Our First Milk, Egg, and Nut- Free Gingerbread House

Last night I made a milk, egg, peanut and treenut free gingerbread house for J's Christmas party. The recipe I used was Food Allergy Mama's gingerbread cookie recipe http://www.foodallergymama.com/2009/12/13/dairy-egg-and-nut-free-gingerbread-kids/ (I did not feel like trying to alter one of my non-allergy friendly gingerbread recipes). I followed the recipe, but the dough was really sticky. I had to add a lot of flour to make it manageable. After adding all the flour, I think it turned out well. The next issue I had was putting the house together. While I could not use a traditional strong icing recipe because of the egg allergy I found another recipe for "edible glue". I boiled 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup corn syrup until it reached 300 degrees- unfornately mine went over 350 degrees and burned, but it still worked as really good food glue. In order to cover the "glue" I outlined the house with a safe icing made of powdered sugar, corn syrup and soy milk. I think it turned out well and my son loved it- he decorate it with snowman marshmellows, skittles, starburst, gummy bears and peppermint sticks.

Namaste Cookie Review

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My older son J had a Christmas party at his preschool today. There are two children in the class (including him) with food allergies. J has milk, egg and nut allergies and the other little boy has a gluten allergy. So in order to make sure that everyone could enjoy the party the other mother and I organized the food. I decided to make cookies and since I am not an expert in gluten allergies I bought a Namaste cookie mix. I had never tried any other their products before but they are free of many of the common allergens. The mix calls for two eggs, oil and water to be added to the mix, so I replaced the two eggs with 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce. When I purchased the mix I was not aware that it did not include any chocolate chips, but was a plain cookie mix, so I added Enjoy Life chocolate chips to the mix. The cookie mix was very oily and did not really resemble a regular cookie dough. While the cookies tasted good, the texture was a bit grainy and was almost like an oatmeal cookie. Overall, I will probably stick with my regular cookie mix (since I don't need to bake gluten free and since the mix, without the chocolate chips was 5.99) but all the children did enjoy the cookies.

Cranberry Scones- Yum!

I found this recipe a couple of years ago in Southern Living magazine and up until now I made it with eggs , butter and milk. Here is my version of the recipe:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup fresh cranberries (divided- I like to chop half of my cranberries- but this is totally optional)

1/2 cup allergy friendly margarine (I use Earth's Balance soy free), melted

1/2 cup coconut milk or rice milk

egg substitute equivalent to one egg


Stir first four ingredients together, stir in cranberries.

Whisk together margarine, milk, and egg substitute, then add to flour mixture. Stir just until all is moistened. Drop onto a greased cookie sheet. Lightly sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

More Finds at the Grocery Store

It seems like nearly everytime I go to the grocery store I find new items that are allergy friendly to our allergies. It never ceases to suprise me everytime I find something new I thought we would not be able to eat. I think part of the reason that I was meant to go on this diet is so that I would be forced to find more things that my children can enjoy. While I have always tried to make sure they could eat things, I am trying to find additional things for myself since there are a lot of foods that I miss. I went to Aldi last Friday and they have graham cracker pie crust that only contains wheat. Then I went to Kroger and found that Jell-o brand pudding (only the instant sugar-free) had several flavors that did not contain any of the 8 major allergens. I also found that frozen Lenders Bagels (at least the blueberry flavor ) only contained wheat. So on Sunday I decided that maybe I should try making a "cheesecake"- the cheesecake was cheesecake flavored pudding in a graham cracker crust. I made it with vanilla flavored coconut milk and it tasted like a vanilla pudding pie- not like cheesecake. I think that next time I try the cheesecake pudding I will use rice or coconut without vanilla. We also made another trip to Kroger today and I found that there are a few varieties of Pop-Tarts that only contain soy and wheat. So I was not able to try them, but J and Princess R enjoyed them on the trip home.

Menu for the week of November 15th

Well last week I had planned on trying some Christmas cookie recipes and posting them on the blog- well that did not happen. Things have been crazy trying to prepare for our first of three crafts shows on Saturday. We are doing craft shows three consecutive weekends (we are totally crazy) and hopefully we sell LOTS of stuff. Here is my easy menu for the week:



Monday- Spaghetti



Tuesday- Hamburgers



Wednesday- TBA



Thursday- parents



Friday- Ham and Bean Soup



Saturday- Craft show



Sunday- Meat Pies (this is repurposing the spaghetti sauce from Monday, since we will probably be exhausted and not want to cook anything) - use store bought pie crust (I use Pillsbury- it only has wheat and it has been on sale a lot lately!) and stuff individual pies with spaghetti sauce.

Menu for the Week of November 8th

Well after a weekend when we did not have much planned (we still went to IKEA, church and Kroger) we have a pretty busy week ahead of us. Hopefully the food I have planned is pretty easy. I am also hoping to modify some Christmas cookie recipes so I can enjoy cookies this year with everyone else.


Monday- Enchilada Casserole (from last week but we did not get to it)


Tuesday- Pork Roast


Wednesday- Ribs in the crockpot


Thursday- Bierocks (http://www.5dollardinners.com/2010/09/aleas-bierocks.html)

Friday- Parents


Saturday- Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwiches


Sunday- Leftovers

Menu for week of November 1st

Wow I can't believe that we are already in November! This week I have been frantically looking for J's glasses (they have been missing since Friday) and trying to get a lot of bows finished (we only have 17 more days until the first craft show). I went to Remke on Monday and purchased 24 lbs of lean ground beef (it was on sale) so I will be busy this week freezing it (I freeze it in 1 lb packages) and it should last about 3 months. I have two recipes for the ground beef this week (that way I have to freeze two fewer pounds of meat!)

Monday- Pizza (on a Pillsbury crust- they only contain wheat)

Tuesday- Sloppy Joes, asparagus and fries

Wednesday- Chicken with Veggie Confetti (we missed this last week- the link is in last weeks meal post)

Thursday- parents

Friday- Meatloaf

Saturday- Chicken Fried Pork Chops

Sunday- Mexican Lasagna (http://blog.fatfreevegan/2006/07/mexican-lasagna-or-enchilada-casserole.html)