Well over a year ago, we began to collaborate on a series of nutrition posts for our personal blogs. Being adoptive mamas with undernourished children ourselves, we shared our personal recipes for high nutrition/high calories drinks in hopes that it would help other parents in similar situations.
Over a year later, those posts are still regularly circulated, and we realized that there are so many parents who are interested in real food, real ingredients, and realistic recipes to nourish their families. Thus,
Dandelion Sprouts was born. We are not chefs or professionals. We are just real mamas who have experience with adoption, undernourishment, special diets, and finding kid friendly foods that make children (and their parents!) happy.
You can read our
Great Big Nutrition Series posts
HERE and
HERE and
HERE.
As for our mostly highly searched recipe post, we are happy to share that with our readers again today to kick off our new blog!
Deanna starts us off:
Ok, so the first thing I want to make sure that we highlight is that these recipes are NOT for infants. This is not formula! These recipes can be used as high nutrition/high fact/high calorie drinks for children who are undernourished or would otherwise be drinking something like Pediasure, but in NO WAY is this intended for children under a year old. It's not a replacement for breastmilk or formula, so please don't use it for babies!
Phew. 'Nuff said about that.
The second thing I want to encourage you to do is learn about your ingredients. Don't take our word for it! This recipe is one that I play with and change often for Aleck, and you will have the best success if you experiment with what works for you. So change it! Adjust it! The confidence to do that (at least for me) comes from practice and from understanding your indgredients. So learn about your food and then leave us in the dust! Seriously :)
So Aleck's recipe makes about 16 oz. give or take. I blend mine in the morning and use it for one whole day, so the recipe makes about enough for an entire day for us--sometimes I mix it with coconut milk or bone broth for the last bottle, but in general...one whole day. This recipe has a TON of good fats in it, but it isn't a good 'snack' recipe. Aleck has gained almost 4 pounds in 6 weeks, so it definitely works, but as he becomes well-nourished, I'll be adjusting the recipe again for his needs. It's not your average smoothie :).
Aleck's recipe
2/3 cup pure coconut milk (canned)
1 cup bone broth (homemade--do not use store bought!)
1/2 T. blackstrap molasses
1 scoop powdered goats milk
1 heaping T. sunflower seed butter
up to 1 T. chia seed gel or flax meal (this will move bowels, fyi)
splash of juice
probiotics (we use Culturelle)
Nordic Naturals baby DHA (fish oil)
Put all ingredients into the blender and whip well. Thin to desired consistency (you may need a y cut nipple for thickness if your child uses a bottle).
Aleck does not care about the taste, and will drink this totally straight. It has a pleasant, lightly 'nutty' kind of flavor, but if your child needs something with a different flavor, think of this as a 'base' recipe and add bananas, berries, a dollop of raw honey or a little yogurt. It's a total experiment!
You can clearly see how love and nutrition has made a huge difference in Aleck's weight gain in just 6 weeks! (click pictures for a larger image)
Sarah is up next:
Deanna did a super job explaining what these recipes should and should not be used for! Just as she said, no two recipes really look alike. You can vary this greatly depending on your child's specific needs and preferences! The
ONE MUST-USE INGREDIENT for me, though, is bone broth! This is certainly a 'staple' of these recipes.
Unlike Deanna, I make each of my bottles/drinks individually. It would save a lot of time if I made the base drink at the beginning of the day, but this just works well for us because I do often change or add ingredients based on their needs that day, so making the recipe each time allows me to do this. This is much easier to do for kiddos who are not liquid dependent since they need less bottles/drinks throughout the day. Again, there's no wrong way to go about this!
When we met Mila at 7 months old, she weighed only 7 pounds. Mila came home around 9 pounds at 8 months old (Yes, that means she gained 2 pounds just from love and likely from increased feedings since we were at the orphanage twice a day to feed her!). She was tiny and malnourished and very sick. Within 3 weeks, she was up to 12 pounds, 10 ounces! This almost 4-pound weight gain in 3 weeks home was prior to her airway and heart surgeries, so clearly her lack of weight gain wasn't only due to medical issues!
We did follow doctor's orders and put her on Nutramigen to start. I was not very happy with this formula at all (ingredients list=yuck), but it kept Mila stable and gaining some weight until her open heart surgery. I didn't feel comfortable using a homemade recipe in a child under 1, and didn't have enough time or resources at that point to do the research needed to formulate a recipe that would give her what she needed as an infant. As soon as she turned 1 we started her on the recipe below. Even though we wouldn't suggest these recipes for babies, I'd TOTALLY suggest using bone broth as a base for powdered formula! I used the bone broth as a base with Mila's Nutramigen before we eliminated it!
Mila's Recipe (12-14 months old):
(Mila was 100% liquid dependent at this point so she got 4-5 oz. every 2-3 hours, with one overnight feeding. She would only take 2 oz. at a time when she was newly home (formula), and we worked our way up to 4-5 oz. at a time by a year old)
4 oz. warm bone broth (chicken or beef--chicken is easier on the belly)
2 scoops powdered goat's milk
1 tsp. olive oil
1 cooked egg yolk
1 oz. canned pure coconut milk (whole fat!)
1/2 tsp. Nordic Naturals Children's DHA
Vitamin D supplement (Nordic Naturals)
Blend all ingredients together, serve warm.
Mila's Recipe (14-18 months old):
(around 16 months old, we decreased her 'milk' intake to 5 oz. 4 times a day and dropped the night feeding.)
4 oz. warm bone broth
1 scoop powdered goat's milk
1 tsp. coconut oil (1-2 bottles daily)
1/2 tsp. Nordic Naturals Children's DHA
1 oz. organic pear baby food (stage 1 to sweeten and thicken)
Vitamin D supplement
At this point, Mila was eating solids, and we added many of the 'superfoods' into her food directly.
When Mila reached her goal weight, we began replacing this recipe with coconut and almond milk.
This pictures shows how much Mila grew in her first year home, thanks to the love of a family and good nutrition!
Sofia has only been home for 6 weeks, but has already gained 4 pounds! It's important to note that Sofia (just like Zoya) was a decent weight when we met her. However, she was still diagnosed as undernourished due to lack of proper nutrition and vitamins. In her before and after picture, you can clearly see that in addition to her weight gain, her dark circles are gone and her eyes are much brighter and full of life....her skin is much clearer....her hair is growing a lot and overall, she just looks a LOT healthier! (No editing was done on any of these photos, by the way!)
Sofia's Recipe (15 months-current 17 months old)
(Sofia gets 4, 4-5 oz. servings daily)
4 oz. warm chicken bone broth
1.5 scoops powdered goat's milk
1 tsp. coconut oil (in 1-2 bottles daily)
1/2 tsp. Nordic Naturals Children's DHA (only in the first bottle)
Vitamin D supplement (first bottle)
Vitamin B-12 supplement (first bottle)
Standard Process Probiotic (Prosynbiotic, one bottle daily)
Personalized Standard Process supplements (via nutritional response testing)
either 1/2 T. raw honey or 1/2 T. blackstrap molasses (I do 2 with honey and 2 with molasses daily)
As Sofia grows and gains weight, I change the recipe. She is at a good weight right now, so I've decreased the powdered goat's milk to 1 scoop per bottle. I will probably drop her servings/day from 4 drinks to 3 this week. I still think it's really important, though, to keep her on the bone broth for a lot longer because it's so healing to the body!
Sometimes I replace 1 oz. of the bone broth with pear juice or juiced greens (purchased already juices because I don't have time for that!) coconut water, coconut milk or almond milk. Recently I started giving all the girls a few ounces of goat's milk kefir, so I add that to her bottle every day as well! I want to make sure her palate is introduced to a variety of flavors so she may be more likely to eat a diverse selection of foods. I don't want her getting stuck on having to have her bottle made one way, so I make very little changes--an ounce here or there--of something new. I also add flaxseed oil if she gets a little constipated and that seems to help a lot! I can't put ground flaxseed in her straw cup so I add that to yogurt instead.
___________________________________________
We welcome you, and hope that this space will become a place where moms (and dads!) in all kinds of situations can discover the joy of real food in real life as we all seek to nourish our own little sprouts!
