Some success

It has been quite a while since my last post.  Much has gone on with end of school and Christmas.  Now I am getting ready for the new school year with my youngest starting school this year. 

So, my thinking is again approaching food and what I am going to feed her at a vegetarian school when she essentially follows a dairy, gluten, soy and rice free vegan diet.  That part isn't actually really so bad ... it's getting her to eat it away from my watching eyes!

But on a happier note, the last few months has brought a few recipe successes. 

There is my very own version of a "Mexican Wedding Cookie", plus a reasonable Irish Soda Bread that I found online - it is more like a damper really, and quick to make.

I'm also about to venture into making my own water & coconut based kefir, plus try out a sourdough culture to see if that is any better in the bread making stakes.

Now for my favourite recipe. 

Mexican Wedding Cookies

1 c. Sorghum
1 c. Corn Starch
1/4 c. Coconut Flour
3/4 c. Finely ground Almond Meal
2/3 c.  Pure Icing (confectioner's) Sugar, plus more for dusting
1/8 t. salt
1 c. Nuttelex (dairy/soy free margarine) at room temperature
2 T. pure maple syrup
1 t. vanilla extract

1. In a medium sized mixing bowl, sift together the flours, almond meal, icing sugar and salt and set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer set on a medium speed setting, cream together the margarine with the maple syrup until fluffy.  Add the vanilla, beating until just incorporated.  Add the dry ingredients in several additions, beating until combined.  Divide the dough in half, wrap each in plastic wrap, and refridgerate for 3-4 hours (or overnight).

3. Preheat the oven to 180 C and line two large baking sheets with baking paper.  Roll about 2 t. of the dough at a time into balls, placing each on the prepared baking sheets as you work.  Bake until th eedges just begin to brown, about 12-14 minutes.  (Don't let them brown all over, as they will dry out very quickly!) Transfer the cookies to wire cooling racks to cool for about 15 minutes.   Roll in icing sugar to coat and return to the wire cooling racks to cool competely.

4.  Enjoy!!

Notes:
a) When blending flours, mix together with a dry kitchen whisk to blend all dry ingredients together.  This stops clumping of similar ingredients, especially when using baking soda.
b) The dough will keep wrapped in plastic wrap in a air tight container for up to 2 weeks.  So you can have some handing to make a fresh batch of cookies if expecting company.  The dough will dry out a little and bake with some minor cracks, but it still tastes great! And the icing sugar covers up any sins.

An edible bread alternative eludes me ...

My bread never looks like this.

I have tried probably four different bread recipes from various sources and so far they are all average to inedible. Some are so bad, that they overflow the bread tin in the oven and don't even make it to tasting.  (Thank goodness for the new fandangled oven I have that turns baked on gunk to ash.)  Others make it successfully out of the bread tin, only to taste awful and end up in the bin anyway. 

This week saw a few of bread flops - the recipes are so sensitive that I can't achieve the same result twice.  The chemistry is just crazy.  I did manage to fluke a couple of mini loaves that my 5yo was really excited to eat, and thought they were good on the day I baked them.  But then the next day when I made her a bread roll for lunch as we were out and about, she said "Mummy, this is very not good".   Back to the drawing board.

On the upside, I was successful this week in finally achieving a very edible cup cake, as well as some almond meal shortbread but I have misplaced the recipe for these somewhere on my kitchen bench!!! When I find them again, I will share them with you.

All in all a good week with some success and some flops - the journey continues ...

The journey begins in earnest

Where exactly do I start?

Until recently, my food world involved all things yummy with very little to worry about.  Eliminating the nasties such as artificial food colouring, artificial flavours and preservatives was a relative cinch! We have been living "nasty free" for 3 years now.

However, my 5 year old was living in the fog of a constant head cold and mucus (yuk!).  Although a bright girl, her language development has been delayed and this has impacted other areas of her development.  I wanted to get her "sorted out" before she starts school next year, so we have spent most of this year 2009 visiting health practitioners.  They have been wonderful, and through a process of elimination we had her tested for food sensitivities.

On Friday 23 July 2010 my world exploded when I was told she was highly sensitive to eggs, casein (all dairy), rice, gluten (including oats and spelt) and soy.  There are more foods that she is sensitive to, but I won't bore you with the details as they are relatively easy to manage.

Up until this point my beautiful 5 year old was essentially a very choosey eater and lived on the above items in various combinations - if there is a child who loved carbs, eggs and dairy, this was her. Oh, and did I say she is allergic to cashews, so we were also a nut free household. She ate carrot, cucumber, banana and pear(sometimes), and mango whenever they were in season. 

My first reaction on hearing the new was "Oh my god ... what am I going to feed this child!"

Milk was going to be the hardest to replace, so I asked if almond milk could be an option as almond was negative on my 5 year old's allergy and sensitivity testing.  The paediatrician agreed.  We were now officially a nut household, and I imagined all sorts of new options.

The next 48 hours was sheer terror trying to come up with some basic alternatives for her to eat that didn't require me making absolutely everything from scratch.  And even if I did have to bake from scratch, I still had to find a gluten free flour that didn't contain rice.  We went cold turkey on the diet.  All the foods she was sensitive to were out - no weaning her off things ... I just jumped in headfirst and hoped for the best.

Dinner time was easy.  Meat or fish of choice plus carrot and cucumber (the extent of her vegetable intake).
Breakfast was OK.  Corn based cereal was fairly easy to source, just the almond milk to find.  Thanks to my trusty organic green grocer, we have sourced one imported from Spain. But let me say it's not cheap!
Lunch, snacks and treats were to become my challenges.

Then the pragmatic me kicked in and I started looking for alternatives.  I trawled the internet in search of that elusive cup cake or biscuit recipe - a treat to feed my child that would allow her to feel normal and not as though she was missing out.  I just wanted one recipe that I knew would work, the first time, and every time.  I was a mother obsessed.  I put the kids to bed, then started baking.  A few hours later my husband went to bed. And still I was baking. I washed dishes.  I lost sleep.

As fortune would have it, one of my friends has been living gluten free for a while and reminded me about a woman in Dee Why, Sydney, who had recently written a cookbook for families living with food sensitivities.  As I live only 15 minutes from Dee Why, I called her up and went to see her.  That cookbook has been a godsend.  Although in many cases I still need to modify her recipes, there are at least a few recipes that I can make without variation that work, nearly every time.

I am now in a world where learning is the name of the game.  I have learned about new grains that I had never heard of before.  I have experimented with recipes and thrown many of the results out as they just tasted disgusting or didn't cook properly.

In an act of motherly solidarity I too am following the new diet.  I just couldn't let her do this alone.  And I can't believe how good I feel. But the best part is my 5 year old has now been mucus free for 13 weeks AND she is eating a bigger variety of foods. YAY!

Tonight she ate tinned salmon with a salad of beetroot, mushrooms, carrot sticks, avocado, tomato and cucumber.  If anyone had said she would be eating like this a few months ago I would have told them they were dreaming.  I'm not dreaming, and the journey has begun.