Veg Box
I can’t really believe we’ve never done this before, considering the amount we cook from scratch and the reliance on fresh fruit and vegetables for our various diet requirements. However, the lockdown conditions have forced us to reconsider our food delivery options and when a delivery slot became available through a well reviewed local company…
Cake, twice!
So without giving away any specific ages or dates, April is a pretty big month in this house for birthdays. And this year was no different. No, wait. It was! Amid social lockdown and barely leaving the house, it was quite a different set of birthdays for both my wife and Piglet. To be fair,…
Home (almost) alone
Hello all, I hope you’re all well and coping in these bizarre and unprecedented times. It’s now been a full month since I first had to start working from home and it has fairly quickly become the new norm. Not to say I’ve easily settled into it but I don’t at least have to check…
Covid-19 – staying at home
Hello all of you. I hope you’re doing ok in this crazy situation that we find ourselves in. For anyone who’s been trapped in a cave for the majority of 2020 (hang on, I mean obliviously rather than deliberately); the UK is currently on “lockdown” by order of the government, the streets are largely deserted…
A little light humour
In a week when it feels like the world as we know it is starting to fall apart, I appreciate that it can be difficult to get the tone right while persevering with some level of normality. This blog has never aimed to be a purely fact-based information share; the aim has always been to…
Hever Castle
A grand day out. What a lovely Sunday with the family. We’ve been getting a bit frustrated the last few weekends. Storm Ciara, Storm Dennis and another weekend of wind, rain and generally miserable weather have seen us truly test our list of ‘101 things to do on a rainy day’. Ironically we’ve set ourselves…
Vegan Cheese
I make no apologies for this but I’ve only gone and done another one… Free From Humour now has its second episode! Alan and I made the (frankly foolish) decision to review vegan cheeses. Lets be straight here: I can’t stand cheese and Alan hasn’t had real cheese for 15-odd years! We are the least…
Vegan Galaxy Chocolate
Woo hoo! This is a treat! In line with the many vegan versions of common brands that have become available in the last few months, I recently tried Galaxy’s vegan chocolate. They have launched three versions of their vegan milk chocolate: Caramel and Sea Salt, Caramelised Hazelnut and Smooth Orange. The latter two of the…
Beautiful Italy
Piglet has been invited to a pizza making birthday party. Yep, that’s right… Little Piglet who only yesterday was a baby I used to rock to sleep in my arms is now getting invited to birthday parties. And not any old birthday parties; ones that involve making pizza! The location of this party is Beautiful…
First Podcast!
This has been coming for some time, but I’m very excited to finally share this. I’ve had the idea for a little while: review a load of vegan ice creams, review them with my best friend, record the whole debacle and upload it as a podcast. Well I’ve (we’ve) done it! Allergen dad’s podcast series…
The treat countdown!
I love a snack. You love a snack. We all love a snack. But when I first cut dairy and then (through my son) soya out of my diet; I found it much more difficult to find little snacks that I could rely on. Over the years, partly through a change in the emphasis of…
Organix
Shock horror! An Allergen Dad blog post about kid’s food – specifically those without certain allergens! It’s almost as if I’ve remembered what this blog was originally intended to do… We’ve been buying Organix products for years now. They’re pretty common place in most supermarkets – increasingly taking up a significant part of the colourful…
The joy of tex(t)
I don’t really know what to do with myself this evening… By 10 o’clock I’d finished the washing up and my wife was in bed reading her book, quite content. I, on the other hand, wander aimlessly around the house looking like someone who’s been stood up by a close friend. I guess I’m tired.…
New Year
Happy New Year to you all! It’s here – the 2020s! It seems like only yesterday we entered this millennium. I remember that very fondly; drinking Champagne (possibly for the first time) on a hill overlooking the fireworks in Central London. This New Year’s was a little bit, um, different… At home, trying to learn…
Vegan Explosion
No, this isn’t the joke about an explosion in a milk-free cheese factory (“de brie” everywhere)… 2020 looks like it’s set to be the year of the vegan. Coffee shops and restaurants seem to be stumbling over themselves to roll out vegan menus for Spring. KFC have launched a vegan mycoprotein ‘chicken’ burger; Gregg’s have…
Oxford Organic Deli Cafe
A very pleasant surprise… Before the festivities fully kicked in, a random Tuesday was spent Christmas shopping in Oxford. I booked a day’s annual leave, my wife had already broken up for the Christmas holidays and Piglet was booked into nursery so we drove him in for the morning drop-off and then made our way…
Merry Christmas!!!
Merry Christmas to all of you, whether you’re somebody looking for allergy support, a Google searcher interested in suitable foods and restaurants, a friend (new or old) who reads this purely for the cutting edge humour and incredible modesty, or even one of the automated bots that seems to routinely hit the ‘vegan magnum’ page…
The final curtain
And that’s a wrap… The run of Seussical the Musical has come to an end. Five performances in four days. I am shattered. Shattered, but very, very proud. Proud of myself, proud of my Piglet (he absolutely stole everyone’s hearts with his cameo at the end of each show); proud of my family (getting through…
Vegan Panettone
As I mentioned in my previous post (NOMO), every year there are new dairy-free Christmas options to try. In fact, I’d say that the number of new options each year is increasing. There certainly seems to be notable increase on the back of the vegan movement. Unfortunately vegan and milk-free don’t always go as hand-in-hand…
A new chocolate spread?
As with so many of my review-based blog posts, I always feel a little insincere reviewing milk alternative products as I don’t eat that many of them. Much like when I was a vegetarian for many years; I wasn’t looking for meat alternative meals, I just ate vegetable based main meals (of which there are…