Tag Archives: Allergy

Play-date anyone?

It is amazing how something so simple can make such a big difference to a small child.

As M started a new school this September and is still getting to know the children in his class, we decided to invite a new friend home for tea after school. M chose C, another child who’s new to the school. I ambushed his Mum a couple of weeks ago to broach the subject of whether he’d like to come home for a play, eventually got round to passing on my contact details and finally settled on a day.

Courtesy of gsapublishing.com

This Tuesday I left work promptly to make sure I was in the right place at the right time to pick up M, C and G. The weather held so they could all burn off their energy and excitement by bouncing on the trampoline and tearing around the paddock like wild things. I chuckled quietly to myself as I heard the 3 of them discussing the ghosts in our house and heard C promising that he would bring back his ghost-detector from home once he’d fixed it – a child with an imagination to match M’s, I thought. I fed them everything-free fish fingers, potato wedges and a variety of veggies determined by the preferences of each individual child. We even survived M having a soiling accident and successfully changed him without C being aware it had even happened.

Nothing particularly out-of-the-ordinary or revolutionary, you might be thinking and you’d be right. The bit that made all the difference came when C’s Mum came to pick him up.

“Thank you so much for having C home for tea,” she said, “he’s the happiest I’ve seen him since we made the move.” And then she uttered the magical words, “Would M like to come home to ours for a play-date next Tuesday after school?”

Before I’d even had a chance to reply, she continued “I can cook just plain chicken drumsticks with vegetables for them for tea, or you can pick him before tea if you’d prefer.”

This woman, who has swiftly become a new friend, had unwittingly just rocked my world. In the last 2 years, since we embarked on our free-from journey with M, he has been home to friends’ houses just twice. The prospect of feeding my food-intolerant child was too daunting to so many of the Mums I’d got to know during M’s first year of school that they just stopped inviting him back after school. One Mum had even told M three separate times that she’d talk to me about arranging a day and what he could eat, and then never bothered to make that effort. Needless to say, that was a friendship that quickly fizzled out as M couldn’t understand why the promised invite never came.

So, for someone who’d known us approximately 5 minutes to take M’s situation and tricky diet completely in her stride and willingly offer to have him home from school, has felt like a real blessing. We’ve got to iron out a couple of wrinkles that are playing on M’s mind – chiefly his medicines and the whole “what if I have an accident whilst I’m at C’s house Mummy” concern – but I’ve got those sussed and I think M is reassured that every eventuality is covered.

Which leaves my 7-year old eagerly anticipating the opportunity to fix the broken ghost-detector – “though I’m not entirely convinced he’s not just making the whole thing up Mummy” – and me as one happy Mummy.

*I’ve just found this article “I’m not neurotic, my kid has food allergy” which helps you understand even more about how important this sort of compassion can be to a family supporting a child with food allergies

The Battle for Breakfast (magnificent muffin recipes included!)

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Courtesy of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_to_work_on_an_egg

Who can forget this advice?

Over the past 12 months, there has been a lot in the national press about the numbers of children who are arriving at school without having eaten any breakfast. More schools have introduced breakfast clubs, in some cases financially supported by the teachers, to ensure that pupils get that all important start to their day. The benefits of a good breakfast to see us all through our day are well-documented and as a Mum, I’ve tried install those principles in my children.

G is a fantastic breakfast eater and always has been. I remember, at an early age, picking her up from nursery and being told by the astounded key-worker that she had eaten 3 whole weetabix for her breakfast that morning. What amazed me more, was that she had already eaten a full bowl of cereal (2 weetabix) at home before getting to nursery – where my tiny mite had put those 5 weetabix we will never know, She happily munches her way through an overflowing bowl of rice pops and cornflakes with raisins and milk and, if she has enough time, then another bowl will be consumed too.

Courtesy of controlengeurope.com

M is the complete polar opposite of his sister. He is much more like me and doesn’t like to eat as soon as he wakes up in the morning. The problem is that due to his sleep issues, I inevitably have to wake him for school and even showering and dressing before we attempt breakfast rarely achieves much success. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get M to eat even a scrap of breakfast, which simply reflects his current health and declining appetite.

Which is why I’m constantly and desperately searching for a tasty morsel that will entice him to eat first thing, whilst being relatively healthy. We’ve tried toast, bacon sandwiches, cereal, porridge, fresh fruit and yoghurts, all with relatively limited success. One day he’ll eat something like it’s going out of fashion, the next day it’s like getting blood from a stone. I was stuck for ideas until last weekend, when inspiration hit. We were up in London for an extended celebration of my Mum’s birthday and at breakfast on the Sunday morning, G disappeared off to the buffet and came back bearing a mini chocolate chip muffin for me as a thank you for taking them to London for the weekend.

As I munched my way through this tiny treat, it struck me that it was just the thing that might tantalise M’s tastebuds first thing in the morning. All I needed to do was find a muffin recipe and do some of my free-from jiggery-pokery to turn it into the perfect M-friendly nibble. We had a huge amount of rapidly-browning bananas in the fridge, so a recipe for banana muffins seemed the obvious choice. I found one, played around with the ingredients and ended up with this wonderful looking batch:

By the time I got round to photographing the end result, 3 had already been devoured by G&M – success!

Excited by the instant success, and with some left-over bacon and soya- and dairy- free cheese (yes such a thing really does exist) lurking in the bottom of the fridge, I found, adapted and baked a recipe for bacon and cheese muffins. These turned out a little more anaemic-looking and seem to be a recipe I’m going to need to tweak a little more to perfect:

Less golden than the banana ones, but still delicious

So, from one evening’s work, I’ve found 2 new recipes – banana muffins and bacon & cheese muffins – and have a pair of happy children. The only problem? As much as M loves the muffins, it appears they weren’t the weapons I was searching for and the battle to get him to eat breakfast rages on!

Apples

With a little help from Easyjet

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Courtesy of bankingtech.com

This summer we travelled once again to Portugal for a week of sun, sand and sangria. On our 2 previous holidays, Mum and I filled our suitcases, not just with the necessary sun-cream, hats, swimwear and shorts, but also with a supply of M-friendly foods to get us through the week relatively unscathed. I’ve previously always taken a more relaxed stance to M’s diet whilst away from home as it’s a great deal harder to ensure that his diet is as strictly adhered to as it is at home and we have coped with the resulting consequences, accepting it as our decision.

However, we decided that this year had to be different. M’s struggles over the last few months with his health have been well-documented on my blog and the accompanying emotional frustrations and challenging behaviour meant that I felt we needed to endeavour to follow his diet as much as we humanly could. This, of course, meant that we needed to take a lot more M-friendly foods with us – free-from spread, rice milk, cereal, bread, rice cakes and snacks to name but a few.

Courtesy of http://www.guardian.co.uk

This increased amount of food, plus all the additional medicines M is now taking – he has increased to 7 medicines daily compared to last year’s 4 and the previous year’s 0 – meant that I needed to find an alternative means of carrying it all as otherwise I’d be leaving some essential clothes behind.

Fortunately, a tip from the “Special Diets” thread on the Dibb website suggested that it might be possible to carry all of M’s medical supplies including the food, as additional hand or hold luggage at no additional cost. I immediately contacted our airline, Easyjet, to see what advice they could give me.

Frustratingly, it wasn’t as simple as phoning a helpline, but rather I had to go through the rather convoluted route of e-mailing their customer services and waiting for a reply. However, the small amount of effort required was well worth it as I received the following confirmation from them:

“Easyjet would like to advise you that if you need to travel with any kind of medication or medical equipment you can do so, if you provide us with a doctor’s letter at the check-in desk, confirming the name of the passenger who needs them, the amount and names of each medication, doctor’s signature and stamp. You will be allowed to travel with the medication in a separate extra piece of hand or hold luggage without any extra charge. Please remember that in the extra piece of luggage you will be allowed to put only the medical stuff and nothing else.

Please also advise our Special Assistance Department about your need, so they will add this additional information to your booking to make the airport staff aware of your needs.
You can contact them by calling on a free of charge from landline number: 0800 998 1130.“

So, I did as I was told and contacted the Special Assistance department. They put a note onto M’s flight details to advise that we would be travelling with an additional bag free of charge and reiterated that I needed a signed medical note detailing all the medicine and foods we needed to carry with us and how much was needed each day. I then spoke to our GP, who agreed to list out everything we might possibly need during our holiday. The letter was duly written, signed and paid for and we were all set for the flight.

Courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

The ease of being able to take a dedicated bag just for M’s medicines and foods was a real godsend and I was impressed at how easy it was to successfully check-in with not a hassle in sight. There was no question about taking the additional piece of hold luggage through and even the return journey was simple, though I would recommend also having a copy of the actual prescription with you instead of just the medical letter if at all possible. Travelling with small children is difficult at the best of times and when you add medical needs into the mix, it becomes even more of a challenge, but Easyjet lived up to its name and made our life just that little bit easier.

The Allergy & Free From Show North, Liverpool

Have you met Frank*?

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Over the last few months since entering the mysterious world of blogging, I have enviously been reading of fellow bloggers being asked to try out and review a vast range of products. I’ve wondered how they’ve managed to bring their blogs to the attention of manufacturers and producers looking to launch new products and whether I could even dream of reaching such lofty heights with my own humble blog.

So, imagine my delight at receiving a message at the beginning of the summer holidays from Ben at The Frank* Food Co. We had discovered this relatively new treat at the Allergy & Free from Show back in June and both children had gorged themselves on the free samples available. In our ever-constant search for snacks that are not only M-friendly, but healthy and delicious, I was thrilled to uncover another brand to add to my cupboard.

The company’s strapline states “Frank*Snack Bars are a deliciously indulgent snack bar made with 100% natural ingredients” and comes in a choice of 5 flavours: Orange & Chocolate, Double Chocolate, Strawberry & Chocolate, Blueberry & Chocolate and Oat & Chocolate. The parcel that arrived from Frank* contained one of each and the children and I eagerly embarked on our very scientific approach to tasting, reviewing and ranking each one.

The chart below shows their comments and marks out of ten for the 5 different flavours:

	G	M

Orange & Chocolate	Delicious, but needs more orange and less chocolate Mark: 9/10	Fantastic Mark: 10/10
Double Chocolate	Very chocolately, very nice Mark: 5/10	Too much chocolate, but very nice anyway Mark: 5/10
Strawberry & Chocolate	This one is nice, but needs less strawberry Mark: 6/10	Okay Mark: 7/10
Blueberry & Chocolate	Too much blueberry Mark: 7/10	Nice, but the blueberry & chocolate flavours are fighting too much Mark: 9/10
Oat & Chocolate	Perfect! Mark: 10/10	Perfect! Mark: 10/10

Favourite flavour	Oat & Chocolate	Orange & Chocolate

The results are clear. G liked them all, even the blueberry one she was reluctant to try, but felt overall that the fruit flavours were too strong. She loved the Oat & chocolate one and said she’d pick this one every time. M liked them all and chose Orange & chocolate as his favourite, though I do wonder if my love for Terry’s Chocolate oranges influenced his decision. The biggest surprise was that neither child rated the Double chocolate bar that much and although they both enjoyed it and certainly wouldn’t turn it down, they felt it was just too much chocolate.

As for Mummy’s review? I’m in favour of them all as they certainly provide a healthy snack and are a nice addition to my kitchen. I wouldn’t give them one every day, but as a treat, they are perfect.

If you’d like to give Frank* bars a try, you can find a complete list of stockists on their website or you can order on-line for home delivery too.

The Best Chocolate cake in the World

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We’ve enjoyed a peaceful weekend away in South Wales. The weather hasn’t been the idyllic temperatures and sunshine of July, but we had a great time anyway. The odd rain shower or clap of thunder didn’t stop us celebrating my Uncle’s birthday in style. We had a BBQ and buffet feast, including my now infamous Lamb and mint burgers and G and M insisted that I made a birthday cake to mark the occasion.

Courtesy of fanpop.com

Last week’s Lemon drizzle cake was a big success, but I was still not satisfied with the granular nature of the sponge that comes from baking with rice flour. Since then I have been searching for a recipe to make the perfect rice flour cake and discovered this one that assured me that the granular texture would be a thing of the past. Having uncovered such a promising recipe, I just needed a reason to bake it and what could have been better timed than a family birthday?

For the first time I ventured into the mystical world of cooking with xanthum gum – a substance much mentioned in gluten-free cooking, but something I had yet to actually use.

We mixed together the xanthum gum, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and once again watched the chemical reaction between that and the white wine vinegar that the recipe required. M was enchanted by listening to the ingredients fizz and watching the bubbles of carbon dioxide rise to the top of the mixing bowl – “just like the volcano we made with Daddy”.

I had erred on the side of caution given my previously chronicled inability to bake cakes thatrise and made up one and a half times the quantity of cake mix. I needn’t have worried. Perhaps xanthum gum is the answer to my baking issues, I just don’t know, but I had more than enough cake mix to make a double layer cake and a dozen cupcakes too, all of which had a lovely depth to them.

I decided to use the classic flavour combination of chocolate and raspberries and layered the cake with raspberry jam, vanilla butter icing and dried raspberries. I finished it with a garden-themed decorating scheme and was proud of, at very least, how the cake looked.

That evening, I nervously cut into the cake and served it to the assorted, gathered family members. The cake was beautifully moist, the chocolate sweet but not over-powering and, best of all, there was not one single sign of that granular texture I’ve come to loathe when baking with rice flour. G gave it a resounding 10 out of 10, M stated that it was the “best cake ever, cooked by the best Mummy ever” and even the harshest of critics complimented me on how delicious the cake was. So the conclusion I’ve reached is that this is a cake recipe to treasure and I’ve now just got to work out how to adapt it for as many different versions and occasions as possible.

A taste of sunshine

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The weather may have turned a little grey and damp once again, but at the end of last week, we decided to bring a taste of the sunshine into the house and spent Friday afternoon baking. I’d been promising the children a baking afternoon for a while and Friday seemed like the perfect opportunity and a great end to the first week of the holidays.

Despite a little active discussion about what we could make, we settled on Lemon Drizzle cake. I searched for a vegan recipe and found this wonderful one by cookery blogger, Sharon. I needed to adapt it a little to accommodate M’s wheat- and gluten-free requirements, but most of the hard work (making it egg-free!) was already done.

Courtesy of buyfruit.com.au

We dashed out to buy the missing ingredients – lemons – and then returned home, rolled up our sleeves and got started. The children had a wonderful time. G had the responsibility of reading the recipe and method out loud for M and me to follow, whilst M became chief-mixer. We watched the “chemical” reaction between the vinegar, lemon juice and sugar and discussed how the frothiness should help make the cake light and delicious. My adapted recipe can be found here.

The end result was a great success. M loved it, though G felt it was too lemony! Having filled the fridge with lemons, we decided to make the most of them and made lemonade using my pink lemonade recipe without the cranberry juice. We then used half of the lemonade to make some ice lollies, perfect for the hot weather.

All in all, a very successful Friday afternoon!

This post is an entry into the Foodies100/Schwartz Flavour of Together challenge, if you have a great flavour story to share, you can easily do it here

My child with Super powers

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As a parent, we all go through that experience of self-doubt and belief that we’re doing it all wrong. As a parent of an unique child, a child with unexpected needs, that self-doubt is part of your every waking moment. You begin to wonder if it’s something that you did, right or wrong, that has led to the position you find yourself in.

A good friend recently sent Mike and me a link to this wonderful blog post that really spoke to her, and our, hearts. Through it I discovered the truth that I have children with super powers, rather than with special needs.

Courtesy of kotaku.com

We all know that it’s not easy being a parent and when you add into that mix an illness or condition or special need for your child, you rapidly begin to wonder why. Almost every day I question why M has this condition. Is it something I did, or didn’t do during my pregnancy? Is it faulty genetics on my side, or on MIke’s, that have led to these problems? Could I have done anything to change the outcome that my boy has to live with? Of course, the answer is no. He is who he is and who God made him. I don’t have the answers as to why his life has been so medically complicated and why he continues to have to fight a daily battle for good health, but I also can’t live my life playing the blame game.

I struggle when talking to expectant Mums who are holding forth that they don’t mind whether they have a boy or a girl as long as the baby is healthy. I remember saying the same thing myself, so why is it that that wasn’t the card we got dealt? I smile and nod and bite my tongue, because I can’t promise that for them that’ll be their experience. I hope it is, I really do, but I know that there are no guarantees in life. We are the exception to that rule.

Courtesy of http://www.evolllution.com

During a recent conversation, I was asked whether I wished I could turn the clocks back and make different decisions to those I made 10 years ago. I didn’t have to stop and think because I know the answer. No. The mountains may be high and treacherous, but the view from the top is amazing and my answer is no. The valleys can be dark and bleak, but the sunshine reaches down and touches those darkest of places and the answer is no. I may get knocked down far more times that I thought possible and struggle to get back up and keep on with the fight, but my answer is still no. I would love for life to be easier for both M and G, I wish for their medical problems to disappear in a heartbeat, but I love them and I love being a parent to children with super powers, even if the going is sometimes really, really tough.

Lake Huron, Canada

BBQs and Bakewell tarts

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The incredible summer weather that we’ve been enjoying this weekend, can only mean one thing; it’s time for a barbecue. True to form, by around 5pm on Friday evening, the shelves of all the local supermarkets had been cleared of the sausages, burgers and other BBQ meats, but for once that didn’t spoil our plans. Most of the BBQ selections available contain wheat, gluten or even soya, which makes them unsuitable for use in our household.

Instead, I took to a recipe that we developed after seeing a similar meal prepared on Canadian TV programme “You’ve gotta eat here“. For those of you who haven’t seen this series, and I highly recommend that you don’t even attempt to watch it when feeling peckish, presenter John Catucci tours Canada, searching out exceptional meals found at various cafes, diners and restaurants across the country. The food featured not only tastes good, but often comes in proportions that defeat even those with the healthiest of appetites. Whilst the burgers we watched being made were traditional in using beef, I adapted them to use family favourites, Welsh lamb and fresh mint. You can find the recipe here.

The final recipe is easy and quick to prepare, delicious to eat and best of all, contains nothing that is not M-friendly. They take around 5 minutes to cook on the BBQ or indeed in the oven and were perfect for a Saturday lunch in the sun.

One of things that M has been missing, other than the by now famous egg mayonnaise sandwiches, is Bakewell tarts. Around 12 months ago, we had discovered Costa‘s gluten-free Cherry bakewells and, as they were dairy, soya and wheat-free and M was trialling egg at the time, we were able to try them out as a treat. M loved them and we had found something he could eat when we popped out for a coffee or were on a road trip.

However, this January’s decision to tighten up M’s diet meant these had to go back on to his forbidden list. It was a disappointment as there is so little available when we’re out and about, but we had the hope that the next trial of egg would mean that he might be able to start eating them once again. Sadly, the current relapse and subsequent medical response means that there is no likelihood of this for the foreseeable future.

M has been hit hard by his current flare-up and so I decided to make a weekend of it and bake some much needed M-friendly treats for both M and G. I quickly decided to investigate whether there was any possibility of making a M-friendly Bakewell tart. Having never even attempted to make Bakewell tarts in my lifetime, even before all the food allergies hit my kitchen, I looked up a recipe to see if I could adapt it.

I was confident I could make a reasonable everything-free pastry base, having successfully mastered pastry at Christmas for mince pies. I have quickly learned that vegan recipes are my friends as they don’t contain any animal products and so instantly remove the issue of being dairy- and egg-free. So, I quickly moved on to the next item on the list, raspberry jam. Fortunately, M suffers no ill-effects from fruit jams at the moment, so that was an easy tick and on to the final element of the recipe: the frangipane.

This filled me with dread. Frangipane is an almond-flavoured sweet pastry cream which, depending on the particular recipe you decide to follow, contains anywhere between 1 and 3 eggs and I just couldn’t see a way round it. With little hope and as a somewhat last-ditch attempt, I used that faithful friend, Dr Google, once again to see if someone, somewhere had created a vegan alternative to frangipane. Imagine my delight on discovering this wonderful recipe from fellow blogger, lucysfriendlyfoods.

I noted the ingredients, checked my store cupboards to see what I already had in stock and drew up my shopping list. A quick visit to the supermarket and we had everything I needed to bake this masterpiece. To my delight, every step of this recipe was easy to follow and put together. 40 minutes in the oven and my work was done.

M was thrilled and had to try a slice before it had cooled fully. The slice I gave him disappeared quickly and his only comment was that he would prefer me to make individual tarts next time. What’s more, G also tried some and enjoyed it. All in all, this weekend has been a resounding success, be it the BBQ burgers or the Bakewell tart.

7 years to diagnosis

Searching for an answer

Tag Archives: Allergy

Play-date anyone?

The Battle for Breakfast (magnificent muffin recipes included!)

Apples

With a little help from Easyjet

The Allergy & Free From Show North, Liverpool

Have you met Frank*?

The Best Chocolate cake in the World

A taste of sunshine

My child with Super powers

BBQs and Bakewell tarts