Hi! I am Mel or Melanie for long. I grew up in a large family with very naturally minded parents. My dad had a wheat and dairy allergy when wheat and dairy allergies were not commonplace, so we grew up trying different foods and diet types.
The most disgusting thing I ever ate, as a kid, was tofu BBQ ribs. No offense to tofu but they were not delicious. Health food has come a long way since the 80’s and 90’s, and I am very grateful.
My mother let me spend a lot of time in the kitchen with her and I developed a love for cooking, baking and all things food.
After I married my best friend and we had our own children, seven darling babies with seven different personalities and seven or more different food needs, I had to learn a new way of cooking.
Watching my children suffer because I fed them food that hurt their stomachs was hard for me. Learning, developing, and adapting had to come next.
I learned to tweak everything in our lives to accommodate food issues. I have been blessed to help families on our journey find delicious adaptations for their family favorites too.
Food can be delicious and nutritious, even if it is dairy, gluten, egg, nut, corn, meat or whatever else free, you just have to learn how to Tweak It the right way. Come along with me and you can learn to Tweak It With Mel.
It All Started With a Loose Tooth
When my second daughter was four years old, she came running in from the backyard one day. “Mom,” she yelled! “I lost my tooth!” She didn’t have any loose teeth and she was only four so I wasn’t sure how to respond. She was so excited! Her older sister had already lost a tooth and so she knew this was a momentous day.
I did not celebrate with her because I was so baffled. She held out her hand to me and in her little palm she held chunks of a tooth, a molar, to be exact. That’s not usually how those fall out so we set a dentist appointment and off we went.
Before the Tooth
A little background information on this daughter, will be helpful. When she was between one and two years old, I started noticing some interesting behavior. She couldn’t sit and play like my older daughter did. She was a “dump and spread” player. Once she dumped out all the toys, crayons, blueberries, etc and spread them all over, she walked away.
She also couldn’t focus on a person’s face very well. Her eyes bounced all over my face when I spoke to her but mostly around my face into space. Night terrors often occurred and she would wake up screaming. Also, it was difficult for her to fall asleep. It was like she was trying to keep herself awake, even when she was beyond exhausted. She would be asleep and then she would shake her head and open her eyes. Some days, she would be a normal little kid and other days she was angry and distant and difficult. I was at a loss and didn’t really know what to do.
One day, I was researching night terrors and a mom somewhere in the blogaverse, who I am still grateful for, shared her story. This mother, with a daughter who had night terrors, discovered that if her daughter didn’t have any food coloring or dye that day she would not have night terrors. A light bulb went off in my brain. That was it. My brother had had similar issues years before when he was small and I had totally forgotten about it.
Checking Food Labels
The next day, I checked labels on everything in our house. Pickles had food coloring. Mac and cheese had food coloring. Blueberry bagels had food coloring. (Seriously! Blueberries stain your fingers just by looking at them. Turns out there weren’t blueberries in the bagels at all, there were chunks of raisins dyed with red #40 and blue #5. Wow! I had no idea!) I took her off every tiny bit of dye and coloring with prayers and high hopes. Days passed and no change occured, but I was determined.
At exactly the two week mark, there was a shift. I had a conversation with my little girl and she looked in my eyes. That was miraculous to me. I watched her sit and hold a little toy doll. She was moving the arms and the legs and imagining. She played with that one toy for minutes and I just sat in awe! When bedtime came, she easily calmed down and actually slept through the night.
A couple weeks after that miraculous day, we went to a cousins house and that little daughter of mine found some M&M’s. She ate five M&M’s and within minutes her demeanor changed. For another two weeks, she was back to the previous version of herself.
After that, we had a serious conversation about food coloring. By this time she was three years old and spoke with the cutest little voice. Anytime anyone offered her food she would ask, “It have food coloring in them?” Most people couldn’t understand what she was saying and I had to interpret.
Back to the Dentist
Fast forward to that tooth experience… when we sat down with the dentist, he had a list of questions because every single one of her teeth had something wrong with it. Does she go to bed with a sippy cup? Lots of gummy candy? Has she fallen and hit her mouth? Does she have food allergies?
I told the dentist about the food coloring. “Sounds like you need to look more into food allergies.”
You know? The funny thing is I grew up in a house of food allergies but I hadn’t ever thought about checking my own children. I was young and just living day to day as best I knew how and I have to give my young self a lot of grace and love and patience.
The Search and The Journey
This revelation launched us into years of “figuring stuff out”. We did food journals, we did elimination diets, we cried, we tried weird foods, we tried supplements, we read books, we called grandma, we googled, we laughed, we learned a lot. When I say we, I mostly mean me. I felt driven to figure it all out. A mom or dad sometimes just knows things about their children. My 3 year old coined the phrase “mom eyes”. I felt like my “mom eyes” helped guide us through it all. In the end, we decided that my daughter needed to avoid gluten and dairy 80% of the time, food dyes 100% of the time, eat as clean as possible, drink good clear water and say her prayers.
She wasn’t the end of the story though. My third child, a son, couldn’t eat peanuts for years. My fourth is allergic to wheat (not gluten) and dairy. Number five has a hard time with refined sugars and dyes. Number six has a much stronger reaction to dairy and can’t have any at all. And the little caboose, number 7 has mineral absorption problems among other things, so food in general, is a problem. Ha! He’s just a party.
We are still working on figuring things out in our house. Allergies make things difficult at times but also adventurous. The way we handle things has changed through the years (hello teenagers!) and being flexible has been key. As my kids have aged, their digestive systems have improved, and for that we are grateful. We have learned how to maneuver through family parties, community gatheries, eating out, and traveling. I have made my fair share of really nasty meals but also have had moments where people ask, “Is this really gluten and dairy free?! It’s so good!” and I feel like a rockstar!
I don’t have all the answers but I hope what I have learned can help you if you are dealing with some of the same issues as us!