Menu Plan Monday and Garlic Bread Recipe

Home made "everything-free" garlic bread was a hit!

Monday - Nachos at our brother and sister-in-law's
Tuesday - Baked fish and vegetables
Wednesday - Homemade chicken nuggets made with crushed plain potato chips rather than rice crumbs (from Friendly Food Cook Book)
Thursday - Homemade Lasagne witha frozen lasagne for my daughter from Choices Bakery and garlic bread
Friday - Bacon, Leek, Zucchini and Mushroom Pizza (base from Choices too)
Saturday - Kid's dinner with cousins - Chicken Nuggets, chips and Frozen vegies
Sunday - Easy Meal - Leftovers for adults, scrambled eggs on toast for Master 3 and boiled potato with Nuttelex and peas and corn for Miss 2. She really enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, the lasagnes from Choices was a big fail. I had a taste as well and it really was pretty disgusting. The garlic bread, praise God, was a hit and saved the meal! Here's what I did:

1 tablespoon Nuttelex
1/4 clove garlic, very finely chopped unless you have an excellent crusher (I found a very small clove instead of dividing but if you just multiply the recipe you could just freeze the leftovers)
1/4-1/2 tsp finely chopped parsley

Mix all the ingredients well and butter onto a slice of bread. Put into preheated oven at 180C and cook until a bit golden on the edges.

Avoiding Contamination #3

The Microwave.
It tends to be full of crumbs doesn't it? I used to just pop our bread in on it's own to defrost it. Now I have to be regular in cleaning the microwave and always use a plate. This helps to avoid contamination.
I had better clean my microwave...!

Menu Plan Monday

Choices small pizza bases - pic from here

Here we go again! Hope you have a great week.

Monday - at my parents place - sausages, rice, mashed pumpkin, peas/corn and tomatoes
Tuesday - we had a dinner out and the kids had spaghetti and meatballs from the freezer
Wednesday - baked fish, rosemary potatoes and vegetables
Thursday - Hamburgers
Friday - Pizza with my daughter's pizza base from Choices to make life a bit easier this week
Saturday - Veal Schnitzel
Sunday - Beef Stir-fry - an improved version - I added some water and cornflour to make more of a sauce.

Baby Mum Mums

Photo from here

Another blessing for babies with our sort of allergies - Baby Mum Mums are a rice rusk that softens easily and is a great little snack. They say that they are for children over 1 year of age but I gave them to Miss 2 quite a bit before that and, as always, kept an eye on her while she ate. She still enjoys them now. You can get 3 types in local supermarkets - Original, Vegetable (it has carrot and spinach powders - I figure it's worth choosing that one even if the amount of vegetable is minimal) and Banana. Read more about them here.

Vanilla bean biscuits

I adapted this recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly Allergy-free Cooking for Kids book.

125g Nuttelex
1/2 cup Gluten Free Icing Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (or 1 vanilla bean)
1 1/4 cups plaing GF flour

Place Nuttelex in a bowl and sift icing sugar into it. Put vanilla bean paste (or seeds) into the bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in siften flour in two batches (just not all at once really).

Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth. Shape the dough into a log (diameter as big as you want the biscuits to be). Wrap in clingwrap and put in the fridge for at least 30mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line baking tray with baking paper.

Cut log into ~1cm slices. Place slices on trays about 2cm apart. Bake for about 12mins or until they get a little golden. Cool on the trays.

And as for the recipe book itself. Now that I own it and have looked through it, it's only ok. Unfortunately they separate the allergy free recipes - so it would help if your child was only allergic to one of the egg, dairy or gluten. But for my girl needing to miss all three, I still have to do almost as much substitution as a normal cook book. Lots of great kid food ideas though.

Menu Plan Monday

Vanilla biscuits

Here's my offering for this week

Monday - Spaghetti and meatballs
Tuesday - Nachos
Wednesday - Pork chops and vegies
Thursday - Homemade pizza
Friday - Roast Chicken
Saturday - BBQ sausages, chicken and salad
Sunday - Left overs "Things on a plate"

Snack - vanilla biscuits

So your child has allergies...

Here's a few suggestions of what to do first
- Follow your allergist's advice. Eg - remove allergens from their diet, buy medications as required, such as antihistamines and epipens and make sure you always have them with you, tell everyone who cares for your child the action plan for when an allergic reaction takes place.
- Meet with a dietician who is experienced in children and allergies. It's worth paying for if you can afford it. They will go through your child's current diet, make suggestions for changes and give you ideas for substitutes.
- Meet with your GP if you think your child is lacking nutrition somewhere and work out if there is anything you can do - like going on vitamins with iron, like we did.
- Work out what substitutes there are for your child to help you cook more eg No Egg, GF flours, Milk, Margarine etc and buy them.
- Find recipes that help you cook good food for your child - your local library should have a good selection, look online (you are here already!) and speak with friends who might have ideas.
- Something I've yet to do, but is a good idea, is join up to your local allergy support network such as Anaphylaxis Australia. They will keep you up to date with the latest information about allergies.

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat personally about anything. It's a tough road.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Not covered in cheese :)

These have been a hit and I have made them regularly since.

500g beef mince
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1/4 cups GF bread crumbs
1 egg equivalent of No Egg
salt and pepper
1/2 finely grated medium carrot
1/4 finely grated med-large zucchini
1-2 clove garlic, crushed 
1 tin diced tomatoes
1/2 same tin water
pinch of salt
1/2 -1 tsp sugar
GF spaghetti for 4

Combine mince, crumbs, No egg, parsley, vegetables, salt and pepper and combine well with your hands. Form meatballs into balls that are about 2 tablespoons worth. I often do this while the kids are in bed so I tend to cover and refrigerate for a few hours. Probably not a requirement but I can't tell you!

Heat some oil in a pan with the garlic. As the garlic starts to fry, add the meatballs and cook until they are browned all over.

Add tomatoes, water and sugar and salt (to taste) and simmer for about 10-15mins, adding more water if necessary and then keep simmering until it is reduced to a sauce.
In the meantime prepare pasta according to instructions and drain when ready.

Serve meatballs and sauce over the spaghetti and for those who can tolerate dairy, add freshy grated parmesan cheese.

Menu Plan Monday

Baked beans on toast from toasto.com

Monday - out for dinner
Tuesday - Roast beef with vegies
Wednesday - Steak sandwiches using leftover steak and roast vegies
Thursday - Homemade Pizza
Friday - Spaghetti and Meatballs (this is such a hit - will blog the recipe this week)
Saturday - Baked Fish and vegies (made by my DH!)
Sunday - Baked beans on toast - bit of a fail for my daughter - she didn't like them, despite her love of all other canned legumes :(. So still on the hunt for a super easy dinner akin to this - your ideas are appreciated!

Chia seeds

Chia pizza - yum

I recently bought a packet of chia seeds from the supermarket. There has been a bit of hype about them being a super food and really good for you so I thought I would see if I could easily add them into my daughter's diet.

Chia seeds are part of the mint family and rich in omega-3 fatty acids as well as providing protein, fibre, and some essential minerals (phosphorus, manganese, calcium, potassium and sodium). More information is available at Wikipedia or just Google it.

So far I have added them to pizza dough and scones (not GF ones though yet). Apparently they go well in salads to add a bit of crunch. For the pizza dough, I just added about 1/4 tsp to the single serve.

On the packet of seeds it also tells you how to make Chia gel, which you can use to replace eggs, oil and/or butter. Combine 1 part Chia Seeds to 9 parts water and whisk to blend the seeds. Stand for 15mins and then whisk again. Put into airtight container and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Pretty cool! Will try it soon.

Edit 22 October 2011 - I recently read that people who were allergic to nuts could be sensitive to chia seeds. So please be cautious if you/your child have nut allergies. I am glad I read it because it explained my son's eczema that had strangely returned. We had been eating a loaf of bread with chai seeds in it that week.

Chocolate muffins

My muffins, or cupcakes, as my 3 y.o. son told me they were!

I want to link you up to a fabulous website - Literary Viands. It has yummy recipes for sweet treats and good ideas about substitutes for different foods. I made the chocolate muffin recipe and it was great. I susbtituted for the egg using No Egg and I used soy milk and there were no problems. They looked really yummy too!

Little Caesar's Pizzeria

It just looks - and tastes - like a normal pizza!

My husband and I love this Perth based pizzeria. Their pizza creations are amazing - including their dessert pizzas! When we lived in Perth we used to head way out to Mundaring when we found out about it and since we were in Perth the other week we took advantage of it's new Hillarys location and the fact that they have gluten free pizza bases and soy cheese options. The staff were really helpful in working out what toppings my daughter could have and we ended up going for the Oka which was just sauce, cheese and bacon and my daughter enjoyed it (she loves bacon!) and I really enjoyed the taste I had as well. It even tasted good the next day - we took the rest home. So for those of you with (or without!) allergies reading in Perth - check them out!