Happy Birthday!

On Saturday, Porter turned two years old. Normally, we would either go out to a favorite restaurant or cook a special meal at home and follow it up with birthday cake, candles, and an off-key verse of the birthday song, but a couple of factors made this year a little difficult. First of all, Stephen flew to Michigan last week to be a groomsman for some very good friends of ours who decided to get married on our son's birthday. Flattering as that may be, we couldn't afford to fly all four of us out there, so it was decided that I would whip up a little something for Porter at home on the actual day and then we'd have the real party after Daddy came home. The other problem is that we recently discovered that Porter is allergic to peanuts, egg whites, milk, and wheat. I'll say that again so you can think about it for a moment: Porter is allergic to peanuts, egg whites, milk, and wheat. That's basically everything we were used to eating on a daily basis. Because it doesn't make much sense to make a separate individual meal just for Porter three or more times a day, we started shifting parts of all of our meals to suit his diet. So this was Porter's birthday dinner:

The main course was my own "kitchen sink" chicken noodle soup, which consists of whatever I have in the kitchen at the moment. This particular  batch had chicken thighs, chicken broth, frozen peas, frozen corn, a third of a Vidalia onion, half of a bunch of wilted young celery, rice-based penne pasta, corn-based shell pasta, garlic powder, celery salt, fresh ground black pepper, dill weed, fennel seeds, and mustard seeds. It was served over cold (refrigerated) left-over rice so that it would be cool enough for the kids to eat right away. On the side we had fresh sliced watermelon and chocolate milk to drink (chocolate soy milk for Porter).

(Note: I normally use this recipe as a starter for my chicken soup.)

For dessert, I made a pan of wheat-, gluten-, egg-, and milk-free chocolate chunk brownies. They taste better that they sound! They are heavy on cocoa to compensate for the lack of milk, so they are a little bitter and very chocolaty, but the texture is just about perfect for gooey fudge brownies. This was a trial run on a line of gluten-free flour mixes I've discovered called Pamela's Products.

The best part is, Pamela's has tons of recipes for using their mixes both on the packages and on the website and a good number of them are built to suit even a stingy diet like Porter's.

Dinner was hugely successful with the kids and Seren is a very proud big sister. She likes reminding everyone that Porter is TWO now and not a baby anymore.

Note: Anyone wanting more info on how we've climbed the mountain and conquered Porter's diet can leave comments below or email me directly. I'm happy to share all of the wonderful products we've discovered and all of the advice I've received from other moms who've gone through similar.