(Wheat free, gluten free, egg free, optional dairy free)
MY BID to recreate the chicken in matzo meal I loved as a child – minus the wheat and egg. Cut into goujons, chunky nuggets or a mini escalope it’s a great dish served warm and just as tasty doled out cold the next day for a picnic-style meal.
Ingredients
One pack chicken breast fillets
Orgran corn crispy crumbs (basically just baked maize breadcrumbs)
(Wheat free, gluten free, egg free, nut free, dairy free)
SUDDENLY Sidney’s second birthday was upon us and I realised that, nope, I hadn’t spent the entire past year transforming myself into the queen of allergy friendly baking after all. And I had no idea what cake I was going to make.
For his first we managed, after much effort, to create a decent Victoria-style sponge, but I didn’t want to churn out the same staple year after year. I needed a repertoire of treats. Plus we were now free to eat banana, Sid having outgrown that ridiculous allergy at 18 months… and banana can be a handy substitute for egg in cake recipes.
YOU’LL BE hard pressed to find a shop or deli-bought cheesecake that doesn’t contain egg, let alone wheat or nuts. But it’s actually really simple to knock up an allergy-friendly alternative that tastes just as good… and maybe even better.
I first made this recipe, just before Sid was born, for my husband’s birthday. (I’m not a mental baker, but I was six months pregnant and we weren’t going out on the razzle so I decided a cake would be a substitute – albeit a poor one!). I’ve adapted it here for Sidney using Tru Free digestives, which are egg, nut, wheat and gluten free. Continue reading
SO TODAY I have a small piece in The Times’ Weekend supplement, ‘Life With My Allergic Toddler’, about the pain in the arseness of trying to shop, cook and cater for a food allergy tot when everything you try to buy ‘may contain’ this that and the other. (Here’s the link. It’s a shorter piece than originally intended but I’ll post the full and unabridged soon…)
Meanwhile, this morning I headed out to the supermarket to buy ingredients for a Sid-friendly cheesecake (recipe also to come). And instantly proved my point.
Sainsbury’s Organic double cream? “Not suitable for nut allergy sufferers”. Silver Spoon icing sugar? “May contain traces of egg.” Sainsbury’s ‘Free From’ digestive biscuits? “May contain nuts”. Three separate shops later and I think we finally have what we need. Minus the cheery disposition I may or may not have had when we started…
SADIE Old Lady is in the house.
Which I hope explains my blogging slackness over recent weeks. But the chaos has – ha! – subsided and I will be back, with recipes and angry foot-stamping, in a jiffy.
To come: egg, nut and wheat free fairy cakes, the food trials of birthday bashes and the battle to stave off silly allergies in no.2…
JUST a quick follow-up to last night’s post on Sainsbury’s ditching the Dietary Specials Mozzarella and Tomato pizzas for their own rubbish version.
I’ve spoken with the exceedingly helpful folks at DS today who confirm that, yes, Sainsbury’s was their only major stockist and that they may now have to discontinue the line completely if no other big supermarket steps in. Deja vu – exactly what happened with Kinnerton milk chocolate. So do give Sainsbury’s a call on 0800 636 262, option ’5′, and ask them to reconsider. Continue reading
IT’S THE same old story. Every time I find a decent free from product and leap for joy, some supermarket chain or other decides to discontinue it. And so it is with the Dietary Specials deep pan cheese and tomato pizza I discovered only last week. Continue reading
Almost a year ago now I wrote a post about looming changes to the laws on food allergy labelling.
New EU regulations set to come into effect in December 2014 state that allergen information should be extended to non-prepacked foods – that means that restaurants, delis, cafes etc will be made to comply.
The catch is, however, that it is up to each individual European country to decide exactly how to implement the proposals. And I for one am desperate to avoid the same mess we’re in with allergen labelling in shops: that is, the manufacturers slapping on ‘may contain’ warnings willy-nilly without ever getting to grips with the issues of cross-contamination and actually doing something practical and helpful about it. Continue reading
A BIG, BIG day today – Sidney’s first ever pizza. It’s big because Sidney is one quarter Italian and his mother couldn’t bear to imagine a world without pizza. The horror.
Sadly, his debut was not a taste of the pizza a taglio I wolfed down on the street as a child in Rome, or the huge, crisp, paper thin versions, bubbling with sweet tomato and mozzarella, served up in a proper pizzeria. In an ideal world it wouldn’t have been a cook-from-frozen special. But beggars can’t etcetera and thank god, in that case, for Dietary Specials. Continue reading
Can probiotics prevent food allergy?
Worries about how Sidney will take to a new baby in the house (not to mention how we’ll tackle two of the blighters) have been supplemented by concerns that a second may also suffer from food allergies. And wouldn’t it be a f***** if they were entirely different to Sid’s? Just as we have built up a pretty good repertoire of food he can eat, to find a second tot can’t do dairy… it’s best not to dwell.
According to Sid’s allergist, the likelihood of a second child also being food allergic isn’t as high as you might think – if I recall rightly, it’s around eight per cent. Eczema in early infancy would be a suggestive sign, so if the baby does develop the same scratchy skin as Sid we’ll be straight to “Dr Bob” to get it checked out.
But I do have a small trick up my sleeve, that our doc has advised is as good a tactic as any in trying to stave off allergy in number two: probiotics.
Continue reading →