Homeschooling Bean and Polenta Vegetarian Sausages (Egg free, Dairy free, Gluten free)

Every now and then I think that I might quite enjoy home schooling my children. I fancy that I would adhere to a wide-ranging, liberal curriculum that would take the form of light seminars designed to equip my children for life. The emphasis would be on self-discovery, tolerance and giving Mummy plenty of time to herself.

Last Summer I decided to do a home schooling dry run. First up was a trip to the bakery (‘Life Skills; Buying Provisions‘ and ‘Language Acquisition Module 1; French‘). In the true spirit of home schooling, bucking trends and fostering autonomy, I decided to let the three elder children go in on their own (‘Cutting the Cord; Never Too Young For Independence’). When they reappeared with the baguettes, my eldest was smiling broadly,
‘Look Mum! With the change I’ve got exactly the right money to buy four lollipops at 30 centimes each, that’s a total of 1 euro 20 cents, can I go and get them?’

I beamed. Here was home schooling in action, times tables being used in a real life application. It had meaning and relevance, it was how education should be. I dispatched her to buy the lollipops forthwith. The lesson on ‘Tooth decay; You Can Never Brush Too Much’ would come later.

Next up was a trip to the wood (‘Physical Education Tom Sawyer Style’). It was hot and I’d forgotten all the water bottles and the pram for the 2 year old (‘Humans and Fallibility; What That Means to Me’). Still, we got off to a flying start as all four children watched moorhens (’Nature in Action; Moorhens’), examined animal footprints (’Nature in Action 2; Animal Footprint Detection’) and played Pooh Sticks (‘Random Forces of Nature; Currents and Swirls’).

But the rot set in on the return journey. We were hot and tired, the two year old was demanding the pram, I had lost all enthusiasm for walking four children in the woods, and the thought of home schooling and doing this day in and day out seemed ridiculous. I was very glad to get them all home and park them in front of the telly. (ICT; Why Television is Invaluable‘).

A bit of lunch revived me (‘Medicinal Benefits of Red Wine at Lunchtime; One Woman’s Theory’) and we decided to play Snakes and Ladders (‘Socialisation; An Introduction to Turn-Taking’). I thought I might work in some simple adding and subtracting with the die, and focus on ‘Learning to Win - and Lose - With Grace‘.

Yeah well, that idea didn’t fly. The two year-old drained the last reserves of my patience by taking everyone’s counters, the eldest sulked when she wasn’t winning, and the remaining two bickered incessantly. In the end it was home schooling Mum who threw her toys out of the pram and refused to play (Humans and Fallibility 2; Puerile Behaviour in The Adult’). Within minutes the telly was back on, I was in front of the computer, and we were all enjoying home schooling a lot more. (Life Skills 2; How the Path of Least Resistance Can Work For You’).

I did rally later in the day, by letting the children go in the swimming pool (‘Physical Education 2; Gross Motor Skills’ and ‘Voice Therapy; Shrieking’). The sun shone down on us, the children were happy, and home schooling Mummy thought that if every day were like this she’d be tanned and tranquil. Alas the complacency was short-lived, one of the children assaulted another with a boogie board (Introduction to Crime; GBH and Beyond), and I ordered everyone out (Proverbs and Idioms; Pride Comes Before a Fall’).

I decided that home schooling was for mugs and set about making tea whilst fortifying myself with red wine (‘Stay at Home Mums and Red Wine; Sowing the Seeds of Alcoholism’). I figured that ignoring the children was the best policy and I engrossed myself in trying a sausage recipe that had been wandering around in my head (Pig In The Kitchen; The Inspirational Story of My Life, Vol I‘).

Astoundingly, my idea worked, and during my time in the kitchen, somehow the children had stopped bickering (’Radical Parenting Part 1; Ignoring Your Children Really Works'). We ate outside in the sun, and they ALL wanted more sausages. I was rather ecstatic at this point because it is so rare for all four children to like my trial recipes (Radical Parenting Part 2; Like it Or Lump It - The Food Approach That Really Works’).

Later that evening when my poppets were all in bed (Radical Parenting Part 3; It’s OK to Scream At Bedtime') I had a long, hard think about home schooling, could it be for me? I weighed up the pros and cons, and decided that I was quite simply not up to the job
(Life Skills 3; Know When To Stop’). Mainly because I love it when they are at school and I have space in my head for me, me and me (‘Confessions of a Selfish Woman, Part 1’), and also because they are lucky enough to thrive in mainstream schooling (‘Mainstream Schooling; It Worked For Me’).

So anyway, Big Respec’ to you fabulous Home Schoolers, and when you’re not doing Kumon Maths and visiting art galleries, maybe you’d like to try making some Vegetarian Home Schooling Sausages? In fact, whether you home school or not, do have a go at my sausages, they will thrill your heart.
(‘In the Footsteps of a Guru; How Pig In The Kitchen Changed My Life).
　
Homeschooling Bean and Polenta Sausages (Makes between 15 and 20 sausages and you can freeze them) The mix is best made a couple of hours before you need to use it.

I do so love Polenta. In fact I love any food that you can mould and shape, it’s like using edible play dough.

I’ve made these often since the home schooling débâcle, you can slip in any finely chopped or grated veg you fancy, so branch out and stray from my recipe (Experimental Cooking Part 1), but just don’t blame me if it all goes wrong (‘Bucking Modern Trends; Refusing to Accept a Litigious Culture’).
　
200g polenta
1 can red kidney beans
1 small courgette
1 small carrot
2 cloves of garlic
2 mushrooms
Olive oil to fry
1 medium potato/ 1 small sweet potato
2 tbsps yeast extract
1 tbsp mixed herbs / thyme/ whatever you like
50-100ml red wine (or a bit more, up to you)
Between 350 and 500ml boiling water

• Finely chop the carrot and potato and put into a large frying pan or saucepan
• Roughly chop the courgette, mushrooms, garlic and herbs and add to the pan
• Douse with olive oil and set to fry over a medium heat
• Whilst that’s doing its thing, drain the kidney beans and boil the water
• After about 5 minutes, add the drained kidney beans, red wine, yeast extract and about half the water to the pan. Stir and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes
• Turn off the heat, and use a hand blender to whiz it all up into a paste. Either put it all into a jug and do it safely, or tilt the saucepan/frying pan this way and that until the blender is submerged and you can blend without spattering hot stuff everywhere (Living on the Edge; Cooking Like a Nutter Part 1)
• When the vegetables and the beans are blended, turn the heat down low and add the polenta. It will be way too thick and you’ll need to add some liquid pronto. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon until it thickens and the polenta starts coming away from the edge, about 10 minutes (maybe more, taste it, it shouldn‘t be gritty). Add more water as you see fit, but you’ll need quite a stiff mix for the sausages, so do it gradually
• When the polenta mix is cooked, remove it from the heat. Be warned, during the next part you’ll probably scald your fingers (Living on the Edge; Cooking Like a Nutter (Part 2) and Loving It)
• Line a couple of baking trays with baking parchment
• The best way to do the next part is to use a piping bag with a sausage sized nozzle. If you don’t have one, cut a sausage-sized corner off a plastic bag (don’t think of nasty chemicals in plastic reacting with your warm food)
• Spread a big dollop of your polenta mix onto a cold plate, and brush the surface with olive oil. Then either using your hands (ouch!) or a spoon, scoop the mix into your plastic bag and ‘pipe’ your sausages onto the baking tray. You can also make the sausages by allowing your polenta to cool some more and rolling the mix in your hands to make sausage shapes, that’s the really fun way, but you have to work quickly so that your mix doesn’t set before you’ve used it all up
• If the mix is a bit warm, the sausages might ‘sag’ a little and not be perfect and cylindrical. Don’t worry too much, as they cool down the mix sets and you can re-shape them a bit
• When you have used up all the mix, leave your sausages to cool completely. Although at a pinch you can cook them straight away, it has been done before
• If you want to freeze them, you can do so at this stage, just layer them with baking parchment
• Cover the base of a frying pan with olive oil and heat it. When it is hot, carefully transfer your sausages to the pan and let them sizzle. They can be a bit fragile and temperamental, so it is best to leave them to fry and go brown rather than keep turning them. When one ‘side’ is done, roll them over and do the other side until they are crispy and brown
• Remove from the pan and place onto a plate covered with kitchen towel (to drain off excess oil)
• And there you have it! Sausages! That’s marvellous isn’t it? And all because of home schooling. Sort of.

© Pig in the Kitchen 2009

Star Solution of Hope #1: Engevita Yeast Flakes

In many ways, the medical diagnosis of a child’s food allergies is not the starting point. The starting point probably came weeks or months earlier, when it was clear that something didn’t agree with your child.


In the case of my daughter, it was eczema and skin infections from 2 months old, and recurrent chest infections. It was noticing that her cheek came up in hives when one of her siblings gave her a buttery kiss. It was her point blank refusal to have yogurt or cheese spooned into her mouth, and most damningly, it was a Doctor’s letter to a Consultant headed,
'9 month old infant girl, failure to thrive’.

It’s almost a relief when the skin prick tests and blood tests show a food allergy. It means you can march up to that sceptical husband/Mother-in-Law/Yummy Mummy, wave dramatic blood test results in their face and say,
'See! I told you my Mother’s instinct was right!’

But, when I received that firm diagnosis, the future looked very bleak indeed. What was I supposed to feed my 9 month old? What was I supposed to feed my breast-feeding self to ensure my milk remained allergen free?

To keep me allergen free, I scrabbled around eating lots of hummus and rice cakes, and on one memorable evening a thick custard made with water, sweetened with golden syrup and enhanced with cocoa powder. Yum. Now 3 years on, I mercifully don’t have to worry about breast-feeding. This is because on the eve of her first birthday, my littlest finally consented to drink a bottle of what we kindly and tactfully call, ‘stinky milk’ (Nutramigen formula milk). As she glugged down her first bottle of stinky milk, I did shed a tear because it was the end of my breast-feeding career. And having wiped away the tear, I poured myself an enormous glass of red wine, because hey, I’m no longer poisoning the baby, right? It was quite a joyful moment.

However, 3 years on, I do still have to worry about providing a balanced vegetarian diet for a child with egg, cows milk, goats milk, brazil nut and mustard allergies. And before you hop around trying to mount your high horse whilst berating me for not feeding her meat or fish in the face of such a restricted diet… I would throttle veal for her if she would eat it, but alas, she’s a bit of a picky one.

Oh, and all you vegans now galloping away on your horrified horse…I wouldn’t really raise veal for her and slaughter it with my own bare hands. That’s just a turn of phrase.

So, a very small pool of ingredients from which I may fish, how on earth am I going to keep this child healthy? By the seat of my pants is how I do it. Whilst my other three hungry children are wolfing down eggs on toast, or cheese, tomato and onion on toast, (a ‘Nanny Toasty’), I am scrabbling around in the cupboard for the last tin of beans for, beans on toast.


When I’ve served Lentil Bolognese (I really must post that recipe), and the other three children are gaily sprinkling the Parmesan, I move her chair carefully out of the cheese zone, and instruct the others not to touch her. And on bad nights, when I’m exhausted and everyone is eating pasta, oil and cheese, I close my eyes to the blanket of ketchup that she has lovingly laid over her meal.

Which is why, I am always so delighted when I find something that might make my life a little easier. And in Engevita Marigold Yeast Flakes I have found a friend. They are described as having a cheesy or nutty taste, and they have…a cheesy or nutty taste. They are also packed full of B vitamins. No I don’t really know what B vitamins are good for either, but I know they are vitamins, ergo, they are good. Vitamins are what my girlie needs. These little flakes melt when they are warmed, so I merrily sprinkle them into soups, beans, Lentil Bolognese, and I mix them with olive oil when I’m doing that trashy meal of pasta and oil that I mentioned earlier. I think Vegetation at The Veggie Patch might have a recipe for a ‘cheesy’ dip for tortilla chips as well, I’ll have to pop over and ask her for it soon.

Of course they are not going to solve the restricted diet problem, but they are a little nugget of hope. Which is why I mentioned them. If you have allergies or cook for someone with allergies, then you know that a little hope goes a long way. As does an enormous glass of red wine.
Cheers!

Yeast flakes are available from Goodness Direct and if your health food store is worth its salt, they should have them too. If they don’t have them, they should order them for you. And if they don’t order them, think evil thoughts about them, and order some online.

Pssst, do you like the new 'Star Solution of Hope' Series?? I've got a whole host of them, some more random than others. Stay tuned...

© Pig in the Kitchen 2009

Breaking My Word Jammy Biscuits (egg free, dairy free, gluten free)

In many ways young children are like puppies. They need clear boundaries, a kind but firm manner, and someone to clear up their poo. Now, when young children get old enough to ask for a puppy, the boundaries need to be even clearer, and the manner steely. ‘No’ is the correct answer. When they ask why, explain that there will be no puppy because you already have enough to do, all their toys will be chewed to bits, and there is no way you are going to scoop warm faeces into a bag. That’s how I have remained firm on the puppy issue for the best part of a decade.

Except that I now have four kids and a puppy.

It was a car crash that did it. There we were, rolling along, when a man with four times the legal amount of alcohol in his blood and going like a bullet shot in front of me. I hit him. His car flew for 62 metres. As it span through the air, his arm flapped lifelessly out the window and I was convinced I‘d killed him. His car landed on its roof, crushed. I don’t know how he didn’t die. To compound my horror, in French law I was held responsible because he had come from my right, and I had ‘refused to give way’. Do. Not. Even. Get. Me. Started.

The next day I gave a statement to the police, then set off for a long walk to try and sort out my head. For the second time in twenty four hours, something flew at me from the right. It was whimpering and jumping up and its anxious Mum was sniffing along behind. A puppy. A delicious, chubby, lost puppy curling up on my lap and nuzzling. I sat on the grass and the Mum and the pup went to sleep, on me and next to me. I felt like Jesus crossed with the Dog Whisperer.

Of course I shouldn’t have told the children. Of course I shouldn’t have carried the pup home and settled her and her Mum in the garage. And I’m fairly sure that I shouldn’t have fed them pasta with a creamy mushroom and artichoke sauce, (but someone told me dogs will eat anything). The dogs were still there the next morning and by now it was clear. They had been sent from on high to console me in my time of need. Unfortunately the vet begged to differ. When I called him because I was worried about Mum dog’s health, he told me that a man five miles away had lost the dogs two days before. Bugger.

I will cut this story short, but after giving the dogs back, the man told me the pup was for sale. Thankfully he told me in local yokel French dialect, and the flapping ears of my children didn’t hear. I kept it secret for two whole weeks, then one day in October we paid the man an awful lot of money and brought my puppy home. The kids were amazed. They realised, possibly for the first time, that there is blood, not stone, where my heart should be.

Husband was happy because I was happy, and he even ventured,

‘You know, I think we may have bonded, she’s just been nuzzling my hand’.

Not ten minutes later, the pup ran around in circles, then went - as if guided by GPS - straight to his laptop bag and crapped on it. A big, wet, stinking crap. Good thing they’d bonded beforehand, no?

Aside from the laptop bag incident, oh, and the chewing the rubber trim off husband’s sports car incident, and the scratching husband’s sports car incident, the puppy is a delight. We all love her, (husband not so much) and I am glad that I went back on my word.

You think I’m really weak, don’t you? First I caved on the puppy, then, hello, here I am blogging again, what’s that all about? Well I’ve explained about the puppy, and the blogging…

A dear friend called me in despair about her baby’s eczema. A non-medical person with a little bit of personal experience (me) is a dangerous person to call in those circumstances. I rambled on and on with advice and suggestions, and we both agreed that baby needed to have skin prick tests.

Baby had the skin prick tests. Baby is allergic to eggs, milk, wheat, dairy, nuts and more. Dear breast-feeding friend is suddenly on a restrictive diet, tired, weepy, overwhelmed. Now isn’t that reason enough for me to get my recipe-concocting hat out of the cupboard? Even if it means going back on my, ‘I’m not blogging any more’ word?

You know, you really shouldn’t take me at my word.

Sweet E and baby Z, these ‘Going-Back-on-My-Word Jammy Biscuits’ are for you. I wish I didn’t have to make them for you, but until our babies grow out of their allergies, or a vaccine is developed, (yep, I’m still clutching at any straw that comes along), I hope the biscuits and the blog help.

Going-back-on-my-word Jammy Biscuits (Makes approximately 15 biscuits, well, probably more)

So these are not quick to make, but worth the effort for special occasions (going back to blogging, that kind of thing). I like putting a genteel dollop of jam in the love heart, but my sugar fiend of a daughter insists that they should be completely sandwiched together with jam. Give both ways a try and see what you think. You'll need a large heart shape, and a small heart shape to cut out the inner bit

For GF version:

240g brown rice flour

55g chick pea flour

40g potato starch or cornflour (corn starch)

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

230g dairy free spread

130g sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1-2 tbsp rice milk

Jam for sandwiching purposes

If using wheat flour:

Substitute the first three ingredients above for 335g of white flour

the rest of the ingredients remain the same (including the xanthan gum)

• Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees celsius
  
• Place the dairy-free spread and sugar into a large mixing bowl, and using a wooden spoon squidge and bash it about a bit until it starts to combine into a dough


• Add the flour(s) and xanthan gum and mix it into the fat and sugar with the spoonWhen you get fed up of using the spoon, dive in with your hands and squidge it through your fingers. You might want to think of a particularly horrible ex as you squeeze and pummel the dough


• Add the vanilla essence, squidge again until it is all combined. It is quite a sticky dough, so use the rice milk to dampen your hands, it will help you bend the dough to your will


• When you have a ball of dough, you can chill it at this point for up to twelve hours. But if you're up against the clock, move right along to the next stage


• Divide the dough in half and flour a wooden board with rice flour (or wheat flour if using). Start to roll out the dough. You'll need to keep picking up the dough at the beginning to make sure it doesn't stick to your board. Keep adding rice flour and hoping for the best


• Roll out the flour to a thickness of approximately 4mm


• Using your large heart shape, stamp out two large hearts. Then using your littlest heart, stamp out a small heart shape from one of the large hearts. Are you following? Shall I say heart again?


• Now to the jammy bit. Place the heart with the small heart shape cut out of it on top of the large heart. Press down a bit on the edges to stick them together


• Then very daintily take a teaspoon of jam and ease it into the little heart shape. Don't overfill as it will spread during cooking. If you agree with my daughter and want to add more jam, before you stick the biscuits together, cover the bottom biscuit with jam, then place the heart with the small heart shape cut out on top. Bit complicated to explain that, hope you're keeping up


• Repeat the process until all the dough is used up, then place your babies into the oven for about 15 minutes, or until they are golden brown. Watch them though, make sure they don't burn. They may take longer depending on your oven, mine's very temperamental (French)


• Allow the biscuits to cool and the jam to set. Please don't try them when they're hot, the hot jam will take the skin off your lips


• Enjoy them, but don't feed them to your puppy, that will encourage poor eating habits and it'll forever be begging when you eat. I do hate that in a dog

© Pig in the Kitchen 2009

To think I did all that, and may I say, not in a shy way...

There's nothing worse, is there, than a dying blog? It's like watching a fly buzzing around on its back. It's not pretty, you feel bad for watching, yet you're incapable of administering the final blow, it seems a bit mean.

For a while now I think my blog has been dying. It goes still like the fly, then has a burst of buzzy action, then stops again. So let me just give it that final thwack...

I started this as a resource for others faced with the stress of coping with food allergies, and - in my wild dreams - because I hoped it might get picked up and turned into a lovely recipe book.

I know that some of you have found the recipes really helpful, so hurrah! the first part of my mission succeeded. Alas, to date, no-one would like to pick my blog up and turn it into a lovely recipe book. Perhaps one day that will happen and that would be great.

But the point is, my heart isn't in it any longer, and I hate to do that to my bright and colourful blog. So I'm going to quit whilst I'm ahead and leave it whilst it's still looking good.

I will just leave myself a little wriggle room...I've seen lots of people try to leave their blogs behind, and blogging must be really addictive because they always come back. Maybe I'll be one of those??!

And if any sweet editors would like to turn this into a lovely book, I've got lots more recipes that I haven't yet published ;-)

With kind regards, a little hint of a tear and a tremble of a pigly snout,

Pigx

Tomato Soup for Ballet Saturdays (egg free, dairy free, gluten free)

When I was little, Saturdays meant two things; ballet and soup. Looking back, I’m not sure which of the two was more of an ordeal. Shall we start with the ballet?

Apparently I wasn’t bad at ballet. My exam certificates mainly show ‘Distinction’ and the examiners had kind comments for me, ‘Lovely footwork’, ‘neatly turned out’, ‘very engaging smile’. Interesting isn’t it how two people can view an event so differently? From what I recall that engaging smile was a rictus of fear; those examiners frightened the life out of me.


There’s more. At dancing displays I was fêted as Little Bo Peep, tripping around the hall with a crook topped with silver foil, theatrically looking for my invisible sheep. I stole the show as the spider in a duet with Little Miss Muffet, although I suspect it was my Mum’s rather marvellous spider costume that got me the vote. It was a slinky all-in-one with four newspaper stuffed legs that stuck out at right angles from my waist and thighs. They were attached to my arms with cotton so that when I raised my arms (in a balletic manner), the extra arms moved with them and I was a dead ringer for a spider. Clever, no?

The weekly ballet classes were all about pointing and pliés and pas de chat. The teacher would stalk up and down the row, tilting our chins up, patting a wayward bulging stomach and tapping us on our ’undercarriage’; ’Tuck it under!’. If only I still could. There were set dances to be learnt, one called the Tarantella which was performed with a tambourine whilst wearing a flowing skirt. I could probably still run through the opening few steps if push came to shove. It involved thwacking the tambourine forcefully onto your hip, then whirling it above your head. I think we were meant to look all passionate Italian gypsy-like and wild. Oooo I did like that one.

So, you might be wondering why you haven’t seen me in Billy Elliot?


Well, it was the Eisteddfods that did for me. I don’t know whose idea it was, but I regularly took part in these ballet competitions. I remember it all very clearly. The white tutu, the heavy make-up, the satin ballet shoes instead of the regular leather ones, the character dances with costumes…and most of all, the fear. The churning tummy, the ballet teacher sternly telling us that it didn’t matter if we forgot our routine, we should just keep dancing, anything would do, but we must never, never, stand like a rabbit in headlights in the middle of the stage. I saw a few girls do that, most of them tiny like me - I was about 6 or 7 at the height of my ballet career - but thankfully I always managed to dance through to the end. Then, when that ordeal was over, came the next one; waiting for the results. Then filing onto the stage to stand in a graceful semi-circle, the stage smile hiding the disappointment at not being placed in the top three. Dreadful. In the end I asked Mum not to take me anymore because it was all too stressful.

So, Saturdays were really not my favourite day. Which brings me to the second horror; the soup. Now my Mum was a tired woman. She worked a full week, then weekends meant catching up on the cooking and cleaning and ferrying me to ballet. No wonder she made soup. Well, kind of didn’t make it. Sort of opened a tin, or worse, opened a packet. The tinned stuff wasn’t so bad, although the charmingly named oxtail with the occasional morsel of gristle wasn’t really my favourite. The tomato soup was a bit better, but loaded with so much sugar it made my throat sore. The packet soup though, was the stuff of nightmares. Thin, tasteless and - be still my gagging throat - often with globules of unmixed powder that had escaped Mother‘s whisk. Bleurgh.

So why on earth would I want to inflict soup on my poor, defenceless children? Well, a little bit of food allergy goes a long way, and there are really not many things that a vegetarian, milk- egg- nut- and mustard-allergic child can eat. Couple that with said allergic child being, a little picky about eating vegetables, well really there is only one solution. Soup. Soup that hides a multitude of vegetables.


When I first had a go at tomato soup I was fairly certain what the outcome would be; sulky children staring at their bowls, refusing to eat. Well, I was wrong. My beaming eldest daughter informed me that it was almost as good as the stuff you get in tins from Lidl (she must have had that at someone else’s house) and my littlest allergic one happily tucked in, blissfully unaware of the hidden veg. What a success! I was tempted to execute a pirouette or two, and do a few pas de chat around the kitchen! In the end I settled for a modest curtsy, being sure to smile engagingly in the direction of the examiners.

Furthermore, you can make enormous vats of this and freeze it, so that when you get back with your children from those terrible ballet competitions, you’ll be able to soothe their troubled souls with wholesome tomato soup. Bingo.

Tomato Soup for Ballet Saturdays (This amount serves approx 6, but increase or decrease the quantities as you see fit)
Now I have made this every which way over the last couple of years. Of course the main ingredient is tomatoes, but after that you can chuck in any orangey or pale vegetable you fancy. Not green. Green is hard to hide in this soup. But sweet potato, carrot, swede, whatever you want, you just chop and chuck.
This is a soup that is kind to the careworn.
This is a soup for you.

About 6 beef tomatoes
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 leek
1 small sweet potato
2-3 button mushrooms
Olive oil
1 tsp of pistou if you can buy it, if not, a handful of fresh basil will do the trick
approx 500ml water
1-2 stock gluten free, dairy free, egg free stock cubes
200-500ml passata (depending on the quantity you are making)
2 tbsps tomato puree if necessary
1 tbsp sugar
Salt and black pepper to taste

• Now my dear friend Franny says my recipes are too labour intensive (I love you Franny, see you next week), so she will completely disapprove of me insisting that you remove the skins from your tomatoes. However I'm afraid I will have to insist on that, it goes back to a traumatic childhood incident (not ballet-related), and in my humble opinion your soup will be nul and void if you leave the skins on your tomatoes. I do have a simple(ish) way of doing it though. Use a knife to cut around the stalky bit of the tomato; cut a cone shape so that you remove most of the evil heart as well. Then cut your tomatoes in half and throw them into your big soup saucepan/stock pot (which should have a lid)
• Roughly chop the onions, leek, garlic and mushrooms and throw them into the pan as well. Add enough olive oil so that it won't stick to the bottom of the pan, add the tbsp of pistou (if using fresh basil, we'll add that later) and heat on a medium heat stirring occasionally. When it's all sizzling, put the lid on the saucepan, turn the heat down low and let everything sweat a little
• Do a bit of a grand jeté across the kitchen to get back to your chopping board
• Peel and roughly chop the sweet potato and the 'normal' potato
• Stir the vegetables in the pan, have you noticed how the tomato skins are beginning to curl and get a bit baggy? Stay with it
• Put the two kinds of potato into the pan, and add the 500ml of water and the 1-2 stock cubes. You should have enough liquid to amply cover the vegetables, add a bit more if you're not sure
• Now bring it all to the boil, then turn down the heat, cover and let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. You might want to do an arabesque or half a kilo of battement frappé while you wait
• Now, have a look at your tomato skins. Some will have peeled off completely, others are hanging on determinedly. This next part will have Franny groaning, but using a knife and fork, fish around in the soup and remove all the skins, it's really not that difficult
• Next, if the potato is cooked, add the fresh basil if using, and then use a hand blender to blend the soup until it's smooth. Add the passata and blend again. You can add more water if it seems too thick and isn't smooth enough
• Taste your soup, and you'll probably find that it's a bit acidic, add some sugar, you can build up to 1 tbsp of sugar gradually, or just whack it all in, up to you. Taste again, and add salt and pepper to taste. You can also now add the tomato puree if you feel that it's not tomatoey enough
• Et voila! It's done! Now how about a little soubresaut to finish?

© Pig in the Kitchen 2009

Banana Buns with Jelly Tot Adornment (egg free, dairy free, gluten free)

So it is a brand new year and I’m supposed to back here, blogging. But I’m not.


I am not blogging.


This is because I am struggling with the thorny issue of New Year's Resolutions.

I was all bullish around the 30th December,

‘No, I’m not making any this year, it’s a waste of time’.


Come January 1st I had a bit of a wobble. Well of course I should make a few, it is after all a means of improving myself, and I am most certainly in need of a bit of improvement.


Of course any resolutions that involve eating less, or eliminating fat forever from my diet, are pointless.


Resolutions that involve exercising more are good, especially if they involve some initial thereapeutic purchasing. I'm thinking new trousers for some rock climbing, or perhaps an arm strap for my Ipod to facilitate my running. You know the kind of thing. In fact, I'm probably due some new trainers, it's been a while since I bought the last pair...

Anyway, like I said, pondering over my resolutions. In addition to the ones above, I'm oscillating wildly between the ambitious,


‘Just be a much nicer person all the time’ through the


‘If you can’t say something positive, just don’t open your mouth’ (that’s possibly a sub-point of the first one) down to the more bite-sized,


‘Recycle the bottles on a hebdominal basis’.


It’s taking up quite a lot of head space, so I definitely am not blogging.

However, I felt I must just share something with you. I returned from the UK last week with another weapon in my allergy-fighting arsenal.

A part of the human genome that they missed?

A completely foolproof way to ensure you never ever have another allergic reaction to anything, ever again?

Nope.

It’s Jelly Tots.

How very delighted I was to discover that not only are Jelly Tots free of nuts, dairy, wheat, gluten, gelatine and artificial colours, but they look extremely pretty indeed.

That’s it.

I hope that wasn’t too much of a let down for you, but I was very excited by the Jelly Tots because they meant I could give my littlest allergic one proper sweets. Not sugar-reduced, price-inflated, specialist order ones (and I do value those by the way), but proper, evil sweets.
That her sisters and brother wanted to eat as well. When our bags got lost at the airport (bless you Air France), and boredom kicked in, we were Jelly Tot-tastic, and life was good.

And when I got home to discover two blackened bananas in the fridge, I knew just what to do.
Not blog or try out a new recipe - durr, I’m wrestling with the New Year’s Resolutions, remember? - But re-hash an old recipe, ice it and add some jelly tots.

Then share it with you, to enhance your life, and buy me some time until I can post the next recipe.

So that’s it. Definitely not blogging, although possibly could be in a couple of weeks.

Hope you had a marvellous festive period, and can I just say to all those lovely people that have emailed me recently:

I have replied to every email I’ve received, but my email account is spammed and hijacked to the core and some dear friends are unable to receive my emails. I think I’ve been put on some black list which means you won’t receive my reply. Try checking your junk mail folder, I may have been put in there. And I love getting your very kind emails, thank-you. I think it’s safe to say that if no-one had emailed me or sent me the lovely pix you send me…I would probably have given up by now.


So there you go, it’s all your fault that I’m still here, wittering on.

Happy New Year,

Pigx

Banana buns with jelly tot adornment
These are, quite simply, ‘Did not see that coming Raisin Buns’ in another form. Instead of the raisins, you use 1 large banana, or 1 and a half medium bananas, mashed. How easy is that?


I’ve only made the egg free, dairy free with wheat flour version, but - going out on a limb here - I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with the egg free, dairy free, gluten free or the gluten free with egg versions. Keep up.



If you wish to make these buns, please click HERE, where I've added the necessary (very minor) adjustments to the recipe.





© Pig in the Kitchen 2009

Festive Dairy Free Rice Pudding (egg free, dairy free, gluten free)

However hard I try, at some point Christmas always gets the better of me. I’ve been trundling along with my shopping this year, not feeling smug - always a trap - not feeling panic.

Fact: I wanted to make a Christmas pudding. Fact: my pudding bears a Tesco sticker.

Fact: I wanted to make my own mincemeat. Fact: I had to call Mr Tesco for that too. Although actually I think I may still have time to make some; I’ve found that you can compensate for making mincemeat late with the simple addition of a litre of brandy.

Still, all in all, it was going well, and whilst incredulous that there are now only about 10 days left before the big day, I thought I had my head above water.

Then, just ahead of Cyber Monday came Suicidal Saturday.
‘I’ll just,’ I said, ‘nip to the supermarket to get a few bits, and then I’ll pick up the tree. It won’t take long’. I hadn’t banked on the list-making machine in my head. When it heard I was going near a shop, its lights suddenly glowed green and it started to spew orders into my head.
‘Get gifts for the music teachers’,
‘Buy present for Mrs Langlois’,
‘Buy stocking fillers for the dog’ (haven’t told you about the dog have I?),

then a question to mix it up a little,

‘Have you got enough brandy to feed the cake?’.

As my face assumed the Christmas look; furrowed brow, stress acne, pained grimace and frenzied whispering under my breath, the voice of doom joined the cacophony in my head,
‘You do realise this is the last weekend you have to do X, Y and Z don’t you? You have to get it all done this weekend, or - sadistic pause - it will be too late”.
The list machine had one parting go before I reached the checkout,
‘Make sure you have enough toilet cleaner’.

I somehow survived the supermarket intact, then headed to the garden centre to buy the tree.

Now I hadn’t committed the novice error of dragging children along with me to make tree-buying a fun and festive activity. If you have ever tried that you know what I mean; tension, squabbling, ‘I need a wee’, freezing little fingers, misery.

Don’t do it.

Being child-free, I thought I’d be fine.

Apparently the xmas calendar had deemed that this was tree-buying Saturday for all French citizens who live north of the Rhône. Getting a parking space took about 15 minutes, and then I shuffled forward with the masses. I was duly sucked in to the noisy, sparkling, stressful winter land of wonder. It was a violent assault on the senses. There were small children writhing and screaming in the clutches of their parents. The music was too loud. There were too many people. The list machine in my head froze; all conscious thought suspended.

Caught in the festive crossfire, I did well to make it outside to where they sell the trees. We are ever so green and buy a ‘proper’ tree for Christmas - natch - which we plant in the garden afterwards. In fact it’s not a Christmas tree at all, just something pine-like, a third cousin of the Nordmans, twice removed. Going outside to the ‘real’ trees did reduce my stress a bit because I was alone in the gloaming, albeit peering at horribly expensive specimens and wondering whether to sack my conscience and go buy a rootless thing that’ll be dead in a few weeks. Eco-warrior prevailed and I loaded up my trolley and headed for the checkout.

Standing in the queue confirmed my suspicion that Christmas should probably be cancelled. Careworn faces waiting to be served, toes curling in dread at what the till display would read. Tired brains totting up how much Christmas has already cost, and that’s without buying the food and drink. Worrying, worrying, will it all get done? Should I have bought that present? Will I still have a job in the new year?

I wanted to leave my trolley and run. Run into some parallel universe where Christmas consists of wooden handmade gifts, simple red and green decorations. Where there is snow, peace and quiet, no obligations, no tension, and healing cups of jasmine tea.

Of course I didn’t run. My children would be distraught without a tree to decorate, and the dog would be crushed if she didn’t get a stocking. I steeled myself, struggled back to my car and told myself it was all worth it.

Do you know what else I did? I went home and made rice pudding. A big bowl of filling, creamy stodge, topped off with a dollop of jam. I hunched over my bowl and savoured the mouthfuls.

Well your first name doesn't have to be Sigmund to work it out; in times of stress cook yourself soothing, childhood food. Maybe by doing that you’ll find yourself in a warm, safe place where grown ups are doing the worrying, someone else is washing up, and you can go to bed excited, because tomorrow is going to be a wonderful day full of presents and more lovely food.

If I keep eating the rice pudding, do you think that will happen for me sometime before December 25th? Well there’s certainly no harm in trying, is there?

Merry Christmas lovely readers!

Eat, drink - try to be merry - and here’s to 2009 with lots of allergy-friendly treats.

Love Pigx

Festive Dairy Free Rice Pudding

(Serves 1 mildly depressed pre-Christmas adult, or about 4 festive ones)

Oh but this is simple! A joy to prepare in these hectic days of extra cooking duties. Rice milk is a bit of a tricky one, I find it doesn't always work so well with its distinctive taste, but in this recipe, it is in its element.

1 cup/225g risotto rice

1-3 tbsps dairy free spread

1 tsp ground cinammon

½ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground nutmeg / a good grating of fresh nutmeg

sugar to taste, at least 3 tbsps

1-2 litres of rice milk

Blackcurrant jam to serve

• In a heavy-based saucepan with a lid - mine was not a non-stick one, I'd try not to use a non-stick one for fear of a flaking bottom - gently melt the dairy free spread, and when just liquid add the risotto rice. Stir to coat the rice
• Add the sugar and spices, and if you think you're lacking a bit in dairy free spread, throw in a bit more (it's Christmas after all)
• When the rice is gently sizzling, glug in about 200-300 ml of rice milk and stir. Cover the pan - make sure the heat is down low - and leave the rice and milk to do its thang for 5 minutes or so. The rice will gradually start to absorb the rice milk
• Stir the mix and glug in more rice milk, you will have to do this over and over until the rice is tender. Keeping the lid on the pan helps, it sort of steams the rice and hurries the process along. In addition it means you can bustle around doing other things instead of stirring endlessly
• So, keep putting in more rice milk, stirring, covering, bustling and repeating it all over again until the risotto rice is tender. It varies, but this will probably take about 20 minutes. Have you noticed the delicious creamy taste? Isn't that a marvel? So rare in a dairy free diet to get that good creamy coating on your tongue. Yum
• When the rice is tender, add more sugar if required, then ladle out a serving into a bowl, and top with jam if you desire
• Let the steam warm your face and gently spoon the pudding into your mouth
• Inhale. Exhale. It will all be ok.

© Pig in the Kitchen