Asian style mince with noodles

I'm of Chinese heritage, while my husband is Australian. Our son knows he is "half Aussie and half Chinese." That doesn't sound very interesting in type, but it is gorgeous when he says it in person.

I'm a little dubious about using imported products, especially asian products which could easily be contaminated by peanuts or something similar. If they can stuff up baby milk powder then you just don't know what could happen with other products.

But alas, in my desire to feed our son a little more variety, I am on the search for products I can use. I look for products that specifically have allergy advice on it. If it has a label saying "gluten free" I'm hoping that their manufacturing controls are more seriously enforced and therefore safer for our son. Australian made always inspires a little more confidence but that's not always easy to find.

If you're in Australia, I'd be most interested to know what sauces other allergy mums use. You'll give me more confidence to try and expand to even more flavours.

So here's my recipe for Asian style mince - actually my picture is when I served it with San Remo Soup Pasta, but you could do anything - rice noodlse, spaghetti, soup pasta ... I believe it's called fusion!

Eskal rice noodles - cook according to packet directions.
Or serve it with pasta, rice or potato.


500g beef mince
1 onion, diced
1 medium sized carrot, diced
1 handful of beans, diced or perhaps 1C frozen peas
2T Abundant Earth Tamari rdeuced salt soy sauce (wheat free)
1T Chang's Tamari Hoi Sin sauce (gluten free)
1 stock cube (optional)
water

Brown the beef and onion in whatever oil you use. We use sunflower oil.
Add vegetables and sauce, bring to boil then reduce heat to simmer.
Our son doesn't use any store bought stock yet, but to flavour the adult portion I added a stock cube and sprinkled chilli flakes on top.
Simmer at least 5 mins to cook the vegetables, or longer if you want the mince to break up more.
Add water if it starts to get too dry.
Add cooked rice noodles or pasta, stir to combine.

Best served in a character bowl like Bob the Builder!

Look and Find Tigger - Book Review

A toddler's life is full of fun, and hopefully the life of their mother and father can be equally as full of fun if we take the time to relax and enjoy.

We've just completed a census in Australia, and it was interesting and slightly scary, just how many hours I spend on housework every week. This included cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, washing etc. Realising that it is nearly equivalent to a full time job explains why I do seriously get so sick of it! I just can't imagine how mothers used to handle it in the days before automated washing machines, microwaves, dish washers and late night shopping! I still can't imagine those mums who use cloth nappies either, but that's for another post. Sorry, I didn't mean to allienate some of you super conscientious mums.

Being a mum of a child with life-threatening food allergies means a slightly increased load of washing since any splash of milk or sauce that I get on my clothes means it has to go into the wash. Perhaps I need to eat more carefully and not just shovel food into my mouth?? But sometimes mums have to eat very fast indeed!

Anyway, so this post is dedicated to the fun we have, in the midst of life-threatening food allergies.

 

I just borrowed a book called Look and Find Tigger. It's gorgeous and similar to the Where's Wally series, except it features Tigger, Winnie the Pooh and friends. Most kids will already be familiar with these characters so the aim is to find them in the midst of all the crazy pictures. The pictures are quite detailed, so the book can amuse them for quite some time. Once you find the characters, there are lots of other little things to look for. The uniqueness is in the attention to detail.
The reason I mention this book is because of the importance of a child being able to read food labels in the future. Words can be quickly recognised, but I didn't really want our son's first reading words to be all the foods he can't eat. Talk about demoralising! Plus, even when he can recognise the word milk, egg or nut. What if the labels says Milk-free or Egg-free? What if he reads that, but then the food isn't Nut-free? So reading labels will be important but obviously not yet.

It is actually the ability to scan and recognise characters in different forms that is being developed by these books or games. For mums who have to read food labels, being able to quickly scan very wordy labels is definitely an advantage. For those who are interested, this ability features in your standard IQ test, so check out this book if you want your child to score well in this sort of test. Or, if you just like Tigger and want to snuggle up with a good book and lovely child, this book is for you too.

How to teach a young child about their anaphylaxis - Part 2

This is Part 2 of tips and tricks for teaching a young child about anaphylaxis. This doesn't include teaching a child how to inject themselves... we haven't got to that stage yet. Our son is only 2 at the time of writing. But if your child is older than this and you have other tips, please feel free to add them.

When our son first discovered wild mushrooms he just couldn't help himself. He'd be climbing on some play equipment and stop suddenly when he noticed a mushroom, seriously, as small as a pin head. At this stage we hadn't tried mushrooms at all, so it wasn't something I wanted him to play with. So my first point of call was "No, that will make you sick." That didn't work... so I decided to allow him to play with it, but only using a large stick. Yup that's right folks, if you can't beat them, join them! On some occasions, I'd tell him, "No, that stick is too small, you need a bigger one." Of course, which boy wouldn't want to find a bigger stick. So this technique seemed to work, and I guess could be employed for things that aren't life-threatening, but still not desirable. We also used this opportunity to distinguish between food bought at the shops and things found in the wild.

Bath games - my husband is responsible for this one. We've got toy cups in the bath, so they'd fill up cups, pretend that one was soy, the other milk, then offer it to each other. Sometimes, they'd get it wrong, and the person would start coughing. Other times, they'd get it right, "Mmm, delicious." Then if there are bubbles in the bath, it'd be coffee made from cow's milk or soy.

Emergency information - I've laminated a card with emergency information and approved foods for our son,. This is placed in the pocket in front of our son's car seat. I've told our son that if we are in an accident, then he has to give that "ticket" to the policeman or to get into the ambulance. He already likes policemen and ambulances, so that's an important thing to encourage too. I'm not sure if he'll actually remember this when the time comes, but the best I can do is try. I'll put the logic and details of this emergency information in another post.

Books - the more books and other people you can reference about food allergies the better. That means you can say, "No, you can't eat that food, it'll make you sick. If Mia eats it, she will get sick too." This is particularly helpful if they actually like the person you're referring to of course.

That's all I can think of at the moment - if you think of another good way, please let me know. The more we can educate our kids, the better. And the more fun we can make it, perhaps the better they'll remember it.