EVERY YEAR I think ‘surely they’ve got to do better this time’. And every year I trawl around the supermarkets and realise, nope.
The perdy pastel shelves at M&S:
Nothing nut free. Continue reading “The 10 best allergy friendly Easter treats for kids (& more)”
Nut free, dairy free, egg free (optional: gluten and wheat free)
I CANNOT even begin to say how easy and amazing this allergy safe cake recipe is.
As usual, I left it until the last minute to get prepping for Sid’s birthday (how clearly I remember last year pledging to perfect all manner of sweet treats by the time he turned three. Ha!) and in a state of panic tweeted my worries about finding the right recipe.
Back came a link to something called ‘Wacky Cake’, an American concoction apparently created during the Depression era when fresh ingredients were rationed. It contains no egg, no dairy, no nuts and can be baked with gluten free flour, too. It uses vinegar or lemon to replace the egg and it works.
MUCH OF THE past two years has been spent desperately seeking a passable taste of the proper pasta Sid is missing. I needed to feed the one quarter Italian in him, after all.
So here’s what I’ve found – the best of the bunch (as far as I’ve managed to get in my mission, anyway). They’re all nut free, egg free and sesame free, too:
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…
I SHALL share a very quick gripe, something that made me groan if not (this time) break down blubbing in the supermarket.
Browsing the shelves for some olives fit for Sid to eat (not easy, given the plethora of “nut” warnings) I came across Sainsbury’s Moroccan dry black ones. And the labelling was even less helpful than usual – largely because someone had seen fit to plaster over the allergy info box with another label, warning that the olives “may contain stones”:
They may contain nuts, too, I suppose, but who would know? (And, yes, I tried to peel the label off, but it ripped the paper beneath to shreds). *holds head in hands*
TODAY I cried in the fish aisle at Sainsbury’s. Yes, I’m vegetarian, but it wasn’t out of pity for the poor dead mackerel. And I know it’s ludicrous. But this is what did it:
yesnobananas 