Easy Holidays!

We've just returned from an easydairyfree holiday! Unfortunately no where near as glam as this beach. We stayed in a villa in Majorca with some friends, which was ideal for us, as it gave us control of what and when we ate. 

Honeymoon in Mauritius - maybe again some day!?

Travelling when abroad with a diary free (or any other food allergy) baby can be difficult. Here are some top tips for travelling:

• Start packing early! The key to a stress free holiday is in having everything ready and planned ahead. You'll have a much better idea of what you need if you can see it all laid out. 
• Print out a packing list. It is inevitable that you will forget something! You can download these easily from the internet. We managed to forget the child camera unit of the baby monitor (but successfully brought the parent unit!)
• Get an umbrella pram. Most airlines will let you take 2 items of baby equipment, so leave your beloved bugaboo at home and get a cheap lightweight pram (I found one for £20 in the local charity shop). You won't be devastated if it gets lost or destroyed. 
• If you formula feed (especially with prescription hydrolysed milk), then make sure not only you have enough to last you the length of the holiday, but also some extra in case of flight delays or emergencies. If you're going away for a week, have enough milk for 12 days for example, or 2 weeks - have enough for 3. Just think worse case scenario - what happens if you spill a tub, or one goes AWOL with some lost luggage!
• If needed, you can call ahead to a Boots at the airport to request baby food/milk be ordered for you. This saves time at the security gates. 
• Forget about taking bulky sterilisers or solutions. You can get small microwavable sterilising bags that usually can be used 20 or so times before they need to be replaced. 
• Bring your own food if necessary! We just returned from holiday and took some dairy free snacks in the hold luggage because we weren't sure what we could get on holiday. Of particular use was taking a small jar of cashew nut butter - it was used LOTS!
• Learn (and write down) the translation for "dairy allergy" and "no milk" if you are going to be ordering food out and about for your baby. This is probably especially important if your language skills stopped at about GCSE time. 

This little jar made the journey on holiday with us! 

Plan your meals

This is probably what helped the most in creating a stress free holiday with T. We stayed in a villa, so it was easy to prepare our own meals for T and take them out and about with us. 

Here is an example of our week's menu for T:

Shopping list

• Weetabix (pack of 12)
• Small bag of rice
• Small bag of pasta
• 2 chicken breasts.
• 6 eggs. 
• 1 x Cucumber
• 1 x Avocado
• Tomatoes (fresh)
• Small loaf Wholemeal Bread
• Tinned sweetcorn (x1)
• Tinned tomatoes (x1)
• Jam (the adults helped to eat this too!)
• Small bag new potatoes
• Mushrooms
• Oranges, melon, plums, bananas and pears.  

Brought from home:

• Rice cakes
• Organix gingerbread biscuits
• Bread sticks
• Boots Fruit pots (pack of 4)
• Small jar cashew nut butter. 
• Salt free stock cubes for cooking rice, pasta sauce etc. 

Day 1 

Breakfast - Weetabix, chopped melon

Lunch - Avocado slices, cashew nut butter on toast

Dinner - Mushroom omelette, slices of plum

Day 2 

Breakfast - Weetabix, slices of orange, peeled and deseeded. 

Lunch - Chunks of local bread, cucumber, tomato slices. Fruit pot 

Dinner - Chicken with sweetcorn and rice (made double the portion)

Day 3

Breakfast - Scrambled egg. Banana

Lunch - Leftover chicken with sweetcorn and rice. Sliced pear. 

Dinner - Fish with chunks of new potato and carrot. Melon.

Day 4

Breakfast - Weetabix. Orange slices. 

Lunch - Cashew nut butter and jam sandwiches. Cucumber and tomato chunks. Pear. 

Dinner - Tomato pasta. Fruit pot. 

Day 5

Breakfast - Weetabix. Chopped plum

Lunch - Leftover tomato pasta. Rice crackers and cashew nut butter. 

Dinner - Chunks of chicken with avocado and cucumber. Fruit pot. 

Day 6 

Breakfast - Weetabix. Banana

Lunch - Chunks of chicken with cucumber and tomato. 

Dinner - Tomato pasta. Fruit pot

Day 7 

Breakfast - Weetabix. Pear

Lunch - Chicken and tomato rice with sweetcorn. 

Dinner - Mushroom omelette, what ever fruit is leftover to clear the fridge!

It was fairly easy with a reasonably small selection of ingredients to come up with different menus for each day that offered variety. I wouldn't necessarily feed this to T every week, but in the interests of minimising waste, it worked very well. 

Fresh local ingredients can make mealtimes even more inviting. 

If you have any dairy free travelling tips, then please share them too! 

Dairy free grown ups: Chicken and Tomato Bake

This recipe was introduced to me by a friend, and like with all good recipes, it adapts and changes over time. This recipe originally started as this Jamie Oliver recipe, but I've worked my own version of it.

It's not the quickest of recipes, but it is one of the easiest I've come across. You just need to put all the ingredients into a dish, place it in the oven, and it can be forgotten about for the next hour or so, when you get out a mouth-watering rush of steaming aromas. This is probably a bit too salty for babies under 1 year due to the addition of the stock cubes - you could use salt free ones instead if you are planing on feeding this to your little one too.

Jamie Oliver's version

Ingredients

Chicken thighs or legs, or a mixture of both. Allow 2 portions per person, (more if hungry!)

Cherry or santorini tomatoes, chopped in half - 2 handfuls

2 chicken stock cubes

2 tins cannellini beans, drained

1 pinch chilli flakes

Couple of lugs of olive oil. 

Splash of water 

Basil leaves to serve

Salt and pepper (optional)

                                                                                                       

Method

Heat the oven to 200C. 

Place the tins of beans in the bottom of a large, oven proof dish. Crumble a the chicken stock cubes of the top of these. 

Add the sliced tomatoes and the chicken portions on the top.

Season (if desired) and then add the water (about half a mugful should be enough to get a lovely sauce going in the bottom of the dish), and the olive oil over the top. 

Place in the oven for approximately 1-2hrs, until the chicken has become crispy and the tomatoes have released their juices into the pan too. 

Arrange a few basil leaves on top once cooked. 

To serve: you can have this on its own, or with crusty bread. We also had this the other night with a side of wild rice and kale. 

My version - hopefully not too dissimilar! 

Meal ideas: Dairy free Pasta Dishes

Why not have a look at these easy dairy free pasta recipes for your little one? (Or even make a bigger portion for yourself?!) 

Beef Bolognese

Chicken and Broccoli pasta

Cheeky Courgette and Butternut Pasta

Tomato Pasta Stars with Tuna 

Always supervise your child eating. 

Please don't exclude food groups from you or your child's diet without seeking advice

Cooking for children

Happy Monday everyone! 

I love looking at cookbooks for ideas, even if I don't always follow the recipes exactly.

This book is great for its seasonality. With such a fantastic fruit and vegetable shop down the road from us, I always try to buy fresh food in season. 

There's also some great advice in this book about baby led weaning, and some lovely recipes for purees if you decide to go down that route with your baby. 

When cooking dairy free for T, I find a lot of my inspiration comes from standard cookbooks. I just end up replacing any milk or butter in the recipe with the dairy free alternative. 

Today on the menu is:

Breakfast - weetabix with 1/2 mashed banana, blueberries and 1/2 apricot as finger food. 
Lunch - chicken casserole with peas and carrots. 
Dinner - beef tagine with rice. Strawberries for dessert. (He goes absolutely mad for these!)

Snacks - rice cakes with cashew nut butter. 

He still gets 3 bottles a day in addition to this, and sometimes it amazes me that he manages to put so much food away! 

I'll post the recipes for the chicken casserole and beef tagine soon! 

Under 15 Minutes: Tomato Pasta Stars with Tuna

In a rush, and haven't been to the shops lately? Here is another EasyDairyFree Fifteen minutes or less meal: 



Note - this recipes assumes that you have made the "Creamy" tomato sauce, find the recipe here. 

Ingredients

3 cubes of frozen pasta sauce
50g pasta stars
1/2 tin tuna in spring water (Not brine as this will be too salty)

Just defrost some frozen pasta sauce cubes and cook some pasta - quick and easy! 

Method

1. Cook the pasta as per instructions in a pan of unsalted boiling water. 
2. Defrost the pasta sauce cubes in the microwave or another saucepan until piping hot. 
3. Drain the pasta, stir in the sauce and add 1/2 tin tuna. 
4. Check the temperature before serving. 

Top Tips
If you want to make this more of a finger food, then cook a small handful of fusilli pasta instead. Baby can get stuck in on their own! 

Why not try adding a small handful of frozen veg (cooked obviously!) to add a bit more colour and taste to the dish?

Find the recipes for other Under 15 Minute Meals by clicking on the pictures below:

Under 15 Minutes: Ideas with an Avocado

In a rush, and haven't been to the shops lately? Here is another EasyDairyFree Fifteen minutes or less meal: 

Ingredients 

1/2 ripe avocado, mashed. 

Serving Ideas:

Avocado and Banana

Mash with 1/2 banana and a small amount of milk substitute. Blend to your desired consistency. 

Avocado and Butter Beans

Add the avocado with 1/2 400g tin of butter beans into a food processor. Add 30mls milk substitute. Blend. 

Avocado Dippers

For the older baby - avocado is a great medium for dipping things into. Try pitta bread, rice cakes, cooked sticks of carrot or broccoli florets, cucumber sticks, toast, strips of cooked chicken breast. 

Avocado Roll ups
Take the mashed avocado and spread onto one side of a tortilla. Tightly roll the tortilla up and cut horizontally. Great idea for picnics with older children. 

Top tip - brush the un-used half of the avocado with lemon juice before putting back in the fridge to keep it from browning. 

PS - Have a look at my other recipes here.

Under 15 Minutes: Vegetable Omelette

In a rush, and haven't been to the shops lately? Here is the first of my EasyDairyFree Fifteen minutes or less meals: 

Diced pepper as well as a host of other vegetables could work in this dish. 

See some of the recipes already on this blog

Click on the pictures below to take you to some great dairy free recipes. 

Beef bolognese, Cottage Pie, Homemade hummus and Butternut squash with red lentils. 

Enjoy! 

Dairy free finger foods

Baby led weaning is very popular at the moment. The philosophy centres around babies weaning at their own pace, and having food from the family's plate. Not such a bad idea, right? It means less cooking for you as you can just siphon things off of your plate and on to baby's. 

Not T - just a stock photo from pixabay.com! 

I don't always find this practical however. When we're out to eat, I can't always trust that our food will be made to the same strict dietary requirements that I do at home, so I tend to bring food for T with me wherever we go. 

Some babies aren't very keen on feeding themselves, whilst others scream at the sight of a spoon. I mix and match spoon-feeding and finger foods for T, as I find that this is the right balance for us.