Free From Mayonnaise

This mayonnaise recipe is dairy, egg, gluten and nut free. Many thanks Michelle from our Facebook group for sharing :)

Ingredients

• 2tbsp potato flour
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 4 tbsp water
• 1/4 tsp dijon mustard (gluten and wheat free)
• 120ml olive oil
• 1tbsp lemon juice
• 1tsp white wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp caster sugar
•  salt and white pepper

Method 

• Mix the potato flour, gum and water in a food processor until it is white and peaking.
• Then beat in the mustard, measure the oil in a jug and with the machine running trickle the oil in a thin gradual stream. I found it was really runny at first but it does thicken.
• When you have added about 3/4 of the oil add the lemon juice and vinegar and then add the last of the oil in a faster stream.
• Taste and add more salt if needed.

 It will keep for up to 3 days in the fridge in a air tight container.  I had to have a few trials with it at first, but really simple to make.

Biscuit Bake-Off!

Following on from my summer post on Independence, I have been involving the kids in catering for their exclusion diets and giving them more say to try and boost their food confidence and take some ownership of their diets.

Having a chronic medical condition can be daunting and scary for anyone, but for children it can be overwhelming. For my youngest two on strict exclusion diets (and the many others I know on similar or worse) and with many eating-related symptoms they often need to feel they have some control in their lives. Some like my youngest son refuse to eat, some comfort eat, some eat non-foods, some just bottle up their feelings and suffer in silence. But food can STILL be fun, it's just a lot harder to achieve and needs a bit more inspiration.

With so many "can't have"s it's vital they feel they have some say in what they CAN have, so we decided to tackle an essential part of children's diet - BISCUITS lol !!

Free From Favourites - Share your recipes on our linky!

This is our first Recipe Resource Blog Link Up!

Do you have a favourite "free from" recipe? Something which is easy, fail safe, popular with the kids? Your go-to meal when pushed for time, or something quick and healthy which freezes well? There are many "free from" Bloggers out there - recipes don't have to be MEWS free or few ingredients recipes, they can be gluten free, dairy free etc.

To enter, click on the Link up button below and follow the instructions. Please take care to follow the three simple rules below. Happy linking!

Rules

1) You must specify which foods your recipe EXCLUDES
2) Make your reason for entering your chosen recipe clear - i.e. why it is a favourite. If you are entering an "old" post maybe add a line to explain why it's a favourite.
and lastly:-
3) The Recipe Resource takes no responsibility for anyone testing a recipe listed within this link-up, it is your responsibility to check ingredients carefully. (i.e. not everyone is always clear about gluten containing foods so if a recipe says it is "gluten free" please CHECK when following it with your own ingredients.

Chocolate Salted Caramels

These are from Emma on our Facebook group!

Free from all major allergens.

Ingredients:-

• 1 bar of Dark Chocolate plus "Moo Free" chocolate melted together
• Teaspoon of coconut cream
• for the "caramel":-
• 50g Vitalite
• 75g sugar
• few drops of vanilla essence
• 3 tbsp coconut cream

Method:-

• Melt all the chocolate with a tbsp of coconut cream and used a paintbrush to paint the sides of the mould you are using, leave to set in the fridge.
• To make the "salted caramel"centre  melt the Vitalite or similar, sugar and vanilla essence.
• Then add 3tbsp coconut cream, simmer for about 10 mins.
• Add to the chocolate lined moulds when it's a cooled a little and spoon more chocolate on the top. To set quickly pop in the freezer, then allow to warm to room temperature before eating!

Chocolate Nutty Crunchies

This recipe is from the "Kid Friendly Food Allergy Cookbook" by Leslie Hammond and Lynne Marie Rominger. It's a book I have more recently got to grips with, the breakthrough moment was buying myself a set of cook's measuring cups so I wasn't trying to convert all the time..... genius lol.

This recipe is MEWS free, but DOES CONTAIN NUTS. If you tolerate coconut I'm pretty sure you could swap the nuts for desiccated coconut. I didn't have whole nuts to blitz in the food processor in any case, so I substituted ground almonds.

My biggest problem was stopping myself eating the dough, it's DELICIOUS. Seriously more-ish!

Ingredients

1 cup (175 grams) safe chocolate chips. (Dark chocolate would be less sweet)
1 3/4 cups (250g) almonds (I used ground almonds, desiccated coconut would work fine)
1/3 cup (70g) sugar (I used caster sugar)
1 teaspoon powdered vanilla or vanilla essence
2 egg whites, or 2 eggs' worth of egg replacer.  I made the egg free version.

Method

Weight and place the chocolate into the food processor.
TIP: If you use a block, break into squares first and be prepared for a lot of noise, but it works fine.

Weigh and add the sugar, almonds and vanilla essence, then mix.

Add the egg whites or egg replacer and mix to form a smooth dough.

Form the dough into balls approx 2cm across according to the recipe, although mine were a little larger. It says to leave plenty of room between them on the tray - which i did, but they didn't spread much.

Bake at 180C for 8 minutes (recipe says) but mine took a few mins longer. I also used a metal spatula to flatten them a little as the balls didn't melt down on their own - probably because I used the ground almonds.

Leave to cool. Try and resist eating and they *might* keep in an air tight box for a fortnight. but I doubt it...... Truly scrummy!

Broken Blog Search Widget

Lots of people are discovering that the Google Blog Search Widget has broken and Google have no urgent intentions of fixing it. There is a Google thread about it which I posted some code my husband wrote as a workaround. It's not perfect, and it doesn't bring up a neat little list of post results so if you are searching for something with a number of results  it's going to be a long list of full results....(particularly true on a free from recipe resource so please get your act together Google!!) but it's the best out there at the moment.

On this Blog you will see I have located it on the right hand bar, under the Google Search widget, so try it out and see.

If you wish to add it to your own blog you will need to do the following:-

Coeliac Disease and a “gut allergy” to Gluten. What’s the difference?

From our background of complex gut allergies/immune responses I find the topic of Coeliac Disease particularly interesting. People “get” Coeliac Disease. It might often be tricky and time consuming to diagnose, but it is well understood by many health professionals, has a set diagnostic criteria and is widely recognised. To the extent that a formal diagnosis will earn you gluten free foods on prescription.

The NHS Choices website says it is an autoimmune condition - which it is, and it is a type of Delayed Hypersensitivity, explained well on Wikipaedia here.

“Coeliac disease is what is known as an autoimmune condition. This is where the immune system – the body’s defence against infection – mistakenly attacks healthy tissue.
Coeliac disease isn't an allergy or an intolerance to gluten.
In cases of coeliac disease, the immune system mistakes substances found inside gluten as a threat to the body and attacks them.
This damages the surface of the small bowel (intestines), disrupting the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food.
Exactly what causes the immune system to act in this way is still not entirely clear, although a combination of a person's genetic make-up and the environment appear to play a part."

NHS Choices

This is not so very different from EGID (Eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease) although the latter rarely receives half the understanding that Coeliac Disease does, despite being far more complex and overwhelming for the sufferer. And yet - and this is the bit which *really* puzzles me - just like Coeliac Disease, EGID is NOT an IgE allergy, NOT an intolerance, and is actually a delayed, Type IV hypersensitivity - a cell mediated response and currently thought to be autoimmune in nature also.