A wonderful Mother's Day present!

Well it is Mother's Day, and that means I get to have what I want for breakfast: PANCAKES! But not just any old pancakes, Jamie Oliver's One Cup pancakes. (Told you I like Jamie Oliver!) These pancakes are so easy to make: 1 egg, 1 cup self-raising flour, 1 cup milk and a pinch of salt.

"But what about the Vegan Carnivore?", I hear you say. Do we make his special non-dairy and no egg pancakes? Well, no! Today is a special day. Today we finally get to do a baked egg challenge! So we will use one egg and some oat milk, and fry in oil and see how it goes....

And......

He was ok!!! Hip hip hooray!!!! We can bake with eggs now!!!!

Don't worry, I'll still write about living with no eggs and occasionally bake no egg recipes. I still have lots of friends who have egg allergies. Plus, that's only baked egg. We aren't up to whole eggs yet....

“Lactose Free” is NOT the same as “Dairy Free”!

“Lactose free” and “dairy free”. Sometimes you see these things written on food and drink packets. Be careful: They are NOT THE SAME thing!

“Lactose free” means a product doesn't contain lactose, which is a sugar contained in milk. People who are lactose intolerant, lack an enzyme required to break this sugar down. Take the lactose out of the milk and everything is fine.

However, there are some people, like my little boy, who are allergic to the protein in the cow's milk. If you are one of these people, it means you cannot have any milk products at all. You need to look for “Dairy free” as “Lactose free” can still have the milk, but without the lactose.

The casein trap:

Looking for “dairy free” is especially important when you are looking at products like soy cheese or cheese made from something other than cow's milk e.g. goat's cheese. You may look at the ingredient list and think it all looks ok. But then you might see something called “casein”. What's casein? It's a protein that's found in milk. So if you are allergic to cow's milk, stay clear of casein!!

Rennet

Another thing to watch out for is rennet. Rennet is another thing used to make cheese. It is often derived from the stomachs of cows, goats and sheep. The good news is that there are non-animal sources of rennet.

I am not sure if Australian cheesemakers have to disclose the source of their rennet. But if you want to be safe, buy from vegan sources (no animal products), or kosher places (milk and meat are not allowed to be mixed).

So, in summary: If you are allergic to cow's milk (not just lactose intolerant), look for “Dairy Free”, avoid casein and check your rennet source.

Well, that's all for now. I hope that this has been as interesting for you as it has been for me to research!

More info:

• What is casein?
• What is rennet?

Dietary restrictions - how do you know what to eat?

I was talking to a friend the other night about the dietary restrictions he's been put on, to try and make him healthy enough for a poo transplant (it's a long story!). Anyway, he's lucky enough to have some professionals checking on him periodically to make sure he is not making too many mistakes with his diet.

But it made me wonder - what about the rest of us? Food allergies are so much more prevalent now than when we were kids. I didn't know anyone who had a food allergy when I was growing up. We could bring all sorts of things to school - tiny nutella packs with those little plastic spoons, peanut butter sandwiches etc. Things that are now banned or strongly discouraged from most daycares centres, preschools and primary schools. This means that most of us do not have a good working knowledge of what is safe to eat from an allergy perspective and what is not.

I'm kind of lucky. I like to cook and even more than that, I love my gastroporn. I have a bookshelf groaning with cookbooks with gorgeous pictures of food. I also love to watch cooking shows like Masterchef, Poh's Kitchen and Jamie Oliver and drool over the yummy food they cook (well, ok, watching Huey's Kitchen isn't terribly sexy, but you know what I mean about the food shows).

So I have a pretty good idea of what goes into food e.g. pastry usually has butter & egg, so pies are a no-no, consommé may be a clear soup, but it's clarified using egg. Nevertheless, I've made mistakes when I've been feeding the Vegan Carnivore. It must be even harder if you don't have either a good knowledge of cookery, or someone to constantly watch out for you and advise you. So my next few posts are going to be about what to buy/eat and what to avoid.

And if you have any stories about mistakes you have made, please feel welcome to post below! :)

ANZAC biscuits (egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free)

On ANZAC Day, I thought we should make some dairy-free ANZAC biscuits for the kids. Luckily they are already egg-free, so the only substitution is nuttelex for the butter.

Today I was talking to some people about making them, and someone pondered how they would have coconut during the war. So I did a quick search on the history of ANZAC biscuits. Did you know that the original ANZAC biscuit was called a wafer or tile and was incredibly hard? It also didn't have any coconut.

I have a few books with ANZAC biscuit recipes, but the CWA one seemed the most appropriate to follow. Here it is.

ANZAC Biscuits

Ingredients

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup sugar

125g nuttelex, melted

2 Tbs golden syrup

2 Tbs boiling water

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced) and grease baking trays/line trays with baking paper.
2. Sift flour into a bowl. Add dry ingredients (oats, coconut, sugar) and stir to combine.
3. Add bicarbonate of soda to boiling water and mix
4. Add melted nuttelex, golden syrup and boiling water/bicarb.
5. Mix with a spoon to a firm consistency.
6. Place spoonfuls of mixture onto the tray.
7. Bake until brown (approximately 15 minutes).

Notes

• Nuttelex can be melted in the microwave, just zap for about 30-40 seconds
• Shredded coconut can be substituted for dessicated coconut.
• Leaving space to spread is really, really important! Otherwise you will end up with a big sheet of biscuit. You can cut/break it apart and it still tastes ok, but it won't be as pretty. You can see the results below from overcrowding.

Here is what happens if you use a tablespoon and put your blobs too close to each other! It's better to put too few on and make more trays. But the kids certainly enjoyed snapping bits off and eating this "disaster"!