Christmas Gift Suggestions

I’m the worst person in the world to be advising on Christmas presents, just ask any of my friends or relatives! However there are a few things that we’ve seen or have that are great for aiding parents with (or managing) milk and soya allergies:

• A bread maker – lets start big, eh? The first item on my letters to Father Christmas as a child was an Aston Martin. I see no reason to break a good habit… Granted a bread maker may not be your average everyday gift but it’s one of the most useful things we own with allergies in mind. Unless you live next to a bakery, finding bread without soya flour in particular can be really hard. Making your own is the perfect solution, plus your house always smells of freshly baked bread. We’ve just bought a new one because our 10-year-old family hand-me-down (handed down gratefully, I should say) eventually came to the end of its life (with a fairly spectacularly overcooked final hurrah, I should add…). The new one is phenomenal. As a write this, we’re in the middle of baking brioche. If that works, I might quit my job and become a dairy, soya-free baker!
• A smoothie maker – again, not the kind of present you’re likely to get in a secret Santa gift, but something we’ve found very useful. We bought a NutriBullet a few months ago to replace our struggling food processor. It’s been brilliant, not just for making health-conscious fruit smoothies but also for making sweet pudding-like treats. Blend up some banana, cocoa powder, peanut butter, cashew nuts and some dairy-free milk and you’ve got yourself a custom chocolate pudding. Top with granola and you’ve got a relatively guilt-free treat!
• A little bit late but Montezuma do dark chocolate advent calendars. We’ve gone a few years without them, such is the difficulty in getting them without milk or soya but this one is perfect. Plus the chocolate is really nice too!
• A snack box – I actually bought this for my wife in Piglet’s first year so that she would be able to graze with ease (that’s an acceptable sentence to write about the love of your life and mother of your child, right?). I basically bought a tub with a comedy statement and filled it with goodies from Holland and Barrett: nuts, banana chips, dried fruit etc… Cheap, tasty and (for me at least) thoughtful

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, after toilet humour – I guess

• A milk frothing jug and thermometer – a bit niche perhaps, depending on what you already own, but if you’re a coffee drinker who’s using dairy-free milks to make lattes, flat whites and babyccinos – getting the temperature right can be key. You can get milk thermometers pretty cheaply and it can definitely help avoid splitting some of the more fragile milk solutions.
• A slow cooker – so, so, so useful for when you want to be able to feed a child (or even yourself) a hot meal but know that the times when you’d need to cook are likely to be the busiest with parenting challenges. (Quick go-to oven ready meals aren’t always particularly compatible with allergies…) This can let you prep everything before you go to bed and then just pop it on first thing in the morning to have a hot tasty dinner ready for the evening. Peanut butter chicken has become a staple of this household as a result. Definitely a trial-and-error tool at first. Some meals work brilliantly in it, some don’t. But once you find ones that do you’ll be eating them all the time.