About me

Welcome to my blog, I am a full time mum, wife, home maker, working professional, cook, gardener and now a blogger:).

I have always been interested in cooking and over the past few years have also started sharing my recipes (through another blog Kitchen69), however, with this blog my intention is to share recipes that are without the common allergens.

This journey of allergen free cooking is new to me - no one in my family or my husband's family suffers from any food allergies or intolerances and while I had heard and read that food allergies were becoming very common, I was not really impacted by it. However, all that changed when I started to suspect my little one was either intolerant or allergic to something in my diet which was passing through my breast milk as he was very unsettled, would only sleep on my shoulder being held up and also had vomiting, and multiple, green mucusy poops. My options were to either stop breast feeding and start him on a hypoallergenic formula or try and figure out the food groups that were the main culprits. I wanted to continue breast feeding and thus commenced a strict elimination diet. I removed the top 8 allergens (gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, shell fish and all sea food, with the exception of salt) plus a few others like corn, coconut, mustard and sesame seeds, yeast, citrus, tomatoes and all preservatives and sulphites.

The beginning was the hardest, and buying food from the supermarket, even from the gluten free/ health food section was impossible as I had eliminated corn and  believe me, along with dairy and soy it seems to be in everything. However, once I decided that I had to rely on my own cooking, things got much simpler. I lived on rice, potatoes, pears, turkey meat and lamb for the first two weeks and slowly started incorporating citrus, tomatoes, mustard seeds etc. one at a time always following the six day rule - eat a suspected allergen over three days and then observe the baby's behaviour for the next three days to see if any symptoms reappear. If no symptoms appear, it is not the culprit and can safely be added to the diet. As I am also introducing solids to my little one ( following the three day rule) it has been a slow process, but it is so worth it. My baby is settled, sleeps well (touchwood) and the vomiting and multiple poops have stopped.

It has been nearly five months since I commenced the elimination diet and I am still gluten, dairy, egg, soy and sea food free. I don't feel like I am missing out on anything as I have managed to find  substitutes  for most items or learned to live without them. I am now an expert at reading ingredient labels, have a few staples that I swear by and have a growing repertoire of allergen free recipes.

My aim for this blog is to share my experiences and my recipes and hopefully help not just breast feeding mums but also people who suffer from food allergies, or are vegan or avoid gluten etc. for health reasons. So with this inaugural post, I hope this is a pleasant, enjoyable and fruitful journey for all... Happy cooking and more importantly good eating!!!