Spoff

 

I saw their products in Waitrose in Hitchin and bought a packet. I've since tried them and they're worthy, interesting and do you good.

Phil Vickery and Jamie Oliver

 

A friend gave me a copy of the Phil Vickery book. It’s interesting, but I’ve found some equally good stuff on the net. It’s a very good present, but I probably wouldn’t have bought it for myself.

Typically, there is this is from Jamie Oliver.

I’ve found it to be a good GF fish pie. I use a Cornish Goats Cheddar from Waitrose instead of good Cheddar. It also doesn’t need a lot of washing up, as you make it all in the baking dish. It freezes well too!

Phil Vickery and Jamie Oliver

 

A friend gave me a copy of the Phil Vickery book. It’s interesting, but I’ve found some equally good stuff on the net. It’s a very good present, but I probably wouldn’t have bought it for myself.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fish-recipes/fish-pie

I’ve found this a good GF fish pie. I use a Cornish Goats Cheddar instead of good Cheddar. It also doesn’t need a lot of washing up, as you make it all in the baking dish. It freezes well too!

Waitrose New GF Cakes and Biscuits

 

I’ve tried the dark chocolate chip biscuits and they are very good. They also seem to be competitively priced. But what do I know about the price of anything?

I just tried the ginger cake slices. They are good too.

It says on the box, “We created our gluten free range in a specialist bakery so you can still enjoy your favourite foods on a gluten free diet”. They are also produced in the UK.

Dr. Schar Products

 

As you know I’m not a fan of GF bread, but I do find the Dr. Schar Mix-B more than acceptable and also my non-coeliac friends like it. It seems to rise pretty well in the breadmaker. Most others seem not to and produce bread like soft concrete. I should say that my housekeeper is a very experienced breadmaker, so it’s not my cooking!

But I can only get it on prescription, which does work and is free, but means I have to plan it. I wonder why, it’s not available in the shops. After all I just bought two one-kilo packs at €4.45 each in Den Haag. They also lots of other products of Dr. Schar in the shop.

Gluten Free Hamper

 

I was looking at a web site and saw a Google ad for a Marks and Spencer gluten-free hamper.

Details are Gluten-Free Greetings - £55.00 - Product Code: 00645232

It may not be to everybody’s taste, but it’s an interesting development.

Marmite Rice Cakes and Unilever

 

I bought some of the new Marmite Rice Cakes in Waitrose on Monday, because I felt they might be gluten-free. I phoned the number on the packet and they assured me that they were, so I ate them and no ill effects. They were quite nice and made a change, but I’m not the greatest fan of rice cakes, as I know they taste of polystyrene.

The guy on the phone was really helpful and said that Unilever could send me their product list with whether things were GF or not. It arrived this morning and was a good document, in that it warned against changes in product composition and gave links to such as Coeliac-UK.

So it seems that Unilever are getting or may have got their act together on gluten. It was interesting that they play safe and say that oats are non-GF.

Eggs Florentine

 

I've always liked this and thought it was terribly complicated.


But then I found this BBC recipe.

It was delicious and gluten-free too!

Eating Gluten-Free in Minsk

 

I did not want to be adventurous with my eating in Belarus.

As a coeliac, there is nothing worse than having to travel on a plane or drive down the motorway, with your guts telling you in no uncertain way that they are unhappy with the gluten. Your best course of action when this happens, is to sit near a toilet. Or sometimes permanently on it!

I had prepared by bringing a good box of supplies with me.


The box contained Trufree crackers, Fruit Break bars and Oskri Sesame Bars. If the worst had came to the worst then I could have existed on them, plus a few bananas, other fruit and a salad or two.

The Belarus Hotel has a Panorama restaurant on the twenty-second floor with expansive views of the city.


I'm afraid that the picture doesn't do the view justice!

I thought I'd be careful and only have a main course with a glass of wine. At least the menu had an English translation and there seemed to be a lot of choice.

I'd also brought one of CeliacTravel's excellent menu cards in Russian, so I gave it to the waiter and asked if a pork something was OK. He took the card and checked with the kitchen.

I was getting a bit apprehensive, but when the meal arrived, I had no worries. The pork had obviously been cooked without any source and it came with some onions, peppers and tomatoes. They did bring a cup of tomato sauce to go with it, but I decided that as I was ahead I'd stay there.

I had no reaction to the meal at all. The card had done its trick.

The two breakfasts that I ate in the hotel were fine too. But then with a buffet, you can usually be fairly careful about what you eat. I stuck to fruit, cold meats and vegetables.

So would I be more adventurous if I went to Belarus again? Probably, especially if I went with someone, who understood their cooking better than I do!

As a postscript here, much of the cooking in Belarus is based on potatoes. They even make pancakes that way. So if you're careful, it isn't one of the most difficult places to eat gluten-free.

But you'll have to take your own biscuits or bread!

Calais and P&O Ferries

 

I got mixed up in the trouble at the Chunnel on Friday night as I was coming back from France. Actually, very easy getting into the Port at Calais and then due to P&O I had to wait two hours later than I should for the ferry. Partly, this was due to port problems, but it wasn’t too bad as I spent a lot of time educating a medical student about coeliac disease.

I was getting hungry as although it was only eight in the evening all the snack bars seemed to be closed and you could just about get coffee or a Coke. Incidentally, there was a lot more available at Dover than Calais. So I just waited for the boat.

I did get a good coffee and some crisps on the boat, but the notice in the Food Court summed it all up. “Food Allergy Advice – Whilst every effort is made to maintain the integrity of all food served onboard, we regret that due to the complexity of our operations, we are unable to guarantee that any food will be free of food allergens.”

Is that good enough?

Problems in Northern France

 

Last week I stayed with a friend in Northern France. I won’t say shopping is a nightmare, as we knew exactly what we were doing, but trying to find anything prepared without dextrose was very difficult. If it was declared it was dextrose de blé, which is wheat. I even found prepared salads which declared the allergies not to contain gluten, but had dextrose de blé. Most crisps and ham seemed to contain it as well.

After what has been said on this list whilst I have been away, that is wrong!

At least my friend is a very good cook and we ate in all the time.

Baked Beans

 

They’ve just announced on BBC Breakfast that sales of baked beans are up due to the recession. I’ve always had at least a small tin a week, which means that I eat nearly eleven kilos a year. Apparently the average is ten kilos a year.

What’s wrong with that?

Belgian Grand Prix - 1

 

I’m off to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa on Sunday. It would have been our fortieth wedding anniversary, so I felt I should do something completely different. Celia would have hated it. I probably will! Let’s hope little Lewis wins!

But has anybody got any ideas for snacks I can take with me. I shall be taking cold sausages, salad, TruFree crackers, chocolate and nuts, but it’s on trips like this, where I suspect the offerings at the other end are totally useless, that I really feel hungry and trapped. My problem is that I can never pace myself and I’ll probably eat all the food I take as early as I can. At least, I’m travelling on after the Grand Prix to a friend in France, who knows my dietary requirements.

Sainsburys Organic Chocolate

 

I went to Sainsburys last night, as they’d given me an offer of quadruple Nectar points on a shop of over £20 for six weeks. Sad, if that’s the only reason why I took a detour. But I did need diesel, some Black Farmer sausages and some TruFree crackers. The latter seem to be difficult to get around here for some reason.

I also had a look at Sainsburys Organic Chocolate. The 75% Dark one is cleared labelled “Suitable for Coeliacs”. I haven’t tasted it yet, as when I open it, I’ll eat it in one.

Lactose

 

I’ve cut down on lactose and I think I feel better. Use goat’s milk instead.

Gluten-Free Bread

 

This is something on which you might like to take a watching brief.

The Codex allows 200 ppm of gluten in food, before it can be called gluten free. As not a particularly sensitive coeliac who needs gluten-free food, I still find that this level too high and welcome proposals that would reduce this limit to 20 ppm.

But!

There are two methods for measuring gluten in food; Elisha and Mendez. The first is used primarily in the UK and the second mainly in Europe. I’ve been told this by a gluten-free food manufacturer, so it could be suspect. The Elisha test is ideal for producing fresh food and no licences are available in the UK for the Mendez method.

That wouldn’t be a problem, but the Food Standards Agency have just followed the draft Codex which makes the Mendez method compulsory.

On the one hand, this would mean a lot of small British manufacturers wouldn’t be able to make gluten-free food and claim it as such and there would be no fresh bread as it would only be available from mainland Europe.

There will be a lot of angry coeliacs out there!

I should say that I won’t be one as I find gluten-free bread awful. Unless of course, it can be proven otherwise.

Haddock and Crushed Peas

 

This recipe was from The Times today.

It looks like even my cooking skills could manage this one.

They did and it was good.

A Use for Gluten-Free Bread

 

I just cooked myself a very nice supper. When you’re a sixty year old man, who hasn’t really cooked before, anything above the ordinary is good.

I took some gluten-free bread and minced it in my Kenwood Mini-Chopper, as featured by the cheating Delia. I then used it to bread a turkey breast, which I’d flattened with a rolling pin. I fried it in olive oil and it was delicious.

Goat's Milk

 

After reading Dogtor J’s piece on lactose I thought I’d try some goat’s milk. Over recent years, I’ve come to think that I’m slightly lactose intolerant. I always thought it tasted and smelt a bit funny, but the Waitrose semi-skimmed seemed to be almost indistinguishable to cow’s milk.

I have found that I get a slight reaction with larger qualities of cow’s milk, such as I would have with cornflakes. But I tried the goat’s milk this morning and felt fine. I even put some orange juice on top of it and got no reaction. That can make me feel queasy.

Recipes in The Times

 

Trying one of these for lunch today.

Does Anybody Like Rice Cakes?

 

I recently went to Montreal for a weekend on business. Coming back there was no gluten-free bread or biscuits, but they served rice cakes. They really are truly awful. Does anybody like them?

As an aside Montreal was good, but not if you are an unprepared coeliac. At least the breakfasts in the hotel were fruit and eggs, but otherwise waiters and restaurateurs didn’t have a clue. Strangely though I met two people, who had close friends or relatives who were so it’s not as though the disease is unknown.

I’ve posted my experiences of the city here.

I’ve since done a Google search for gluten-free restaurants and there are a few lists.

Campaign for Real Chips

 

I’m writing up my book on coeliac travelling and a pattern is starting to emerge. When I’ve been glutened and it hasn’t been often, I suspect that in several cases, it has been due to chips. If you look at M&S, their oven chips are marked as containing gluten and I suspect that some of the industrial chips used by restaurants and sometimes very good restaurants have been coated in flour.

On the other hand, I was recently at the Ship in Levington near Ipswich and had some very good hand-cut gluten-free chips. So it can be done. I was also told by the manager of the Cart and Horses at Kings Worthy that his chips were not gluten-free, but they would boil a few potatoes for me. I also accused the owner of the Star at Lidgate over her chips, as they were very nice and very crisp and I suspected that there was flour involved. She assured me they weren’t and I was fine.

Campaign for Real Chips anyone?

Gordon Ramsay in The Times

 

There are some interesting recipes in The Times today courtesy of Gordon Ramsay. A bit too challenging for me, but of the three recipes there’s no gluten except in a soy sauce, which of course can be changed.

It must be gluten-free day as there are a couple of nice ones in the East Anglian too!

Gluten Free Sausage Pie

 

Henry and some of his friends are coming down at the weekend, whilst I'm up in London.

Celia would have always cooked them something so I did the same this morning. Henry may have lost his mother, but he shouldn't lose the things she would do.

So I've cooked a variant of her sausage pie for everybody.

I took ten Musks gluten-free sausages and cooked them in the oven and then cut them into pieces which I put into the bottom of a large flat dish.

I also fried one onion and two peppers in a small amount of olive oil, which I then mixed with the sausages and a tin and a half of baked beans. Some gluten-free soy sauce was then added for flavour.


The whole thing was then covered by mashed potato.


Before heating it just add some grated cheese to the top.

A Gluten-Free Dinner Party

 

Celia and I always had a dinner party at Christmas. Roderick had pointed this out at her celebration and I thought why not in a rash moment.

So on Friday night, seven of us sat down to dinner that I'd cooked myself.

Now, is that a first for someone of sixty?

Super Natural at Sainsburys

 

I was in Sainsburys this morning and they had a special offer on these. They are chilled meals for one and it seems that about half are labelled “Suitable for Coeliacs” and not just gluten-free.

I had a chicken and rice one tonight. OK.

India Knight in the Sunday Times

 

She is promoting her new interesting diet in The Sunday Times today.

I’ve just read it and most of what she has done looks interesting and is gluten-free. There is one recipe for Indian Scrambled eggs, that looks good to me. She also has a recipe for quiche that doesn’t use traditional or gluten-free flour.

Baked Eggs with Tomato

 

This is a recipe that Celia found many years ago and we’ve served up at dinner parties for years. As we always had a dinner party sometime around Christmas, I thought I’d try and carry on the tradition and the recipe did me proud.

2 cups cooked or canned tomatoes
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour (gluten free works)
1 teaspoon sugar
6 or 12 eggs
¾ cup grated cheese

Butter 6 ramekins or small baking dishes well. Combine the tomatoes, onion, salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Add the butter and flour, which have been kneaded together, and stir until the mixture is thickened. Add the sugar and taste the mixture for seasoning. Spoon the sauce into the ramekins or dishes. Break a large egg into each dish. Sprinkle lightly with cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until the white is set.

Sorry about the cups etc. but this recipe came from James Beard’s American Cookery.

If you get it right, which is not too difficult, they come up like little domes and look seriously impressive.

Gluten-Free Cookery School

 

Thanks to everyone who responded to the death of Celia.

It’s funny but I’m happier now that I’m by myself. I suspect that it’s because I can do what I want and eat what I want and need. My middle son went out and bought some ready-made cottage pies for supper yesterday and he didn’t bother to read the label. So I went out for an Indian in Cambridge.

Seriously, though my cooking skills are pretty limited, although I’m not bad with a frying pan for one.

Does anybody know of a gluten-free cooking school, preferably somewhere nice and warm, that would welcome a sixty-year-old widower with the lack of knowledge outside of the very basic?

Kangaroo Meat

 

Kangaroos are gluten free, but they jump about a bit on your plate. They are yumm though!

Trufree Pretzels

 

Found these in Tesco at Newmarket this morning.

Taste just like normal ones.

Catering at Exhibitions

 

I normally avoid eating at exhibitions and such-like as there is usually never anything remotely gluten-free except Coke and perhaps a few crisps. Today, I went to an exhibition at Earls Court and was intending to turn up, walk round, exit and the take the tube to somewhere more friendly.

But, they had four types of sealed salads which were a pretty good meal for me. I chose a Nicoise and although the plastic knives and forks were their usual useless selves, the salad was quite tasty and much more than OK. It contains lots of tuna, a whole egg, a lot of cucumber and tomato and not too much lettuce. Unfortunately, there were olives. I hate olives. There was also a cheese and egg salad, which looked gluten-free.

But the salad was only £4.50, which I thought was very reasonable for an event, considering that a 33cl. bottle of Coke was £1.80.

I shall be writing to Earls Court.

Gluten Free Food on Prescription

 

I’ve never bothered much with prescriptions.

The only thing I get is Dr. Schar’s pasta, which you can’t get in a shop.

I should also say that I don’t eat GF bread, as I’ve just cut it out of my diet. I do it biscuits and cake, which I get from the supermarket.

As I turned 60 in August I get free prescriptions, but after going through what is available, I decided not to bother. My surgery has its own pharmacist, so I was able to sit down with her at the computer.

She said that the lot of many could be improved with some chocolate items on the list. She felt that as you’re ill, the NHS thinks you shouldn’t have anything enjoyable.

Food Manufacturers

 

It’s funny, but the older I get, the more I trust certain companies and the less I trust others.

After my spat with Proctor and Gamble, I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. Mars are on that list too, as no matter how I try I can’t find the information I want. On the other hand you have Heinz, Kettle and Cadburys, who are always honest. It’s the same with restaurant groups. Some you trust and some you don’t.

I think that if I ran a company, then honesty and openness would be the best policy, whether I was a coeliac or not.

After all, we may think being a coeliac is serious, but I wouldn’t want to be allergic to nuts.

The Black Farmer

 

We bought some of his company’s sausages from Sainsburys last week and ate them last night.

They were excellent, although they are very meaty and exceptionally filling.

But they were some of the best GF sausages I’ve ever tasted.

Crunchies

 

Crunchies used to be made in the old Frys factory near Bristol and were very gluten-free then.

I just checked on the Cadburys site and you can bring up a list (long) of all their products that are gluten absent and suitable for coeliacs. Crunchies are still there. It’s an odd list though and I suspect it’s more to do with which factory they are made in rather than the ingredients.

If so they are taking cross contamination into account.

For instance, small Dairy Milks are GF, but the standard product is not.

Mars

 

I read a post on the UK-Coeliac List, this morning and tried to find out whether Mars is gluten-free on not from the Mars web site.

It is the worst consumer web site, I’ve ever seen, where there is virtually no information and nowhere to write to or contact the company.

It just amazes me that you were able to find out the product is not gluten-free. Incidentally, I looked at one of their bars in Waitrose today and there is no information on that either.

I’ve avoided their products for some years and I think it was a good decision.

I've written to them and I'll be interested to see if I get a reply.

Food Additives

 

A Professor on Victoria Derbyshire's program is right when he says that some food manufacturers will see removing additives as a marketing advantage.

I’m a coeliac and you can see a pattern with food manufacturers over gluten. Some are honest and you can trust what they say. With them gluten-free means absolutely no gluten. Others are dishonest and hide nutrition information, so that you need a magnifying glass to know if it will poison you. They also hide behind standards that allow small amounts of gluten in food.

It’s funny but the successful, open and health-conscious ones are all in the first group. The others are renowned for the products you’re talking about today.

Unless legislation is passed, there is a class of food manufacturer, who will pass off absolute rubbish as food. Unfortunately, they will fight to the last.

Did I hear Turkey Twizzlers?

Son Julia Hotel, Majorca

 

We stayed at this hotel in Majorca for my sixtieth.

They understood what to do and a good gluten-free few days was had by all.

I should say that the hotel is not cheap, but the grounds, pool etc are magnificent. Note too, that we’ve spent New Year on the island and were able to swim outside, as it’s not unknown for the temperature to be 20 degrees. A double room in October was about 184 Euros a night upwards. Suites were up to 700 Euros.

They seem to be part of the Stein Group of hotels and I’ve e-mailed them to see if all hotels have the same gluten-free policy.

As an aside, I noticed that at Palma Airport, all of the prepared salads were properly labelled and it was obvious which contained gluten, as it’s the same in one form of Spanish.

Pringles Rice Crisps

 

This is the correspondence, I've had over Pringles Rice Infusions.

The first is my letter to Pringles in Belguim. Yes, the Customer Service Department where you write to is in Belguim.

My local supermarket is Waitrose in Newmarket.

Today they had a promotion on your new rice-flavoured Pringles.

Now I should say at this point that I am a coeliac and therefore can’t eat wheat, barley or rye.

So I asked the demonstrator, if your new product was suitable for me and he said no. (10/10 for him!) So we had a very good look and could just see that there was a very small note that said the product contained wheat starch.

So you put rice all over the product and then say in very small print that the product contains wheat.

Where is the mark that says that your product is suitable or not-suitable for coeliacs? Nowhere!

I suggest that you look at your competitors like Kettle or Walkers.

I shall be reporting your product to Trading Standards because of the misleading packaging and the fact that it is not clearly labelled as unsuitable for coeliacs.

If you want to see the full letter I wrote, it's here as a pdf file.

I don't think that their reply was very helpful, but that is not for me to judge. Just read their full reply.

As I said I would I wrote to Trading Standards when I received the unsatifactory reply.

I am enclosing some correspondence that I have had with Pringles concerning their new Rice Infusions.

As a coeliac, I thought that here must be something that I can add to my limited diet. I am a coeliac, which does get a bit difficult, when you are away from home and can’t cook your own fresh food.

The packaging emphasises the rice, but it is only 26%. The major component is wheat starch, from which most of the gluten has been removed to make the product meet the CODEX level. For many coeliacs including myself, this is not good enough and eating some of this product would cause severe diarrhoea and other problems.

The packaging on this product must be changed so that it says “Unsuitable for Coeliacs”. Walkers, Kettle and other crisp manufacturers do this, so why not Proctor and Gamble? It is just like Cadburys and other chocolate manufacturers saying “May contain nuts”.

But they are unrepentant.

I should say that Waitrose have behaved correctly and warned me against the product.

Again if you want to see the full letter, just click here.

I also wrote to Procter and Gamble, returning their two pound voucher.

Thank you for your totally inadequate reply.

You say I got the wrong information in-store. I did not. Waitrose obviously care a lot about their customers and don’t want them to suffer adverse reactions to the products they sell.

Rice Infusions may be gluten free according to the regulations, but they are not gluten free, which as my wife who is a barrister says, is totally without gluten.

I am not a supersensitive coeliac, but I am sensitive to small amounts of gluten in such things as wheat starch and glucose. For instance, I can’t use most normal cough mixtures and Boots have advised me the ones that use real sugar instead of wheat glucose.

So your product should say that it is “Unsuitable for coeliacs”, just like most of the other snack manufacturers, such as Walkers and Kettle, do in similar circumstances.

I am returning the voucher as I have no use for it.

The full letter is here.

I shall update this as the correspondence develops.

Prewett's Chocolate Biscuits

 

I’ve just tried out some of these biscuits. They seem quite new and are available in Tescos and Waitrose.

They were pretty good for gluten-free chocolate biscuits.

We also got some GF Jaffa cakes in Waitrose this morning. They were from Baker’s Delight.

Warning - Pringles New Rice Crisps

 

These were on special offer with Waitrose this morning. They looked like they might be gluten-free.

But they also had an old retainer, demonstrating and giving out tasters, so I asked him if they were gluten-free.

He said sadly no, but the fact is buried in the very much small print on the packet. In fact, I suspect they are even less gluten-free than the normal Pringle crisps.

So I shall be sending this to Pringle as I think that saying the product is rice-based (only 26%) and then not saying it’s gluten-free is almost fraud.

So it’s full marks to the demonstrator at Waitrose and nil points to Pringle.

Afghan Cooking

 

The Times has some interesting Afghan recipes in the paper today. They look GF.

Gluten Free Oats

 

I’ll put my farmers hard hat on here and put my head over the parapet.

Oats in themselves are gluten-free, but the problem is cross contamination in the fields. Walk past any field of wheat and you’ll often see wild oats growing above the wheat. They have seeded accidentally and they are called “volunteers” by many farmers. (I think this is where the expression sowing wild oats comes from.)

With a field of oats, that may have been used for wheat or barley you may well get the same problem of self seeding of unwanted crop, but here because the wheat is shorter than the oats, you can’t see them. So when the oats are harvested there is a variable amount of wheat or barley in the oats.

With a good farmer proud of his crop, this level will be probably be below a few parts per million, so it would be acceptable to many coeliacs. I can eat porridge in most cases, but I don’t as I’m not that struck on it.

So would organic oats be better?

I will infuriate many here, by saying that in my view they may not be. The reason is that when a non-organic farmer is putting a new crop into a field, he will use a strong spray to kill the remains of the previous wheat or barley. This may reduce the cross contamination. Other practices such as good crop management and probably leaving a wide border around the field would also help.

So they would certainly be more gluten-free if it was a good farmer, who might even be growing oats for seed. In that case he would want to make sure that the levels of contamination with wheat or barley were extraordinarily low. They get a premium price from that.

So as in many things provenance is everything.

And that’s the problem with oats.

How do you find out which field on which farm they were grown? And what was in the field before they planted oats?

Aside - After writing this I found a company that produces gluten-free oats called Gluten Free Oats.

Read how they do it.

I suspect in Wyoming, where they have a lot of space, they can do it. But it will be much more difficult proposition in a crowded country like the UK, where agriculture is just that more intense.

Kosher Food and Gluten Free

 

I was having a friendly argument with a Jewish friend about kosher food and whether it is gluten free. This had started because her mother had always coated fish in matzo meal rather than breadcrumbs and she thought they were gluten free.

She pointed me to Kosher On-Line Superstore called justkosher.co.uk, which does have a small gluten free section. And you can get gluten free matzo meal, but it is made from oats.

One thing that came up, was my friend said she’d never come across a Jewish coeliac. Just chance I suspect.

Pitta Bread in Waitrose

 

Our Waitrose in Newmarket has expanded its Free From section and added a Sugar Free section next door.

They’ve now added pitta bread from Livwell.

Mars

 

I am not vegetarian, Jewish, Muslim or any of those other groups that are morally or religiously affected by the change in the formulation of Masterfoods products.

I have to read all food labels as I'm a coeliac. This means I'm allergic to the gluten in wheat, barley and rye, so no bread, beer and pasta for me. But I can and do enjoy cake, cider and rice noodles!

So when a company like Masterfoods changes the formulation of their products, without flagging this in the media and on the product with a big **New** sticker, I immediately put the company on my banned list.

There are many companies that are scrupulous in flagging and informing changes and in future I'll stick to them.

Ice Lollies

 

I’m pretty sure that Waitrose do a lolly which is just frozen orange juice. We give them to our granddaughter (non-coeliac), as she thinks they’re great. I suspect that some of the other supermarkets make them too.

On the other hand, my mother used to make lollies with a mould. I’m 60, so that was more than a few years ago.

I looked and Lakeland have an ice lolly maker on their site.

Montezuma's Chocolate

 

Celia bought some of this in Wilkinson's in Norwich. She bought the Chilli variety and it certainly tastes of chilli!!!

It's very high in cocoa and most if not all appears to be gluten-free. They also have shops in the South of England.

Green and Blacks Chocolate

 

I've just read their nutrition page in detail.

To summarise. Only mint and caramel chocolate are down from gluten and all the ice cream is safe.

But what about their Dark 85% chocolate. It's virtually nothing except cocoa and vanilla. I think I'll live on that for the last five days of my life.

Sainsbury's Hot Cross Buns

 

I tried these over Easter and found them excellent.

Halls Extra Strong

 

I received this letter about Halls Extra Strong which is good news for coeliacs.


Let's hope that other companies remove unnecessary gluten from their foods and snacks.

Supermarkets and Gluten-Free

 

Our closest supermarket is a Waitrose in Newmarket and their gluten-free offerings are pretty good.

I get Trufree crackers, Village Bakery cakes and ginger biscuits and Orasco bars from their Free From section, but I also buy a lot of other things that are certified gluten-free from other parts of the store. These include Whole Earth cornflakes, Aspall cyder and some of the ready meals by people like Castle Farm Kitchens. (They also seem to have introduced a Free From section into the chilled foods in the last week or so.) My problems with Waitrose include the fact that they don't do any reasonably priced liver.

Sainsbury's are the closest the other way in Haverhill and their gluten-free offerings are not as good as some of their more up-market stores. I do buy their small sponge puddings (where are the jam ones), some of their scones and the Meridian sauces. For a time they did have a very good gluten-free pitta bread, but apparently the factory burned down. I would use them more but they don't stock Village Bakery stuff.

I try to avoid Tesco for personal reasons, but I still have to go there for their pitta bread.

As for Asda, being owned by Wal-Mart is a very good reason not to shop there.

My wife also gets things like liver and gluten-free fishcakes from Marks and Spencer. They also do some excellent cheese soufflés in some stores.

So to get what I need, I have to go to four different supermarkets. That isn't really a problem for me as I travel to Cambridge about twice a week, where there is another Sainsbury's and three Tescos. But this must be a problem for people who only have easy access to one supermarket or large shop.

Chocolate Cake

 

Our son cooked this at Christmas and it works well.

300 gm Green & Blacks Plain Chocolate
50 gm Ground Almonds
165 gm unsalted butter
275 gm caster sugar
6 large organic eggs
pinch of sea salt

Place chocolate, butter, sugar and salt into an ovenproof bowl and melt slowly over a pan of simmering water.

While the chocolate is melting, beat the eggs and ground almonds together.

Once melted, remove the chocolate mixture from the heat and fold in the eggs and grounds almonds.

Place the mixture into a lined 23 cm. spring loaded cake tin, and cook at 180C for 35 to 40 minutes, take care to cover the top and sides of the cake tin to prevent the cake burning.

When cooked leave the cake to cool in the tin, then leave overnight in the fridge to set.

The following day remove the cake from the tin and lightly dust with icing sugar.

Elveden Estate

 

Yesterday we were on the A11 at Elveden, which if you know the area, is the only piece of single carriageway road between Newmarket and Norwich.

We went into the Deli/Cafe at the Elveden Estate, which is probably the most luxurious farm shop, we've ever seen. There were lots of very interesting products, many of which were gluten free and probably unheard off outside of Suffolk or Norfolk. It was definitely worth a browse. We bought some Suffolk salami and a Suffolk dressing for salad.

We also had a coffee in the cafe and they said to mention if you had any allergies. Obviously, this didn't apply to the coffee, but I asked and they said they were very much aware of all the problems and would be happy to provide an appropriate meal.

They also have all sorts of other things to do.

Halls Mentholyptus

 

I just checked these on the Cadburys nutrition site and the normal ones are neither gluten nor wheat free. The blackcurrant ones are labelled as gluten free (suitable for coeliacs), but not wheat-free. The sugar-free ones though don't have any wheat or gluten.

All very confusing.

Letter To Dame Deirdre Hutton

 

She is the chairman of the Food Standards Agency and appeared on the Simon Mayo show on Radio 5 Live.

This is the letter I wrote to her.

Issues for Coeliacs

I am a coeliac and not a sufferer of coeliac disease, as properly handled it is very much a non-illness and an intolerance.

I heard you yesterday on the Simon Mayo program and was generally impressed with your answers on the work of your Agency. On a personal point of view, as an engineer/scientist and statistician, I’m not impressed with the Tesco labelling system and feel your proposal is best. (I had one of their healthy option pies and quite frankly it had more salt in it than the Dead Sea! They know that salt sells and I know I don’t like it. I also have gall-stones.)

I am a moderator of a lively group of several hundred on coeliac disease on Yahoo and one topic has dominated over the last few weeks. That is the fact that the Codex standard allows 200 ppm of gluten. This means that if you have two slices of toast, you’re eating a lump of gluten the size of the average aspirin. (It doesn’t bother me, as with few exceptions gluten-free bread is total crap and only marginally more tasty than cardboard. I’m on a Marie Antoinette diet where I eat cake.) So please can you reduce that limit to at least 20 ppm as it is in Australia or the USA.

I also was worried about your reply on Simon’s program as to labelling for allergies. It should be compulsory for all allergens to be named on the packaging. Anything less is totally unacceptable. Marks and Spencer are leading the way here and actually name both gluten and wheat separately.

Remember that according to serious studies coeliacs are one in a hundred of the population. Even if many have not been diagnosed!

It will be interesting to see the reply.

Sainsbury's Gluten-Free Bread

 

I just phoned them on 0800 636262 to complain about the lack of gluten-free pitta bread. Apparently, it's on hold to change the packaging.

Sounds daft, as it was rather nicer than the Tesco pitta bread.

So if anybody wants to phone up and ask, it may get them to take their fingers out and start deliveries again.

Quaker Seasons

 

I've just tried this snack. Not bad and it says it's suitable for coeliacs.

Anybody else looked at these.

Maltodextrin

 

Maltodextrin comes up a lot, so I've been doing a bit of research.

In the US maltodextrin must be made from maize or rice, so it must be gluten-free. So if you eat a US made product with maltodextrin, that part must be gluten free.

I also found this Question and Answer on the Kettle site.

Q. Why is Salsa with Mesquite gluten free when the ingredients list says it contains Dextrose and Maltodextrin from wheat?

A. Dextrose and Maltodextrin are made from wheat grains by a process that separates all of the protein including gluten from the Dextrose or Maltodextrin. We can confirm that products such as Salsa with Mesquite contain less than two parts per million of gluten which means they can be classed as gluten free. Some people may need to avoid wheat products entirely and to help with this we always indicate the source of ingredients such as Starch or Maltodextrin that may come from wheat.

Myself, I tend to eat their low salt or undressed crisps, so it doesn't affect me.

If you want a laugh read what Pringles are made of.

Astraeus to Gambia

 

We flew to the Gambia on Astraeus from Gatwick.

Just a quick post to say that the GF meals were actually quite good.

We flew what they call Star Class, which is a bit more upmarket but they made a mistake with the meal on the way out and I got one for steerage. It was a Citrus Ginger Chicken the CFH Group in Wrexham. It was very nice, even if it had too much coconut for my liking.

Coming back I got the Star Class meal, which was again chicken and very good.

This was a much better experience than I got with BA when we went to Turkey.

The only problem I had was they gave out nuts mixed with the odd biscuit. I didn't need to eat them and mistakenly ate a biscuit. Serves me right for being greedy.

PPM Contamination of Gluten in Food

 

With all the talk of gluten contamination I just thought I'd do a few calculations.

I weighed an 8-10 cm. potato and it weighed about 200 grams. So if you take a double adult portion of mashed potatoes then it is probably about 1 kilogram or 1000 grams.

Wheat flour contains between 8 and 14 percent gluten. (I got this from a site called www.cookingforengineers.com which appears very interesting if you want to find out things like this.) I'll use 13 percent as this is average for bread making flour.

So let's contaminate the mashed potato with different levels of gluten using wheat flour.

200 ppm would mean that 1.54 grams of flour had been added.

So how big is that amount of flour?

Now a cubic metre of wheat flour weighs 593 Kilograms or a cubic centimetre would weigh about 0.593 grams. (I got this from www.simetric.co.uk which gives the density of many materials. It actually lists gluten by itself, which is slightly heavier than flour.)

So that means that to get 200 ppm in the kilogram of mashed potato you would have to add about 2.5 cubic centimetres of flour. i.e. that would be 1 cm x 1 cm x 2.5 cm. or about half of a large heaped teaspoon. (A heaped teaspoon is about five cubic centimetres. But that seems a lot to me.) Interestingly, you would probably add less salt than that when you cook the potatoes.

So even a low level of 10 ppm still needs about 0.125 cubic centimetres of flour, which is probably a generous pinch.

I have checked this, but if anybody can find fault please let me know. Years ago I used to do these sort of calculations all the time as an instrument engineer, but I'm rather rusty these days.

The Gambia

 

This will probably end up as a series of posts and certainly I'm quite prepared to answer any questions.

Celia and I decided to go to The Gambia, as we needed a break, wanted some sun and it is about the shortest flight where you can get reasonably warm at the New Year.

To quote the Lonely Planet guide "For vegetarians, this region can be a challenge." I hoped it wouldn't be the same for coeliacs. But then I'm not supersensitive, it was only a week and there was a lot of interesting things to see like the birds, the forests and the other wildlife.

We had a very good time.

We did stay in a very good hotel called NGala Lodge which is owned by its Belgian chef and he had been warned. For instance on the first night, I ordered a starter based on grilled fish. Normally, he breadcrumbed them, but for me he did them plain. And they were very good.

We ate in a couple of restaurants and I had no trouble at all. Generally, the waiters speak very good English, as it is promoted as the National language. One thing though the holiday rep from Gambia Experience told me, is that no-one minds if you seek out the chef and ask his advice.

But the good thing is that most of the food seems to be naturally gluten-free. We had one of the local dishes which was effectively beef in a spicy peanut sauce. There is also a lot of good fruit and plenty of things like eggs and bacon at breakfast, even if I had problems convincing them that I didn't want toast.

So if you want a nice winter holiday, I'd recommend The Gambia. But I would plan more than I did, as we would have had a better holiday if we had. That is nothing to do with food, but I'd take a bird book, stay perhaps in two places and learn more about the people.

Marks and Spencer at Christmas

 

I was in Ipswich M&S today and was trying to get a gluten-free Christmas pudding. They were sold out.

I asked if they had any in the store and a manager said that they had had a very much larger response than expected for all GF Christmas foods. She thought that offices might have been buying GF mince pies to make sure they didn't upset anyone.

Let's hope that M&S look at the computer output and decide to up their output of GF foods.

Dietary Specials Chocolate Cake

 

Celia made one of these for me whilst I was out at the football today.

It wasn't bad at all. She even liked it!

Marks and Spencer Cocktail Sausages

 

Marks and Spencer have got lots of gluten free cocktail sausages in their Cook section of the BSE (Bury St. Edmunds) branch. If they stock them, then I suspect they'll be elsewhere too!

A One Woman Food Revolution

 

This is an article about Patricia Wheway that appeared in The Times.

It tells of her problems with her son and how she wrote to Tesco's chief executive Terry Leahy to tell him how they should cater for allergy sufferers. This led to Patricia being employed to create Tesco's Free From range which has now been copied by every other supermarket.

So if you have a specific need, then be constructive and you might get a better job.

Patricia did.

Finding Christmas Difficult

 

There have been a lot of posts on the UK-Coeliac Yahoo Group recently about how people find Christmas difficult.

One of the main problems is eating out. On the whole, I don't go to too many Christmas parties and certainly not any where there is a large sit-down meal with little choice. So luckily, I avoid compulsory stuffing and Christmas pudding, neither of which I've ever liked.

So perhaps my body knows more about what I can eat than I do!

When it comes to eating in, there are a lot more options as Marks and Spencer and others now have gluten-free stuffing, I like turkey and redcurrant sauce and even gluten-free mince-pies are common.

So my main plea is to all you caterers out there, do think of all those people out there who have various food intolerances and allergies.

Sausages

 

I am a coeliac and can't eat wheat or barley.

What illustrates how dynamic the sausage industry has become, is that when I was first diagnosed there was only one or two brands easily available. Now there are nearly a dozen.

Manufacturers wouldn't do it, if it wasn't a profitable market.

The Pricing of Gluten Free Foods

 

We rarely buy any special gluten-free foods except for Dr. Schar's pasta. Otherwise, we just use fresh meat, fruit and vegetables and standard sauces and other goods that are marked gluten-free.

Note that I'm almost on a no-bread diet, as bought gluten-free bread is generally rubbish. The only one I ever eat is Tesco's gluten-free pitta bread, which is excellent with a decent Italian salami or prosciutto. Don't ever eat more than two slices as it sits in your stomach rather heavily.

I think that if you want to live just like you used to, you will get ripped off, but adjust your diet and you can live very well. And very reasonably.

The Usual Suspects

 

Am I being the typical middle-class idiot?

After all I am featuring Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and Carluccios. But then they are the sort of companies that provide the wholesome gluten-free food that I need.

Sainsburys has not really featured, but this is mainly because we are rather over Tesco'd and I don't visit the nearest Sainsburys at Haverhill very often. They do make a rather nice gluten free sponge pudding though!

You will notice that Asda don't get a mention. Why should I shop at a company that is owned by WalMart from the land of the death penalty, global warming, Guantanamo, unwise excursions into Iraq and unfair trade practices?

Packed Lunches

 

I've started doing a lot of work in Nottingham and now pack my own lunch before I go, as where I work there is a fair way from anything suitable. I do find the North much more difficult than the south as in London, there are many places where I can get a good gluten free lunch. Carluccios, Pizza Express and several other cafes come to mind.

The problem seems to be up North, that what they say is gluten free isn't. Often it's something like chips that have been fried in the same oil as battered fish.

Cheese Souffle

 

I haven't had one of these since diagnosis and I was very surprised that I was offered one for supper.

It came from Marks and Spencer and contains potato starch and cornflour, so it was gluten-free. My wife, Celia, hadn't bothered to check them as she didn't think you could make one without normal flour. She was as surprised as I was!

It wasn't bad either.

Village Bakery Ginger Biscuits

 

These have just appeared in my Waitrose. They seem to be going fast too. Like hot biscuits?

Baking Powder

 

Baking powder should be GF as it’s sodium bicarbonate. It has a chemical formula of NaHCO3.

I used to work for Mond Division of ICI and they had two Solvay processes that produced tons of the stuff. One was built about 1880 out of oak beams instead of steel girders. If you were over five foot six you kept bumping your head, as people were smaller then.

However, someone might stick some additive in it. I suspect you can buy pure sodium bicarbonate in a pharmacy with a BP label on it.

I just phoned my local Boots in Newmarket.

They stock 500 grams or half a kilo of pure sodium bicarbonate, which costs £1.89. That should be enough to last you a lifetime if you keep it dry!

Tesco Healthy Living

 

I also bought two of the Tesco Healthy Living pies as they were on special offer. There are several varieties, most are gluten free and all comes with a potato crust.

I had the Cottage Pie today for lunch and it was quite nice. It actually had too much salt for my taste. And probably me too, as I’m supposed to stick to a low salt diet as I’ve got a gall stone.

It certainly was a good lunch, for someone of the “Men Behaving Badly” school of cuisine!

The product also has the new labelling which has been much-derided by health fascists. I actually found the labelling a bit frightening as it listed that the pack contained 32% of my daily salt needs. That salt again!

As this is quite a new product for Tesco with a 2006 copyright, I looked at the Allergy Advice on the back. It also gave extra allergy information about nuts, so the message must be getting through.

All in all though the product would be much better with half the salt!

Tesco

 

Tesco gave me one of my worst shopping experiences yesterday.

I went to the old stocking factory at Baldock and had filled my trolley only for there to be a fire alarm. So I had to leave the trolley and wait in the car park. In the end I had to drive away empty-handed.

Today I went to the smaller Tesco in Newmarket, which seems to have been laid out in a much more logical manner. The interesting point was that at the entrance you passed the Organic display, follows by the Free From and then the various sauces, oils etc.

Some have been worried about Tesco’s policy on gluten free and I think that they can be reassured if they put gluten free goods prominently in the store.

Kettle Crispy Bakes

 

I got a packet from Waitrose today.

One slight problem is that on their web site, they say they are gluten-free. The ingredients don’t look at all dangerous, as they state the origin of things like maltodextrin as being potato.

But on the packet it says wheat-free.

I’ve e-mailed them for clarification.

Update October 2006

The new packaging says gluten free.

Marks and Spencer

 

Stuart Rose, the chief executive of Marks and Spencer, was in impressive form on Radio 5 last night. He virtually offered to meet anyone with sensible suggestions.

So I wrote :-

"With food I have always been a fan. Note that as a child in North London, my mother purchased a lot of food in the Wood Green store in the fifties, which was close to where she worked. Now we buy a lot of food from Cambridge and also from the convenient Simply Food at the station. Where are the latter on the motorways?

I have no complaints here, but a serious suggestion.

I am one of the one percent of the population who is a coeliac and therefore must avoid wheat, barley and rye. You are making a lot of play about organic food, lack of additives and quality. You are also providing some excellent gluten-free sausages, fish cakes and ready meals. But sometimes you show a lack of consistency with some ready meals by switching between containing gluten and gluten-free.

If you published your policy on gluten, avoided the wheat-derived additives like maltodextrin, substituted unnecessary flour for cornflour etc., I’m certain you’d steal a march on competitors. You only had to be at the scrum that was the Gluten-Free Food Fair in Newmarket this July to know how desperate some coeliacs can get."

Celia's Sausage Pie

 

Here’s what I just finished off for my lunch.

Celia has made these for years and find that they freeze well and are a very quick meal to warm up in the AGA after we get home late.

She starts by baking some of Musks gluten-free sausages in the oven with an onion or two. You can add anything else you like at this point. Peppers? At the same time she boils and mashes some potatoes.

She then takes a large lasagne type dish and chops the sausages and onions, then mixes them with baked beans and a good helping of pickle. This is the one change she’s made over the years, in that the BB and pickle are now gluten-free.

The mashed potato is then spread over the top and then grated cheese is sprinkled on top. It can now be successfully frozen, kept in a fridge until needed or cooked immediately for about twenty minutes in the oven.

I’ve just reheated Friday’s remnants in a microwave for lunch. It goes well with tomato sauce too!

Additives

 

We also had a chicken thing last night from Marks which was OK, but not brilliant.

The interesting thing was that it had a big label on it saying no additives.

It seems to me that Marks may be reacting to both everybody’s fears and also making sure that they are squeaky clean with respect to the new labelling regulations.

It’s probably a sensible decision, as we are only one of several groups who worry about our food. And often the more money you have, the more picky you get.

Marks and Spencer's Gluten Free Fish Cakes

 

Celia has just bought some GF fish cakes at Marks and Spencer. They are under the Gastropub label. Sound naff but will try and eat them tomorrow!

It looks like they are using potato starch for the crust on the outside.

Corn Flakes

 

In Waitrose you can get Good Earth Corn Flakes and Maple Syrup Corn Flakes. The Corn Flakes are I think £1.29 for 375 grams, whereas Waitrose charge about the same for 500 grams.

I’ve changed and I think they taste better!

Strangely, they are not on the Waitrose web site.

Dr. Schar

 

We’ve just had a weekend in Ancona. Excellent!

We stayed at the Hotel Emilia. Not cheap, but very good value at ˆ190 a night. Large pool, big room, good food, superb views, lots of good art on the walls etc.

I said to the waiter on the first night, that I was a coeliac and he said that they always had gluten-free pasta. So I tried it at lunch and it was excellent. I thought at first they had made it themselves, but it was from Dr. Schar in Bolzano.

I now get this pasta on prescription. In fact, it's the only gluten-free item that I do.

Gluten Free Food in South Africa

 

When I went to South Africa a few years ago, I hadn’t been diagnosed, but found the food to be very good to a high standard and very affordable. A lot of good meat, like Springbok carpaccio!

Waitrose Gluten-Free Fish Cakes

 

Has anybody tried these?

They disappeared for a couple of months and are now back. We prefer the tuna ones.

Cross Contamination

 

I think we also have to bear in mind that some companies keep a factory gluten-free, by not having any wheat derived products at all.

Kettle do this. They also have to do it for their Organic products, where nothing non-organic is allowed. Many others do to!

Gluten is quite a simple one for the manufacturer, because if they are sure there is no cross contamination, then they can be pretty sure they won’t get sued for a lot of money! Their lawyers would advise them to either be gluten free or not say anything.

Now unless you get the sort of contamination you used to get in the 50s when a packet of 20 fell into the aniseed ball mix, you should be a whole order of magnitude safer. The cigs in the aniseed balls is true!

I should also say that I’ve worked a lot in chemical factories. Product contamination is something you always take seriously. With food they are a lot more so.

British Farmers

 

They’ve just had the President of the NFU on the BBC.

He was going on about producing what the public wants. Now surely it should be pointed out to him that if you buy a local food product, then because you are sure of the provenance, you are sure of what’s in it.

Local purchases have come up before here and it can be something that improves our diet. I for instance, drink Aspall Cyder and eat Musks sausages. Both are local and having spoken to the owners, know that they do their utmost to keep product gluten-free.

Orasco Bars

 

Has anybody tried these? I suspect so.

I just found them in the GF section in Waitrose.


Very nice. Made in Egypt interestingly.

Bread

 

I don’t like to sound an alternative view, but since diagnosis, I’ve never bothered with bread, except at one restaurant where they always bake a special GF roll for all coeliacs.

So why bother with it?

I should say before diagnosis, I used to eat loads of bread. My wife has also given up at home and only has the occasional sandwich at work.

Farming For Coeliacs

 

I’m not an arable farmer, but a stud owner with lots of farming friends.

I would suspect that crop rotations are more likely driven by economics of subsidy than the economics of quality.

An old friend of mine who died many years ago, used to grow seed barley, which of course fetches a high premium. So he rotated it with rape or sugar beet. The only way he could get it to the desired quality was to weed the wild oats or ‘volunteers’ out of it by hand. Many a day I saw him walking through the fields doing it!

In these days of extensive agriculture, I doubt that you’ll get any profitable alternatives to wheat and barley, which will mean that contamination will occur. We also have the problem that sugar beet may cease to be grown here. (Should we subsidise it, when we can buy all the cane sugar we need from the developing world?)

The only good thing is the new EU agricultural subsidy, which is based on hectares. So if you come across a gf corn, you can grow profitably for bread and rotate with say rape, then you are on a winner.

I think it may be a case of watch this space.

One last thought! Wheat and barley must be related to wild grasses. Does anybody know whether any of our common grasses are not gluten-free?

Codex Starch

 

I have not joined Coeliac UK as I am a Marxist (of the Groucho tendency) and wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member!

But seriously though, I am a scientist and engineer, who has some very good credits in the past and I got those by distrusting what it said on the tin!

I should also say that I’m not that sensitive, especially as I wasn’t diagnosed until about 55. But I probably should have been diagnosed a lot earlier and wish I had.

So I am always suspicious of what I’m told. But then I enquire to make sure that what they say is correct. Take Kettle crisps! I phoned them and got someone who assured me that everything they say is GF is GF. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I think they said it was easier to not source any non-GF ingredients, so that they wouldn’t be in trouble with anybody.

Consequently and especially after the Christmas incident, I always ask and insist that the chef tells me, when I’m in a restaurant. On Monday this had the result, that I got some really nice asparagus and Parma ham that wasn’t on the menu.

So to return to the Codex starch. I would avoid anything I don’t know what it is! I’ve not read the Codex, so I don’t know about Codex starch, so I wouldn’t eat it.

Just be sensible and each to their own!

Rice Krispies

 

I checked on my Krispies and find that they actually label them as containing barley.

That is new or at least since I last checked about two years ago.

Still as I said before they don’t affect me at all. But then I can drink old-fashioned bottled Guinness without affect too! (I don’t now, incidentally!) I may stop but not at present!

A dietitian said they would be OK for me, some years ago.

Marks and Spencer

 

Just had a butterflied leg of pork from Marks & Spencer for supper.

Basically, it is pork with olive oil, garlic and summer herb marinade. But obviously it is gluten-free as it uses cornflour instead of floue!

It was very nice.

As it’s new, does this mean that M & S are taking coeliacs seriously. I suppose like us, they need all the help they can get!

Gluten Free Barbecue Food

 

I’m not a barbecue person, but Musks and others have told me that gluten-free sausages don’t spit! So if you’re sunbathing at the same time, you won’t get burned. Except by the sun!

Someone once told me that liver barbecues well too!

The Most Disgusting Way to Eat Sausages

 

I found this on Musks web site.

Obviously, you can substitute their gluten-free sausages and I would use Aspall’s cyder!

Trufree Spicy Crackers

 

I like these a lot and they are gluten-free after all.

But do I like them too much!

Yesterday, I ate half a packet and this morning I’ve got runny eyes, a sore mouth and itchy skin. Could it be all those spices. It’s happened before, but I put it down to whisky.

Porridge

 

I tried some porridge today. Celia thought some might help her too!

I used this which I got from Waitrose. If I can believe what it says on the tin, then it is probably pretty gluten-free. I am not super-sensitive and I haven't had a problem.

Village Bakery Ginger Cake

 

Waitrose in Newmarket has a large gluten-free section, so my wife bought a Village Bakery gluten free ginger cake yesterday.

Now, I’ve never been a lover of cake all my life as perhaps my body knew better, but nearly all of the cakes I’ve tasted since diagnosis have been rubbish.

This one wasn’t! In fact my wife, who likes her cakes, said it was one of the best ginger cakes she’d ever had!

Tesco Gluten Free Pitta Bread

 

At last a gluten free bread that is edible.

Usually, I wet it and stick it in the AGA for a few minutes, turning ever so often. I then put something like ham or salami inside. If you're clever, which I'm not, you can open it up to put the bread inside. I just fold it in half!