yummy food for children with major allergies

[Candace]

does anyone out there know of any truly child-centred festive treats that actually look Christmassy? so far I've only found scary looking Terence Stamp father Christmasses in plain chocolate .. but they're £4 each!!!!! they need to be dairy and soya and nut free, so its not easy..HELP!

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Candace, I was in the same situation. Offhand, I don't know any pre-made Chirstmas treats, but if you'd like some recipes, let me know. Green and Black dark chocolate products are usually good-- no soya or dairy, although I think there's the "may contain traces of nuts" warning (as there is on everything, it seems!). Next time I do the shopping I'll keep an eye out.

Thank you for the ideas, I'm just fed up with making everything from scratch and wanted to be lazy and give them a shiny wrapper with a snowman/santa etc on it. I have found some OAT icecream ( first glace) which is lovely ( their first ever as they can't do soya stuff) and can be defrosted to make "cream". But I wish I could buy a tweenies fromage frais sometimes! or a milk chocolate tree novelty. I guess they're doing well on their diet so I shouldn't fuss , but!!!!! Maybe I could unwrap something they can have and rewrap something they can have with its wrapper! desperate eh!

Candace,

I empathise as my daughter has major dairy and egg allergies (I do consider myself lucky that I don't have to deal with soya aswell!!) I know exactly what you mean about being fedup with having to make everything from scratch. However, I may be able to help with your search. This year I have come across some vegan chocolate snowmen wrapped in coloured foil to hang on the Christmas tree. They come in a box of 6 for £2.99, a bit pricey but loads better than that Terrance Stamp Father Christmas!! You can get them from www.veganstore.co.uk. From the home page go into the 'vegan grotto' and look in 'santa's snacks'. They also do a nice box of 8 snowmen for £3.45. Unfortunately they don't list ingredients, but if you contacted them I'm sure they would confirm the soya and nut position for you.

Otherwise, in previous years I have resorted to the sticking gold stars on Whizzers chocolate footballs and hanging these from the tree.

Good luck with your search - if you come across anything else dairyfree I would love to know!!

Coral

Found some gingerbread Santas at Sainsburys that are soya, dairy and nut free. They were positioned by the Christmas biscuits and wrapped singly. They look fairly festive and definitely seasonal. I didn't find any chocolate, but the store was busy and I had my baby in the pushchair.

Coral, thanks for the info! I've just emailed them asking about nuts and soya in a few products. Will let you know the results. Looks like an excellent site!

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Candace, How about looking out for candy canes and sugar mice to decorate the tree ? These ought to be dairy, soya & nut free (Thorntons used to do sugar mice years ago - don't know if they still do)
JJ doesn't Green and Black contain soya lecithin ? Certainly it isn't egg which my toddler avoids so I think it must be soya.

Green and Black's do contain lecithin. Most people with soya allegies can safely eat it. It doesn't contain any soya protein -- it's actually separated from the soybean oil. Here's the URL of a brief article from the Food Allergy Network.
www.foodallergy.org/topics_archive/lecithin.html (sorry, my html formatting isn't working for some reason.)

My son could eat it, but his allergy wasn't horrible. (He'd get a black, blue and red face with hives if he ate any.)

The people from the Vegan Store and they said that the chocolates are made on lines used to make nut containing products and they also contain soya lecithin.

I am writing on behalf of a friend who has a 14 month old who is allergic to dairy products and some vegetables. He has soya milk. She also has a three year old who can eat anything and sometimes finds mealtimes a little challenging in trying to match everyone's dietary requirements. Does anyone out there have experience of getting the balance right for everyone without cooking different meals ? or can recommend any good cookbooks etc.

There's a website: Welfed that has recipes for kids with allergies. They're easy and taste good.

Also, oddly enough, I've found that old cookbooks have easy dairy-free recipes. It seems to me, at least, that substituting dairy free margarine for butter works well but doesn't taste as good as when a recipe was developed using margarine. I guess that since the person who wrote the recipe with margarine knew that no flavour would be coming from the butter, she made up for it with different ingredients. Just a theory.. but it's hard to adapt the Nigel Slater/ Jamie Oliver dishes so that they taste ok if butter or milk is an ingredient.

Anyway, I do have some recipes if you'd like them. Let's see: pasta with slow cooked meat sauce (good for making in the afternoon to have at dinner), lentil stew (freezes well) and loads of recipes for sweet baked things.

Good luck to your friend!

Yes! I have the latest cookbook. I've only tried 3 recipes, though, and one bombed. It was a very odd muffin. The other two were good.

Truthfully, I'm more of a baker and not so good at the cooking dinner part!