Sunday 30 November 2014

Christmas Lollies!

So, following on from Emma Cawood's amazing efforts making single ingredient lollies... I decided these would be perfect for the twins' school bazaar next week. After much psyching myself up.... I set everything out and got started...

Ingredients

  • 2 cups white caster sugar
  • 2/3 cup light corn syrup - if you have this your lollies will stay fairly clear. I desperately wanted to source some, but so far no luck. After reading some excellent info here I decided to use Agave nectar instead. It worked fine, but the lollies were toffee coloured instead.
Equipment
  • Lolly sticks
  • silicone baking sheet
  • sugar thermometer
  • non stick pan
  • bowl of cold water large enough to submerge lower half of the pan.

Tip:- Add flavouring if desired - mint or vanilla, but your lollies will darken unless you have clear flavouring! 




Method
  • Heat the sugar and syrup in the pan and using a sugar thermometer heat and stir until it is boiling at 310F
  • Remove from the heat. Submerge the lower half of the pan in the cold water bowl for 10-15 seconds, keep swirling/stirring.
  • As it thickens up pour the liquid sugar on top of the lolly sticks in 1 inch circles. (If it spreads too much, it's still too hot)
  • Quickly add sprinkles etc before the surface cools!
NB lots of sprinkles contain major allergens. I used these which do have egg white and soya lecithin in. We are lucky and these are ok for us, soya protein would not have been.

I honestly don't think I have *ever* been so nervous about a recipe before. I had never made anything like this - but it was surprisingly easy and I will be far more confident next time! Clearing up took a while, perhaps because I knocked over the sprinkles.....

Clearing up Tips

  1. DON'T panic!!! You have't ruined your pan etc (unless and liquid sugar gets burned underneath.) as long as you have a large bowl of hot water to submerse the lower half in you an manage this really easily.
  2. Once you have poured your lollies, the remaining sugar will be hardening and impossible to remove from the pan. Heat gently until it starts to move again, and literally POUR it into the cold water. It will set immediately, and your pan will have so little left in that the rest will easily dissolve in hot soapy water!


Friday 28 November 2014

Single Ingredient Lollies

As promised, here is how to make #freefrom lollies, from the lovely Emma Cawood who is part of our Facebook Group. 


Emma describes so emotively the reality of catering for a child with few safe foods, and the lengths we mothers go to to ensure they don't miss out more than they have to.



Over to Emma:-

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching I could feel that feeling off doom overwhelming me once again. The dreaded season of parties and family get togethers, where every event seems to focus around food. If I'm being truthful I think T deals with it all much better than I do. He just takes it on the chin and accepts it for what it is. I'm the one that carries the burden and constantly questions whether this is having an impact on his childhood. Are his Christmas memories going to be ruined in someway because he never had a Candy Cane or Mince Pie? Because his selection boxes didn't contain chocolate will he somehow grow up unhinged? Ridiculous I know but it's the kind of thing that goes through my head on a regular basis.

So the day arrived that I thought I owed it to T to try and make a sweet of some sort out of his 6 safe foods. If I tried and failed at I would be able to hold my hands up and say at least I had given it my best shot. The good news is after a week of trawling books, the web and dismissing so many things due to too many ingredients I came upon a simple Sugar Lolly. The original recipe had more ingredients in it than T could tolerate so I omitted them all and went with pure sugar. Not the best option I know when you think of those little teeth and with my biggest boy I would have been hyperventilating at the sheer thought of it but these wouldn't be given more than once a week and as T gets no other sugar in his diet I took the bulls by the horns and went for it.

The first day I tried to make them I boiled the sugar in a solid bottomed pan on a low heat. It went through the various stages. Melted, grainy, back to powder again and then finally just as I was giving up hope it turned to a lovely golden caramel colour. I quickly poured over plastic cake pop sticks that I had laid out lovingly on plastic sheeting. However it soon turned into disaster. Without a mould the sugar didn't stay in neat round lollypop shapes, it ran everywhere. The pan began to boil and burn so when trying to remove the sugar from the pan I flicked it into my eye and nearly blinded myself. My husband arrived home to smoke, screams and chaos. Ok I thought! This isn't going to be as easy as it seems.

Day 2, I was prepared with goggles, a new bag of sugar and a positive attitude. I had ordered a chocolate lolly mould online and set my stall out properly. The sugar started to melt and go through its various stages again but this time I was ready for it. As soon as it turned a lovely amber colour I took it straight off the heat and poured into the moulds. Yay!!!! I had lollies. Safe, gorgeous lollies for my beautiful boy. Ok, not the easiest thing to make but if they bring a teeny bit of joy to his life then worth every ounce of effort, after all when you're 7 years old to be able to eat something similar to other children means everything and even more so at Christmas.


Emma has inspired me - we are supremely fortunate that corn syrup is not an issue so I might manage to make some without the moulds, all being well!

Tuesday 25 November 2014

No more Mr NICE guy.

I'm actually fuming. Really spitting angry. Because of THIS.


I joke that I've been "riding the reflux roller coaster" for many, many years. But actually, it's no joke at all. Not even a tiny bit amusing. Because when you can be accused of something as utterly ridiculous as not feeding your baby appropriately/sufficiently because an arrogant health professional has never heard of reflux occurring in children without considerable disabilities after the age of twelve months you begin to lose your cool. And that was after many years of (relative) restraint, anxiety, despair, sleepless nights, screaming babies and nearly losing the plot all together.

Most babies DO outgrow their reflux. It isn't always a long-term debilitating problem. Neither is it a "disease". It is a symptom - usually of an immature sphincter, perhaps due to a developmental disorder and is often present in those with other underlying health conditions, but increasingly it is due to the gut responding inappropriately to food proteins (most commonly cow's milk) causing inflammation.

The gut is basically a hosepipe. Squeeze one section (inflammation) and the flow changes along the pipe. Inflammation anywhere will, can and DOES have an impact anywhere along it's length. So kids with constipation will commonly have reflux and people with a slow emptying stomach will have reflux due to backwards pressure too. It's really not rocket science - yet STILL top consultants cling to the outdated notion that reflux is a disease in its own right.

And babies with bowel inflammation will most likely have significant acid reflux. 

WHY?

Because they are on a liquid diet, because they spend a long time lying down and because their gut is immature  (the sphincter muscle sealing the stomach may not be quite tight enough) meaning they regurgitate more and also swallow more air, which needs to come up. (How many reflux mums will tell you that the entire feed will come back until the wind, trapped at the bottom *finally* comes up? probably almost all.)  Babies are also at higher risk of gut allergies too - at least in the short term due to a permeable gut which is designed to allow maternal antibodies through and offer extra immunity. (Which is why the WHO recommend delaying weaning until 6 months of age.)

There is increasing evidence that gut bacteria play a role in the infant gut, immunity and gastrointestinal disorders. Babies have a suppressed immune system at birth which gives a narrow window for the colonisation of their gut with healthy, protective bacteria. But in the West too many babies are given antibiotics early, born by caesarean section, or are formula fed and all these factors do have play a contributory role.

We also have this ridiculous notion in the West that babies should be allowed to cry. Babies cry to communicate with their mothers - you won't come across babies sleeping in separate rooms, "crying it out" or suffering from "colic" in the indigenous populations of the Third World. And this bizarre acceptance of infant distress is a hang-up from bygone times - yet STILL mothers have to try and explain to their (usually male) doctors that something is not right, that their baby is suffering - struggling to have some recognition of their (very valid) opinion.

So this paragraph made me particularly furious:-
"A lot of this is about the relationship between the baby and the mother and the mother's reaction to anything unpleasant or abnormal happening to the baby. "This guideline will empower GPs to reassure mothers there is nothing is wrong and they will get better on their own."
We should not have mothers sent away being told a persistently unhappy child is acceptable, a figment of our imaginations or in any way appropriate to ignore. 

I've been fighting, campaigning and persistently spreading the word about reflux for 17 years now. We all suffer here - possibly partially due to a connective disorder, certainly due to gut inflammation - but I spent months of Hell with ALL four of my children trying to obtain appropriate support. Even when lack of answers led to the finger being pointed at ME I refused to stay quiet, because I have reflux. It hurts! My Dad has suffered all his life - nearly died of aspiration pneumonia when younger, we have a family history as long as your arm, and whilst I would have LOVED those years of sleepless nights to have been a figment of my imagination, my husband would testify to the contrary.

So WHY, after years of progress are NICE seeking to turn the clock back?


https://www.flickr.com/photos/dad/

I do think we have lost our way a bit though. GPs began to play "catch up" and realise that infant Gaviscon only helps a tiny percentage of babies with reflux. It is a thickener too, creating a "raft" over the stomach contents and whilst this can be useful in some babies, it slows down gut motility and often causes constipation - which makes reflux worse! Even when this is less obvious it can slow gastric emptying sufficiently to cause problems.

(Some!) Doctors also began to realise that early weaning is probably not a good idea. Babies with reflux may sometimes be low in weight and solids fill them up but are less calorie dense. They slow down the gut too as their take longer to digest being another risk factor for constipation and making reflux worse! most worryingly the infant gut is permeable for the first six months and foreign food proteins can often get through and cause a local allergic response.

NICE Guidelines for diagnosing and treating food allergy  (IgE and non IgE responses) was published in Feb 2011 and whilst there is still a VERY long way to go more and more doctors are recognising that food proteins are causing the (very real) conditions such as FPIES, Proctocolitis, IBD and Eosinophilic Disease. Top paediatric allergists like Adam Fox have explained how food proteins such as Cows' Milk can and do cause problems and the message was very, very slowly starting to get through...... So stronger medications were prescribed - acid blockers like Ranitidine and Proton Pump Inhibitors like Omeprazole which definitely help hugely in appropriate cases. And the pharmaceutical industry responded in full, omeprazole is now one of the top prescription drugs in the UK, across all age groups!

And now, it seems there is concern that too many infants - and children, are taking these drugs. 

Absolutely. 

I would not disagree with that at ALL. But apart from the tiny minority that maybe are over-prescribing, I assume doctors would correctly refer cases on to professionals best able to judge whether such drugs are necessary?

Surely the bigger issue here, is WHY so many infants and children are NEEDING these medications?
Even our consultant in London has said there is an "epidemic" of such cases.

DOES THAT NOT BOTHER ANYONE?

Apparently not, it's easier to blame mothers, after all what do we know about our own children?

But most of all, I'm furious that this slipped under the radar - the article is from AUGUST, when most mothers are in the middle of the summer holidays busy with families or away. The directive is here and the draft guidance here.I hope to goodness someone actually addresses the real issues here:-
  1. Infant reflux with additional food related concerns is on the rise, and reaching almost epidemic proportions.
  2. IgE food allergies are also on the rise. Approximately 30% of children in all primary school classes will have an allergy.
  3. Gut allergies (non IgE) allergies are under recorded and poorly understood. Recent research and progress is actually now being diluted to fit in with National opinion.
  4. Somehow, the way live, the way we produce and process our food is contributing to this exponential rise in both food allergies and gut inflammation which cause reflux and bowl disorders in our young people.
  5. Less than 1% of medical research funding in the UK goes on gastrointestinal topics, NONE on paediatric gastroenterology. Isn't it about time we recognised not only the importance of the gut, but it's role in our overall health?
  6. The way we view mothers, babies and families has to change. Because slapping down mothers who are worried about their babies is certainly not the way forward. Scapegoating them will NOT address the fundamental concerns in the West about our gastrointestinal health, reflux is not going to go away, and neither are bowel disorders relating to food allergy.

Have your say - sign the epetition to change outcomes for mothers and their babies with reflux.


Friday 21 November 2014

Facebook Group Recipe Round-up




The members of our Facebook group are soon going to put me out of a job.... we've had some inspirational cooking with very few ingredients showcased on there this week.


Here a just a few of them!





Chicken Pop Corn Kebabs

  • Cooked chicken breast, cooked mashed sweet potato, dash of oil and a little water if needed. 
  • Bind all ingredients together in a bowl with maize meal (polenta). 
  • Season if allowed and then divide into balls and pop on a baking tray, keep checking and turning. (Not an exact science as to when done. Just check and check.)
  • Once crispy and firm take out. I bought cake pop sticks and put 3 on each (like a kebab). 
  • Eat hot and cold.



Gingerbread Reindeer

Using a slightly different recipe to mine - (from the Glutafin site) one member made her own gingerbread reindeer. It's really simple, you can read more here.


I love the glass cherries for the red noses!

Lollies - Coming Soon!!!

Last but not least, I take my hat off to the person who made lollies on sticks from sugar alone, and wrapped them to look like store bought lollies! A real treat. For children who can only eat homemade food, sometimes making something look less homemade is a treat. My Mum used to make most off my clothes when I was younger, and clothes with labels in generated a great deal of excitement!


Keep checking back/subscribe for more info on how to make these simple treats.

Friday 7 November 2014

Gingerbread Reindeer

A lovely easy biscuit recipe from a friend that you can decorate to make reindeer! This was a wonderful tip I saw doing the rounds on Social Media last year.



This recipe is so easy, it's a blend of various recipes so things like xanthum gum may need tweaking and the amount of flour may need to be increased. This will make about 30 gingerbread men/reindeer.

Ingredients

• 140g pure sunflower spread
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
• 350g Doves gluten free plain flour
• 1 tsp gluten free bicarbonate of soda
• 1.5 tsp Xanthum gum
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cloves


Method

Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix flour, soda, spices and xanthum gum in a bowl. Stir in the butter mix to make a stiff-ish dough.

Wait until cool enough to handle, then roll out dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again. Lift onto baking sheets.

Bake for 10-12 mins until golden.

Cool 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks.

Decorate upside down as reindeer!

Tip: Remember that these will spread a little in the oven so keep a bit of a space between them.  
These keep for about a week in an airtight tin, dough should freeze if made in quantity.
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