We live a pretty frugal life here in the SimplyBurbs home, not a whole lot of stuff being bought, and we definitely watch our budget, including our grocery budget. I aim for no more than $75 a week for all five of us, including household and personal items. Some weeks are good, some not so much.
But all that rather went out the window a couple of weeks ago.
The eczema that My Little Boy has had little patches of for the past six months, suddenly got A LOT worse. Worse to the point that we came close to taking him to Urgent Care in the middle of the night because he, and My Good Man and I, were miserable with the scratching and the lack of sleep. It had been a long week.
So, we decided to try putting him on an elimination diet, and we saw instant improvements. Four days later, you would not have recognized our Little Boy for the same miserable baby four nights earlier.
The downside?
No more
wheat
gluten
eggs
soy
corn
dairy
or nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers etc)
Yikes!
Our plan is to try reintroducing things gradually, and try to narrow down what is causing him issues. But all that is another post.
With their birthday last week, the prospect of baking him and Baby Girl a cake for their first birthday celebration filled me with dread ... no wheat, eggs, dairy etc etc? But friends better versed gave me a couple of recipes that would fit our needs, and the path looked a little clearer.
I decided on this Honey Yogurt Cake from the Nourishing Meals blog, which didn't look too tricky. Of course what I hadn't factored on was that my baking supplies are geared towards a wheat- , dairy-, egg-eating household.
So I had to buy everything from scratch. Which was a lot more expensive than I could have possibly imagined.
All in, the ingredients for the cake cost $45.10 (which includes the price of a bag of Peanut M&Ms ... bought to assuage the stress of the whole expensive ingredient buying process - ahem!)
And then I got home and realized that I didn't have vanilla extract, and sent My Good Man back out to the store; another $4.99! (Bringing the total for our homemade, supposed to be inexpensive, cake, to $50.09!!)
But the end result? The cake was good! Good enough that My Good Man went back for seconds and thirds, and the two Little Ones enjoyed it. Success!
And it was easy to make! Double yay!
Will we be making it again? For sure! (and especially now that I have all the ingredients!) Would we make it by choice, if we didn't have any food restrictions to cook for? Hmmm, maybe! It really was pretty good!
Do you have diet restrictions in your house, or foods you just prefer to avoid? Any favorite 'go to' recipes? Feel free to share in the comments below; I'd love to hear from you!
