Hello!

Hello! My name is Catherine and I'm the proud mum of five little boys. Yes... five. Feel free to say "Wow!", "Five?", "How do you manage?", "Enough for a football team!", "Don't you have a television?!?" or anything else that takes your fancy. I'll wait for you. My youngest are eight month old baby twins and the younger, Ash, has food allergies.  I'll pause again here to post a picture of Ash and his twin Leo, because who can resist seeing newborn twins?  Ash is on the left.

He developed eczema at 5 months old and a few weeks afterwards he had a severe allergic reaction to a dry spoon with milk residue on it that he pressed to his cheek. His face swelled up and his left eye swelled closed and we ended up at paediatric A&E.  Allergy tests followed. He's allergic to egg, milk and peanuts. His reaction is so severe to even minute traces of allergens and his skin so sensitive that I need to follow an exclusion diet to carry on breastfeeding him.  I have to cut out egg, dairy, soya and peanuts.

I found all this out at Christmas, after I'd made the Christmas cake and ordered the Christmas cheese board. I am in mourning for my Christmas cheese board and feel the need to wander around wearing a black armband. Nevertheless, I'm up to the challenge and thought it would be fun to blog my attempts to cook allergy-friendly food for my family. Tonight I am attempting to make another Christmas cake, adapting the original recipe to remove the egg, milk and butter and replacing them with an egg substitute product, almond milk and Stork margarine.  I'll let you know how it turns out!