Travelling with Allergies!

Travelling with children is tough enough, but travelling with children with any other health issue is definitely into the next league. We have a collection of complex issues and haven't travelled abroad once in ten years because it is just too anxiety provoking. The last time was when my twins were two, one drinking elemental formula and one 100% tube fed. This actually made it a million times easier than sourcing free from foods abroad, or having to take ingredients and find somewhere to cook when you get there.

Don't get me wrong, travelling with any medically complex child earns you the right to feel smug about what is no small feat when you return home, triumphant yet in need of a proper holiday to recover.... but travelling without knowing if you can actually FEED your child precipitates a nasty churning feeling in your stomach which has thus far put me off trying.

That's fine if you have summers like 2008 or 2010 with long weeks of summer sun and you can do THIS in the UK...

But sometimes our temperamental climate just doesn't cut it. We are desperate to travel next year so I ask some of my lovely Facebook Group friends to offer some advice.

Cooking with Neocate - Quiche revisited...

I've posted about our efforts with Quiche before both here and here. I've used two pie crust pastry recipes over the years, but we are now gluten free so I stick to the Juvela Harvest White mix recipe on the back of the boxes. It works well for us - BUT it isn't egg free.

Eggs serve to enrich a dough because of their fats. So anything with a certain amount of fat would work like condensed milk or extra butter or oil. However, keep in mind that though eggs are liquid when you add them to a recipe they change into a solid when they are heated. So if you are adding an ingredient such as milk or oil that does not solidify on heating, you must remember to add a little more flour to your recipe to act as a binder.

The other reason egg is used in pastry is to make it more malleable, you can use milk or water to replace egg but your pastry will not be as delicate as milk and water release the starch out of the flour and make it stretchy. So it will be perfectly edible but not as delicate.

It IS a dilemma, but given that THIS post is about quiche - or EGG PIE as we have to call it in this house - and given that quiche needs egg I'm going to gloss over this. Sorry. However, I do feel this a bit lame, and have tried backing an eggless quiche once. The Vegg can be used to make the filling and an eggless crust IS possible, just not as easy to work with. There is a list of egg substitutes here.

I would LOVE to see some of your egg free success stories, (especially the savoury ones) and will test and feature any I'm sent on the Recipe Resource.

Now for the Neocate part....

Bran and Raisin Muffins

Makes 20 cup cake size mini muffins or approx 12 larger ones.

Free from Wheat (gluten free if using rice bran), Dairy, Soya and can be egg free if you use egg replacer or try omitting the egg which does work although not as well.

Ingredients

• 120 mls pineapple juice / orange juice / juice and smoothie mix (I did the latter)
• 60mls Molasses or treacle, or I used Golden Syrup and it worked just as well
• 150g Oat bran (or rice bran for gluten free)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 75g raisins
• 1 egg
• 120mls Oatly cream (or for gluten free use rice cream or soya cream if allowed)
• 60mls vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 115g rice flour/blended plain gluten free flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 shredded carrot or shredded apple (optional) or drained stewed apple (again, optional)

Method

• If you have an electric mixer you can mix all the ingredients at once in this recipe. Otherwise mix all the wet ingredients plus bran, cream/yoghurt, and raisins and leave for 10 mins 
• Combine with all the all the dry ingredients. 
• Combine and mix in the carrot last.
• Line a muffin/fairy cake tin and spoon out the mixture. 
• Bake at 200C for about 10 mins or until firm.