Online and allergen-free in WA

screen shot taken from here

 We have recently moved to Western Australia which means that a lot of the online stores I was buying from now have prohibitive shipping costs. So I googled where to buy allergy free foods in Perth and came across this website - Allergy Tots. They don't have a huge range of products but they do have what I am looking for - a dairy free Easter Egg for our little Miss. So I have emailed to reserve an egg for her and can now feel less guilty about shopping for Easter Eggs for us too! Now to locate some mini Easter Eggs like what we had last year.

Absolute winner of a chocolate cake

Photo from here

I bought this cake mix in order to make little muffins for my daughter to take to her preschool for them to freeze for whenever someone has a birthday and she can't eat what is provided. I make a smaller cake with what was left over. I sprinkled pure icing sugar over the top instead of making an icing.
It was delicious! We all loved it and it was so moist and yummy that it was like eating a normal chocolate cake!

Here is their website. It is pretty easily available from certain large supermarkets.

We made the egg free option with No Egg rather than what was suggested but otherwise made it according to the instructions.

We are going to make it again for my daughter's 3rd birthday! I can't believe it is less than a month away.

A couple of products we are enjoying

Potentially the tastiest cupcake we've made.

Icing and Sprinkles certainly make it more exciting!

Just like Cheerios! Well, almost.

We purchased these from Allergy Train's website. Eggs are suggested for the cupcake mix but we just used the equivalent of No Egg.

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 :)

A break is in order

As my regular readers may have already guessed, I'm feeling the need for a bit of a break from blogging about food. So I will take some time off and reassess at the end of it. I hope this blog continues to be a resource for lots of people with food allergies.

We are currently back to wheat free because my daughter's lip started getting it's eczema again and her back was continually spotty so we are giving her body a break. Then we will start again. Probably just with irregular dinners with wheat in them rather than bread for lunch every day like we have been doing. Thankfully she hasn't put up a fuss going back onto the gluten free bread.

I hope you have a good few months.

BBQ sauce

Not many regular BBQ sauces are wheat free, but Woolworths Select's BBQ sauce is so that's what we have in the fridge.

Menu Plan Monday and cookbook review

A great resource!

Another week, another menu! How great was Kate's win on Masterchef last night?! We were very excited for her.

Monday - homemade pizzas - they are great when you have others over for dinner - easy to multiply!
Tuesday - Fish in Foil with vegies
Wednesday - Roast Chicken and vegies (leftover chicken used on sandwiches for next 2 days)
Thursday - Spaghetti bolognaise (using pork & veal mince)
Friday - Pea & Ham Soup
Saturday - Went out to an Italian restaurant with the kids - Miss 2 had a pizza with no cheese - amazing to think that we can do this every now and then - having wheat in the diet certainly makes it easier!
Sunday - Turkey burgers - fantastic - we all really enjoyed them - I'll blog about it soon.

I bought this cookbook a while ago and found it fantastic to browse and inspire me with different ideas. I especially like the section with cookies/ cakes etc because that is the area I tend to struggle with. Each recipe has a code at the top to tell you what it is free of and a lot of the recipes are free of most allergens. The author is a Mum of children with allergies and she found she was supplying recipes to lots of her friends and so the cookbook was a natural progression. She has sections at the back with information on all the allergies she provides for in the book as well as a shopping guide with allergen information for lots of regular grocery items like flours, stocks, margarines, processed meats, sauces and snack foods. Really helpful and worth buying especially with the price. She also has a website that you can check out for more allergy information.