Cauliflower and Broccoli

[antonia]

I’m wondering your opinions on whether either of these would be safe if you were to only use the flowery tops. Absolutely no stem pieces at all.

[nancy]

Hi Antonia, I would think it would depend on how much fructose your child can tolerate. You could look on nutritiondata.self.com. Of course, I can't have anything with fructose.

[colormist]

I know Bill has consumed the flowertops of broccoli in the past. I'm not sure if he still does.

I, personally, only consume veggies as a last resort. I've noticed too many side effects that linger for days if I eat a serving of veggies a day (even the safe ones).

[tummyache]

I eat the steamed flower tops of both broccoli and cauliflower [although, never have liked the stems since I was a little kid]...but then, I also eat some veggies others question on here in moderation. There seems to be differences in tolerance and sensitivity levels among us [perhaps that is due to genetic snp differences?]. As we get older and our body gets larger in ratio to our liver we can tolerate fructose better, or so it seems -- anyway, probably best to be on the cautious side with little folks. Trail-test...hopefully these will be more foods to add to the growing list.














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[antonia]

Palmera rarely eats HFI safe vegetables or fruits (rhubarb, spinach, green lettuces and olives are about all we’ve tried). We’ve taken guidelines from Colormist, they are not an everyday foods. Except rhubarb that is. I make her rhubarb compote which she has a little bit of everyday spread on her toast. I’ve been wanting to try mushrooms and avocado but keep chickening out.

But I was poking around in one of my old, low fodmap apps that I used when we thought she had fructose malabsorption, and although it doesn’t give quantities for sugars or sugar alcohols I still find interesting information that can be applied to HFIers. For instance, I saw that green beans are a source of sorbitol. That explains why many HFIers take issue with them, especially when fresh (verses canned where some of the sorbitol/fructose may leech into the brine). Anyway, I saw they had new entries for broccoli, one showed stems only and another showed heads only (heads only I’m assuming still contains part of the stem). And the stems only definitely contained more fructose than heads only. Of course, I don’t know HOW much is in either portion-stems vs flowery tops. Cauliflower was only shown as whole and it just said it was high in the sugar alcohol mannitol. Which is the same sugar alcohol in mushrooms which I believe is HFI safe.

I thought if broccoli or cauliflower tops were safe they could be a good thing to add bulk and body to soups. Or added to pasta or rice salads and the like. So I was just wondering if anyone was eating just the tops.

[antonia]

On another note the fact that she rarely eats any kind of produce can get interesting. The other day she had a math question asking what kind of unit she should use to measure the length of a green bean. The correct answer was inches but she said to me green beans were too small to measure with inches. Well that’s because she didn’t know what a green bean was! She thought is was like a legume type of bean.

[colormist]

I can only rarely do avocado. It does have fructose in it, so it will make her sick. I probably shouldn't eat it.

White Mushrooms should be okay, but portobella mushrooms have unsafe levels of sugars in them. The tinned white mushrooms should be safest. Much like green beans, most of the sugars are in the brine.

[antonia]

Yes I saw on the app that avocado contains sorbitol. But it doesn’t state what kind of avocado and I know there are many different varieties. Frustrating that such vague data is all that’s available to us.

One of reasons I’ve never tried mushrooms with her is that I’ve always disliked them myself. But given it’s one of the few vegetables that may be safe for her I ought to let her try it.

[colormist]

Tuna noodle casserole with tinned mushrooms (no peas) is one of my favorite dishes and pretty easy to make, too!

[antonia]

Oh, do you have a favorite recipe? I’ve actually never made tuna casserole before. Palmera does like grilled tuna steak though so I bet she’d like that too.

[colormist]

I eat this all the time when I'm in a pinch for a meal and don't feel like cooking for an hour or two.

Wide egg noodles (I usually use about half a bag)
Safe tinned tuna (tuna in oil or any kind you can find without vegetable broth or other sweeteners)
tinned sliced mushrooms
Cream of mushroom condensed soup (I like campbells--make sure it's not low fat or low sodium)

Boil some water and cook the noodles.
Drain the cooked noodles
Stir in tuna, mushrooms and cream of mushroom soup

You might need to add a little bit of milk to make it creamier. I usually don't, but sometimes it's more sticky than creamy.

You can also swap out the egg noodles for pasta noodles of different shapes and sizes, to mix things up and make it fun. Egg noodles taste best, though.

[rysmom14]

we have done the same as colormist and have also made it with ground beef and added cheddar cheese as well. It's nice because you can have it for a couple days.

What about a breakfast casserole? egg, a little shreddy potatoes, cheese, mushroom and spinach?

[antonia]

Thank you for the ideas. She doesn’t do well with potatoes but I could do a quiche with spinach and mushrooms. I have also been wanting to try a savory bread pudding. I found a recipe for a sausage and cheese bread pudding that I’ve been meaning to try.

I’m assuming the Campbell’s cream of mushroom is not gluten free. Pacific makes a gluten free cream of mushroom (and cream of chicken) but it has onion and garlic powders in it. Maybe this would be okay since she does okay with the occasional Hebrew National hotdog and she used to do okay with the g-free Applegate chicken nuggets before they added sugar to the recipe. Both of those have/had onion and/or garlic powders in them.

[colormist]

I do okay with onion and garlic powder--so long as they're way down at the bottom of the list. The amount is usually small enough that it doesn't cause a reaction so long as I don't eat a whole can of the soup.