Frank bars

I've been a little quiet here for a while as real life got in the way a bit. I'm back now though. We were recently sent some Frank Bars, they are gluten, nut and dairy free. Perfect for Nate, so as soon as they arrived we had to try one. Nate chose the Chocolate and Oat to try and we happily shared this, the other flavours I haven't been so lucky with. These are perfect snacks for a little person and a great post run snack.

 

Frank Bars come in five flavours: Chocolate and Oat, Double Chocolate, Chocolate and Orange, Chocolate and Strawberry and Chocolate and Blueberry. Of the little nibble I have been allowed of the other bars, my favourites are Double Chocolate and Chocolate and Orange. These bars are yummy treats for anyone not just those with allergies.

 

All of the bars have a lovely coconutty flavour from the coconut cream used, we love coconut especially as it is our most used milk alternative. All of the bars except the Oat and Chocolate contain EnergySmart and 4g of Protein, perfect for a pre-run snack.

At the minute Frank bars are on special offer on Ocado, buy 4 get the 5th free. Look on their website to see their other stockists: http://www.thefrankfoodcompany.com/

Disclaimer: We were sent the bars free to try but all opinions are my own.

Pancakes/cakes

I have been experimenting with baking without eggs as they are on our shortlist of things that Nate reacts to. I liked the pancakes we had been served at the MomenTums launch so decided to tweak the batter to make cakes and to match what I had in the cupboard already (it was 6pm on a Sunday, no chance of getting to the shops)

I used this mixture to make a scotch type pancake and cakes

Pancake/Cake
1 cup of Gluten free Bread flour blend
1 1/2 teaspoons baking power
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 can Coconut Cream
1/2 Coconut milk (I use Koko)
4 Dessertspoons Sugar

Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients, mix well. If you are making cakes fill up cupcake cases and bake in a preheated oven for 13/15 minutes at 180 C
Pancakes - I left the batter while the cakes were baking and then heated up a non stick frying pan with a little oil, ladle in some of the mixture to make a pancake roughly 7cm in diameter cook them for a few minutes until golden (when you see lots of bubbles on the surface that's a good time to turn them) and then turn them over and cook until golden

Cooking the pancakes

These are the first cakey cakes I've made since baking without eggs, a lot of vegan cakes end up very oily or heavy, these are lovely and light. We then decorated them with a little icing.

These cakes didn't last long

MomenTums Cookbook

Last week I attended an event launching a new website, my blog post on the event is here.

I have since had the chance to try a couple of the recipes myself at home.

The first one I had to try was the pancakes. We couldn't pick up the Doves Gluten Free flour used at the demonstration as they didn't stock it in the Asda we visited but it is stocked in our local health food shops. Below is a picture of all of the ingredients needed.

Not many ingredients.

I remember it being mentioned that the batter is quite thick, but my batter was very thin, so I had to add some more flour. In fact I found that I needed to measure the coconut milk and orange juice mixed to the 240ml asked for in the recipe. However, the pancakes were lovely an fruity, when paired with Sweet Freedom they didn't last long at all. 

Cooking the pancakes.

These pancakes aren't thin crepes, they are more like scotch pancakes however, I'm sure you could make them bigger than I was but they shouldn't be thin or they will crumble due to the lack of gluten. 

Cows Milk Allergy Resources

Yesterday I attended the launch of online resources for cows milk allergy. These resources are aimed at parents with infants at present, the website is split into three sections: baby (0-12 months) Toddler (1-3 years) and school aged children (4-10 years). The website is MomenTums.

There are a few resources up there that are relevant for all age groups, one of the most important if you haven't got a diagnosis yet is the food diary. Keeping a food diary is very important and is normally one of the first things you're advised to do but no one suggested to me to also keep a note of moods and other symptoms exhibited. Another one of the resources explains the differences between Allergies and Intolerances.

My favourite resource is the cookbook, at the minute it is slightly hidden on the website but if you click on the read more button on the main page there is a link to a book for children with allergies. This book is worth downloading, the recipes it contains are whole family recipes. A previous book I had found contained recipes that were mainly weaning recipes or recipes for one child, I cook one meal for all of us so cook something we can all eat. There was a demonstration by Andrew Kojima (Masterchef Finalist) of some of the recipes from this book and I really enjoyed all of the recipes I tasted, I don't normally like sausages so was surprised to really enjoy the sausage casserole. The Mango Lassi requires a special mention, made with four ingredients (Oatley milk, Mango, honey (Sweet Freedom) and Cardamom seeds) it was unlike a 'normal' lassi but lovely and refreshing.

All in all, hopefully with resources like these it will make getting a diagnosis and understanding allergies slightly easier.

Living with possible allergies

Nate as you might have gathered suffers from an intolerance to Dairy and Soya. At the minute we are waiting for a referral to the paediatric allergy specialist because we have had several instances of him coming out in hives and we have an interesting family background with all things health related. Recently, just over a month ago we had a week long bout of hives. They were coming up within half an hour of eating so after this happening while eating his breakfast we decided to see the GP. Which is why we are now waiting for our referral to come through although she was very honest and said we never know what is/was causing the hives.

Around the time he came down with croup we'd also noticed something strange, we'd been out for supper and had prawns, Nate's first time trying them. As soon as he'd had a bite he complained about his lips feeling funny. We gave him a big gulp of water and swore not to try prawns again for a while. With the hives and the funny lips we had decided to ask about seafood being an issue for Nate.

This leads me to yesterday I made supper, normally Nate doesn't eat with us as he has tea at nursery however, he didn't eat much at nursery yesterday. I made pasta puttanesca and put an anchovy paste, which had come with an order, in the sauce (not thinking) as soon as Nate took a bite he complained about the heat and burning in his mouth. It took a moment for me to fully realise what I'd done. I didn't think anchovies were an issue but I hadn't looked at what the ingredients which contained butter along with other potential allergens. This I had to look up on the internet as in opening the pot (last week the first time I used it) I had to take off the ingredients list.

Why have a container that you have to remove the ingredient list to open it? I can't be the only person who has foods their toddler can't eat in the house?

What's causing the hives?

Recently we've noticed that Nate has been coming out in hives soon after eating. We have begun to try and work out what is causing these hives. Nate already avoids dairy and largely soya due to intolerances to them I'm not looking forward to adding anything else to that list.

Last years hives

We have on our list of potential suspects tomato, mayonnaise or brown bread. We're not 100% sure that he has had the same food each time the hives have come out. He loves tomatoes but noticed this time last year every time he had them he came out in hives so we avoided them until early this year when there was no reaction. 

This mornings hives

We are thinking it may be brown bread as we recently have changed to brown bread due to the recommendation of the nutritionalist and this morning while having his toast we noticed his legs were covered in hives. However, he hadn't eaten any brown bread when he came out in hives yesterday so we may be looking for something else as well.