Planning a new and improved Living with PKU… I’m back!

Hi everyone

After a long hiatus from blogging I’ve finally decided that it’s time to revive things and get it all moving again.

I hope you’ve all been well over the last… well… many months (!) since I’ve been gone and certainly a lot has happened in my life.

Perhaps most notably (for the purposes of this blog at least) has been my ongoing struggle with my diet since having my daughter, who is now a big 1 year old! With motherhood has come a whole new set of challenges with the diet and I freely admit to the fact that I have found it much harder to maintain my levels than I thought I would.

Anyway, enough on that.

The point is, I’m back. I’m thinking the blog will take a bit of a different direction to it’s previous format of almost 100% recipes. Don’t worry, I’ll still be posting recipes, but if I’m honest I no longer get a lot of time to get into the kitchen and experiment. Hopefully that will change as Miss E continues to grow up and become more independent. However, I intend to invite guest bloggers to join us, cover events and try out other new things too. A URL change might also be in there… we’ll see!

Please bear with me while I figure out what feels right for the new and improved Living with PKU

Testing…

Just testing to see if I can post by email

Sent from my HTC

Best ever PKU low protein pancakes

As you all know I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging until we’re in a living situation that allows me to get back into the kitchen and cook on a more frequent basis. We move next week and I’m really looking forward to it – a kitchen will a full sized fridge, a splashback instead of the bare plasterboard wall we’ve got now and on the same level as the rest of the house which will make looking after my daughter and cooking at the same time much easier!

Still, sometimes no matter how much you want to avoid it (in my case for fear of ruining said bare plasterboard wall… my mother in law would kill me!) you have no choice but to cook. And as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Well, this morning I spent most of my time procrastinating… about my breakfast! You see, I wasn’t particularly well organised in my shopping this week and I didn’t plan my meals particularly well so here I am on friday morning, hanging out for my husband’s pay day on Monday, and with excrutiatingly little in the fridge and cupboards except for low protein products, various out of date things (oops!) and a few odds and ends that don’t exactly equal a meal. Don’t get me wrong, it was actually quite productive! During my procrastination I managed to feed, bath and play with the baby, put her down for a nap, make myself a low protein latte while I delighted in the gentle hum, hissing of steam  and delicious coffee smell coming from my home espresso machine, clean the kitchen and bathroom and put on a load of washing. Eventually though, it was inevitable that I was not going to be able to ignore my hunger any longer.

I knew I was going to have to get creative if I wanted a meal that was going to fill me up and not blow my morning’s phe budget. I have been avoiding doing too much low protein cooking (or any cooking for that matter) but I decided to summon up everything I had to make myself a batch of pancakes from an unknown recipe.

Here is the final product:

I’ve got to say, I’m pretty pleased with them. Now, they’re NOT phe free. I attribute that as to why they’re so good. The good thing is though, you don’t need to eat the whole recipe. My next experiment is going to be making this recipe oil free.

Kate’s PKU Pancakes (based on a recipe from Fate Special Foods)
200g fate baking mix (you can try any other baking mix you have but I can’t guarantee results)
1 tsp baking powder
450ml water
50ml oil
A good splash of vanilla extract (I didn’t measure but I used a lot)
Pinch salt
1 – 2 tablespoons sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1 medium egg (6g protein/6 50mg exchanges)

Method
Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a hand mixer until well combined. The batter should be quite thick. Heat a frying pan at a touch over medium heat and put in one or two squirts of low calorie spray (don’t use pouring oil or butter – it will make the pancakes overly greasy, gummy and not very nice).

Spoon the mixture into the frying pan and tilt the frying pan in circles (let me know if you want me to put up a video of what I mean by this) to get the mixture to spread out a bit but there’s no need to do anything else to it. You will need to flip the pancakes when lots of bubbles appear on the surface but BEFORE they burst. It takes a few goes but you’ll get the hang of getting the perfect colour soon!

To find the grams/exchanges per pancake simply divide 6 by the number of pankcakes or pikelets you make. I used a large soup ladle to put the mix into the frying pan and I made 12 pancakes plus a small pikelet.

Taking a break from blogging

Hi everyone,

You might have noticed that Living with PKU has become a little quiet lately. For various reasons I’ve decided to pull back from blogging and my efforts in PKU advocacy. The blogging will hopefully be a temporary hiatus and I still might get the chance to post once in a while until I can get back to how often I’d like to be posting.

At the moment I’m just not in a situation where I have the ability to cook as much as I like and… well… my cooking experiments are pretty much the entire basis of this blog Hopefully this will change in the near future but I’ve just moved from Australia to England with my husband and baby daughter and until our belongings arrive via a sea shipment we’re living in a converted barn at my mother-in-law’s. It’s nice (apart from the fact I keep bashing my head on the low beams!) but small and I’m a bit worried about doing too much in the kitchen because aside from the fact that it’s very small and not very functional, the splashback hasn’t been done yet and I’m afraid of ruining the plasterboard!

On my move wishlist is a good sized kitchen so hopefully that will see the return of my low protein cookery experimentation and blogging

As for the PKU advocacy, well… I’m pulling away from that for reasons that I won’t go into as I don’t think it would be right of me to be particularly public about the events that have led up to this decision but I do not forsee me feeling compelled to do more advocacy work any time soon. Maybe I’ll get back into it one day but for now I do not have the heart to keep going with it.

Please keep coming back and using the recipes I have posted so far and I’ll see you all when I am in a position to cook more Happy cooking!

Decadent low protein PKU chocolate cake

I was going through my stack of recipes for a friend last night and I came across this recipe for a low protein chocolate cake that I had. It’s good! Really good! In fact I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t made it more often (wait, yes I am… I was pregnant and didn’t think I could control my chocolate cravings if I had anything chocolatey in the house lol).

I thought I had blogged this recipe quite a while ago but I’ve gone back through the site and I can’t find it so I’m posting it for you now.

I am not sure where the original recipe for this chocolate cake came from, but I know it has been around for a while and it’s delicious. This recipe is not free, and the protein content is entirely dependent on the brand of cocoa you use, so make sure you calculate it before you start eating.

The cake is rich, most and light in texture – my husband (non PKU) loved them and I ahve served them to non-PKU friends who didn’t seem to notice they weren’t normal high protein cupcakes! I found the cooking times in the recipe weren’t that accurate and that I had to cook my cupcakes for a lot longer than stated in the recipe, though this may be because I used silicon cupcake cases instead of paper cases (and had never used them before nor since!). Make sure you don’t skimp on the sifting/whisking step as that is part of what makes this cake recipe so darn good!

This chocolate cake is light, moist and best of all it's low pro!

Ingredients
6 tbsp oil
2 tbsp cocoa
1.5 cups of Loprofin
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup of cold water or coffee
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp salt

Method
Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees C

Sift the Loprofin into a bowl. Add the remaining dry ingredients and whisk together (the whisk is important as it helps to keep the air in the mixture).

Add all liquid ingredients and mix on high with an electric mixer until the batter is nice and smooth.
Pour the mixture into a cake tin or cupcake cases.

Bake at 175 degrees C for 35 – 40 minutes for a cake, or 20 – 30 minutes for cupcakes. The cake is done when a skewer comes out clean. Decorate as desired and don’t forget… you can have some fun with it! This recipe freezes well.

PKU friendly weight loss meals

If you’ve read my last post you’ll know that I’ve challenged myself to prove that you can lose weight and stay on the PKU diet. To do this I joined Weight Watchers – the onus is still on me to plan and cook my own meals but the tools available to me help me to find fresh ideas, balance the amounts and quality of food I’m putting into my mouth and give me the support – and accountability – I need to make it happen. [Edit: I have since removed the posts about the weight loss seeing as I couldn't dedicate the time to blogging about it. The weight loss efforts continue on though, I haven't given up!]

I started my weight loss challenge on Thursday and so far I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I haven’t had any soft drink (my biggest weakness – when I was small I was given soft drink to wash my formula down because it was all that helped but now I can’t seem to exercise any self control when it comes to fizzy drinks), I have not gone over my phe allowance once and I have provided my husband and myself with healthy, nutritious meals every day. I have not been hungry once. An added bonus seems to be that my weekly grocery shop was cheaper than usual thanks to my meal plans!

I’ve even found some products on the supermarket shelf that have helped me satiate that mid-afternoon sugar craving without going overboard!

At the moment I’m eating 15 – 18g protein per day. I know that’s a lot for some people but I truly believe this could be done on less with some clever substitutions.

There is a lot out there that I think we probably don’t consider eating that a lot of us can work into our diet… This week during my weekly shop I came bome with Weight Watchers Cream Cheese (2.2g per serve), Weight Watchers Belgian Chocolate Brownies (1.5g) and Buttercup Wholegrain Bread (2g per slice). I also bought some goodies at my weekly Weight Watchers meeting that fill me up nicely and I can work into my diet.

If anything, the biggest problem I have had since Thursday is keeping my phe intake consistent. It’s lower than it’s been since my daughter was born in December, but I need to work on the consistency more.

Here is my food diary so far. I will start from Friday – I didn’t start until half way through Thursday because I didn’t sign up until then!

Friday

Breakfast - 1 serve of rolled oats, cooked in water with 1 tbsp of sultanas, a couple of drops of vanilla and 1tsp honey. One banana. 125ml Lophlex LQ orange flavour (4.8g)

Lunch - 75g (dry) Loprofin pasta with 25g Weight Watchers Cream Cheese, grilled mushroom, zucchini, asparagus and halved cherry tomatoes. 1 plum. Lophlex LQ orange flavour (4g)

Dinner - Jacket potato topped with fresh tomato and 25g WW Cream Cheese served with assorted steamed veggies. Formula. (5g)

Snacks - 1 cup of coffee, 1 WW belgian chocolate brownie (1.5g), 1 nectarine

Alright… no time right now to type out any more, but other meals have included grilled veggie sandwich, stirfry and veggie cous cous (4.8g and I could barely finish because it was so filling).

I will post some pictures soon!

Low protein omelet and quiche from Cook for Love

This coming weekend I’m going to a tea party so tonight I decided after months and months of procrastinating to try the Eggcellent Mix on the Cook for Love website. One of the things that will be served at the tea party is mini quiches so I thought it would be a good idea to try to make some low protein ones I could take.

I made some mini quiches for dinner tonight but I didn’t read the full recipe first (naughty!) and so I didn’t realise I had to let the quiches sit for at least 20 minutes before removing them from the tins so I decided with some of the remaining mix I had left to attempt and omelet. I’ve tried low protein omelets before and while they’ve been sort of okay I’ve never really gotten into them. They have been too much work for an underwhelming result.

The quiches didn’t take too long at all – most of the time was in the cooking – 25 mins in the oven and a min 20 minute resting period. So, while they were cooking I set to work on the omelet. I was done in less than 10 minutes, from start to finish! Amazing! I think I have a new favourite fast and easy meal

Omelet made from the Eggcellent Breakfast Mix at www.cookforlove.org

I loved it! It was delicious. Only problem I had was that I forgot that since being pregnant raw onions DO NOT agree with me – and of course I added them into the omelet so thanks to that I’m feeling a little rough now (DEFINITELY the onion… its a very distinct feeling).

Next up was a test of the quiches. I struggled to get them out of the muffin tin at first – they didn’t just tip out and I thought they’d fall apart if I tried to spoon them out but I was wrong. Once I carefully got them out with a spoon they were perfect.

Mini quiches from www.cookforlove.org

These too were lovely, though I enjoyed the omelet more as I found these a tiny bit bland. I will have to play with the fillings I think (the recommended filling is something we don’t have in Australia – Morning Star imitation bacon strips). Don’t get me wrong, they were still delicious, but I just didn’t get the flavours quite right for the fillings I chose.

You can find these recipes at www.cookforlove.org. You do have to register but registration is free and it’s well worth it Admittedly yes, you DO have to make the baking mix yourself and I find quite often that the ingredients are not available in Australia but Brenda, who runs Cook for Love is fantastic at coming up with substitutions for ingredients we can’t get in Australia and the baking mix makes the best low pro products I have ever made or eaten (and said low protein products frequently get devoured by my non-PKU husband and friends before I get a chance to eat them!).

Delicious pumpkin soup recipe – PKU friendly

To me there’s nothing more delicious on a cold day than a hot bowl of pumpkin soup. I’m guessing this probably comes from growing up in a home where mum always cooked up her ‘special’ pumpkin soup if it was cold, if I was sick or if it was a special occasion (including enormous pots of the stuff at my 18th birthday party!).

The phe in this recipe is going to depend entirely on what country you’re in, given that it seems every country has a different way of counting pumpkin. In Australia pumpkin is free. You will also need to weigh the potato and then work out the phe per portion depending on the amount of phe in the potato you used.

I apologise now for the lack of picture but my last batch of this recipe (the first I’ve made in years, though i can’t think for a moment why since it’s almost gone!) is very lumpy due to the fact that i don’t own a blender or food processor and I didn’t mash my veggies up first. Next time I make it up (which will be soon) I’ll post a pic

Please bear in mind that nothing in this recipe is exact! There is room to play around a bit depending on your tastes. This recipe works great on the stove or in a slow cooker. If you do it stove top after step 1 just throw all the ingredients in, bring to the boil and let simmer as you would any other soup. Below is my version of the slow cooker recipe, which I prefer as I have found the flavours to be a bit more intense.

Ingredients
1/4 medium sized butternut pumpkin/squash, peeled and diced
1 small potato, peeled and diced
1/2 a medium onion, peeled and sliced (can dice if you prefer, but I like the texture it adds)
1 – 2 cloves of minced garlic, depending on your personal taste
1 tsp nutmeg (can add more if you like)
2 cups water
1 knob butter
Ground sea salt and cracked pepper, to taste
Cream – to serve

*If you don’t have a blender or food processor, boil or steam then mash the pumpkin and potato before adding it to the pot/slow cooker

*Pre-heat slow cooker on high for 15 minutes before use for best results

Method
1. Place the butter, onion and garlic into the slow cooker (or a heated pan on the stove). When butter melts down give it a stir.
2. Add pumpkin, potato and water to the slow cooker pot. Don’t worry if the butter hasn’t melted – this won’t affect the final result. Stir well.
3. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg, stir well. Put the lid on and cook. If your time is limited (4 hours), leave on the high setting. If you have five or more hours, set the slow cooker to low and let cook. It doesn’t matter how long you let it cook for, as long as everything is nice and tender - mine was on for 10 hours and it was delicious. To maximise the effectiveness of the slow cooker avoid taking the lid off too much. You don’t need to stir often, or even at all.
4. When your soup is done, remove the lid, stir well. Carefully transfer into a blender or food processor (make sure it is heat resistant) and blitz it until you get the texture you want.
5. To serve, place in bowls and add a measured dollop of cream and stir through well. You can do the recipe without the cream but it isn’t anywhere near as nice!

This recipe freezes well.

Low protein PKU crumpets recipe

I absolutely LOVE these crumpets. They taste pretty close to the real thing and they look like the real thing too. I haven’t quite perfected getting rid of the white look on top, but I know other people have so it is possible! They take a while to make but are well worth the trouble. I have to say, these crumpets got me through the early stages of my pregnancy when I could barely eat!

Ingredients
300g Loprofin mix
1 sachet yeast (comes with mix)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarb soda
250ml tepid water
1 carton Loprofin PKU drink or 200ml of some kind of PKU milk
Oil for frying (you can use butter, which I prefer for the flavour)

Method

1. Mix the baking mix, yeast, salt and bicarb soda in a large bowl. Then mix water with the PKU drink and pour into bowl.

2. Mix with a wooden spoon for 5 mins (awesome arm workout!) or with an electric hand mixer until smooth and creamy. Cover with cling wrap and leave to rise in a warm place for around an hour (keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t spill over).

3. Once the mixture has risen put a drop of oil in a non-stick frying pan and rub into surface with a piece of kitchen towel. Heat the pan to a medium heat.

4. Take a table spoon and scoop up some of the mix, using another table spoon you can sort of shape it a bit and also helps when putting it in the pan. I actually spoon the mixture straight into greased egg rings – they keep the mixture in place and give a nice shape.

5. Cook for around 4-5 mins. The surface of the mixture will start to look dry and little bubbles will burst to create ‘holes’ like you seen on real crumpets. When you’re satisfied with this (don’t overcook the underside) flip over for a minute or two (again be careful not to burn) to finish the crumpets off. 

6. Leave to cool before eating. The crumpets are delicious still warm with butter and drizzled with honey or jam.

7. To eat just drop into the toaster like you would with regular crumpets. Enjoy!

I’m back :)

Well, I apologise for my absence and lack of posts over the last few months, however I assure you that it has been for a very worthwhile cause.

I’m very excited to report that my husband and I are expecting our first baby, due in January 2011. I haven’t had the nose (or stomach!) for cooking since I have been pregnant but the good news is that my smell senses seem to be calming down a bit, which means I can get back to my favourite past time and get myself back into the kitchen!

After already losing one baby last year we decided to be more cautious and keep the pregnancy fairly quiet until I reach the second trimester, and I have made it, relatively incident free.

I’m certain that you can expect quite a lot of posts on PKU and pregnancy too. I will try my best to keep these posts as informative as possible, but right now I’m just going to tell you a bit about my personal pregnancy journey so far.

I won’t lie to you. Managing PKU and pregnancy is a lot harder than I ever imagined it would be. I found the pre-conception diet easy and last time I was pregnant I got my levels down and they stayed down, but then I only made it to 6.5 weeks so I never had to deal with morning sickness or huge amounts of fatigue.

The reality of PKU and pregnancy has been a bitter pill to swallow for me. I honestly thought it would be a lot easier than it has been because I found the preconception diet so easy. Now I realise that thinking like that was rather naive of me. The fact that I am writing this blog from a hospital bed with glucose being pumped through my veins (and this is my second night) is a testament to that. No, it’s not from the morning sickness (well, it kind of is I suppose), but my levels have been very erratic. As it turns out, PKU and pregnancy is completely different to ‘normal’ PKU. Your body just doesn’t respond in the same way and it’s a steep learning curve, but one that I have no doubt will be well worth it in the long run. I think my levels went so unstable because I basically stopped being able to eat. With week 6 started the morning sickness (seems to be the time it hits for a lot of women from my dabbles in forums!) and with that came a total intolerance of all low protein products except stuff I could bake from the baking mix. I haven’t been able to stomach any of the biscuits, pastas, bread, Milupa etc. On top of that baby decided he/she doesn’t like fresh veggies! I’m hoping this isn’t a sign of things to come when Cupcake (I have nicknamed the baby Cupcake as the joke seems to be that I have a bun in the oven/am baking, plus I hate referring to it as ‘it’) is a toddler! It has certainly made life interesting and despite charging myself with calories (and gaining 7kg in the process…. ouch!) my levels have been very erratic (up as high as 580) just from a lack of volume of food. I’ve heard this is actually quite common (not meaning to scare anyone!) and they have admitted me to hospital to get my levels down. Unfortunately I’ve been put in the gastroenterology ward, simply because thats where the first available bed was, and thus am surrounded by people vomiting every 5 minutes. Not good for a sympathetic vomit-a-phobe like myself, but hopefully I’ll be going home tomorrow as it turns out as soon as I started eating more food (same phe intake), my levels started dropping, and I’ve been eating proper food for about a week now. Yay!

Anyway, pregnancy has had its perks thus far. I have discovered a few great recipes (admittedly cooked by my mother who has been visiting with me for a week) which have gotten me through the last three months that I plan on sharing, plus I’ve found some great new products that are available straight off the supermarket shelf.

So, as soon as I get home and recover from my lack of sleep from my hospital stay I will start posting things. I hope you enjoy them! Personally, I have been delighted to find some of these products and they have been a godsend to me!