The quest continues with Sweet Potato Fries

Well, I went off dairy a week ago and even after 5 days there wasn't much difference in her rash. It was a little better but we were also using hydrocortisone cream and serious moisturisers on her so that it didn't get too awful. So 2 days ago, I went off wheat. And already it is looking better. I was hoping to not have to go off wheat since Miss 3 is back on wheat these days (although more on that in another post) but it looks like wheat might be the main culprit for Miss 0's reaction at the moment. So I have been seeking yummy lunches and here is one easy and delicious recipe that I'm enjoying this week that I got from Bill Granger's 'Every Day'.

Sweet Potato Fries (serves 1)
1/3-1/2 sweet potato (depends on its size and your appetite), peeled and cut into batons
a generous shake of paprika
a little shake of cayenne pepper (your preference as to how much heat you want really)
salt (again, to taste)
a couple of tablespoons olive oil

ready to go in the oven

Preheat oven to 230C. Toss the batons in all the other ingredients. Place on a baking tray in a single layer and bake, stirring occasionally, for 30min or until golden brown. Bill recommends serving with lime wedges (which I am trying today and it is great!). I used to like them with mayonaise but that's out at the moment...

I'm no food stylist and I have a new baby so you are just going to have to cope with these pics - they were super yummy and filling though and that's what counts :)

PS - sweet potatoes are also known as kumara and yam depending where you live

Wheat, no wheat, wheat, no wheat

Our attempts to get our girl onto wheat continue with a current break from wheat again. It doesn't seem to be causing any allergic reactions now but she just wasn't getting better from a cold/cough that she had so we have gone off wheat again to see if she'll get better. It hasn't been an immediate response but no doubt she'll need time to get it all out of her system again. Then we'll head back to wheat but this time very, very gradually on the advice of the allergy specialist we consulted before going off it again. It is very hard to go very gradually I must say.

On the food front, we had a chicken salad this week that was made up of baby cos lettuce, baby roma tomatoes, celery chopped, carrot chopped, red capsicum sliced, butter beans and grilled chicken (adults had a caesar dressing too!) and Mr 4 declared it to be the best dinner ever! Miss 2 declared butter beans to be the best bit (I wasn't very surprised) but she consumed a lot more vegetables than she normally does. They both helped me prepare it and I think that was partly why they enjoyed eating it so much. I think the best bit was watching them make the little lettuce leaves into beds for their other vegies and gobbling it up! Fun.

I'm still not planning to blog regularly - we are expecting our 3rd child and planning a move interstate - 2 very big events really - but I will pop in every now and then :)

Eat with others

Something that has really helped my daughter try new foods is eating with other children. Often with her cousins she has tried and/or eaten new vegetables! Just recently we had dinner at her uncle and aunt and they served green beans, something that I hadn't served in her living memory really (because I was sticking to ones I knew she would eat) and she proceeded to eat all of the beans inside the casing. Having other kids model eating other foods or even just having them on the plate in a different place can really make a breakthrough. Since then she has started eating peas as well because they come out of their skin too. Brilliant!

If you have a child with a limited diet who isn't keen on eating much inside their limits, this could be a great way of expanding those limits.

Chinese Noodle Salad

This is such a yummy salad and it can be done gluten free thanks to this product:

Here's the recipe


1/4 large Wombok/Chinese Cabbage, sliced thinly
1/4-1/2 bunch of shallots (green onions), sliced
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 packet Chang's Gluten Free Fried Noodles, prepared as per instructions

Mix cabbage and shallots in a bowl. Roast the sunflower seeds in a frypan or in the oven until turning golden and put aside until ready to serve salad. Prepare dressing as per below.

Dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Mix the dressing ingredients by shaking together.

When ready to serve, mix cabbage with seeds, then add noodles and at the last minute the dressing. Mix well and enjoy.

Note: If your family can have nuts, you can roast some slivered almonds as well and add them to the mix. They make it really yummy but it's not an option for us.

Baked Pumpkin Risotto

My Mum gave me this recipe when I got married. It is simple to prepare and you just put it in the oven. I've adjusted it to be allergen free, but it's also great with 'normal' ingredients!

Serves 2-3 adults (or 2 adults, 2 toddlers)

1 cup Arborio rice
2.5 cups hot chicken or vegetable stock (ensure gluten and dairy free if powder)
4 tbsp dairy free spread (Nuttelex)
350g pumpkin, peeled & diced
1/2 onion chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
cracked black pepper
sea salt
1 tbsp flat-leaf parsley

1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (for those who can have it you can stir it in after taking enough out for those allergic)

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C
Place arborio rice, stock, Nuttelex, onion, garlic & pumpkin in an oven proof dish and cover tightly with lid or aluminium foil.
Bake for 45min or until rice is soft
Stir through pepper, salt, parsley (and parmesan if possible) and serve.

You can add more vegetables to this like fresh spinach (chopped) and peas in at the same time as the pumpkin etc.

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

A great recipe from Julie's blog that we have tried a few times. The kids don't really like many orange vegetables currently but the adults loved it and it will be a good one for the future. I love how coconut cream makes things creamy without the dairy!

Curried Sweet Potato Soup
This recipe serves 6 people.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 brown onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 teaspoons curry powder
• 1.2 kg sweet potato, diced
• 5 cups chicken stock
• 1 large apple, peeled and grated
• coconut cream and crusty bread, to serve

Method:

• Heat oil in fry-pan. Cook onion and garlic 3-4 mins or un til tender. Add curry powder and stir for 1 min
• Add onion mix, sweet potato, chicken stock and apple to the slow cooker
• Stir to combine ingredients
• Cook on LOW for 6-7 hours or HIGH for 3-4 hours
• Turn slow cooker off and blend with stick blender until soup is puree and smooth
• Serve with 2 tablespoons coconut cream (per bowl) and bread.

(If you don’t have a slow cooker, you can simmer all ingredients covered for 30+ minutes, or until sweet potato is cooked, then blend and serve as above)

Savoury Pancakes

These were inspired by a friend who used to make them for her kids regularly.

1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup GF plain flour
Equivalent of 1 egg using No Egg
pinch salt
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup milk
1/2 zucchini, finely grated
1 small carrot, finely grated
small can corn, drained (or fresh cut off 1 cob)
tomato sauce

Mix flours, No Egg, salt, water and milk until you have a batter. Add in vegetables and mix until well combined.

Add oil to heated frypan and pour mix into fry pan. Brown each side and transfer to a plate.
Serve with tomato sauce.

For those who can eat cheese, add grated cheese to the batter before cooking.

Play with the amounts of buckwheat (maybe put less in, it is pretty bitter and darkens the mixture) and liquid (more milk, less water; less of all liquid to make them thicker). You could add meat on the side if you wanted to add more protein.

Potato Fritters

We had leftover chicken from our roast the night before so I decided to make potato fritters. I had never made them before so I used this recipe from Taste and modified it for my daughter. I made normal ones for the rest of the family and apart from having to have 2 lots of bowls, frypans, flippers etc, it wasn't too much more effort.

Here's the recipe for our allergen free potato fritters -
Serves 1

1 potato
1 teaspoon No Egg (or equivalent) mixed with 2 tablespoons water
salt
pepper
1/4 cup (or maybe lss depending on your frypan size) rice bran oil for shallow frying.

Place potato in cold water in a saucepan. Heat water until boiling and then remove potato to cool.
Peel potato and grate. Place in bowl. Mix in No Egg mixture and salt and pepper to taste.
Heat oil in frypan. Prepare 'patties' of potato and then place carefully into oil. Fry each side until golden brown.

We served with leftover roast chicken, peas and cauliflower. They could be a snack as well really.

Roast Chicken dinner

Since I mentioned roast chicken last post, I thought I should tell you what I do. This is one of the easiest and most delicious meals we have at the moment.

A good quality (hormone free) whole chicken
salt
freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Rinse the chicken inside and out and pat dry.
Season with salt and pepper inside and out. Truss legs together if you have kitchen twine (I don't usually).
Place in roasting tray (I have one with a rack so I can put vegies underneath) and cook until juices run clear (about 1-1.5hrs depending on size of your chicken). For example - 1.5kg chicken takes about 1hr15 if you start the oven at 220 for 15min and then turn it down to 200, according to a Bill Granger recipe).

Putting a lemon inside the chicken gives a lovely flavour.

I usually serve with potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato and peas. I usually half cook the potatoes (halved) and sweet potatoes (large pieces) in the microwave, drizzle them and the pumpkin (large pieces) with olive oil and place them in the tray under the chicken for the same amount of time as the chicken. Then I cook frozen peas and make gravy with Gravox powder, boiling water and the juices from the chicken. I have used gluten free flour, the juices from the chicken and pepper before as well to make the gravy (I think that's all the ingredients).

Enjoy.

Rosemary potatoes

My little girl is quite slender thanks to her dietary restrictions. Since she is lacking the fats found in dairy and doesn't like avocado, I look for other ways to get some good fats in. Here's a recipe that does this.

Rosemary Potatoes
(serves 1-2 as a side dish depending on size of potato of course)

1 potato, peeled and diced
fresh or dried rosemary
olive oil
salt

Boil/microwave the potato until cooked but not crumbly. Place potato in a bowl. Drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle some rosemary and a little salt (not too much and see if you can do the iodised salt because then they get some iodine too). Toss gently. Fry in frying pan until a but crispy on the outside. Place on a paper towel lined plate to take away excess oil and then serve.

Very yummy and also great on the BBQ.

Vegetables with Rice

This was a "what's left in the fridge" dinner that both my kids ate their whole portion!

Feeds 2 adults and 2 young kids with leftovers (so probably 4 adults)
Ingredients
1 small zucchini, finely diced
1 medium capsicum, finely diced
a handful of mushrooms, finely diced
a handful green beans, chopped
1 green onion finely sliced
1 carrot, grated
1 small can cannelini beans, rinsed
rice for 4
soy sauce and sesame oil to taste (for adults)
sesame seeds as garnish


While the kids were asleep I prepared the vegetables, put them in a bowl and placed them, covered, in the fridge.

15 minutes before dinner time I boiled some rice, rinsed the cannelini beans and then cooked up the vegetables with some olive oil in the frying pan.

When everything was cooked I cooled some of the rice down and added the cannelini beans and vegies on top for the kids and then returned the rest of the rice to the pan where I added some soy sauce (you can get gluten free if required) and little bit of sesame oil and fried it briefly to mix everything up. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and it was ready.

It is easy to leave out the soy and sesame if you need too or just add to those who can.