Cooking with Food Sensitive Kids

The latest foray into the land of cooking took us to soups.  My child now has a thing for soups.  It started with chicken noodle and quickly progressed to clam chowder and lobster bisque.  One of the favorites turns out to be broccoli and cheddar soup.  A famous bakery chain restaurant with a lot of soups carries it, but like most of their soups it has wheat in it.  We should not eat wheat, even the amount they use to thicken the broth.  So we made our own.

This version uses gluten free flour as part of the roux that thickens is.  The base is partially milk.  Lactose free milk was used for that.  The hardest part would be to find a lactose free cheddar cheese.  That was impossible in a super market.  We actually did use standard cheeses and just took a lactaid pill, just in case.

It turned out very good.  Now for those of you worried that broccoli is dangerous to those with sensitive digestion, certain foods like broccoli are to be avoided as they may physically irritate the colon due to their shape or roughage, what we used was chopped very fine.  It still had a texture to it but was not the large brush-like shapes that can irritate.

This is a quick, easy dish most any kid can do.  It does have some risk if you are very sensitive thanks to the cheese and broccoli. But if you are able to tolerate those then this is worth trying.

Bake your own bread

So I am not all that thrilled with #glutenfree bread that's available commercially.  They are all frozen, except one that I found which was like a small brick of sawdust, and that makes them dry.  Crumbly, stale tasting bread is what you get when it is frozen no matter how good the initial bread.

That said, for me to find some good bread for toast or sandwiches I broke down and got a bread maker.  It has a setting for gluten free breads.  That means there is only one rise.  The machine, as a real baker, normally lets a standard dough rise once only to be punched down to let rise again.  Gluten free doughs do not have the structure to rise again so can't go through this process.  The program in the machine took away from any manual parts to the process.

The above loaf is from my own dough concoction.  I had recipes but not all the ingredients.  My local supermarket had almost all gluten free flours and stuff so I was able to get this done.  It's not the really airy white bread, a tad on the cake-y side for that, but it is good with nice texture and crust.  I will experiment some more with my new toy.  Looks like I am eating a lot of bread in the near future. Apparently have to make up for the seven months of no bread.

Cross Contamination Worries

I started to think dining out was getting better in the greater Boston area for people with food sensitivities.  The menus might be limited but they existed.  And servers seemed to know about the issue, as in really know, not just the lip service like having to wash your hands.

I was wrong.  Recently we went out to a couple of different restaurants.  One was a steakhouse in Weymouth, MA.  The other was all-American fare in Quincy, MA.   The both got things wrong, much to our detriment, although one more than the other.

In Weymouth, we figured a steak house was a safe bet.  Beef has no gluten.  Now many of the sauces, demi glace or whatever will have gluten.  They usually use flour to thicken them.  However, ordering a steak without sauce should be fine.  It didn't turn out that way.  We ordered after informing our server several times about gluten allergies, and asked questions about specific dishes regarding gluten content.  That still was not enough apparently.  My lovely date ordered filet with a lobster tail.  Now for her I will give the benefit of the doubt that it may have been the lobster.  It came out dull with brown edges instead of the bright red that one would expect.  Our guess is that it was cooked well ahead of time and just reheated when served.  You CAN'T do that to lobster.  I ordered sirloin.  It was a little tough but the butter on top may have had some additive that made me sick.  That is only my guess, there could have been something in the mashed potato.  In any event the food was somehow contaminated.  That is inexcusable in light of informing the server of our food allergies.  What should have let me know was that the same server brought the food.  Previously in other restaurants a designated food allergy server brought out the actual food as a way of insuring against cross contamination.  One place even uses slightly different shaped plates also.  This steakhouse did not.  And we paid for it.

The Quincy restaurant was a bit better.  The server acknowledged our food allergies and even went to check with the chef about our questions on some dishes.  Even with all that there was still something possibly wrong.  I am only mentioning this to highlight the food sensitive's need to be ever vigilant.  She ordered a Cobb salad with steak tips.  The steak was obviously marinated in something, presumably teriyaki.  That may have been good except she cannot have any marinades, and most teriyaki contains soy sauce, which has gluten.

Even with the best of places, and when doing everything a person should do when food allergies are involved - reviewing ingredients, asking questions, informing servers - there is still a significant risk of becoming ill when dining out.  Restaurants are not automated, they are run by people.  People make mistakes.  While that is a fact of life, that fact can ruin another person's day, or life.