What's Owen Eating?

macadamia nut/ egg pancake with apples

  What exactly is Owen eating? Mostly cream, eggs, and macadamia nuts. Have you priced out macadamia nuts lately? I told Rod that we should just travel to Hawaii and bring back nothing but macadamia nuts in our luggage. It might not be any cheaper , but it would be a lot more fun. A friend of ours is from Hawaii and on his last trip home he brought us back two 11 oz bags for about $10 each. We've almost used up a whole bag in just over a week! Our local grocery store has a 3 oz jar for $10.98. Macadamia nuts are so fatty though that Owen is able to have quite a bit of fruit with them and he loves fruit.

The scale reads 47.0 not 470

Cereal made ahead for quicker meals

 One of Owen's pre-diet favorite meals was "Cold cereal, Cold milk" . He doesn't get his old cereal or milk on the diet, but we are able to get something similar.  This is Fiber One cereal with chopped nuts (almonds and pecans this time) added, served with cream instead of milk. As an added bonus he gets 1/4 t of calcium powder in it.

 Scrambled eggs are probably the most "normal" looking meal Owen gets. We have recipes for eggs with bacon, sausage, kielbasa, and just plain cheese. There is a lot of cream and butter mixed into the eggs, but they absorb it nicely.

Pre- cooked hamburger patty topped with butter

Then cheese

Served with whipped cream "ice cream"

 Can you see the butter dripping off that hamburger? I finally got smart and just fed him half of the butter straight. I remembered snitching pats of plain butter when I was little and tried it with Owen. He gets a vitamin tablet crushed in his whipped cream "ice cream".

 Sometimes he just gets a milkshake for dinner. A whole dinner in a milkshake is almost too much, but it makes a special treat! We also have a meal with a half sized milkshake served with chicken and broccoli. The milk shake is mostly whipped cream, but being on a 2:1 ratio means he does get a tiny bit of actual ice cream in it. There is a brand of sugar free chocolate syrup he can have on the diet. He also gets vitamins crushed in the milkshake.

 This is one of Owen's favorite meals! He loves these little sausages and they are fatty enough that he can have a fairly nice portion of broccoli with them. The butter cooks right in, so it doesn't feel oily.
We have to scrape any extra oil off his plate and feed it to him. Tonight, he started crying about 5 minutes after dinner saying "My mouth is still oily! It won't get out of my mouth! ". We are trying different recipes to keep the oil from coating his mouth.

 Fun dishes are helping the transition. Even if he doesn't have the ability to eat his choice of food, he can choose which plate to eat it off of. About a week before our hospital stay, Owen started asking me where his doggie plate was. He didn't actually HAVE a doggie plate, but that didn't keep him from asking where it was. We asked friends and family to keep and eye out for a doggie plate since I hadn't been able to find one. Grandma Carolyn came to the rescue with this adorable set! She also found a cute set for Morgan who has been feeling a little left out lately.
 The diet is going a lot smoother now. We have recipes for some of Owen's favorite foods, and I've been able to make some things in advance. I'm still spending a LOT of time in the kitchen, and I'm struggling with feeding Owen and the rest of the family. Owen is happier if we all eat similar things at the same time, but I think it's going to be a while before that happens regularly. Our biggest challenge this week has been getting the baking soda in him. The keto team wants him to get 1t. of baking soda a day to counter acidosis, but adding it to his food made everything taste HORRIBLE (yes, I checked). I asked advice on the keto yahoo group and found that most parents added to a drink instead. Now we are giving him his baking soda twice a day in water with a couple of drops of flavored stevia and he's taking it great. I've been told that the first month of the diet is the hardest. I can say it's getting easier already. A few more weeks and we should be a lot more comfortable.