Eczema and vegetarian cookbook

Sam has eczema since he was a newborn, on and off, sometimes not so good but mostly managable. It got worse when he was around 6-7 months. He had red patches all over his arms and legs but none under his nappy. Doctor suggested we change laundry powder. A acquaintance at daycare told me her specialist recommended pure soap as her son had bad eczema too. I switched to pure soap for Sam's clothes, but we still use normal detergent for ours(omo sensetive). It probably helped Sam's skin somewhat, well enough for us to forget about it for a while until it started again at the end of last year. The eczema was the worst ever, it was not on and off, it was ON all the time! Sam would scratch his skin, it bled and healed and you could see little red blood marks everywhere. The itch would made him awake at night(otherwise he always sleeps through) and made him irritable during the day. Doctor prescribed cortisone cream (elocon) and said eczema is a chronic disease we need to manage. Sam was only 18 months old and my lovely baby boy, for his sake I need to believe I can find a solution for his eczema. Anyway I started doing research on the internet and looking at alternative medicines. We took Sam to see a Chinese doctor for herbal cream and he had acupuncture. I was also looking at naturopaths.

It was during that time that I came across this website : Eczema - One family's solution . As soon as I saw it, I remembered we had changed back to detergent for Sam's clothes at around the time his eczema got worse. I was very moved by this Mum's determination to fix her son's eczema and I realised detergent exposure was probably the main reason Sam's eczema got worse. I can relate to the "water in bucket" analogy of allergy on the website - Sam's bucket was full (he had a lot more exposture to detergent) and that made him susceptible to allergens that he could usually tolerate, like grass. Now we only use pure soap to wash clothes for the whole family, we also switched to a detergent-free dishwashing liquid. I'm watchful for anything that has SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) or similar. Food was another big contributor to Sam's eczema problem.

A book I read recommend eating only veges and brown rice for two weeks then slowly introduce food to determine the 'culprit'. It sounded like a good idea but very hard to implement. Sam is in daycare 4 days a week. It is very hard to control his food intake during those days, it's even harder for me to cook tasty food with only vegetables. I know I need to learn to cook more tasty vegetarian food so I bought a new cookbook "River cottage veg everyday" to help me. Every dish in this book looks so yummy and I want to make every dish in this book! So far, I made beetroot and walnut hummus (page 300), oven-dried tomatoes (page 304), pistachio dukka (page 294), roasted pasnip chips (page 357) and Tahini-dressed courgette and green bean salad (page 74). I will be making more even when Simon and the kids don't share my enthusiasm unfortunately...