Tag Archives: wheat free

Allergy and FreeFrom Show 2016

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I am so glad that we made the decision to visit last weekend’s Allergy and Freefrom Show at Olympia London as we had the most amazing day and made some great finds. The show has always been one of those lovely experiences for the children, where they have been able to try so many of the foods and drinks on offer, although we have constantly had to remind them that they can’t assume that everything is safe, even though so many of the offerings are. IMG_0645[1]This year was no different and G ate her way around the show, delighted to try some old favourites as well as the new products that we hadn’t seen before. It was understandably a much harder show for M this time than ever before, but he pinpointed on the map which stalls he wanted to visit and was thrilled that we managed to find some great new food options for him too. I am also extremely glad that we chose to take the wheelchair with us as it proved to be useful, not just for helping M negotiate the crowds flocking round each stall, but also as a receptacle for the numerous bags of goodies we gained during the day.

The day was also a great chance to catch up with some old friends from the blogosphere and allergy community, though this year I didn’t manage to make the bloggers meet-up arranged for the Saturday morningIMG_0647[1]. It was fantastic to see G and M recognised and welcomed by so many of these lovely individuals and they happily chatted away almost as much as Mike and I did. We spent some time at the Allergy Adventures stand, where Hailey and her crew of cheerful helpers were once again providing entertainment for the children in the guise of paper crafts and story-telling time, although they couldn’t persuade G and M to make the paper lollipops planned. Instead my pair went off-piste and created an array of paper lizard heads (M) and chatterboxes (G) to fill their time, some of which I think were left behind and not just stuffed into pockets and down the sides of the wheelchair.

Between us, we came home with a huge selection of new products for both children to try and I can’t wait to share their reviews of these foods with you, especially those that are not just new to us, but to the market too. We spent the entire day at Olympia, getting in when the doors opened at 10am and leaving as the tannoy announced that the Show was closed at 5pm  and I could quite easily have spent another day IMG_0651[1]discovering all those hidden gems that were tucked away in remote corners of the space. We had taken some safe food for M with us for his lunch as we just didn’t know what would be available at the site and G enjoyed a gluten- and dairy-free pizza from Schar that was cooked to order. The Show now visits 3 UK locations during the year – London, Liverpool and Glasgow – and I would highly recommend a visit if you get a chance to go. It is a brilliant day out for anyone living with food allergies and offers the opportunity to discover so many safe alternatives that often don’t make it to the High Street.

Home-cooked Chinese takeaway

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chineseOne of things that I know M has really missed since his diet became so restricted is the occasional Chinese takeaway shared with the rest of the family. For as long as I can remember our young foodie has loved eating Chinese food and insisted on mastering the chopsticks early on, so the loss of that treat really did hit him hard. Thanks to the amazing team at our local Wagamama, M has been able to enjoy safe Asian food once again and recently I took the plunge and tried my hand at making him a Chinese-inspired meal too. It was never going to be the same as those fabulous meals we enjoyed in London’s Chinatown when the children were little, but hopefully it was a tasty replacement for a much-missed treat.

Lemon chicken is one of Mike’s favourite Chinese dishes and given the base ingredients of, well, lemon and chicken, it seemed to be an achievable goal for my home-cooked takeaway. For once I didn’t turn to my trusty sidekick, Google, for some speedy research, but instead just used the knowledge I’ve stored up over the last few years to see if I could come up with my own recipe for a delicious lemon chicken. I originally considered using lemon juice, water and sugar thickened with some rice flour to create the sauce, but a quick perusal of the fridge brought the last remaining half-empty jar of dairy-free lemon curd to my attention and I instantly decided that that was exactly what this recipe needed.

Having prepped the diced chicken to make a batch of my M-friendly chicken nuggets and with the rice simmering on the hob, I turned to making the lemon sauce, feeling a little like I was concocting a magic potion as I stirred spoonfuls of this with a dash of that in the cauldron saucepan. IMG_0637[1]I’m certain that the authentic Chinese recipe includes soy sauce, but with soya definitely banned from our repertoire for the foreseeable, I tweaked the sharp flavour of the lemon curd by adding a little more sugar as well as some salt, pepper and rosemary until I had a savoury sauce I was confident the children would eat. As I finished cooking the rice, chicken and sauce in my trusty wok, G and M drifted to the table drawn by the delicious smell, eagerly asking what was for dinner. The portions I served soon disappeared as did the children once their plates were empty, which, without a doubt, signalled a new and successful addition to my ever-growing list of M-friendly recipes.

Any plans for the weekend?

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We’ve got a weekend in London ahead of us and, being our usual optimistic selves, have planned a whole host of activities to keep us busy at every interval. Thanks to remarkable coincidence, we are able to combine 2 opportunities that have come our way and I’m hoping that Sunday evening will see us back home, exhausted, but also exhilarated by our experiences.

Allergy_Olympia_Logo_2Last year we decided somewhat reluctantly not to make our annual pilgrimage to the Allergy & Free From Show in London as M was in the midst of being tube-fed and had, at that point, only 4 safe foods in hand. Whilst I would have loved the opportunity to explore the offerings we’ve found at these shows in the past, I knew in my heart of hearts that it was more than M would be able to cope with and I wasn’t prepared to put him into what was bound to be an emotion-filled, stressful situation. G and I did toy with the idea of going without the boys, but other events came along and we enjoyed a weekend at home instead. To my surprise, M was incredibly disappointed not to go and was insistent that when this year’s show rolled around, he wanted to attend and was as keen as we have been before. At the start of this year, Mike and I discussed whether we really would go, talked it over at length with M and finally took the plunge and got our tickets for this Saturday. Over this past week or so, M and I have been looking at the businesses that will have stalls in Olympia when the show opens on Friday and he’s already made a note of a few he wants to visit. As I have become more active in the allergy community over the last 12 months or so, especially through friendships built at the FreeFrom Food Awards in February, we are all looking forward to meeting up with some familiar faces during our visit. This show is an amazing event and one that I would highly recommend to anyone living with allergies, or indeed following a vegan lifestyle. You can still get tickets to attend by clicking on this link and the show will be there until Sunday.

GOSH-logoSunday brings a different opportunity and an exciting one for G. When M and I took part in this year’s PLACE assessment at GOSH, I met and got chatting to Fiona Jones, the Children and Young people’s Participation officer at the hospital. One of her roles is to promote the GOSH YPF, or Young People’s Forum, something I had never heard about before, but was interested and keen to find out more. The YPF is for patients, ex-patients or siblings of patients at GOSH who are aged between 11-25 years old and who are interested in expressing their opinions about how GOSH can best support its teenage patients as well as being involved in projects that will help make the hospital experience a positive one for patients and their families. Unfortunately, M is too young to become a YPF member just yet, but Fiona asked if I thought G would like to become involved and I promised to ask her as soon as I could. To my delight, G was excited to be asked to join the GOSH YPF and is looking forward to attending her very first meeting on Sunday. focus-groupBoth children have already been lending a hand by trialling and reviewing an on-line project called Digital Badges, something they have really enjoyed trying out over the last 2 months or so, especially giving their feedback on how this project worked. G will spend her day with this group on Sunday at GOSH, whilst Mike, M and I explore the nearby British Museum and their Sutton Hoo exhibit and I can’t wait to hear all about it during our return journey.

FreeFrom Eating Out Awards 2016

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FFEOA 16 200X200As promised in my last blog, it’s now the turn of the second of the recently opened awards and one that I’m really delighted to be able to share with you. The FreeFrom Eating Out Awards 2016 are now heading into their 3rd year and are part of the Foodsmatter family  run by the same, highly successful team who organises the FreeFrom Food Awards and FreeFrom Skincare Awards. The Awards were launched to show that creating gluten, dairy and allergen free food that would be as good, if not better, than ‘normal’ food was completely possible as well as encouraging innovation and celebrating excellence in the freefrom food service industry. Working with members of the allergy community, including website Can I Eat There?, experts and bloggers, this year the awards are hoping to find more hidden gems than ever before.

Eating out is a treat that we love to be able to do as a family and I’m always on the look-out for new restaurants to visit with the children, be they part of a chain or independent, especially when I can be confident that they can and will prepare safe food that we all can enjoy. I have already suggested some of our favourite haunts to the #FFEOA16 team and would ask you to do the same if there are any you would love to see recognised for their allergy awareness. These are restaurants who have taken on board the changes to EU legislation back in December 2014 regarding the provision of information about the presence of top 14 allergens in their dishes and, rather than continuing to complain that its cramping their style, have embraced the changes and used them to make a difference.

This year there are 8 award categories:

  • Cafes & teashops
  • Fish & Chip shops
  • Pubs & pub restaurants
  • Restaurants
  • Corporate hospitality and catering – venues and outside catering
  • Hotels & guesthouses
  • Schools, colleges and universities
  • Foods manufactured for food service

Just as with the Allergy UK Hero Awards, it’s great to see such a cross-section of eating out venues included in the #FFEOA, especially the corporate hospitality and schools, colleges and universities categories. I will be watching the progress of these awards with interest and look forward to being able to tell you the final winners after the presentation in late November. In the meantime, I want to share with you the winner of the first ever Pathfinder Award, which has been given by #FFEOA to mark the opening of the 2016 competition. The Pathfinder Award is a discretionary award for anyone, or any establishment, that is really pushing the boundaries of freefrom and thinking outside that box. The 2016 winner is Executive Chef Dominic Teague and his team at restaurant Indigo at One Aldwych Hotel, Covent Garden, for their ground-breaking work in catering for those on freefrom diets.

DT

Last year, after a brief closure for kitchen refurbishment, the restaurant created massive social media buzz when it was revealed that it was now serving a new and entirely gluten- and dairy-free menu and had been for 3 months without anyone realising it. Dominic had been inspired by increasing customer demand for gluten- and dairy-free food and had taken the opportunity of his kitchen refurb to ensure that he could continually create culinary masterpieces in a freefrom-friendly environment. The compliments came flooding in, from regular non-allergy customers and new diners alike and since revealing the truth to the world, Indigo has seen a huge increase in the number of its bookings, which only goes to show it really can be done if only you put your mind to it.

You can find out more about Indigo and Dominic Teague’s revolutionary decision on the #FFEOA16 website here.

The Italian Job

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Sometimes you just need some time off; a week away from it all; an opportunity to have a break from the everyday, to just rest and relax and be. The thing is that that is hard enough to achieve when you’re a parent and near on impossible when you’re a special needs parent. The stress of leaving your chronically ill child with someone else, even when accompanied by a small novel’s worth of detailed instructions about what to do in every possible and conceivable situation, threatens to overwhelm and can seemingly be insurmountable for a day or two, let alone more than that. Mike and I are lucky that my Mum lives close enough to give us some nights off during school holidays, but those days usually mean longer hours at work for me as I attempt to make up time missed for hospital appointments with M and include only the occasional trip out to the cinema or for dinner somewhere where we aren’t tied to the essentials of chicken, rice and cucumber of our everyday menus.

Last December, in fact the day before M was admitted to GOSH for those disastrous food challenges, I received a Facebook message out of the blue from one of my fellow FABED Mums:

“Is that you that has won a trip to Italy with schar? Saw Twitter post? Congratulations x”

and have to confess that at that point I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about! A quick unscheduled peek at my Twitter feed and a long look at my e-mails later, I was stunned to learn that she was indeed right and I had won a 4-night stay in Italy thanks to gluten-free producer Dr Schar and the Allergy and Free from Show, Liverpool. It has taken a little while to put all the necessary pieces in place, but finally, last week, 6 full months since I first received that message, Mike and I left G and M in my Mum’s more than capable hands and jetted off for a much-needed break from it all.

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Getting to that point did take some effort and there were last-minute wobbles before we finally left. It took an unbelievable amount of time to confirm the dates for our hotel stay due to the relaxed attitude of the Italian hotel staff and our flights were researched and scheduled by me once I knew the preferred airports for us to travel to and from. Two nights before we left, Mike questioned whether we really could go abroad given M’s current ill-health, but we trust my Mum implicitly and knew we needed to take some time for ourselves. That’s something that my Mum supported fully as she knows that reality as well as we do due to my T1D diagnosis at age 9. The truth is that you should never under-estimate the impact of a sick child on a marriage: the focus naturally shifts from each other to that child and home life inevitably revolves around what they need in every waking moment. In our household, those needs have not just been during the day, but at nighttime too as M’s sleep issues have been an ongoing problem that we continue to struggle with and every time we seem to be making some headway with it, something happens to set us back to where we were before. His broken leg has been no exception and has added to that regression as it has seen us playing musical beds with G moving to M’s cabin bed and Mike to G’s room to give M the comfort he needed to enable him to sleep in the weeks following the accident. The physical strain of looking after M with his broken leg has taken its toll on me, leaving me exhausted and Mike and I have had little time to spend with each other without interruption.

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Our plane is the one on the left, which looked tiny when seen next to the Easyjet one also waiting for passengers

Last Monday passed in something of a blur and proved to be a long day of travelling with more than its fair share of minor hiccups along the way, just to keep us on our toes. We were up at 3.30am to reach our regional airport before a 6.30am flight to Munich, followed by a couple of hours waiting at the airport before our shuttle bus arrived. Then there was the 30 minutes of pure stress as we failed to connect with the shuttle bus due to the unclear instructions as to where to wait that were written on the booking form and my tears of panic as Mike desperately tried to find a helpful German airport worker to help him communicate with the bus company, before all was finally resolved and the driver turned around to pick us up. IMG_0522[1]The following 4.5 hours in a minibus without functioning air-conditioning and unable to communicate with said driver due to my lack of German and his lack of English was interesting, though we drove through some amazing countryside and realised that 4 countries in 1 day (UK, Germany, Austria and Italy) was a record even for us. We finally reached Lana, our Italian destination, only to discover that the cable car to the hotel – the only way to reach it – had broken down and we were destined to wait for an indeterminate amount of time as the statement that “..it might be 5 minutes, it could be 30…” was accompanied by an unconcerned shrug. But, we got there in the end and, having reached what is an amazing resort, it was, without a doubt, all worth it in the end.

Meeting a knead

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With so much of my time and energy focused on NEAW16 throughout May as well as coping with the aftermath of M’s broken leg, I unusually spent very little time in the kitchen for most of the month, other than to whip up the regular offerings for each meal. Having taken a much-needed short break to recover, it has been time to revisit some of the recipes I’ve spotted and saved over the last few weeks to see if they could be adapted to suit M’s current dietary needs. One of the foods he really misses having is bread and barely a month goes by without him requesting a sandwich made of “real bread”Kneading-dough-007 and not just rice cakes. A couple of years ago I took a Doves Farm recipe and adapted it to suit our then requirements, and it worked. It wasn’t brilliant, but M loved it despite its foibles because it met his needs. Over the last 18 months, I’ve mastered bread-like equivalents such as pancakes and flatbreads, but hadn’t ventured back into the world of bread-making…until now.

The biggest challenge for my current bread-making attempt was the yeast. We haven’t trialled yeast with M as yet and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t imagine we’ll be doing so for quite some time as the nutritional benefit to be gained by adding it to his diet right now is negligible. We will, without a doubt, get there some day, probably round about the time M wants to start drinking beer – though obviously my baby will never be old enough for that milestone to pass! – but it doesn’t feel like a priority for the time being. Instead, I switched on my trusty laptop and started looking for yeast alternatives or, even better, recipes for yeast-free bread and found this fantastic one by FussyFoodie.co.uk, which I was able to tweak further for M. I am, as ever, extremely grateful to those other allergy-aware cooks IMG_0458[1]out there, who take their time to share their recipes via blogs and other websites as their hard work helps make my efforts a little easier as I strive to create appetising dishes for M.

I baked my final recipe twice to try out both my bread-maker and my free form bread-making skills, as well as adding different flavours to see how the end results compared. The machine mixed loaf looked great, but I found that the ingredients hadn’t really been combined enough in the pan and ended up having to remove a good centimetre or so of rice flour from the bottom of the loaf before it could be enjoyed. The centre of the loaf also failed to cook thoroughly, though toasting slices of the bread before serving did go some way to resolving that particular crisis. Both M and G were suitably impressed by my efforts, which encouraged me to give it a go a second time. This time round I hand-mixed the dough, added some herbs for a different flavour and formed small bread rolls instead of a single loaf. IMG_0491[1]These worked much better in my opinion and M certainly enjoyed the crusty outside, reminiscent of a “real” bread roll, almost as much as the warm centre that had been spread with some coconut oil to replace the butter. I will definitely be baking this bread recipe again and may even try to co-ordinate my cooking so that M can enjoy his chicken burgers in a bap!

Lasagne – an unusual last supper!

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I’ve been fascinated looking back over the last 4 awareness weeks and seeing how our approach to “Eating like M” has developed over time. When we first started in 2013, we chose to eat the foods that M could eat at the time, even if they were things he wouldn’t have touched with the proverbial barge pole such as mushrooms, tomatoes or courgettes and followed the lead of other EGID families by eating exactly the same as him on the Friday, including the much-dreaded Neocate Active. Year 2 followed a similar approach, though Mike matched M mouthful for mouthful on the Friday to truly understand what it felt like to be on his diet and again drank the obligatory pint of Neocate for full effect. By 2015, M’s diet had changed dramatically and when we hit NEAW15, he had only 3 safe foods he could eat. Despite initially rejecting the idea of eating like M, IMG_0496[1] Mike and I decided we would once again support him through what was proving to be an extremely challenging time and agreed to spend the week with just 3 foods making up our 3 meals with a litre of E028 to wash it all down for Mike.

2016 has taken us another step forward in our “Eating like M” adventures and this year saw G choosing to stand in solidarity with her brother and join in our week with just 5 safe foods. I am so proud that she decided to take part in this challenge with us and stoically managed the week without complaint. Once again, our week led to opportunities to share our family’s EGID story with others, including Mike’s discussions with fellow attendees at a fully catered RICS training course in London. He had expected the standard buffet lunch to be provided and had armed himself with rice-cakes and apples to get him through his day, so the hot meal that was prepared on request to meet these strict dietary requirements was a more than pleasant surprise.

One of the highlights of the week for me was our final meal on the Saturday night. I had been looking for the perfect opportunity to try out what was, to me, a completely new product and our last M-inspired dinner gave me that chance. I first heard about this product back in February at the #FFFA16, when fellow judge, Stanley Montwedi, founder of online shopping website FreeFromMarket recommended it to me and couldn’t stop raving about how amazing it was. IMG_0469[1]With NEAW16 in mind, I had ordered a couple of boxes from him and knew exactly what masterpiece I’d be whipping up next.

As a family we have always enjoyed eating pasta, but M’s food restrictions have made enjoying a variety of different pasta dishes almost impossible. Thanks to this new-to-me range of products, that is no longer the case. Rizopia Organic Brown Rice Lasagne was actually the winner of the 2015 Free From Food Awards Pasta & Pizza category and I must say that it was definitely a worthy winner. I used it to make a M-friendly chicken lasagne, layering strips of chicken with the pasta sheets and lashings of white sauce flavoured with basil and oregano. I didn’t pre-soak the sheets as per the cooking instructions, but given the limited sauce that could be added to my lasagne, we all found them quite chewy, so I think I will try soaking them beforehand the next time I cook it. And believe me, there will be a next time because the whole family was impressed with this dish. M enjoyed it so much that he asked for it for lunch and dinner 3 days in a row and was most disappointed to discover that it did eventually run out! The Rizopia rice pasta range includes lots of different shapes of pasta which are all safe for M and will add some much-needed variety to his meal-times.

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A Quick Pudding Dilemma

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On Saturday afternoon I spent some time reading back through my National Eosinophil Awareness Week blog posts from previous years, looking for a little inspiration for those I’ll be writing to mark this year’s week, which is fast approaching. I expected to spend a good 20 minutes reminiscing and little else, 0c0dc8797599764caae7d88291139822but instead found myself being led in an entirely different direction as the very first post I re-read inspired me in a completely unexpected way.

I’m always on the lookout for new menu ideas for M and whilst we really don’t need any more sweet options, the lure of a quick and easy pudding was too good to resist. I had a look at the original recipe I had posted, but wondered if there was a more M-friendly one already out there, which would only require the very slightest tweaking on my part. To my delight I found an almost perfect vegan recipe, where all I needed to do was change the flour and oil to suit M’s restricted dietary needs. I was particularly excited about the fact it could be cooked in the microwave as so often puddings for M take a lot longer to prepare and cook, something which requires a level of planning ahead which doesn’t always happen in our household.

IMG_0446[1]Recipe adapted, ingredients checked and with 5 minutes on the clock, I whipped up the sponge batter, set the timer on the microwave and waited with bated breath for that final ping which would tell me if it had been a success or not. As always, the children’s reactions are the best indication of whether I’ll be cooking a dish again and this one has definitely earned a place in my repertoire. It’s an easy pudding to make with only a handful of ingredients and can be cooked in 4 minutes with the help of a trusty microwave. M and G both gave it a massive thumbs up and enjoyed finishing it off for Sunday tea. Even better, I’m sure it can be easily adapted to use my M-friendly lemon curd instead of the golden syrup, or any safe jams to change the flavours, which really does make it a success in my book too.

A Power of Superheroes

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What is the collective noun for a group of superheroes? Any idea? I didn’t know off-hand, but as I looked around the room at the amazing group of people gathered to celebrate the 2016 Free From Foods Awards this week, I realised that that’s what I was in the midst of: enough superheroes to make any allergy sufferer’s heart flutter. Ever since I spent a fabulous 2 days judging these amazing awards at the start of February, the ceremony had promised to be the highlight of my season and, with M and G in their new role of diary contributors to the Foodsmatter newsletter, the whole family was lucky enough to be invited to attend.

13095812_10153421370696123_3435156642706845396_nM’s broken leg required some significant amendments to our original plans, but we were determined to get the family, wheelchair and all, to the event, held near Regents Park, London at the rather impressive Royal College of Physicians. We planned to leave as soon as the children finished school, which left ample time to reach our destination and even allowed strategic stops along the way to primp and preen ourselves for the evening. We all had new clothes for the occasion and G took the matter so seriously that she hand-wrote a note for her hanger to remind herself not to wear them before the day itself. Our journey started well and as we travelled along the motorway, the children took turns to pick songs for us all to sing or compared what cloud creations they could spot out of their respective windows. Naturally things couldn’t continue in that relaxed manner and we soon joined a queue of stationary traffic that had me biting my nails and stressing to the hilt that we wouldn’t reach London in time. Fortunately for all concerned, Mike has a much calmer Cg-yOG8WIAAwdZYhead than me and was our nominated driver for the night. The traffic eventually started to move, we crept past the accident site and soon were back up to speed and on our way without me completely losing my cool. We stopped just once and Mike, G and M were all able to nip into the service station toilets to glam themselves up for the evening. I was too anxious about our timings to take 5 minutes out to change myself and the following hour or so was filled with moments much reminiscent of Dirty Dancing – remember Baby changing on the back-seat of Johnny’s car? – as well as hysterical giggling from M as I contorted my body into unbelievable positions to don my own new outfit.

Of course, as it turns out, I needn’t have worried. We arrived bang on time and thanks to the helpful College staff, we were able to park in their car park to ease the burden of manoeuvering M and his wheelchair around. Convoluted lift systems negotiated – seriously complicated as we had to go down from the ground floor to the lower ground floor before taking a different lift up to the first level – we were finally there and the children were thrilled to receive name badges of their very own. From the moment we stepped into the room, I was surrounded by a group of innovative, interesting and fantastic people who all had one thing in common, their passion for the freefrom market. Some of them I had had the honour to meet at one of the judging sessions, others I know from social media, whilst others I’d never met before, but as we made our way across the room, being hugged and kissed by new friends and old, I realised that I really did feel at home with them. We parked M’s wheelchair close to the stage so that he could observe all the proceedings with ease and my thanks go to the Romer Labs UK representatives, one of the Awards sponsors, as they made sure he could see what was happening at all times.

Michelle Berriedale-Johnson was the emcee Cg_buJJW4AUTEpIfor the evening and the awards presented by celebrity chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, who gave what has to be the quote of the night that “..free from people should not be seen as niche people but normal people..”, which was great to hear. It was wonderful to see so many creative and innovative producers receive commendations for their hard work and the winners were all deserving in their categories. It was good to remember some of the fantastic new foods that I had tasted and wonderful to see G so excited about the gluten- and dairy-free offerings available that her own mini fist-pumps could be seen as she heard who the winners were. The full list of winning entries can be found on the Awards website, but a special mention must go to the winner of the FAIR trophy for the Best FreeFrom Food 2016, Nutribix. I was particularly thrilled to see this breakfast cereal win, not least because I had been fortunate to judge the Breakfast products category in February and absolutely loved it. Nutribix is an amazing product, reminiscent of Weetabix and unlike anything else available on the freefrom market at the moment. nutribix-awt-mmoWe’ve still to track down a box in our local supermarkets for G to try, but I’m even more determined to get my hands on some now that one of my favourites has won the overall title.

It was an unmissable night and we could easily have stayed for hours chatting to the other attendees. G and M were on best behaviour and did some impressive networking of their own – politely introducing themselves and chatting confidently to the adults in the room. I received several compliments from those they spoke to, which makes me immensely proud. G was absolutely buzzing from the thrill of having canapés and a buffet that were, more or less, all safe for her and certainly enjoyed the food – the surprise hit of the evening being water buffalo canapés which she declared “delicious” and helped herself to more as soon as she could. It was wonderful to have the time and opportunity to put faces to names of so many other allergy bloggers and companies out there and whilst I won’t even attempt to list them all for fear of forgetting someone, they know who they are and I can’t wait to the next opportunity to meet up. The free from community can sometimes be surprisingly small, but it is also very close-knit and these are people that I’m delighted to be able to describe as friends. Even better, we already have a date in mind and many of us will be able to reconnect at the Allergy and Free from Show at Olympia, London during the weekend of July 8-10th. There’s also the Free From Eating Out Awards coming up later in the year, which is looking to recognise nationwide chains as well as independent restaurants who go the extra mile to provide safe meals for their allergy-suffering diners.

Special mention has to, of course, go to our very own superhero, Ryan from Borough 22 doughnuts. He got one of the loudest cheers of the night, partly aided by our very exuberant family, as well as 2 very much deserved Highly Commendeds for his doughnuts. The highlight of M’s evening was meeting the man he now terms his “personal chef” and even more thrilled that Ryan signed his cast too. It says a lot about the difference this man has made to M in such a short space of time that today even his teacher understood why M was so excited to have met “the doughnut man” in person.

Oh, and I still don’t know what that collective noun is, but I rather think “A Power of Superheroes” fits the bill perfectly! MzQ1QzM3M0E4MzFCNjM4QjYzMUY6YWUxNzkyMGNiZWRkMjJhNGIyYWI2YTNlNDZiNGJjODM6Ojo6OjA=

The missing element

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With only the occasional exception of the odd batch of chicken liver pâté, M has been consuming more than his fair share of dry rice cakes on a daily basis over the last 14 months. What started as a necessity because of his limited diet and the lack of finding a delicious and safe spread to use, continued because, however I looked at it, I couldn’t see a way to create that missing spreadable element. The recent discovery of a great rice cream which could be spread a little like butter has meant that things seem to finally be on the up as it not only provides a tasty addition to an otherwise inarguably bland food, but also adds some much-needed extra calories each day. Arsenic-levels-in-rice-crackers-and-Rice-Krispies_strict_xxlEven better, that upward trend continued this past weekend when, as Mike prepared some toast with lemon curd for my breakfast, my mind was drawn back a few summers to when I realised that I could make dairy- and soya-free lemon curd for the children to enjoy and I wondered whether I could take that original recipe a step further and produce one that would achieve M-friendly status.

To my delight, this looked to be one of the easiest recipe adaptations I’ve had to tackle in the last 15 months as there were only 3 ingredients to be replaced and all could be done in the simplest of fashions. My coconut milk became rice cream, the cornflour mix replaced by rice flour and the safe margarine could be substituted by coconut oil. Refusing to tell either M or G what I was planning, I sent them out on an errand to buy some more lemon juice from our corner shop and achieved a much-needed break from the near constant bickering we’d been subjected to so far that day. It was a beautifully sunny spring afternoon and I knew they’d benefit, not just from the feeling they were doing something useful for Mummy, but also from some sun, fresh air and a stretch of their legs. M was somewhat confused by my request as he was insistent I had more than enough lemon juice in the fridge already, but he was readily swayed by my demand for more and the promise of a special treat if it all worked out.

The process of making the lemon curd was actually a lot easier and quicker than I remembered. I have vague memories of making “proper” lemon and raspberry curd when G was in Reception as an end of year gift for her class teachers and remember standing at the hob, stirring the hot mixture until my arm both arms felt tired. I’m not sure why this recipe and method don’t take so long, but I’m definitely grateful for anything that takes less than 30 minutes to whip up these days. To my surprise, despite their initial interest, G and M soon became distracted by other activities and so I was able to finish the preparation and get the 2 jars into the fridge without them noticing. The distraction of a dairy- and soya-free chocolate fondue for pudding – my desperate attempt to use up as much of the leftover Easter chocolate as possible as sadly it’s not been a success for M – proved invaluable and Mike and I were able to hold off the big reveal until it became Sunday teatime. IMG_0277[1]The flavour is very sharp and not overly sweet and M has loved every mouthful, demanding it on a near daily basis for either lunch or a bedtime snack. G says she enjoys it too, though I’m certain she won’t be asking for it on anything like as regular a basis as her brother. Most importantly, it provides a break from the dry mouthfuls of rice cakes that M has become accustomed to and that, in my world, is absolutely priceless.