Christmas Cooking

Happy Christmas everyone! Tis the season of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All Men, and of course, eating!! It is that time of year when, no matter how good you might be for the rest of the year, you let go and allow yourself to indulge in rich foods both sweet and savoury, delights such as chocolate, fruit cake, trifle, and roast potatoes, stuffing, bread sauce to name a few. Being on SCD means our family couldn't eat anything on the list I've just mentioned. But I have to say it has been a bumper Christmas, with glorious food, plenty of sweet treats and best of all, the most incredible turkey I've ever tasted.

We decided this year, inspired by the SCD experiment, that we would have a go at rearing our own turkey. Being on this diet really does give you a keen interest in everything you eat, where it comes from, and what's in it. What better way to ensure you could eat the purest, best meat than to "grow it yourself!" We got our turkey chick in September from a local farmer, from whom we buy vegetables every week. I had bought an oven-ready goose from him last year for Christmas, which was delicious so I knew he would get me a good turkey, and so he did.

She was a bronze turkey, which is different from conventional supermarket turkeys, which are white. As you can see, this one had black feathers with a few white stripes on the wings. Bronze turkeys put on weight slower than white turkeys and are considered to be tastier. Our turkey had the whole back garden to run freely around in, she pecked and foraged on the windfall apples and pears, lots of grass and bugs and she got the best of kitchen scraps. We also gave her about a handful of organic pellets each day. She was a very social bird, she liked the company of the chickens and in fact would call out if the chickens left her alone. She would run up to the back door as soon as it was opened and follow me around the garden or into the garage, sometimes nearly knocking me over in her haste to catch up with me. She was really nice to have around, a much friendlier bird than the selfish chickens!

But the time came to turn turkey into meat. It was a weird day. I went out to feed her and I couldn't look her in the eye! We were very lucky to have the help of my brother-in-law, an experienced chef, to guide us with the hard part, which I won't go into any detail about, except to say my husband did the deed, and I was very glad not to have to do it! The plucking was much easier than I had imagined and was over in a matter of minutes. Our son even plucked a few feathers! The bird was then hung for 4 days in our attic, as we have no shed, and the three cats in the garage were lying in waiting!

The cleaning out was really the most disgusting part! Just as well both of us have strong stomachs! Again, my husband did most of that part of it, I just held the bird and added encouragement!! He has had plenty of experience gutting and cleaning fish but this was a whole different story! You could use the giblets for stock or gravy but I only kept the liver. The dog and the cats had a feast with the other bits.

It was cooked for four hours, draped in Caroline Rigney's free-range, nitrate-free rashers. The stock made the most amazing gravy. We accompanied it with a mixed roasted vegetable dish that I found in the RTE guide a few months ago. It is a simple dish of Brussels Sprouts, leeks, carrots, beetroot and garlic drizzled in honey and warmed duck fat (you could use olive oil), and seasoned with thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. The beetroot gives the whole thing a lovely festive colour and the roasting makes all the vegetables very sweet. I also made cranberry sauce which was incredibly easy, using honey instead of sugar.

And without doubt, it was the best turkey I've ever tasted. It was moist and had quite a rich distinctive taste. We'll definitely be thinking about doing it again next year!

A Sugar-Free Birthday Party!

A few days ago my little Einstein celebrated his sixth birthday. He was so excited about this year's birthday, counting down the days from about 3 weeks beforehand. And he was looking forward to his party in a big way. On the morning of his actual birthday he arrived into my room, way too early, about 6.15, full of excitement and happiness. I was way too tired to be that excited so I pulled him under the covers and said, "its very early, let's go back to sleep, please!". He was quiet for about half a minute then whispered, "Mom" he paused with a giddy smile, "I'm six!!!!" It was a perfect moment.

The party was the following day. Usually little Einstein's birthday parties are outdoor affairs where the kids run wild around the garden and the adults have very little to do but sit around and chat! Unfortunately this September the weather did not behave for us. It rained on and off, but we made the best of it, and the kids all got outside, from time to time, for brief spurts, usually legging it from the house to the treehouse, or running after a chicken and getting very muddy shoes.

The prospect of having a party without sugar had given me a few sleepless nights and I spent many hours on the web looking up recipes. I couldn't even picture what the table would look like without the usual party treats. No jellies, no sweets and none of my famous chocolate chip muffins. Crisps, popcorn and tortilla chips were all off the menu too. But I'm here to tell you that it IS completely possible to have a sugar-free party. We managed it, and it was a great success. I found plenty of recipes on www.pecanbread.com and www.scddatabase.com. I made marzipan sweets and toffee and presented them in cute coloured mini-muffin cases. My sister made gingerbread men, with cool currant faces and buttons, they looked fab! There was also orange jelly in a shaped mould, little bowls of strawberries, raspberries and raisins. Now, there were one or two of the kids who looked at the table despairingly, probably wondering "What's all this weird fruit and stuff?" But they all ate something. And they had fun. And no-one went home hyperactive!

The cake has always been an important element of parties at our house. I have often been up until 3am the night before a party, putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece, whether it be a fairy princess castle, a train or a pirate hat. This year I had accepted there would be nothing too fancy, no sugar means no sugarpaste icing and there are limits to using honey. Still, at least I would get to bed early! I've been making pineapple upside-down cake fairly regularly over the last few months so I decided that would serve well as a birthday cake and I adapted a recipe for meringue frosting to cover the cake. The final touch was to decorate with golden raisins. Simple but effective.

Pineapple upside-down cake
(from Raman Prasad's "Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet")

220g almond flour
3 eggs
55g butter, melted
160g honey
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
pinch cinnamon
230g fresh pineapple, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 180 C, gas mark 4. Grease a 20-23cm baking dish, I use a spring-form tin.
Mix all the ingredients, except the pineapple, in a food processor until smooth. Layer the pineapple slices on the bottom of the baking dish and then pour in the cake batter and spread it evenly. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven, allow it to cool for about 15 minutes and then carefully turn it out onto a plate (this is where the spring-form tin is very useful) so that the pineapple is on the top of the cake.

This cake is really delicious as the juice from the pineapple seeps into the cake, giving it a lovely flavour. The cake really doesn't need frosting, I just felt the need to have an iced cake for a birthday party!

Meringue Frosting

4 egg whites, at room temperature
dash of salt
160g honey, runny
150g unsalted butter, softened

Make sure your bowl and whipping attachment are dry as one drop of water will ruin your meringue.
Whip the egg whites until they are white and form soft peaks.
Slowly drizzle the honey while continuing to whisk, and add a dash of salt.

Beat the butter in a separate bowl until light and fluffy. Add the meringue gradually, beating well after each addition until thick and fluffy. Spread immediately over the cake and smooth with a palette knife.

You can flavour the icing with some grated lemon or orange rind, about 2 teaspoons of it is enough for a good sized cake. I haven't experimented with colouring yet, I will have to do that for the next birthday party!

An SCD Holiday

So, we are just back from a week in the UK. We went to Newcastle for a family wedding and I thanked the bride sincerely for getting married and giving us an excuse for a holiday! We probably wouldn't have dreamed about having one otherwise! It was a daunting prospect as the thought of being away in a strange house with God-only-knows-what-kind-of-kitchen was a bit worrying. And being on SCD means no easy frozen pizza dinners or take-away meals so its kind of a working holiday!! Still, I'm happy to report it was all worth it and we had a fantastic week.  The kitchen in our apartment was well-stocked and I managed to borrow the only 2 things missing (a food processor and a weighing scales) from the groom's Mum.  This wonderful lady had also done a bit of shopping for us, so when we arrived at the apartment (quite late) there was butter, eggs and freshly pressed apple juice waiting for us. So we didn't have to worry about shopping before breakfast!

Packing was interesting. It was our first foreign holiday for quite a while and I had no idea if it was ok to bring food on the plane, in either checked baggage or hand luggage, so I took a chance and packed a couple of kilos of ground almonds, a loaf of almond bread and a jar of coconut oil. I also brought two silicone baking moulds, for making bread and cake. I had been wondering about what to bring for the plane journey. We hadn't flown for four years and the last time, all the kids had experienced pain in their ears. Lollipops or sucky-sweets usually help this but we couldn't have those on this trip so I just brought some cookies in my bag and hoped for the best. Thankfully none of us had any ear issues at all, I don't know if this is thanks to the diet, or maybe because it was such a short flight!

Shopping was interesting too, if that's the right word. The fresh poultry section in the large local supermarket was so small, I wonder what on earth are they eating over there! The ready-meals section was 3 aisles long and the chicken section was 3 feet long!! We ate a lot of chicken for pure convenience. I could put it in the oven, then go to the park or beach for two hours, then arrive home and just cook the veggies. This kind of dinner was handy too, to keep the work-load down.  We brought picnic lunches with us most days, with almond bread sandwiches, banana pancakes, juice and lots of fruit. And there was a big flask in the apartment which we filled with coffee and brought along too! The kids absolutely love the novelty of having picnics and it helps to make up for the lack of ice-cream or candy floss or anything else you might eat when on holiday! Of course it's important to have some kind of sweet treat or snack (it is a holiday after all!) so we had banana cake, nut cookies, raisins or banana chips with us at all times!! Did I mention it was a working holiday?!?

The wedding itself went off without a hitch and the lovely staff at the Elephant on the Tyne Hotel looked after us in a kind and discreet manner. I had been in touch with them about our particular dietary requirements and they were very accommodating. And the kids didn't mind having melon and strawberries when everyone else was having cake and ice-cream, they are amazing! We had a great time at the evening party too and even managed to eat some food, from the most impressive buffet I've ever seen. My daughter and I went up with a plate just to grab some grapes but we came back with pineapple, melon, baked salmon and blue cheese. We didn't give any of these to little Einstein, that would be taking too much of a risk. He was happily entertained with the helium balloons, and a couple of cookies from my bottomless handbag!

Somewhere along the way, in the last few days of the holiday, little Einstein started to get a bit grumpy. He had a few tantrums and a few tears. This could possibly be explained by the change in routine, the strange place, the plane journey or a multitude of other reasons, but I can't help thinking it may be food related. We were careful, but not as careful as we would be at home. We ate chicken of dubious quality, we bought juice brands we didn't recognise, we ate eggs which were like rubber! But there had to be some compromise in order for us to actually have a holiday. And we really did have a thoroughly enjoyable, long-overdue holiday! We are home a few days now and he is coming back to himself, still a bit teary but no more tantrums. It has been a good reminder that we need to stick to this diet, and we will!

The Horse-Boy

I recently went to see Rupert Isaacson give a demonstration of his "horse-boy method" for children with special needs.  It was a fascinating day and he had a really positive attitude to special needs and autism in particular.  You can check out his foundation here: http://www.horseboyfoundation.org/ 

There was also a screening of his film "The Horse-boy" which tells the story of their family's trip to Mongolia to spend time with the horse-people and Shamans who live there in the hope of helping their autistic son. Now, whatever you might think about Shamans and that kind of thing, the child's improvement over the course of the film is undeniable.  The thing that really struck me was the change in his eyes.  It is the same change I've seen in little Einstein's eyes over the last six months.  His eyes are different.  I've already mentioned how people notice that he looks AT them now and not THROUGH them as he did before.  This was evident in the child in the film too.  There is more though.  It's almost as if his eyes have opened.  They are clear and vivid and curious.

One of the other things I didn't mention before is expressions. Like many autistic children, little Einstein's face was often flat and expressionless.  In the last few months I've seen so many expressions on our little man's face.  The first time I noticed them was a moment I won't forget.  We had come in from a walk and he was tired, and upset and didn't know what to do with himself.  I was asking what was wrong and trying to motivate him to do something, and he was annoyed with me.  He was sulking and being awkward.  I was on the brink of feeling frustrated when I suddenly realised he was making lots of different faces - sad, worried, annoyed, angry faces - expressions!!  Thankfully these days, the main expression on his face is pure happiness!  And he is always laughing.

Rupert Isaacson mentioned over the course of the day that a great way to connect with kids is by using toilet humour.  In the film we see the family struggling with their son's incontinence but trying to make it funny by referring to accidents as a "Code Brown!"  Coincidentally, we are going through a toilet humour stage in our house too, but the great thing about it is that all three kids are participating.  They are constantly telling me new "Poo" jokes and little Einstein races his brother to tell me the joke first!  They are sharing the jokes and making up songs, and interacting constantly.  He is even initiating games with his brother and sister.  And if they say no, he says "OK!" and doesn't have a melt-down!!  My favourite sound in the world is the sound of his voice shouting "Come on guys!"

It's bread Jim, but not as we know it...

Bread is comfort food. Easy, fast, convenient and adaptable comfort food. We use it every day, some of us even eating bread at every meal. Kids especially love their sandwiches and toast. So, it would be very difficult to manage without it, but as this diet is grain-free that means no wheat, rye, corn, spelt or any other kind of bread. The GFCF diet allows gluten free bread but these breads are highly processed and still contain a lot of ingredients which would be very hard on a sensitive or damaged gut. SCD allows no grains at all so we make our bread from nuts!

This bread is really easy to make. It doesn't contain yeast so there is no resting time. It is more like making cake really. I make a loaf every night. It is a very adaptable recipe. You can add salt, pepper, herbs, or grated cheese for a savoury version or apple, banana or raisins for a sweet version.

Basic everyday SCD Bread

60g butter, melted
3 eggs (I use duck's eggs, I find the bread rises really well, but large or extra-large hens eggs work fine)
1 tablespoon honey
280g ground almonds
1 pinch baking soda

Put your melted butter into a good-sized bowl, add the 3 eggs and whip them together with a fork until they are nice and yellow and well mixed.  Add the honey and give it a quick stir. Then add the ground almonds and baking soda and mix well. You can use an electric mixer for this but I just use a tablespoon, it comes together very easily and doesn't need to be mixed for too long.

When it is well-mixed, and looks a bit like thick yellow porridge, turn it into a loaf tin. I line mine with parchment paper as the tin is ancient and looking a bit rusty! But if you have a nice new tin you can just grease it with butter. Smooth the top of the bread. Bake for one hour at low temperature, 150-160 C, Gas mark 2 or 3. I usually bake it at Gas 3 for the first 45 minutes and then turn it down to Gas 2 for the last 15 minutes. You need to watch it in the last 15 minutes as the top might burn so if it's looking a bit dark, cover it with foil.

After an hour, take it out and cool it on a wire rack. It is totally delicious hot and smothered in butter! It toasts well too!

"Gotta Make Soup"

 “I gotta go make soup” has become a bit of a catchphrase for me during the last few months, since starting our new food experiment. I might be out for a cup of coffee with my fab foodie friend, and after a while she’ll ask if I want another, to which I reply “No sorry, gotta go make soup.” I really should be more organised at this stage and batch-cook, but I don't have a chest freezer so fitting everything in the fridge would be tricky! I managed it once, and as you can see there was very little room for anything else!

Soup and stock making has become second nature at this stage, which is just as well as it needs to be done fairly often. With 5 hungry people in our house, food just disappears as fast as I can make it.  I used to be the type of person who stuck religiously to a recipe, weighing out every item carefully, but in the last four months I find I’m making soup in the “toss it in and see” method! It’s much quicker than weighing everything, and the soup is delicious, if slightly different every time! Little Einstein’s favourite soup is squash and vegetable soup so I make a lot of this. Sometimes it tastes more of squash and sometimes it tastes more of leek or carrot but he eats it every time. His appetite is huge. He has two bowls of soup every day when he comes home after school and today he had three!

Soup really is one of the most nourishing things you can eat, and so is a very important part of the SCD. Soups should be made from home-made stock (which is surprisingly easy) and they will keep in the fridge for a week or so and of course can be frozen. I make stock once or twice a week from a chicken or duck carcass or from beef or pork bones. If you have chicken drumsticks or thighs for dinner you can keep the bones in the freezer until you have a good collection of them and make lovely stock from these. You don’t even have to defrost them first.  Just put them in a BIG pot with some vegetables for flavour, like onion, leek, or carrot and boil for a few hours. I like to have different types of stock so I can vary the flavour of soups or sauces for dinner. I made fish stock once but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to do that again, the SMELL in my kitchen was rotten!!

Squash and Vegetable soup

1.5 to 2 litres of stock, chicken or duck is best

1 small butternut squash, or ½ a large one, peeled, de-seeded and cut into chunks

1 or 2 leeks, washed, trimmed and sliced

1 onion, peeled and chopped

1 or 2 carrots, peeled and sliced

Parsley, about a handful, chopped (or any other herbs you have)

Salt and Pepper

Put everything into a large pot, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour. Blend until smooth.

This makes a nice thick soup, which I find is easiest for little people, they don’t tend to spill so much! You can play around with this recipe too, adding broccoli or garlic or any other veg really. The veg I use are pretty easy on the gut, and so are good choices when you’re starting out on the diet.

Progress!

Yesterday was our 4 month anniversary of starting the diet.  And what a difference it has made to all of us. Speaking for myself, I'm full of energy, my sinus pain has decreased, my asthma has improved and best of all I've lost 32 pounds!!  My husband has lost weight too, and feels great.  I don't really see much change in the older kids, other than they are eating better, both of them were pretty healthy before we started. But the changes in my younger son have improved the quality of life of everyone in the family.

Living with a child with autism can be pretty difficult at times, for everyone in the house. We used to have to tiptoe around him quite a lot, and give in to his demands. He could get upset easily over the smallest things. Sometimes it would take ages to figure out what he was crying about, it could just be that someone said the wrong thing to him, or that someone said something in the wrong way.  I had to have schedules for him every day so he would know what was happening during the day. He would get very anxious and sometimes aggressive if there was something unexpected. He needed to be watched while eating and dressing as he would often drift off and forget what he was doing, or just sit there as if in a trance. My other kids would have to be careful around him as the slightest loud word or even simply moving something he was playing with might upset him. He didn't play with them much, or even talk to them, he preferred his own company.  He could be very lethargic and sometimes the only thing he was interested in was the tv or the Wii.

I have been keeping a diary since Day 6 on the diet, to track exactly what foods he is eating and any reaction he might have to any particular food.  Some days I also wrote a note on his form and mood and it has been a good way to remind myself of his progression.  About 2 weeks after starting the diet, my husband noticed that our little man was staring at his brother and sister across the dinner table.  He was watching them and listening to what they were talking about. This was definitely new. A few days after that, I wrote that he was staying in my hugs for longer, and not pushing me away, and that he seemed "different." After a few weeks, he began to reject his schedules, at first he would ask me to change them, or remove an item, and then he started tearing them up! Even at school, where he loved his laminated schedule on his desk, he started ticking off boxes before he had completed tasks, especially if it was a task he didn't like! So, he was thinking differently.

On the 31st January, he asked me a "WHY" question for the first time. A few days after that he said "Imagine if" in the car on the way to school, "Imagine if those two cars crashed, they would be broken."  It was all I could do to drive the rest of the way to school, as the tears were running down my face. He had never said anything like this before.  I knew it was a big step.

These days, these words are part of his everyday language.  He talks all the time, about everything! In fact, he never shuts up!! I hear him running to his brother or sister, calling them, and saying "You know what guys..." The interaction between them all is just wonderful, and particularly between the two brothers. They share a room and it is so heartwarming to stand outside their door after the lights have been switched off and quietly listen to their conversations. Their LONG conversations.

For many people the first change they notice about him, is in his eyes.  He looks right at people now, and not through them.  He is starting to show interest in the other kids at school, and in visitors to our house.  He is more interested in doing things for himself, like dressing and eating. He is so much more content in himself. 


He is no longer in a world of his own, he has come back into ours.

A Sugar-Free Easter!

Easter is the first big celebration we've had to deal with on the diet. We've had one birthday so far too, but as it was my daughter's and she's 11, it passed off quietly, she was happy enough to have a trip to the cinema and a low-key family party, with banana cake! But Easter is a different story. It's basically the chocolate holiday! So how do you celebrate Easter without ANY chocolate or even any sweets?

Every year since the kids were very small, we've been having an Easter egg hunt during the Easter holidays with two of my good friends and their kids. It's a fun afternoon and the kids usually end up with a nice bucket full of the usual small eggs, kinders, cream eggs etc. I had thought we would skip it this year but my daughter insisted we should do it, as its a tradition! As a happy coincidence, it was our turn to have it at our house. Instead of chocolate eggs, the kids painted hard-boiled eggs and we hid those instead. They had great fun painting the eggs. They painted numbers on some of them and after finding them, these numbered eggs corresponded to little prizes, like balloons, bubbles, paints and little model planes.

I also made some tiny meringues using just egg-whites and honey, and we put these inside some plastic eggs kept from the past few years. We hid these and the painted eggs around the garden and the kids had great fun trying to find them. They all ended up with 4 to 8 eggs in their buckets, much less than they usually would have but the fun part was really in the hunting for them. The best part for us parents was we didn't have to worry about any of them over-doing it and being sick later on!!

On Easter Sunday, instead of chocolate eggs, we had pancakes, lots and lots of banana pancakes. These have been a huge hit in our house, and in many of my friends' houses. I've passed this recipe onto many Mums already. Its such an easy sneaky way to get banana and egg into any fussy kids. They look exactly the same as the usual pancakes, as you'll see from the photo. And they don't need any sweetener as the banana really makes them sweet enough. (Although they do taste even nicer with a little drop of honey, or a small spoon of home-made raspberry jam!)  All you do is put 1 banana (very ripe!) and two eggs into a food processor or blender and whip them up for about a minute until they are well blended. This mixture makes about 3/4 pancakes. I fry ours in coconut oil as my younger son is avoiding dairy at the moment, but they are lovely fried in butter too.  They cook much quicker than normal pancakes so you do have to watch them carefully and cook them on a fairly low heat.

As a special Easter treat for the kids, we got them two Easter bunnies!!

What's for dinner?

So, what is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet? What exactly does grain-free, lactose-free, sugar-free mean?

The basic premise of the diet is that a damaged gut cannot properly digest complex carbohydrates, so that means the only carbohydrates we eat are easily-digested monosaccarides, which are fruit, honey and non-starch vegetables. Starchy vegetables like potatoes and parsnips are not allowed.  No grains means no bread, porridge, pasta or rice. No lactose means no milk or cream but butter is allowed. No sugar means, well, no sugar! And nothing with sugar in it. So that rules out most processed food. So SCD is more of a lifestyle change than a diet. I really had to re-think my shopping list! When we started I gave away packs and packs of pasta, porridge, rice cakes, flour and sugar. Now my shelves are full of nuts, fruit, veg and honey. It's like being in a different house!

So what DO we eat?  Well, plenty actually!  Meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts and lots and lots of eggs! We are an egg-mad family now! My younger son eats 4 or 5 eggs a day, as many as possible from our own back garden.

A typical day's menu for us goes a bit like this:

Breakfast: Eggs, turkey patties, nut bread with some fruit.

Lunch: Pancakes made with eggs and banana, or soup, or nut bread with jam or cheese

Dinner: Meat or fish with vegetables, but no potatoes!

Snacks can be fruit or home-made nut biscuits or cakes

It probably sounds a bit daunting but it is surprising how quickly you get used to eating differently. And children really are very adaptable. My older son actually asked me could we continue to eat the nut bread after we're finished the diet as he prefers it. They have accepted the lack of sweets and biscuits with hardly a complaint. And the best part is that they are all full of energy, and fighting fit! Most importantly of all, my younger son, who is autistic, is improving every day.

A Little Bit of Background

Last September I was in my local shopping centre when I bumped into an old friend who I hadn’t seen for a while. He asked how I was. Now if I’d been having a good day, I probably would have said “I’m grand thanks” and exchanged pleasantries and left and that would have been that. But I happened to be having a really bad day and I told him so. I told him how my youngest child had been diagnosed with autism a year ago and how he had been particularly difficult this morning. So my marvelous friend took me to a chair and we had a long chat about it. “I have this book”, he said “about a diet that treats autism, and it impressed me so much, I went to meet the author. You HAVE to read it!”

So, a few weeks later I read my friend’s copy of “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” by Natasha Campbell McBride. The book describes a natural treatment for autism, and other conditions. It explains in detail the connection between the functions of the digestive system and the brain. It describes how gut dysfunction can affect brain function and makes the point that most children with autism also have digestive problems. And most importantly, it outlines a diet to treat these issues, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. This diet was devised in 1951 (so it’s not a new fad!) to treat Celiac disease and other digestive disorders. It began to be used to treat autism in the early 2000s.

After that I read “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” by Elaine Gottschall which gives even more detail about the diet. Elaine Gottschall used the diet to treat her daughter who suffered with severe ulcerative colitis and neurological problems. After her daughter was completely recovered, Elaine went back to college to study diet and nutrition in detail. She wrote her book in 1987. In a reprint of the book in 2003, she added a Chapter on Autism. Her book contains many testimonies from parents of autistic children on the benefits of the diet.

So, I felt in my bones, that we had to try this diet. Whether it worked or not, once I knew it was out there, I just felt we had to give it a go. So we decided that as a family, we would all do it together. And the kids managed to convince me to wait until after Christmas!! So we started our new diet adventure on the 4^th of January.