, cook till onions are soft and translucent.
• Add bottle of beer.
• Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer. Simmer till beer has evaporated by half.
• Add 1 cup of BBQ sauce, and bring back to a boil.
• Once it starts to boil again remove from heat and blend till smooth.

Simple yet flavorful pork picnic! Put some of this pork on fresh soft yeast rolls with a little drunken BBQ sauce for an melt in your mouth sandwich. Cole slaw, baked beans, and sweet tea – now you have a meal your family will love.

Ingredients

3 cups Tomato juice

1 cup clam juice

2-3 tbs prepared horseradish

2 tsp worchestershire sauce

2 cups cooked peeled shrimp

1 cup cooked lump crab meat

1 avocado, cubed

1 english cucumber cubed

2 roma tomatoes cubed

1 small sweet onion minced

2 cloves fresh garlic minced

1 habanero pepper (optional)

1 bunch fresh cilantro chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together and let sit over night.  The longer it sits with the habanero pepper, the hotter it will get. You can remove the pepper at anytime.

Serve chilled with fresh tortilla chips.

By Krissy Stark, a cooking enthusiast.  Krissy grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York where she learned the importance of good food.  She contributes her best recipes for My Baby Clothes Boutique to share.

10 Delicious Ways to Make a Difference This Week

Service doesn’t have to be bland or boring! Spice it up. Sweeten the pot. Make it delicious. Think of people that need a little love and touch their heart by going through their stomach during this week’s Summer of Service Challenge, sponsored by Campbell’s. How? By making and sharing a tasty treat, including one or more of the 10 ideas listed below!

For more ideas, join us for a great Girl’s Night Out (#gno) on Twitter this Tuesday night. And, please share a comment on this post with other ways to serve others by sharing a tasty treat.

1. Make some baked goods—cupcakes, cookies, bread, muffins, etc.—and take them to a neighbor.
2. Take a meal to someone in your community that is sick or needs a night off from kitchen duty.
3. Spend one-on-one time with your children by having a cooking class with them to prepare dinner for the family! For a special treat, do a craft activity beforehand to make paper chef’s hats.
4. Have a family activity where you make a tasty treat together, such as suckers, decorated sugar cookies, chocolate-dipped strawberries and pretzels, etc.
5. Have a couple’s night in! Invite your closest friends over with their significant others for a fondue party. Play the newlywed game no matter how long everyone has been in their relationship.
6. As a family, choose another family that needs some love or an act of kindness/service. Drop off an anonymous treat on their doorstep with a nice card telling them how much you love them.
7. Organize a girl’s night out with your closest girlfriends and have a progressive dinner where you rotate houses during the meal, starting with appetizers, moving on to salad, heading to the main course, and ending somewhere else for the dessert.
8. Treat your spouse or close friend to a dinner at his or her favorite restaurant!
9. Make your family’s favorite meal and decorate the table special just for them. Devote the evening to family time by turning off phones, TV, etc.
10. Make your children’s favorite cookies, making a different batch once a week until you’ve made all of their favorites. Don’t forget to include your favorite as well!

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• What other ideas do you have for sharing a tasty treat?
• How has touching other’s hearts by going through their stomach made a meaningful difference this week for you? For others?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Summer?

Make a meaningful difference this summer by taking the Summer of Service (SOS) Challenge. Here’s how you can participate:

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Grab the SOS button in the sidebar and put it on your blog or social networking site.
• Enter to win each week’s giveaway. Check out this week’s prizes from Campbell’s.
• Join #gno this Tuesday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.

• Alice at Plain Cook.
• Beth at Coming Up for Air.
• Chef at I’ll Make a Foodie Out of You.
• Kelli at Gohn Crazy.
• Nicole at Pinch My Salt.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes picture courtesy of Nicole at Pinch My Salt.

Alice inspires us to go crazy with cranberries this season with her many recipes featured on plaincook.com. Here are a few:

Cranberry Jello
Cranberry Pineapple Jello
Cranberry Jello Salad With Port Wine
Fresh Cranberry and Cream Salad
Cranberry Pecan Salad With Feta Cheese

Coming Up for Air reminds us what Thanksgiving is about and that it is bigger than our corner of the world. She inspires us to think globally:

… we have taken a break from our normal history routine to learn about Thanksgiving across the centuries, across the world, across religion and across tradition. Thanksgiving is not just something we Americans celebrate because of the pilgrims. Thanksgiving has been celebrated for centuries by many different countries and cultures as a way to express thankfulness for the harvest, for protection and for the blessings of nature. So far, we’ve learned about the Chinese celebration Chung Ch’ui – which starts with the celebration of the moon’s birthday on the 15th of August. We’ve learned how the Greeks and Romans celebrated the harvest and the stories of their gods and goddesses. And we’ve learned about the Jewish holiday Succot and what a beautiful expression of thanks this festival is. Tomorrow we learn how ancient Egyptians celebrated harvest.

I’ll Make a Foodie Out of You shares family holiday tips from her pastry-chef perspective. My favorite? Her delicious recipe for marinated asparagus wrapped in phyllo dough. I am drooling just thinking about the yumminess! I may not be able to wait until the holidays to try out this tantalizing treat.

She also provides some basic, but expert advice like the following:

Sugar Cookies boring you? Then make a huge batch and seperate them into smaller ones. Add different extracts, or maybe even some citrus peel and your completely changed it into something edgy. I like to take my sugar cookie dough left overs and add lemon zest with a little orange blossom water. Think high end tea party, they are ungodly delicious.

Gohn Crazy shares her first Thanksgiving meal with us. Can you almost taste Thanksgiving after seeing this pic? Mmmmmmm!

Pinch My Salt shows off comfort food at its best with the creamy mashed potatoes featured above and this amazing batch of sweet potato rolls. Once again, we appreciate Nicole for being our guest tweet this week. It has been a treat to visit her blog every day for yummy recipes and beautiful pictures. Check out her holiday series throughout this season for wonderful holiday recipes.

Thanks to today’s featured GNO Gals—and everyone that participated this week in Topic Talk—for their mouth-watering pictures and yummy recipes. Next week’s theme is giving and charity in celebration of our live auction to help provide Thanksgiving meals to families facing hunger this holiday season.

Wanna be featured? Please comment here or e-mail us at mommygossipgno AT gmail DOT com and provide your BLOG URL, linking to the post you’d like featured.

• Brandie at Joy of the Kitchen.
• Brandy at Not Your Average Soccer Mom.
• Cindi at Moomettegram’s Musings.
• Joy at All Because Two People Fell in Love.
• Tori at Thoughtfully Simple.

Chocolate Mini Marshmallow Velvet Fudge picture courtesy of Moomettesgram’s Musings.

Joy of the Kitchen shares a family Christmas tradition—Persimmon Cookies—and this story:

Several years ago, our family gathered at the beach for Christmas. My mom was living there at the time, so we crowded into her oceanside condo. Let me tell you, it was rough. (Ok, it was cold, but when I’m walking on the beach I just don’t care!) Anyway, Grandma brought a HUGE batch of cookies with her. All I remember was my uncle grabbing his coffee can full of cookies, tucking them under his arm and threatening (jokingly?) anyone who touched his stash.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family and I do.

Not Your Average Soccer Mom ponders whether to brine or not to brine her buttered and seasoned turkey. What do you think?

Moomettesgram’s Musings refers us to two recipe posts:

Chocolate Mini Marshmallow Fudge (shown above)
Bacon Cheese Roll Up Appetizers

All Because Two People Fell in Love absolutely recommends brining your turkey and provides great instructions and this explanation:

I brine my turkey-Alton Brown from the food network swears by it and lets face it the guy knows what he is talking about so I trust him. Basically it is just soaking your turkey in a salt water (a few other spices) bath for about 8 hrs. It does something with something (kinda science talk I don’t understand) but it makes it very juicy.

Thoughtfully Simple adds this tasty drink to the mix today. What meal would be complete without a delicious drink and dessert? How much better then if you combined the two as Thoughtfully Simple does with her pumpkin martini:

Thanks to today’s featured GNO Gals for their mouth-watering pictures and yummy recipes during this week’s holiday food-themed Topic Talk.

Wanna be featured? Please comment here or e-mail us at mommygossipgno AT gmail DOT com and provide your BLOG URL, linking to the post you’d like featured.

• Christy at Southern Plate.
• Jessica at Momma Cooks Cooking.
• Kaye at The Butler Diaries.
• Kristin at Give Me a Minute, I’ll Come Up With Something.
• Mikki at My Recipe Box.

Marshmallow Sweet Potatoes courtesy of Southern Plate.

Southern Plate provides perhaps the sweetest of the sweet treats—chocolate cobbler (shown below) and chocolate gravy.

The chocolate cobbler makes the perfect holiday dessert.

And, the chocolate gravy can be packaged up and given as delicious neighbor and friend gifts.

Check out the Southern Plate cookbook for more mouth-watering goodies.

Momma Cooks Cooking shares two delicious Pampered Chef recipes. Check out her Iced Gingerbread Cookie recipe for a sweet treat.

The Butler Diaries writes about holiday traditions and memories. She says:

I’m sure that you all know how quickly the Holidays can sneak up and before you know you are scrambling for just the right gift and groceries. Those wonderful ingredients to make that one special dish that you, your spouse, kids, Uncle Harry, Aunt Millie, or Cousin Bob just can’t live without at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, a tradition.

Every year for 32 years, the same tree was put together and decorated on December 6, my birthday, pop corn strings were made and hot chocolate topped it off. Three years ago, I had to give up the tree and buy a new one. No tree will ever be as beautiful to me as the one I grew up with. Keeping tradition, we still put the tree up and decorate it on December 6 and there is always hot chocolate.

Check out her hot chocolate recipe and other yummy holiday food ideas in this post.

Give Me a Minute… shares this tasty treat—eggnog cheesecake bars. Mmmmmm!

My Recipe Box in addition to her yummy Cream Cheese Pie recipe, shares this recipe for daily living:

1 c. love
1 c. patience
1 c. forgiveness
1 c. charity

Mix well with loving heartstrings and serve 1 tablespoon every morning, noon and night.

Thanks to today’s featured GNO Gals for their mouth-watering pictures and yummy recipes during this week’s holiday food-themed Topic Talk.

Wanna be featured? Please comment here or e-mail us at mommygossipgno AT gmail DOT com and provide your BLOG URL, linking to the post you’d like featured.