Tag Archives: Special Diets

My top 6 #Back2School items for an allergy kid!

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So, Im one of those mums remember? (Eye roll as you see fit). As one of those mums back to school is a little bit harder, and a little bit more stressful. Whether you are new to the allergy / celiac game or an old timer, my list of must haves may help make your life a teeny bit easier. Aili was diagnosed as a baby, not yet 2 years old, now she is over 7, and making sure I have these allergy must haves around is totally routine.

  1. Gluten Free labels! I stick these on all our lunch box containers, these serve as a great reminder for any teacher or other adult approaching my child and hopefully reminds them to not touch my carefully prepared allergy safe meal. These are from Ladybug Labels and they ship internationally. The labels are dishwasher safe and stay on for a long time. Through the years I tried many different brands and these win hands down. The quality is superb and they are easy to peel off and stick. (http://www.ladybuglabels.com)
  2. Name labels. The last thing I need is for my kids to lose anything (they do, anyway obviously, especially my son, lol), but even worse would be their stuff getting mixed up with someone elses. All their lunch gear including cutlery has a name label. Again I tried many different ones from different companies and these are now my go to every year. Delivery is fast and cheap even for international delivery. I always get the plain label, it sticks well, peels off easily and is dishwasher safe. I still have some labels from when my son was 4 that are stuck on! He’s almost 10 now, thats value for money right there! These are from Easy2name and come in lots of different colours. (https://www.easy2name.com)
  3. Good lunch boxes! My kids bring lunch to school every day and I need something that lasts, is good value for money, and works! It needs to be able to keep my kids food hot or cold, and I need to be able to clean it easily as it goes in to a contaminated environment on a daily basis. We now use only Pottery Barn lunch boxes. The kids get to pick a new one every second September, so we have a few, the first ones we ever got are still alive and kicking (!). We use lunch boxes for every day outings as well, so even though the Pottery barn boxes aren’t exactly cheap, the fact that they are practically indestructible makes them value for money. I pop them in the washing machine regularly to clean them and so far, no problems! Pottery Barn also delivers internationally! (http://www.potterybarnkids.com)
  4. Good Thermoses! My son goes through anti cold food phases, especially in winter. Ive tried so many thermoses its unreal, many of the kids ones are actually good, but to small for my growing boy! I also found many are hard to open once the hot food is in and I prefer my kids to be able to open their own containers. Surprisingly, the best food thermoses I have found are the IKEA ones (or maybe not so surprising, it is SWEDISH after all, haha). They are a great size, easy to open, no flimsy silly seals that come off after 5 uses, and best of all, I can wash them in the dishwasher (they do say not to, but I do and so far no problems). As far as affordability goes they are amazing. The food stays nice and hot too which is obviously great as so many thermoses don’t keep their heat well. (http://www.ikea.com)

     

  5. Baby Wipes and hand wipes. Seriously, you cant get enough of these babies! I keep them in every school bag, in every handbag and each kid has some in school. The baby wipes are sometimes on special and you can get a box with it, cover the box in funky stickers and make it non babyish for school. Alco gel is of no use as it does not kill gluten or other allergens, allergens need to be washed / wiped off! You can get wipes in pretty much any shop. Not all wipes are gluten safe! Johnsons contain no gluten.
  6. A good freezer block. Again, I tried so many. Having had my kids in school in Dubai I may have gotten overly paranoid about the whole cooling issue, but unless you are sending a hot lunch you really do need to worry. These allergy / celiac kids are often more sensitive then others, and the last thing we want is to give our kids food poisoning. I have every size and shape imaginable, these ones are firm favourites as they are slimmer then others, come in pretty colours and stay frozen until lunch time even though they are slimmer. I got these particular ones in Jula. (Yup, another Swedish shop!) (http://www.jula.com)

Anyone want to add anything? Is there something you cant live without for sending your allergic or celiac kid to school? Id love to know 🙂

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Eggs and dogs and underwear.

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Its been a while. Ive been feeling very uninspired and lazy. Frankly, its been to hot to THINK. We have had days with 33 degrees, which is not so bad actually compared to Dubai, but in Dubai there is AC everywhere! Here, the closest I get to AC is standing in front of the open fridge looking for snacks. Me and the kids have all taken to wearing just underwear in the house.

(Funny that, apparently Polish people do a fair bit of walking around in just their underwear, lol,  Polish Housewifes facebook post , my friend Brooke has a whole blog post coming on the subject )

We had a ton of new medications given to us for Celiac kid, we are getting closer to answers. Seems her lungs, the bronchii (bhroncolii?) bits, are constantly inflamed, when it flares up and gets even a tiny bit worse, pneumonia or upper respiratory infection follows. We also now know that her bone pain is highly likely to be linked to her over use of steroids. Dr has her on a new medication and we are hoping to slowly faze out her other two steroids.

Her allergy test results are also back, and they say dogs and eggs. Both a total shock. Dogs, because although we have dogs, our dogs dont have the dander normal dogs have, they are a non shedding breed and most people with pet allergies tolerate them very well. Doctor also seems to think its wrong as nothing showed on dust, yet she reacts strongly to any amount of dust. More testing needed in that department. But EGG! It all makes sense once I start reading…. egg allergy can cause wheezing, respiratory issues etc etc etc. So on the one hand Im numb and a tad devastated that she can no longer eat eggs, but on the other hand, I feel a little like we just won the lottery, because maybe, just maybe this is the answer we needed, and maybe, just maybe, her lungs will finally be able to improve!

We have also consulted a naturopath, who also happens to be one of the ladies I met with just when I started GlutenFree UAE, her daughter is gluten intolerant. She gave us some great advice and I hope to share all this with Celiac kids Dr – who seems very open minded – and hopefully we can all work together to help make this awesome shining star of a girl feel a bit better.

Celiac Kid’s comment when we told her about the eggs was ‘but mum, thats so lucky, I don’t even like eggs!’ , its true, if she knows something has egg in it she wont eat it, the only hard blow here is ice cream and pancakes. Awesome kid that she is she is already getting stuff out of the drawer asking me if she can still eat them, ‘has it got egg inside mumma?’.

We still haven’t been on our holiday, but should be off soon, then school starts with all the work that comes along for us gluten free mums, new classroom, teacher etc. I never shared my school letter last year, I will be sure to do so this year. I edit it yearly to suit our needs so have a ton of versions already 🙂

Off to make glutenfree – eggfree cheese rolls now 🙂

Have a fab day!

Linda

sad-egg

Please note, its the egg thats sad, not us! 😉

My Celiac Awareness Post

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May is for Celiac Awareness.

In the UK Celiac is spelled Coeliac, same in Australia and New Zealand. In the UK they have Celiac Awareness week, rather then the full month they do in the US. Its in May, so for me, May is for Celiac.

Celiac Awareness is not really needed on a blog like mine, because to me, Celiac Awareness is about reaching those who are NOT here on this blog. Those mums endlessly walking their screaming (undiagnosed children), those dads who scratch their elbows with a knife because their (undiagnosed) DH is itching so bad. The women who have been trying for years to become pregnant. Those who struggle daily with stomach issues and put it down to IBS or stress (yeah… could be undiagnosed celiac).

Of course, not all people with stress tummy or an itch or whathave you have undiagnosed Celiac disease. But the numbers speak for themselves, in Europe something like 1 in 100 (slightly less or more in some countries) have Celiac, in The US numbers used to be 1 in 133, thats now thought to be incorrect and latest figures show similar to European figures. And how many are diagnosed? Hardly any. Estimates say that somewhere around 97% of Celiacs in the US today could be undiagnosed. In Europe they talk about numbers around 80% (varies from country to country).

So that pretty much means most of us know at least 1 undiagnosed Celiac. Maybe they have classic and visible symptoms, or maybe they are walking around with nothing other then slight anaemia or feeling a bit depressed. Thats the thing with Celiac. You can have diarrhoea or be constipated, you can gain weight or loose weight, you can have aching bones or depression. There are 300 symptoms to date associated with Celiac disease, and a sufferer can suffer only one symptom, or 50!

The people who need to know all this are not Celiacs, the people that need to know all this are people who may never have heard of Celiac!

Then the other part of Celiac awareness, the one that explains to the world that Celiac is an autoimmune disease, not a fad. Not an allergy.  The one that explains what gluten actually is. A protein, found in wheat, rye and barley and all products thereof. The one that talks about cross contamination, and explains that one breadcrumb is enough to hurt someone with Celiac disease. The one that explains that although we may not suffer anaphylaxis, there is long term damage to our systems every time we are exposed to gluten, and a Celiac who keeps being exposed to gluten can suffer other life threatening diseases such as cancer.

Eating just a little bit of gluten, is not an option. Some may not react to ‘just a little’, but the long term damage on the inside still occurs.

I am asking you all a favour today. Help us spread this awareness. Help us – the Celiac community – to spread this awareness as far as we can. Please share this post, or one of the many other Celiac awareness articles out there. If you see it on twitter or Facebook, like it, tweet it, share it. Help take the awareness further.

I also have a challenge for the bloggers out there, the non gluten free bloggers. Please, if you can find the time, write a post about Celiac for Celiac Awareness Month. YOU can reach exactly the person who needs to read it. I already gave this challenge to my small expat bloggers Europe group, and two lovely ladies accepted the challenge. I will be sharing their posts next week, along with yours if you accept 🙂

MAY! Is for celiac Awareness. May is when my own little Celiac was born. How oddly appropriate 🙂

Linda

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Moving time! (again)

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What a week!

Friday morning last week we were in Poznan, Friday evening we were in Wroclaw. By Sunday I had somehow magically managed to unpack everything! Then a frantic whizzing from place to place to sort out the school, kennels for dogs for our trip, food shopping, food shopping research (gluten free peeps know exactly what I mean!) etc etc.

We somehow managed to pick a great area for ourselves without ever having visited (thats how we roll, haha). Its great with tons of greenery, kids and barking dogs.

Im not sure what it is with barking dogs here…. if my dogs bark they get told off, but it seems here many people have dogs to deter from break-ins, and a quiet dog sleeping indoors obviously doesn’t deter much, so dogs are left stood in gardens barking. Drives me slightly bonkers, but it is what it is. At least I feel totally warranted to smile smugly at all these dog owners that MY dogs are so well trained and don’t bark.

We found a great little shop that sells organic produce and some freshly baked gluten free goods. I was to scared to get any of the baked stuff because even though the lady assured me it was baked in a gluten free kitchen you just never know. I need my hubby to go and ask her all the tough questions in Polish. But the produce! Gigantic organic apples that tasted like the apples from my childhood, I cant wait for summer when all the locally grown berries will come!

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The shop is called Awokado – delikatesy ekologiczne, they have a facebook page (opens in new window).

Slightly further up the same road there is yet another eko (organic) shop, a family farm and the produce is sold in someones garden! Eko eggs and veggies. Im in HEAVEN 😀

I have yet to find where the shops selling all the breads are hiding, so far its all schar. Im guessing I need to find another delikatessen. In Poznan we found most of the breads in normal supermarkets. Im sure I will find all what we need eventually.

Few more days now then its Dubai time! Cant wait. Also cant wait to come back and for kids to start their new international school where people speak only english. Happy happy happy! 😀

-Linda

 

Mixing with the gluten kids – No problem!

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We have been gluten free for over 2 and a half years now, the house, pretty much as long. We have ALOT of play dates and people over at our house, why? Because its easier. Here Celiac kid can play without supervision (gluten supervision), here, she can put toys in her mouth and touch whatever she wants, and there will be no issue what so ever (as long as people wash their hands as they arrive). I find that mostly, kids are extremely accepting of gluten free. I never tell anyone that the food they are about to eat is gluten free, why would I? You wouldn’t hear the host of a dinner part serving up pasta and saying ‘THIS is pasta made with GLUTEN’ (unless they had intolerant people there). Kids who visit my house generally eat what I serve, often ask for more and never even realise they are eating gluten free. Adults at times will be more hesitant, they take a bite of something and analyse it, like its a wine tasting! Then they look up and utter with surprise ‘its good!’. Like what, they expected us to eat disgusting food? It should be said here that I buy very few ready made gluten free things, I make all food from scratch and we eat a generally healthy diet with only a few processed things thrown in. But still, Im surprised that so many adults seem to think we live on some kind of starvation diet. If I had a dirham or zloty for each time someone asked me ‘but what do you eat??’ Id be very very rich by now. Its simple really. We eat exactly the same as anyone else, only our food is generally healthier (because I read every label and scrutinise it like a scientist), mostly organic, and always gluten free. We eat pasta, pizza, bread, hot dogs, you name it, we eat it. Except maybe liver. We aren’t to keen on liver. Like I said, kids don’t seem to care, they eat and move on.

We had one mum in our school who point blank refused to let her kids eat gluten free. My sons lovely teacher had asked me to bake for the class for their Christmas party so that his sibling would be able to take part in the open day same as the other siblings and mums and dads – the previous party I had ended up holding her standing by the door as there was a gazillion kids running around with cupcakes (poison) in their hands. I was so touched to be asked, what a kind gesture. So of course I went all out. My friend Katinka helped me bake brownies and cupcakes and biscuits and soft cake. The only mum who knew I was baking gluten free was the class rep at the time. She was obviously not happy as she was the one who usually baked. She sent gluten cupcakes for her kids, I overheard her saying at drop off ‘my kids wont be eating any of that stuff’ (meaning gluten free stuff). Talk about judgemental! At the actual party everyone ate, parents, teachers, siblings, kids, not a single person noticed they were eating gluten free! One mum said the brownies were the best she’d ever had!

Im guessing if we had made some kind of announcement about everything being gluten free the reaction would have been different. Kids however, are so awesome. To them, cake is cake, no matter which flour you use! If they ever ask, I explain, and all the kids that come to our house know I make awesome pizza and snacks. I only wish adults were as open minded!

-Linda

brownies clip art

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Tesco extra, what is going on???

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Having spent half an eternity in the UK before moving to Dubai, there was something I couldn’t wait to do on my arrival in Poland. Go to Tesco! So, 2 weeks passed, and there was finally a day with some spare time. I drove all across town to get to the biggest Tesco in Poznan. Like a child in a sweetshop I entered, full of expectation, eyes open wide and bright. An hour and a half later, having gone up and down every single aisle, I found an employee and asked him for the gluten free section. I even repeated my question in Polish to be on the safe side, Bezglutenowy? Yes yes he said, follow! My hope was renewed, obviously I must have missed it!

I hadnt missed it. On a small shelf with sugar free products, hidden behind some other items there was. one. packet. of. glutenfree. biscuits. ONE. PACKET.

I know, Tesco is low cost, glutenfree is not. But Tesco has a whole range of low cost gluten free produced by them! Tesco, gluten free is not a choice for most, this is not something we do because we want to be cool, we do it because its a medical need, something we must do to LIVE. Given a choice of doing my weekly shop in shop A that is slightly more expensive but has a gluten free section, and shop B that is slightly cheaper but nothing gluten free, I will almost certainly choose shop A! So you are not just losing the revenue on the gluten free stuff, you are in fact loosing the revenue from my weekly shop, and with me, many others! Providing a gluten free section is not just about the profits you may make on gluten free, its about keeping your customers!

Am I going to have to get a cheap flight to the UK to get some Tesco brand gluten free biscuits? Please. Please please. Tesco Poland, give us a gluten free section.

If you are in Poland, or the UK, please share this post, perhaps someone somewhere in the right place will read it. I hope so.

-Linda

(images below showing just part of the Tesco free from range, NOT available in Poland)

 

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