Aldi’s new ‘ Has No’ range in Ireland

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July 28, 2014 Food
Aldi’s new ‘ Has No’ range in Ireland

One of the perks of running my blog and facebook page is that I get a few freebies now and then. Most recently, Aldi kindly sent me samples of their new ‘HAS NO’ range which is fully gluten free.

I had actually noticed the range appearing in my local Aldi store and it seems like a new product has turned up on the shelves every week for the past month. The samples I received included bread, bread rolls, queen cakes, pasta, madeira cake and cornflakes. I’ve also picked up digestive biscuits, jammy rings and porridge oats myself since then.

 

I’m overwhelmingly impressed with both the quality and the variety of the food Aldi have made available to coeliacs. As a keen baker, the price difference on biscuits alone is enough reason to buy this range. Their bread continues to be fantastic value and the new rolls are perfect at the moment for BBQ’s and cold lunches. The porridge oats have also made their way into my homemade granola, again, brilliant value for money to be had here.

The only item I wouldn’t be mad on were the jammy rings which weren’t similar to the texture of the ‘normal’ variety from my glutenous days and were a bit disappointing. The biggest surprise for me was the queen cakes which were really tasty and would be perfect for a kids party or even an emergency when you haven’t time or the inclination to bake a few treats. I’m planning to use the Madeira in a trifle base soon so I’ll let you know how I get on.

I was already an Aldi shopper but with this new range of gluten free products they’ve really given me even more reason to keep my custom with them. Happy GF shopping!

Homemade Granola – a tasty gluten free breakfast

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June 30, 2014 Breakfast, Food
Homemade Granola – a tasty gluten free breakfast

My friend Sinéad has been making her own granola for ages and inspired me to have a go myself.

I got this recipe from BBC Good Food and it is SO GOOD. Not only that, it’s really easy and any baker will have the majority of the ingredients in their cupboard.

For the porridge oats, I used Nairns GF oats and the only other real tweak I made was to add some cinnamon to taste.

Mix this with some natural yoghurt and berries and you’ve got yourself a seriously tasty GF breakfast.

If you don’t feel like making it yourself, try homemade granolas from Foods of Athenry or Maria Lucia Bakes which you can get in shops across Ireland.

Fish & Chips for Coeliacs…in Ireland – Yes they exist!

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June 03, 2014 Dublin, Eating Out, Kerry, Kildare, Killarney, Mayo
Fish & Chips for Coeliacs…in Ireland – Yes they exist!

I’ve made no secret of the fact that love a good GF takeaway. Lately, there have been so many places popping up that I felt I needed to give Fish & Chips their own category.

I can only comment on the places I have tried but by all means get your recommendations in and I’ll update my post.

Dublin – get your cod on

#1 in my opinion has to be given to Fish Shop in the Blackrock Market. I visited recently to sample their GF delights after reading about them on facebook and twitter. They focus solely on fresh fish and chips and use the chip fryer for the GF battered fish so no risk of cross contamination.

Another great option is Beshoffs who offer GF fish, chips and much more on a daily basis – check your local branch for full details. Yum- meeee.  They have a new location coming to Dame Street soon so I think I’m going to have to step up my fitness regime in anticpation.

 

Kildare – Fry with flair

I visited The Bay Tree in Athy again last week and it was amazing as ever with a full coeliac friendly menu including fish & chips. Get a load of this.

 

 Mayo- Garlic and a diet coke please

The Market Kitchen in Ballina is all over gluten free and these fish & chips sampled last January were no exception.

 

Kerry – I want fish & chips in my belly

Allegro in Killarney gave me my first coeliac friendly fish and chips and I will love them forever for it. They are also the brains behind Marcos frozen GF pizza.

 

Gluten free Lemon Drizzle cake

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May 18, 2014 Dessert, Food, Recipes
Gluten free Lemon Drizzle cake

I fancied some lemony goodness and a quick google on BBC good food led me to this recipe which I altered slightly to make GF and to taste.  This is such an easy recipe and the cake is delish with a cuppa.

What you need:

For the cake

225g Caster Sugar

225g Butter,softened

225g Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (I used Doves Farm)

4 eggs

Rind and juice of 1 lemon

Tsp of Xantham Gum

 

For the drizzle

Juice of 1 Lemon

85g Caster sugar

 

This is how we do it

  1. Cream the butter and caster sugar together, I find a fork good for this. If the butter isn’t soft this will take ages so do yourself a favour and leave it out of the fridge an hour before baking
  2. Add the eggs in  and mix well
  3. Add the lemon juice and rind
  4. Sift the flour and xantham gum in and combine
  5. Whack in a loaf tin which has been lined with baking paper at 180C for around 45 minutes. A skewer which will come out clean once the cake is cooked
  6. While your cake is cooling, make the drizzle by mixing the caster sugar and lemon juice over a low heat
  7. Pour over the cake (having first pricked with a fork to let in the juices) and leave to set – it will be shiny and crisp on the outside
  8. Enjoy with cream, ice cream, hot, cold – in your lámh as you run of the house- what ever you want!

Hi, I’m Donna and I’m a coeliac

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May 13, 2014 Coeliac awareness
Hi, I’m Donna and I’m a coeliac

That’s me there with my husband Mos lurking behind me as usual.

In the spirit of Coeliac Awareness week and following the lead of other coeliac bloggers I decided to post up my diagnosis story which began just under 8 years ago, at age 25. I should warn you that this might be a bit graphic but other coeliacs will understand!

As long as I can remember I had stomach ‘issues’. As a child, my parents put this down to nerves/excitement/bugs and to be honest it wasn’t that prevalent in my day to day life – I think I probably just had flare ups.  To be fair to my parents, I wasn’t failing to thrive, I wasn’t fatigued – I just puked or felt like puking quite a bit so I can understand why neither they nor my GP picked up on anything.

As a teenager,one of the first really obvious flags to me that something was wrong was that every time I ate Burger King (usually out with my friends hanging around a shopping centre) it came up straight away. Like, within minutes. Funnily enough, the same never happened with McDonalds – perhaps showing the absence of real wheat in their burger buns?

Anyway, again, there was a bit of puking here and there after my breakfast/dinner (again, put down to nervous stomach but really I was rejecting gluten) and I often got really bloated. This was put down to ‘women’s troubles’.

Wombs – you have a lot to answer for but you can’t get blamed for CD! My poor mam tried everything she could think of including buying me herbal remedies for water retention. My GP  gave me a sympathetic nod and the hormones chat so I suffered on.

Into college I went and to be honest, had very little in the way of symptoms during this time.  I even spent a year in Australia and found a new love…. BEER… which you would think would be like a flag to a bull but I still felt grand….until I came back!

I think a year of bad diet and beer gave my system a shock and when I got back to Ireland I was experiencing fatigue, bloating, puking, constipation….everything. Not nice and definitely not pretty. After a year of this I eventually went to my GP and started looking for answers.

Given a family history with stomach problems, including ulcers, I was put on ulcer meds for a month which cost a fortune and did NOTHING. I went back and got bloods done and HALLELUIAH, got tested for CD.

The bloods indicated CD so I was sent for an Endoscopy which is basically a camera down your throat checking out your stomach lining and small intestines. I have intravenous sedation which I highly recommend – any doctor who tells you plenty of people are grand getting it done with no sedation are LYING.

Results don’t lie, my poor villi were as flat as pancakes and a coeliac was born. I embarked on a GF diet straight away from diagnosis and noticed my energy increasing and symptoms waning within months. Further testing showed I was very deficient in vitamin B12 because my absorption had been poor so this was boosted with injections for a 6 months period.

Now, I get my bloods done once a year (ish) to make sure all is good, eat gluten free and miss tayto and jacobs cream crackers on daily basis – but it’s worth it.

 

 

Gluten Free Waterford

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April 27, 2014 Eating Out, Locations, Waterford
Gluten Free Waterford

Being from the sunny South East I’m frequently down in Waterford visiting family and friends. All this catching up has to be done somewhere so I have lots of eating out tips for any coeliacs visiting the area. The first one is try not to be too disappointed you can’t have a Blaa ,which is a soft floury bread roll which Waterford is famous for. You can’t have it so quit your moanin – just feast in the places mentioned below and you’ll be grand!

 Waterford city

My first tip is to try Bodega for lunch or dinner. As well as just having superb, affordable food, their menus have all the coeliac friendly dishes noted clearly. I had this steak & chips with GF pepper sauce more than once there and I will again no doubt.

If you’re looking for some gluten free pizza or pasta, Espresso is a good choice and is very central.

For a quick bite during the day visit The Pantry in Georges court who make their own gluten free cakes and have a full menu of GF dishes. You can get GF options in The Granville Hotel on the quay aswell.

There are also the well known chains such as O’Briens Sandwiches and Costa coffee in the city where coeliacs will have the usual options.

Tramore and surrounding areas

Ah lovely Tramore. You can’t have a famous Dooley’s fish and chips but you eat well here my friends.

The Vee Bistro in Tramore have coeliac friendly dishes on the menu and their early bird is excellent value, get in!

I’ve also eaten in Banyan Thai who don’t have items noted on the menu but were very helpful when I enquired and do a mean red curry.

Another good option is The Copper Hen in Fenor, just outside Tramore which I recently visited and had a brilliant GF experience. Piri-Piri chicken below was delicious.

 

T-Bay cafe provide a good variety of gluten free snacks if you’re out having a walk on the beach and need coffee and a sugar rush.

Heading out Dunmore East way, you’ll get a full GF menu in Azzuro including pizza and pasta.

If you’re looking for some fresh seafood in Dumore, The Strand Inn will cater for coeliacs, just mention to the wait staff. I hate this cod recently and they made sure to pan fry it with a gluten free flour.

Gluten free food at the Strand Inn, Dunmore East

Shopping wise – as well as having all the normal options in the supermarket chains, a visit to Ardkeen Stores in the city is a must, particularly if you’re self catering as it had a huge selection of both gluten free and artisan produce.

Waterford is a fantastic place for coeliacs to visit and I’d welcome any other tips or comments so that this can be used as a resource for visitors from both home and abroad.

The header photo taken on Tramore beach is courtesy of @mossyb.

 

 

New GF bread from Brennans and Delicious

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April 02, 2014 Food, Shops
New GF bread from Brennans and Delicious

The lovely folks at Delicious recently sent me a sample of their new,  fresh, loaf sized bread made in conjunction with Brennans.

I tried it over the weekend with a great big dollop of butter and a mug of tea – – guys, this is the nicest GF toast I have ever had in my life. For me, it’s definitely the closest to a normal slice of toast I have had, although there are plenty of very good  contenders in the market these days.

The slices aren’t crumbly like some brands I’ve tried and although I’ve yet to try a slice untoasted I know that once I can get my hands on this bread in stores, it will be a staple in my freezer.

The bread has had a soft launch in Cork but should be available further afield very shortly. In the meantime, you can order online at the Delicious website.

Stay tuned, I have some delicious pastry mix I need to test out so I’ll be be back with the results very soon!

Review – Diep at home using just-eat.ie

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March 28, 2014 Dublin, Eating Out
Review – Diep at home using just-eat.ie

I contacted Just Eat.ie on twitter recently as I wanted to see if they would think about adding a gluten free or coeliac search option for foodies like myself. They responded very positively and let me know that they have been looking into this. In the meantime, they confirmed there are plenty of affiliated restaurants on the website which advertise coeliac options, something I had not been aware of.

I put this to the test for a Friday night takeaway last week and had a great experience. Registering with Just Eat.ie is easy and once you’ve logged in, you simply need to input your location, the type of food you’re looking for and bob is your mother flippin uncle. In my area, there were a couple of known options as well as some Indians which usually, if you ring ahead, can talk you through the gluten free options available. They use gram flour rather than wheat flour in the majority of their cooking so are always a good bet.

I’m a bit of a Thai addict so decided to go for some Diep at home. If you haven’t had Diep before, you need to rectify this pronto! Diep started as a restaurant in the city centre and have branched out into takeaways in recent years with 7 branches across Dublin city.

Looking through the menu, there are helpful indications under each dish, confirming how spicy it is, if it’s a low calorie option and most importantly for me, if it’s coeliac friendly. I’ve been trying to experiment outside of my favourite Thai dish, prawn red curry, so I plumped for the Beef Rendang with coconut rice (no extra charge for this).

My husband, Mos, was also feeling like mixing it up and chose Yalan Gai, a new yellow curry dish to Diep’s menu. As a side, we chose the Larb Ped, which is a spicy duck salad. Bill came to €33 including delivery. You can specify your delivery time when ordering but we just went for ASAP. Sure enough, an hour later (it was a Friday night after all), we were sitting down to get our grub on.

Both mains arrived piping hot and didn’t disappoint. For me, the succulent beef and a spicy yet coconuty sauce went down very well and the coconut rice was lovely for a change. Mos didn’t find it too spicy and it completely hit the spot.

The one negative for us was the Larb Ped which was tasty but just too spicy for us and we have a high spice threshold. I’d recommend this if you ever have a friend who is bigging up their ability to handle spice, get them to try this and see how they get on!

We had a great experience ordering with just eat.ie and as someone with a dietary requirement, one that I really wouldn’t have thought I could have. Remember, all the affliated takeways are just a phonecall away if you need to check anything and the team at Just eat assure me that continuous improvement is high on their agenda around both healthy eating and dietary options for their customers.

*Just-eat.ie asked me if I’d be interested in reviewing their website from a coeliac’s point of view and gave me a voucher towards this meal –  See  the review on their website here*

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