Sticky Pork Spare Ribs

Last day of school before the holidays today, which has led to two inconsolable children.  At our school, the Year 5's graduate on this day, and both of my kids have friends in this year level.  Mstr H in particular is losing one of his best friends today.  He knows we will keep in touch, but he is still very sad.  Consequently we are all in our PJ's watching movies for the afternoon to cheer them up.

I decided to try to make some comfort food in the shape of spare ribs for dinner.  If you love American style spare ribs, you know that these are not allergy friendly.  Yummy, but you will be sick for a week.  A friend of mine suffered with this recently.  I found this recipe by Donna Hay, and after tweaking out the nasties, this is my attempt to make a yummy sticky dinner that is gluten free, fructose friendly and delicious!

STICKY PORK SPARE RIBS
INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup GF Tamari Hoi Sin Sauce or Teriyaki Sauce (Ayami)
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup Tamari Oyster Sauce
1 handful garlic chives, snipped into small pieces
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 cup water
2kg pork spare ribs

METHOD
Mix all the sauce ingredients together.  Place the ribs in a baking dish in a single layer and cover with the sauce.  Cover with alfoil and bake at 180C for 1 hr and 15 mins.  Remove the foil and bake for a further 25 mins.  Increase the heat to 200C and cook for 20 mins.  Serve with chips and steamed green veg.  Yumm!

Party Share Plates

Miss A's class was having a shared recess today.  This is where all the Receptions and Year 1s take in a plate of food to share.  Obviously these sorts of situations can be stressful with dietary issues, and there is no real right way to tackle them.  Because of the stress that can be felt, I thought I would share with you what I do to give you ideas for tackling your own challenges.

Firstly, I like to take a selection of food so that if there is nothing else she can eat, Miss A has some variety to choose from.  Given all the yummy-looking food that will be there, it also needs to be presented nicely.  She misses out on so much, the last thing she needs is to share an ugly plate of food.  I also try to make the plate healthy-ish, but palatable so she doesn't feel unsatisfied.

For this recess, I decided to make watermelon trees, choc dipped strawberries and some gluten free chocolate muffins.  I cheated and used the Orgran Chocolate Muffin mix.  Usually for this mix I add a grated zucchini, it makes it really moist and yummy with the hidden veg to add nutrition, but from past mistakes I have realised that these things are an aquired taste born from necessity.  None of Miss A's friends appreciate this sort of effort so her food ends up being passed over by the other children as 'yukky' or 'strange'.  Instead I made as per the packet instructions and used a delicious chocolate butter frosting to top.  The recipe for the frosting I got from google, but cannot remember the page.  Feel free to let me know if it is your recipe and I will give credit.

It is 1 cup butter and 1/2 cup cocoa, whipped until smooth.  Add 5 cups pure icing sugar and 1 tsp vanilla essence and continue beating.  Gradually add small amounts of milk until the desired consistency is reached.  I made this as a soft frosting to be extra gooey and yummy for little people.  If you have never choc dipped a strawberry, just melt some choc melts (I used dark, but white or milk work too), and dip the strawberries in, leaving the green leaves at the top.  Place onto some baking paper on a tray and put in the fridge to harden.  The chocolate will not stick to the baking paper so this works perfectly.

You don't need to do a sweet platter, nice savoury platters are easily achieved with your favourite quiche slice recipe, popcorn and veg cut into sticks, or popcorn, cheese and ham sticks and gluten free jaffas makes a lovely supper.  Lots of ideas to get creative with.  With important thing is variety and presentation.  This is what makes it bearable for little people who can't eat off of anyone else's plate.

Let me know your ideas in the comments.

Strawberry Shortcake

It was my dad's birthday a while back, and when thinking of the birthday cake, which I obviously offered to prepare, I drew a blank.  You can only make mudcake so many times.  We are all getting sick of it.  I remembered seeing a recipe in the ones my mum got from the library for Strawberry Shortcake (which was a red headed doll in my day!) and thought I would give it a go.

Being a sponge-type cake I was dubious.  The gluten free ones I have tried in the past have a nasty after taste and are just 'not quite right' in the consistency/texture feel.  They have always been a big disappointment.

I tried this one, and although it is still a different consistency to a normal sponge, it works with the cream and strawberries.  Looks pretty nice too, if I do say so myself.  The recipe comes from Lola, so here goes.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
INGREDIENTS
100g castor sugar
2 tsp butter
1 tbsp glycerine (edible - from supermarkets and cake decorating shops)
4 tbsp hot water
100g gluten free plain flour
2 tsp gluten free baking powder
2 tsp vanilla essence

Filling:
1 punnet strawberries
250 ml cream
2 tbsp pure icing sugar
few drops vanilla essence

METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180C.  Grease sides and line the bottom of 2x20cm round cake tins.

Place the eggs and sugar in a large metal or glass bowl and hand whisk over a saucepan of hot water until the mixture is slightly warm and frothy.  Remove from the heat and continue beating with an electric beater until the mixture is thick and creamy, but not stiff.  In a separate bowl, add the glycerine and butter to the hot water and let stand for 1 minute.  Fold the flour and baking powder into the egg mixture.  Mix in the vanilla and glycerine mixture.  Fold lightly but thoroughly.  Pour into prepared tins and bake for 30 mins.  Let stand for at least 1 minute before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

Beat cream until thickened and add the icing sugar and vanilla.  Continue beating until stiff.  Reserve strawberries for decoration, and thinly slice the rest.

Place down your base cake (the least pretty of your two cakes) and spread thickly with cream.  Top with a layer of strawberries.  Place the other cake on top.  Pipe swirls of cream on to the top and decorate with strawberries.  To fan you slice thinly, but not all the way through.  Fan with fingers.  When decorated, sprinkle the entire cake with icing sugar to serve.

Yummo!  A great cake to take to someone's house or to share with a cuppa!  Let me know what you think in the comments.

BBQ Season

Here we are, at the end of Spring and BBQ's are being fired up in every backyard.  This presents its own problems for those who are have allergies and intolerances.  Even with the beautiful array of lean meats and veg to put on the grill, most people go for prepackaged sausages and patties that contain all of the foods that we or our loved ones can't eat.  Most contain onion and garlic, a banned food for Fructose Malabsorption, and/or gluten for coeliacs or those intolerant or allergic to wheat or gluten.  The other issue is salad dressings or the chosen vegetables in the salad.

Tonight, being the tail end of a 35C day in Adelaide, we have guests coming over for a BBQ dinner, so as I was pressing my burgers and marinading my eggplant I thought I would share the recipes with you.  I am not as organised as I would normally be, as Miss A had to stay home today.  It appears she has caught Mstr H's virus from last week.  She is itchy, spotty (eczema) and running a temperature periodically.  Argh!  I had hoped to have a sick-day-free school term for her, but we are now up to 4 days off.  Oh well.  With vague symptoms like this, Miss A usually has a swollen, hard, sore tummy, and this is no exception.  She is also inflamed 'down below', leading to redness and pain.  All due to her digestive issues.

Back to my yummy food!  I have previously given you my hamburger recipe, so here is one for chicken burgers!

CHICKEN BURGERS
INGREDIENTS
500g chicken mince
1/2 cup nomato sauce
1 carrot (grated)
1 tbsp tamari soy sauce
1 tsp paprika
herbs and spices to taste

METHOD
Mix all the ingredients together well.  Separate mix into 8 equal portions.  Using your hands, shape each portion into a round, hamburger shape.  Grill carefully on a BBQ or in a frypan.  Remember that these burgers are fragile, so may break apart if you are not careful when flipping.  Serve with veg or in a gluten free roll of your choice.


The best accompaniment for these is corn on the cob with butter, marinated eggplant and stuffed field mushrooms.  Here are the recipes for the eggplant and mushrooms.

MARINATED EGGPLANT
INGREDIENTS
2 eggplants
1/2 cup Balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp tamari soy sauce
herbs and spices to taste

METHOD
Slice the eggplant fairly thinly, each slice should be about 2 mm thick.  Place rounds overlapping in a large seal-able container.  Mix the remaining ingredients thoroughly.  Pour evenly over the top layer of eggplant and seal the lid.  Shake the container to distribute the marinade evenly.  Sit for at least 30 mins.  BBQ and serve.


STUFFED FIELD MUSHROOMS
INGREDIENTS
Field mushrooms or any large mushroom
1 pkt spreadable cream cheese
chives
diced bacon
black pepper

METHOD
Mix together the cheese, chives, bacon and pepper.  Carefully remove the stem from the mushrooms.  Fill the hole with the cheese mixture.  BBQ until cooked.  Yummo!

I hope you enjoy!  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Chocolate Gelato

Wow, we have had such a busy week!  Mstr H has been sick all week with a nasty virus.  I hate those vague viruses!  He is really lethargic, has a nasty cough and occasionally asthma.  Such a pain.  This has led to a lot of 'stay at home' time, but very little time to actually achieve anything.  We have also been getting together some donations to help the people in Ormoc in the Philippines after a typhoon wiped out the entire area.  So sad and so many people affected.

With all of this happening, we have been using the BBQ a lot for dinner.  I just get the meat out, cook the veg and hubby takes care of the rest!  We are even planning a BBQ Christmas this year.  Who needs a big roast, when we have prawn kebabs, salmon fillets and marinaded lamb chops instead?  Also taste testing a recipe to make a frozen Christmas pudding.  I thought choc chip strawberry icecream, vanilla bean ripple and all encased in rich chocolate fudge icecream.  Will let you know how I go.

We have also been experimenting with glucose powder as a way to introduce Miss A to some higher fructose foods.  She is loving banana smoothies with yoghurt, a handful of strawberries, rice bran and some glucose powder.  I am hoping this will mean she can eat some cherries at Christmas, by mixing them into an icecream and using the glucose to balance out the fructose.  Feeling like a mad scientist!

I also have to share the break through we have had with Miss A's eczema.  I saw an article on a current affairs show for Robertsons Skin Repair.  This is an ointment that is all natural, basically made up of cod liver oil and oatmeal, and it actually works!  You apply 3 times a day, and in our case, the eczema has cleared up.  We no longer need to use steroid creams and Miss A has a lovely smooth face free of scabs!  She is no longer itchy all the time or oozing and bleeding.  Her skin is smooth, and free of the roughness she has always had.  It is not a cure, if we don't use the eczema comes back, but it is making it liveable for us.

On to the promised recipe!  In South Australia, we have always called Italian ice cream 'gelati', so I was confused when I saw all the signage changing to 'gelato'.  Was it the same stuff, or something different?  Was it a change inspired by America, like so many of our language changes are?  The answer is that it is the same, and that the change has come from us calling it the wrong name for all those years.  Who knew?  Will be hard to make the change!  So given all of this, I googled to find Miss A's favourite flavour, chocolate!  I found this low fat recipe on taste.com.au, and it is fantastic!  It uses cornflour to make the custard base, rather than egg yolks.  I will try this method on other flavours!

CHOCOLATE GELATO
INGREDIENTS
3 cups skim milk
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 tbs gluten free cornflour
3/4 cup gluten free cocoa

METHOD
Whisk together 1 cup milk with the sugar, cornflour and cocoa.  Place the remaining milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil.  Add the cocoa mixture and continue heating until it thickens.  As it starts to thicken, remove from the heat and stir periodically.  Using the gluten free cornflour means that it will thicken on standing.

Cool to room temperature, chill for an hour.  Place in ice cream maker.  Yum!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Creamy Tuna Mornay and Soda Bread

We are coming up to the Christmas season.  Here in Adelaide, we have the famous Christmas Pageant every year, where we sit on the side of the road and watch lots of floats with fairy tale and Christmas themes go past.  It is a real tradition, and we go every year with the kids.  We get into the city at around 6am, have a picnic brekky, the kids draw on the road in chalk, play games, and then the pageant does its thing, and we have a great time.  Tomorrow is the day!  This heralds the season for Christmas baking, house decorating and present buying and wrapping, if you haven't done it already.  Santa comes with the Pageant, so he starts appearing in stores to get the lists from hopeful children, and the streets get their Christmas overhaul.

This means that my posts between now, and the big day, will probably focus on Christmas or party treats.  Watch this space if you need some ideas!  Last night I was planning to make our family favourite meat pie, but after a bad day, I just didn't have the energy.  Here is one of our family favourites, with our favourite loaf of fresh bread to munch, covered in butter, on the side.

This recipe comes from Food.com, and the Soda Bread comes from dovesfarm.co.uk.

TUNA MORNAY
INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp butter
3 sticks celery, finely diced
2 tbsp gf plain flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup cream
2/3 cup grated cheese
1 440 g can corn (drained), or 1 cup frozen peas and corn mix
425 g can tuna in springwater, drained
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I freeze the ends of gf bread, or any stale bread, thaw and put in the whiz to make crumbs.  Add some herbs and spices, and freeze in ready to use packs)
1/4 cup grated cheese, extra

METHOD
Melt butter and saute celery for approx 3 mins.  Add flour and stir over heat until bubbling.  Remove from heat and slowly stir in milk and cream.  Return to heat and continue stirring until thickened.  Add cheese, corn, and tuna and mix to combine.  Place in a casserole dish and top with crumbs and extra cheese.  Bake at 200C for 15 mins.  Serve with soda bread.


SODA BREAD
INGREDIENTS
500g gluten free white flour blend
1/4 tsp salt
1 2/3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp Xanthan Gum
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
500ml milk, or rice milk
2 tbsp milk or rice milk, extra

METHOD
Mix together dry ingredients.  In a jug, mix oil, vinegar and milk.  Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and mix to combine, until a soft, sticky dough is formed.  Press into a loaf tin, brush the top with extra milk, and bake at 180C for 90-100 mins.  I find mine is baked after 45 mins, so check every 30 mins or so.  Serve warm topped with your favourite spread.

Can be made into muffins or rolls, just by pressing into smaller tins.

Green Smoothy and Halloween

Last night, we did Trick or Treating at a lovely street party run by one of the mums at school, you know who you are!  The issue with this sort of activity is that Miss A cannot eat most of her haul.  This leads to the night being fraught with emotional highs and lows as we try to guide her to make sensible choices about the lollies she can and cannot eat, without crushing her little spirit in the process.

The way we managed this was to take our usual picnic for the shared dinner, this week's selection was GF lepinja rolls with homemade schnitzels and salad greens, with a salad and some strawberries.  We also took a selection of chocolates and some lollies from Sue Shepherd's gluten free and fructose friendly lollie collection.  I highly recommend these lollies!  Anytime we are going to a party, fete or gathering where there is likely to be lollies and other sweet foods we have a small bag of these for Miss A.  They are not recommended in large quantities, this is always a no-no for people with Fructose Malabsorption, but a small handful so she doesn't miss out is fine.

Given that all of Miss A's friends and school chums are really understanding, I love our little school for how inclusive they are, she had no problems swapping her lollies for chocolates so she still got a pretty nice selection of sweets without making herself sick.  It was, as always, a lovely night, and we walked away from the experience with renewed confidence that we can live with this lifestyle and still raise two well adjusted, normal children who have not missed out on all the fun things due to circumstance.  If you put in the planning, anything is possible, regardless how difficult your eating plan needs to be.


Green smoothy time!  Because of how educated my kids have become through this process, they have both been really eager to try a green smoothy for a healthy breakfast option.  All the recipes I have come across either have ingredients that Miss A cannot tolerate or are outright allergic to, or things that are not readily available in Adelaide or I have not heard of.  This has led to us not yet giving this a try.  Even a search on the web for Fructose Friendly recipes came up with recipes that are not ok for us, for example, they all call for banana as the main ingredient, a big no-no for Miss A, or nuts which we have to avoid completely.  One even called for cherries which are on every High Fructose list I have ever seen!

Once again, invention needed to be my saviour.  We gave this a go, and it was drunk by both kids and only uses ingredients that we can consume readily.  There are a couple of moderate fructose ingredients in there, but with the high percentage of low fructose ingredients, I think the balance works.  It is not an attractive looking drink, being a muddy orange colour, but is packed with nutrients and tastes pretty good.  If too strong for your taste, add extra coconut juice/water to thin it out.

GREEN SMOOTHY
INGREDIENTS
1 cucumber
2 sticks of celery, with leaves attached
2 tangelos, peeled
1 punnet strawberries
1 carrot
2 cups coconut juice or coconut water

METHOD
Put all ingredients except the coconut juice/water through a juicer.  Add the coconut and mix to combine.  Serves 4.

Give it a try and see what you think!  You could try some spinach leaves to improve the colour and boost the iron as well.  Let me know how you went in the comments.