loving lots!

Linking up with Meghan (not sure what's up with the button, it's also half black on her blog page. Sorry I am not techno-savvy enough to sort it)





♥ My husband

He has just been away at a conference for a couple of days. I seriously struggled without him. Kids, sickness and work meant I merely survived while he was gone. I truly appreciate this man. He's a fantastic hand on Dida and supporting and encouraging husband. I am blessed.

♥ Gluten-free and Allergy Show

This annual event showcases information and products for those of us whole are living with or have a child with allergies or food related illness. Last year I went looking for help. I was desperate. This year was so different. I am so much more informed now (yay!) so I went for just the great show deals on all Blossom's favorite products. Dairy free products are expensive and the show deals are soooo good.

I went home with: 12 loaves of bread, 9 boxes of cereal, 4 packets of biscuits, 4 packets of dairy free choc chips, 3 packets of dairy free chocolate bits, 2 jars of coconut oil, 2 packets of rice cereal, 7 packets of popcorn, sesame seed bars and 2 bottle of kids omega 3 juice. I was shameless and loaded up like a small camel. I may have caused some embarrassment to my mother who was my show-partner.


♥ My small fish in the making

I went to watch Rupi at hois swim lesson on Friday. It's offered by his pre-school. I was shameless (again) taking 27 photos and 7 videos of him. I was running up and down the side of the pool, SO proud. It was one of those moments I waited a life time for. I gave him the double thumbs up at one point and he did them back and yelled 'I love you Mama" across the pool. Melt.my.heart.

So much to be thankful for!

Dairy-free party food

Like I said in my last post, my vision was for a completely dairy free menu for Blossom's party. She attends birthday parties with a "special box" of goodies for her and generally eats away from the other kids. She doesn't care at this age but I hate the segregation. So I wanted her party to be utterly safe for her. Plus we wanted the food to be as additive/ preservative free as possible.

And we did it! All the food was dairy free, and normal. It was not weird or funny tasting and no-one noticed it was 100% dairy free. Success!

The Kids menu:

• Sausage rolls- we found that Ernest Adams sausage rolls have no dairy ingredients at all. We use Watties Lite tomato sauce as the salt content is low and they are relatively preservative free.
• Chippies- Red Rock Sea Salt chips are basically salt/ oil and potato. Fantastic!
• Popcorn with a bit of oil and sea salt.
• Fairy bread- white bread/ Olivani spread and sprinkles
• Marshmallows on skewers (blunt ones!) dipped in dairy free chocolate and then dipped in sprinkles.

The menu was short and sweet and the kids loved the food. I used glass bottles and pretty paper straws for drinks. The drink was Vitafresh cordial (low in preservatives and coloring free)

The Adult menu:

The same as the kids menu but added:

• Zucchini cake- sounds horrific but so good that my friend Meg's husband ate half the loaf!
• Home made hummus and plain taco chip pies.
• Fruit platter
• Dairy free chocolate chip cookies- Meg's recipe

The CAKE! So important! I wanted a "normal" looking and tasting one.

Meg was a life saver here. I asked her for a cake recipe and when she gave me one I realized she just adapted a normal one. So I looked at my own chocolate cake recipe to see if I could adapt it. YES! It's an oil based one with no butter and I substituted the cow's milk for soy milk. It tastes exactly the same. I was thrilled.

Meg then gave me an American Frosting recipe for the icing. It was so easy to make using Cremelta/ Olivani and rice milk. And it tasted so good, I much prefer it to butter icing. It was also a gorgeous white color so I just used heart sprinkles to decorate the top. Simple and just my style...

The goodie bags had a ball and some sweets/ lollipop in each one. These were the only sweets at the party and the plan was to inflict the related sugar-high on the parents in the car on the way home. This nearly went to plan but as soon as the first mini guests left the rest of the little guests demanded their goodie bags. Oh well, haha!

I was so encouraged by how easy it was to create an entire party that was dairy free! I felt that the party food didn't lack anything by being dairy free and this was just what I wanted. A "normal" party for my little girl where she could be free to eat whatever she pleased. And she did!

Dairy free goodness

This afternoon we baked Meg's Dairy free chocolate chip cookies. Although we (Rupi that is) calls them biscuits.

They are delish! And super easy to make with small people, we'll definitely be making these again.

 The helpers...

The bowl scrapers..

And the eaters!

Happy Monday!!!