Microwave Muesli Bars (Egg-free and Dairy-free)

The kids are eating soooo many muesli bars these days, I can barely keep up! To make matters worse, Uncle Toby bars have milk powder in them and a large number of the rest contain nuts, which are a no-no for school. So I found a recipe that is quick & easy to make. These get devoured very quickly, so it's just as well that they are easy to make!

Microwave Muesli Bars

Ingredients

• 75g non-dairy spread e.g. nuttelex
• 5 tablespoons light brown soft sugar
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 150g rolled oats
• 75g sultanas*
• 75g dried apricots, chopped*

Method

1. Place the butter, sugar and syrup in a microwave safe bowl and cook on high power for 1 to 2 minutes, or until butter is melted.
2. Stir in the oats, sultanas, and apricots and mix thoroughly.
3. Press mixture into a small greased and lined baking dish. (I used a medium-sized rectangular pyrex dish)
4. Cook on high power for 4-5 minutes or until the centre is bubbling. Allow to cool then cut into squares.

Notes

1. * all that is required is approximately 150g of add-ins. You can split it any way you like: e.g. 50g sultanas, 50g apricot, 50g glace cherries, or just all sultanas. Try nuts or chocolate chips if your family can take it
2. I know it's tempting to cut it while it's still warm, but I found that this makes it disintegrate a bit as it is not set yet.
3. You don't have to line the dish, but it is easier to remove the bars if you do.

Persimmon Cookies (Egg-free and dairy-free)

When I was little, persimmons were a rare treat. They were also astringent, which means that the skin is inedible. So we had to wait until they were soft and squishy on the inside, and then scoop the sweet pulp out with a spoon.

These days you can buy persimmons with edible skin, and eat them hard like apples, or wait until they become so ripe that they're soft and mushy. We had a few too many mushy ones, so I decided to try making some persimmon cookies.

These cookies are quite easy to make. The Carnivore's sister helped me do the mixing. The cookies are a bit soft & cakey on the inside and remind me a little of gingerbread. These yummy treats only survived two days in our house, and I made four trays of them!

Egg-free and Dairy-free Persimmon Cookies

` Makes about 40

Ingredients

• 2 ripe persimmons, pureed (I also peeled mine)
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 egg replacer (1 heaped tsp No Egg with 2 tbsp water)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) non-dairy spread e.g. nuttelex
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced/350°F ).
2. Stir flour, bicarb soda and spices together, set aside.
3. Cream together nuttelex and sugar until fluffy.
4. Add egg replacer and persimmon and beat until combined.
5. Add the dry ingredients from step 2 and mix with the beater.
6. Stir in nuts and raisins.
7. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased tray. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly golden.

Note: These cookies don't really spread much when cooked, so you can place them fairly close together on the tray

Eating out

Eating out is often a challenge. To make things easier, we tend to stick to sushi when we are in a food court (being mindful that california and tuna rolls may have mayonnaise). When we dine out, we don't want to be "difficult diners", so it's usually Chinese.

So I was really happy to see a list of places we could try other than our usual haunts! We might have to go and dine out some time :)

Here is the list of places to eat:

Sydney restaurants for "difficult diners"

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"!