Mealtime

How do you handle meals at your house?  Are you a short order cook who feels burnt out?  Are you a new parent who worries about how you will coordinate it all once your baby starts to eat foods.....stressed about how you will meet the needs of everyone in your family?  

So many parents struggle with how to handle mealtime so that they can accommodate the low protein diet and the regular diet without cooking many different meals, and the answer is simple......find recipes that you can convert and make both PKU friendly and high protein friendly.  When you do this you aren’t necessarily cooking two separate meals even though you are accommodating two different types of diets.

For example, my 12 yr old daughter’s favorite meal (right now) is fajitas.  This is a simple one to accommodate both diets.  We simply cut up the vegetables that will be put into the fajita and cook them up (she likes green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, onions). Once they are done you pull out the low protein portion and season it how you see fit, and then what is left in your pan you can season how you see fit, and if you want add meat to it (if you are a meat eating family).  Top the fajitas with low protein cheese for your family member who has PKU, and top the normal ones with regular cheese, sour cream, or whatever else you like on them.  One meal to accommodate two diets without a lot of work.

Another one I like to make is a pot roast in a slow cooker with veggies.  I have two slow cookers and in one I will put the pot roast with the roast seasonings, and in the other I will put the veggies with seasoning.  When it comes time to eating I take out the veggies for my child with PKU and add the rest to the roast.  Add a roll (low protein for the person with PKU and regular for everyone else).  Another meal made for everyone without much effort.  

One I made recently (found the recipe on an app called Mealime) is Cheesy Penne with Zuccinin, Corn, and Basil.  I cooked all the veggies as the recipe called for, and made both regular pasta and low protein pasta.  Topped the low protein pasta with the veggies and sauce, added a little low protein cheese on top, and then the rest of the sauce I added to the regular pasta and topped with the two types of cheese it called for.  Add some garlic bread (regular and again low protein), and one meal cooked, but two different diets managed.  

I also highly recommend parents start young with introducing their children to various types of foods so they become accustom to them.  So many times I see parents with young children/toddlers or preschoolers saying how they can’t get their child to eat anything but xyz.  They only eat that because that is what you introduced to them early on, or it is their favorite foods and they know you will give in and feed them their favorites if they hold out long enough.  

 One thing to consider and remember is when introducing a new food introduce it along with a favorite item.  Put it on their plate and don’t make a big deal out of it.  Simply serve it and see what they do with it.  The more you try to force a food on them the more a toddler or preschooler is going to push back and attempt to assert their independence.  Also you have to often introduce a new food to them multiple times sometimes before they will even try it especially if it isn’t something they are used to.  I know this can be disheartening especially with how expensive low protein foods are.....all the more reason to find recipes that can be adapted so you aren’t wasting a lot of food.  

Another idea is to consider taking the foods that could be made into baby food easily and blended them in a food processor early on to introduce them to the taste.  For example, the pasta recipe I used in my example a few paragraphs up.....you could put that in a blender or food processor and blend it up....adding water as necessary to get it to the consistency that your child can handle (very puréed when little, and with chunks as they got older).  Now remember when doing this you do need to calculate out the phe/protein/exchange to count so you will want to measure out what you are giving your child before processing it.  

I found when making new foods that my children were more easily willing to try them when they look similar to what everyone else is eating, and as they got older seeing that their food was coming out of the same pot/pan as everyone else’s also made them feel included.  

About the author:  Michelle Hardy currently lives in Wisconsin and is the mother to nine children (3 with PKU), and a grandmother.  If you would like to contact Michelle directly you can email her at michelle.d.hardy@gmail.com