Allergy Train Website

Hopefully they will look better than this one

Oscar's Mum blogs about cooking for her son who has food intolerances and I enjoy reading because sometimes we cross over in what we can cook. The other day she blogged about succeeding in cooking tortillas - I have been looking for a successful tortilla recipe/mix for a long time (we love tortillas!) and so her link to the Allergy Train website for Mrs Robens Tortilla Mix was quite exciting.

I have placed my order (along with a couple of other things - had to make the $12 postage worth it) - and will let you know how it goes. By the way, I noticed that you can get a lot of Eskal brand items including the ice-cream cones that I mentioned on Wednesday.

Ice Cream Cones

We recently instituted Friday night ice-cream after dinner. The kids are super excited about it and often try to work out if it is Friday yet. Miss 2 can have soy ice-cream and we are currently using So Good's Chocolate ice-cream. I was at a specialty shop and happened on some gluten-free ice cream cones by Eskal and so I snapped them up. Both kids really enjoyed having them and we saved washing up 2 more bowls :)

There's lots more gluten free products by Eskal here - we have enjoyed the Deli Crackers before but haven't seen many of the other products in regular stores. I think some aren't dairy free so make sure you check.

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.