Hummus is good for you. It has protien, potasium, and adds dietary fiber. The chickpeas in hummus are also a good source of soluable fiber, which can lower your LDL undesirable cholesterol.  It’s a great staple in our GFCF Diet!

1. Use as a replacement for butter on your gfcf toast. When you add garlic and flavorings, this is really yummy.
2. Miss grilled cheese? Try a grilled hummus! Add some gfcf olives, roasted red peppers, and artichoke hearts and suddenly you are a gourmet chef. Who knew?
3. Use as a sandwich spread instead of Mayonnaise that isn’t acceptable on the gfcf diet.
4. Use it to make great garlic bread, instead of butter.
5. Use it as a flavoring instead of sour cream on top of baked potatoes or to garnish soups.
6. Use it as a coating for chicken breasts or fish fillets before rolling in rice bread crumbs.
7. Make hummus and cucumber sandwiches for a nice brunch. They are different and yummy.
8. Thin it and use for a sald dressing.
9. Dress a potato or gfcf pasta salad with it instead of gluten filled mayo.
10. If you are making a viniagrette so that it complies with the gfcf diet, use hummus in place of the mustard.
11. Make a yummy omelet filled with sauteed spinach, garlic, hummus, and gfcf olives.
12. Of course, it can be used as a dip for all of your favorite raw vegetables, gfcf chips and wheat free pretzels.
13. Hummus is good to use as a condiment for hamburgers!
14. Most tabouli salads can be made with Quinoa to make them square with the gfcf diet, adding a dollop of hummus adds protein and is delicious.

For a recent birthday we decide to start the day off with Mr. Breakfast. The foundation is our GFCF French Toast Pancakes. Add the yolks from a couple of hard-boiled or fried eggs, a strawberry and a strip of bacon and you’re all set. Believe it or not, our daughter is allergic to both bacon and strawberries - for her we used eggs, a slice of cantaloupe for the mouth, and a triangle of cantaloupe for the nose. Be creative and you can work around just about any allergy you’re up against.

We altered the recipe by omitting  the tomato sauce- making it less allergenic for our son who has been reacting badly to tomatoes.  We also added  cooked chicken to the dish, making it more of a meal, and less of a side.  It was a great meal at that - I only wish we had made a bit more Italian dressing to go with it - we’ll probably double the recipe next time.

With the firm belief that we can bake anything better homemade than a factory can mass produce, we set off on the daunting task to better this pinnacle of cookies.  I do believe that our Woggle-Bug test kitchen have managed to do it once again! Our Snickerdoodle recipe has amazed me (and somehow managed to shrink my pants waistline in the process!).  Unfortunately we haven’t been able to keep a batch around long enough to get a picture of them (sorry honey!), so you’ll have to make a batch for yourself to see (and taste) how good they are!

The results were delicious! We made pumpkin pies with this crust (I used lard instead of margarine) and it was the hit of the night. I may have to chain myself to the treadmill after thanksgiving, but I will probably make a bunch of these!

Bet you can’t  eat just one!

Always the tone of surprise, isn’t there?

On the other hand, I am grateful to Jenny McCarthy and her plan to go the distance for autism. She is one brave lady. I am sure she gets the resistance average moms get on a much higher level. Anything that brings autism treatments to the mainstream is a good thing, and I applaud her efforts. To me, it is touching that she would look at her talents and say, what can I do for this fight? I can go on Oprah.

Most of us can’t go on Oprah- but we can do what we can. Myself, I keep adding recipes to Woggle-Bug, hoping that they may help some Mom or Dad make a cookie for a child on his birthday that is yummy, and he doesn’t have to feel sad about his diet.

I think I am sending this out to all Moms of Autism today, to say thank you for everything you do. Heaven knows we have a very thankless job. But our children, and their happiness and health is worth everything we do. Try to do something to be good to yourself today.

What do you do to relieve stress? How do you recharge your batteries after a long day of battling autism? (send me your ideas.) I thought it would be good to make a list of things to do, (and NOT do) when you feel like it is all hopeless. I have found that just getting moving helps. NOTE: If you are the kind of person who is good at taking care of yourself, you will not understand what I am getting at here. This list is for those of us who kill ourselves taking care of other people until we are so sick we can’t get out of bed for three days. You know who you are. The idea here is not to be selfish and let everyone else go hang, but to remember that Mom and Dad have needs too, and they have to be met at least some of the time, or they can’t effectively meet anyone else’s.

What NOT to do:
Just for one day, I decide not to:

Read any articles about autism.

Listen to autism 1 radio.

Talk about autism with a support group.

Bake elaborate GFCF pastries.

Turn on the answering machine, and take no calls from doctors, principals, teachers or interventionists. In fact, I don’t answer the phone at all unless it is my sister who makes me laugh.

Don’t watch mindless TV or surf the internet. I find it makes it worse.

What to do instead:

Sit in a sunny window especially in winter. The vitamin D you get will make you feel better.

Worry about your own diet for a change. Cut out the coffee, pop, or what ever stimulants get you through the day. You will handle stress better without them. Make yourself a decent meal.

Rent some movies that are stupid and funny, especially ones from your youth before the trek with autism started.

Get outside and walk around a park or something. I find it is hard to be depressed if I am moving around. Hard physical labor helps too. Change all the sheets on all the beds, or clean the garage or something. You get the double pick me up of moving and having accomplished something.

Go to church. Pray. Some days take Divine Intervention. Have faith.

Do what makes you laugh. Laughing is very important. Have you noticed that people with autistic or otherwise mentally challenged children have a “look” in their eye? It is the look of someone who knows that life is deadly serious, every day. Being deadly serious every day will crush you. Go buy a “Get Fuzzy” book, read some Terry Pratchett, head over to www.cuteoverload.com or www.cutebabyfix.com. Smile sometimes.

Turn on some of the music you listened to in high school, and dance all over the house while you clean up. It is seriously funny to try to be stressed when Frankie is admonishing you to RELAX.

If you can find a babysitter- go out on a date with your spouse. The divorce rate for parents of autistic kids is over 80%. Go to the movies, take a walk- just make sure you talk about anything other than autism for once. Turn in early for a change…know what I mean? Take some couple time and guard it jealously. Your children will need both of their parents, so do the work necessary on your marriage to keep it together.

Take your kids outside and play with them. Build a snowman or fly kites or something. Try to remember that you like them:)

Work on your hobby- you know, that thing you used to do before you focused your entire life on autism? Knit, or paint or build something beautiful. Doing something creative really helps me unwind.

Put the kids to bed early after they ate their nutritious GFCF dinner and order a pizza.

Do something for someone else. This one is powerful medicine, and must be used wisely. Some of us spend every moment of ever waking day serving our child- this may not be helpful for you. But I find I can take my problems off my mind if I focus on serving someone else, like a sister or a friend.

It seems counterintuitive, but it works.

What do you do? Send me your thoughts and I will post them!

Every once in a while I get on the blogs and start reading about other people’s journey through autism with their family. It is interesting, but usually baffling to me how much venom and energy is wasted on these forums discussing controversy and ideology. I can’t get on board with any of it- I can’t stand the holier than thou neurodiversity people who look at their autism as an asset, they seem to be in denial to me. I have problems with anxiety, but that would certainly be the last thing I would want to define myself with, and I’d be happier without it. I also can’t stand the rabid parents on the other end who go on and on about finding a cure, and who are into all kinds of activism. I kinda think their time would be better spent with their child? Then there are the parents who turn their noses up at all of it and pat themselves firmly on the back for being sensible enough not to fall for any crazy alternative medicine scams. Keeping your mind firmly closed is about as useful as leaving it so wide open your brains fall out. I can’t help but wonder why there can’t be more civil discussion about what works and what doesn’t.

We have a really interesting set of circumstances at our house: Our daughter is high functioning, and has speech. Lots of speech! (In fact she loves reading the dictionary.) But on the other hand, she had sensory issues that were much more severe than most kids who are as high functioning. When we try therapies with her, she is better than most at telling us how she feels and what works. Also, her brave daddy shares some of her issues, and so he gladly acts as a guinea pig for new supplements and therapies. Because of this, we have been able to try out therapies and really gage their usefulness.

Plenty of people will go on for hours on their blogs about their opinions about how pointless and dangerous chelation is. They will be happy to explain to you that autistic kids don’t store mercury. Where’s the proof they shout- they will listen when there have been 20 duplicated double blind placebo controlled studies. Well, I say, the proof is in the pudding. Initially, we were skeptical. I think healthy skepticism is a good tool. But we did not form our opinion based on nothing. We did our homework and finally settled on Dr. Bradstreet for our daughter’s doctor. He had the right combination of an open mind while being firmly conservative. He suggested she have some chelation. We proceeded cautiously. We were careful to protect her with vitamins and minerals. What happened as a result is nothing short of a miracle. In a nutshell, our daughter’s sensory issues went away. All of them. I don’t mean they were lessened, or that over a period of three years we saw improvement- what I am saying, is within a week’s time, her sensory issues evaporated. She started telling us things like, Mom, I have a strange tingling in my fingers. The strange tingling turned out to be, um, feeling. We had been struggling for years with her handwriting. Her teacher at school, called me in a tizzy and asked us what we had done- Dorothy’s writing was miraculously beautiful! Turns out being able to feel your fingers helps your handwriting considerably. She started feeling pain- she could have an injection and not feel it before. She stopped bumping into walls and tripping. She told me that before chelation, she had trouble seeing because of all the dark lines and “sparkles” covering everything. (By the way, skeptics, seeing sparkly colors is a classic symptom of mercury poisoning.) Once she had the chelation, the dark lines and sparkles disappeared. Our daughter has a whole new way to experience the world. For those people who are contemptuous of attempts to make our autistic kids “normal” all I can say is, how can you argue with this? She loves her new found vision and abilities. We took her to the optometrist, and her glasses were now too strong. For me, the proof lies in whether or not it helps. When we looked at her before and after bloodwork, we were shocked at the amount of mercury she dumped. It was breathtaking to us. Chelation gets our stamp of approval. So the question is, why are we to be vilified for having a happy outcome?

Another controversial topic is the gfcf diet. I read a blog today from a father who seemed like he loved his autistic son more than anything, but he then went on to deride parents who “deprive their kids of normal food.” He seemed to think that the gfcf diet was just grasping at straws, and parents who used it were abusive. Well, my question from the beginning has always been, well, does it work? I can say affirmatively that it does work. My husband uses it to keep himself off the spectrum, and as for my daughter, she is a teenager now, and will tell you herself, when she has eaten something that is off her diet, she feels “buzzed” and “wiggy.” I know from watching her she certainly is calmer, more thoughtful and more social when on her diet. This father who was so contemptuous of parents like us goes on to lament his boy’s lack of speech- but he is not willing to sacrifice anything to help his boy find speech- I find that to be very sad. I have heard from other parents that their child’s speech improved dramatically after gfcf and chelation. We are not interested in the politics of autism, we are interested in results for our daughter’s well being and continued improvement.

Another topic that seems to get a lot of copy on the Internet is how upset people get about having to “fake it” and try all day to be someone they are not. Generally this is an adult Aspie who is talking about having to “behave” neurotypical all day long and how wearing and tiresome it is. They also like to complain about how awful society is for not accepting them for who they are. This group also seems to have some support from parent groups who deride any effort on the part of parents to “normalize” our children. I must be really slow on the uptake but I thought that was what parenting is? I don’t understand at all how teaching my daughter manners and how to be civil in society is a wrong. How is giving her the skills to get through a job interview wrong? The job interview is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I am not autistic. However, I am an artist, and a bit eccentric. I like to wear wacky clothes and ridiculous jewelry. If I was going for a job interview, however, I would swap that all out for a very boring business suit and sensible shoes. I would be on my best behavior. I would curb my tendency to laugh too loudly and scribble on everything. This is certainly “faking it” on my part, but it is by no means something above and beyond the call of duty, it is called being civilized. It may be difficult for my daughter to learn to keep her finger out of her nose in public, but it is certain necessary for her to do so if she wants to achieve her goals. I don’t think there is anything “unauthentic” about learning to discipline yourself.

Our high functioning children need to learn to adapt to society with out losing a bit of who they are inside. Part of that involves embracing autism, but I think too many people stop at the embracing part. We can empower our children to acknowledge their autism, and then become its master. The other night, we were at the regional spelling bee. My daughter was nervous, just like everyone else, but because she is autistic, she started making some random noises. I asked her: do you want to go up on stage tonight? Yes, she says. Well, I explain, they are not going to allow you up there if you are making noises. It would be too distracting to the other children. They wouldn’t be able to spell. Do you think you can stop? Yes, I can she says, and stops. We joke about getting her game face on, which is code for “acting normal” She gets it on. As she leaves me to go on stage, in front of a huge crowd, I whisper to her, remember, honey, you are autistic- you have such an unfair advantage over all those other kids! Her eyes twinkle because she knows her savant memory will leave all the other spellers in the dust. She placed pretty well, her nerves got the better of her in the end just like all the other kids who didn’t win that night. Being in the Bee at all was a huge success for her. She wanted to do it so badly she practiced for weeks. Would it have been better for her to remain “Authentic” and not have been able to participate?

The people who accuse parents of wanting to only normalize their children are just baiting people for attention. It is nonsense on stilts. I have never met a parent of an autistic child who wanted them to be any thing but happy and healthy. As for me, my daughter has absolute freedom to be as amazing and fabulous as she wants. In fact, now that we have been through all the treatment protocols and have her diet firmly in place, we are seeing more and more of her personality shine through, and the autism is fading into the background. Is she cured? Well, that is a loaded question, too, isn’t it? I would say, yes and no. I feel we have put her disease in a sort of remission, but there are lasting effects that we will always have with us.

I think I understand the anger and desperation which fuels a lot of the debate out there- I just think it is unproductive. Instead of focusing our energies and passion on ideology, I think it would be better if we focused it on compassion for individuals fighting a hard battle every day, parents and children, adults with autism and their families. One post I read today said parents who get online and complain about their life with an autistic child should be ashamed of themselves. How terrible they are for not loving their child enough! In my experience, parents of autistic children love their children desperately. But their battle with exhaustion, depression, stress, divorce, and constant crushing heartache is never addressed compassionately. The parents have needs too. They are judged as often as the children are. I think it would be better if we could all be nicer to each other and try to find some ways we could all buoy each other up instead of tearing each other down. But until that perfect day, it would probably be wiser if we all followed my Grandmother’s advice, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.