Tag: LOW FODMAP

Snack time – spicy paprika crackers Low FODMAP, wheat free, dairy free, gluten free

I have been meaning to look into snack ideas for the low FODMAP diet and wondering how to make crackers. I have been reading on the internet and the methods people use seem simple enough. This is my own recipe – but thanks to those whose recipes I have read – too many to mention individually. However special thanks goes to Jonathan Itchon see the link at the bottom of the page – for providing a ratio to make the crackers. Here is the recipe:

200g of plain gluten-free flour mix

150g of water

50g of olive oil

2 tsps of chilli powder (not a blend of spices, chilli ONLY)

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp of asafoetida

1 tsp of smoked paprika

1/2 tsp of salt

Add the oil to the water, place the flour in a mixing bowl and add the spices, mix well. Add the water/oil to the flour and mix till it has bound together, too wet and add a little more flour, too dry and add water – although the mix did come together very well. Place dough on a large piece of cling film and add another piece of cling film over the top. Roll the dough till it is VERY thin – thinner dough makes crisper crackers. Cut out with a pastry cutter. This is the most time-consuming bit. the dough is quite brittle so take care – or you can always add 1/2 tsp of xantham gum to make the mix more elastic. Place the crackers on an oiled baking tray and cook on gas mark 7, 220 degrees for ten minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

With 2 teaspoons of chilli powder these crackers are hot hot hot! Reduce the amount or exclude it altogether if you find that chillies don’t agree with your digestive system, or if you are making these for children – use animal cutters! Also the whole house was filled with the smell of asafoetida – just be warned! 😉 Also I don’t tend to use much salt in my cooking so they are perhaps less salty than you may be used to. If you have coeliac disease and are following a gluten free diet you must ensure that the spices you buy have not been contaminated with gluten containing grains – wheat, barley, rye. But these crackers were easy to make and has made me feel like trying different flavours – excellent, since ready-made flavoured gluten free crackers are rather expensive. Make some for your food intolerant friends today!

http://thecanaryfiles.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/ratio-rally-gluten-free-vegan-grain.html

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Midweek Low FODMAP special veggie chilli – A warming meal for chilly nights!

Wednesday evening – midway through the week and always a night to have something different. So I decided to trial a Quorn meal using Quorn mince. Here is the recipe

1 400g packet of Quorn

4 red bell peppers

1 tablespoon of garlic infused oil

1 teaspoon of cornflour

1 teaspoon of cumin

2 teaspoons of chilli powder (hot, hot, hot) if you prefer it less so, use less chilli! Watch this if you find spicy food tends to make your symptoms worse.

salt to taste

Slice the pepper roughly and spread on the oil, roast for 10-15 mins and then add to a food blender with a little water and blend till a smooth sauce is achieved.

Add this to a pan and then add the Quorn, spices and salt. Mix well

Cook for five minutes then add the cornflower directly to the pan.

Cook for 10 minutes and add salt to taste.

Serve with fresh boiled rice.

We are mid month and moving rapidly towards Halloween, and then plans for Christmas. Time seems to go so quickly and the nights are drawing in. It will soon be time to turn the clocks back and you really are aware that we are truly in Autumn. https://plus.google.com/118333009720408143699/posts/h1bkMSMDZt1

I remember how to do this by the rhyme – fall back spring forward, fall is an American word for Autumn but it does seem to work in reminding me which way to change the time. The date is 28th October this year – learn about time changes here:-

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/clock-changes/

I thought this card was very funny! From www.someecards.com

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Food, mood and improvement in gut motility? Low FODMAP, wheat free, dairy free, egg free.

So it begins, the Low FODMAP adventure – a tale of gut calming peace. Ready for the story? It began by eating out, but now I am happy to be home, then I can choose myself what to cook for my hubby and myself. Yesterday the weather had been appalling, back in the Pennines again and guess what? It’s raining again, not the raging downpours that happened over the summer, but a depressing drizzle – the drenching sort with no passion, it is so fine it may as well not be happening. But obviously it is, as my returning husband can contest, after going for a run he was soaked to the skin. Food and mood, now that’s interesting – shall we cook something to lift it? (Your mood that is!) Serotonin is a happiness chemical, it is made from tryptophan (an amino acid – building blocks of protein,) by your body and this chemical can lift your mood. It is also suggested that serotonin in the large intestine can help with constipation by increasing the speed the gut moves – some people with IBS-C are deficient, apparently. This seems to be one of the reasons why a low dose of antidepressants can be beneficial for IBS, it increases the amount of serotonin in the gut, thus increasing motility. Can this be done with food, I wonder? Food is better than taking pills, but we don’t have any evidence that food high in tryptophan can increase the levels of serotonin or improve a slow digestive system, so no point in taking this amino acid or foods high in tryptophan to try, until we do. See your doctor if you want to try a drug to help. It’s an interesting hypothesis though – don’t you think? I wonder if anyone will consider trialling it?

Meal

2 Mackerel

brown rice (120g)

2 tablespoons of pine nuts

1 sprig of mint

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt to taste

1.5 pieces of celery

Spray oil

Serves 3 people

Place the rice in a pan and cover with water, add a small pinch of salt, bring to the boil and cook till soft – this will take at least 40 minutes, watch the pan to ensure it doesn’t boil dry – boil a kettle and add more hot water to the pan if needed.

Wash and prepare the mackerel and grill for 10 minutes on both sides till cooked.

Put both the pine nuts and chopped hazelnuts on a tray and put in an oven to toast, watch this closely as it can easily burn.

Chop mint and squeeze lemon.

Add Lemon, mint and nuts to the rice and mix well.

Place the celery in a dish and spray with oil and cook in the oven for 15 minutes until cooked.

Serve and eat!!

Brown rice contains B vitamins, omega-3 oil is in the mackerel and both contain tryptophan – all nutrients suggested to improve your mood, but the main thing here is that this meal is low in FODMAPs, tasty and hot – what other reasons do you need to tuck in?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652519/pdf/nihms76319.pdf

http://www.nuh.nhs.uk/media/11284/Food%20and%20Your%20Mood.pdf

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Low FODMAP on a budget – how to make the diet more affordable

One factor I have noticed about this diet is the likely increase in food costs, it is not possible to get gluten/wheat free foods on prescription in the UK. Free from food is expensive, no-one will disagree, so how can we make the Low FODMAP diet cheaper to follow?

Some of the vegetables and fruit allowed are not staple items, this also applies to the basic carbohydrates that are good to consider. It is important to have the full range of Low FODMAP foods to ensure you are receiving the full nutritional content in your diet your body needs to be healthy. But rising food costs are a problem currently, so help is required when you have been informed by your dietitian to try the diet to alleviate your IBS symptoms. So when shopping yesterday morning I thought about what to do to make the diet cheaper – here are some tips that might help:

1. Choose to buy in bulk, particularly the basic carbohydrates such as potatoes and rice.

2. If you have an ethnic supermarket close to where you live check out their prices for rice, they often have very large sacks of rice that are cheaper in bulk. This can mean a cost of £1.00-£1.20 a kilo – significant savings. Also check out bulk spice prices, again the saving can be substantial comparing with prices at the usual supermarket stocks. Some

supermarkets also are now providing bulk buy opportunities for rice.

3. Choose value items when buying fruit & vegetables, also some of the lower cost brand supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi can have occasional offers of half price fruit & vegetables so watch out for these.

4. Remember misshapen fruit & vegetables taste the same and have the same level of nutrition and may be cheaper to buy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/9572730/Wonky-fruit-and-veg-to-return-to-supermarket-shelves.html

5. Check out the offer shelves for items that are due to go out of date – it is normally obvious if fruit & vegetables are spoilt – check them thoroughly. You can make some real savings here.

6. Again check out for offers on free from items, they do occur and it is worth the outlay in time to watch for offers.

7. Base your diet on more cheaper carbohydrate basic foods, such as potatoes and make your own treats, this again may be cheaper than purchasing free from items.

8. Use your own flour blends, check out what is in ready-made wheat free flour blends and make your own this can also be better as some gluten-free blends do not always contain starches that are low FODMAP.

9. Utilise coupons, supermarket offers and trials of free from food items.

10 Plan your food for the week and shop accordingly.

11. Use as many UK basic food items in your diet as you can such as bananas, carrots, potatoes, oranges, lettuce, tomato (watch amounts if you are fructose intolerant,) cucumber, celery (1/4 stick maximum at any one meal.)  Also base your breakfast on cheaper own branded cereals – you can always add your own Low FODMAP dried fruit (a tablespoon or 13 g only) and nuts if you wish to.

12. If you do purchase wheat free bread, buy sliced, or slice it yourself and freeze what you don’t immediately need. This prevents wastage, also freeze other items you might not use initially. If you have a problem with resistant starches you might not want to freeze your bread – as freezing it can increase resistant starch content.

13. Utilise frozen and tinned fruit & vegetables, however be aware of what the tinned fruit juice is based on – you may be inadvertently adding a FODMAP to your diet, some have apple juice as a base.

14. Please don’t use ‘free from’ cook in sauces – these are generally not a great deal different from normal sauces, they may also contain onion and garlic. Make your own thickened with cornflour. Cornflour is simple to use to thicken sauces and it mixes into the sauce really easily.

15. Learn about your diet and look around the supermarket – the more expensive items will be on the free from shelves – alternatives may be available in other sections of the store.

16 If ordering on-line check out the delivery costs, purchase savvy to save on delivery costs.

17. Bulk cook recipes and freeze what you don’t eat.

18. Also make your own stock, when buying meat or chicken, cook the waste scraps and bones in water with a  carrot and herbs, allow to cool, skim off the fat and freeze in small amounts. Water from cooking vegetables can also be used in the same way if a vegetable stock is required.

19. Share bulk items with friends and family to share the initial cost in purchasing – using the principles of the co-operative society, originating in Rochdale and still a good ideal to follow when money is tight!

20. Even if it means that you don’t start the diet immediately, plan well, planning may be the key to ultimate success and a feeling of achievement when you can do the diet within budget.

Updated Jan 2015

 

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The non Moroccan eat – FODMAP free

My first eating out Low FODMAP and I chose a Moroccan restaurant next to the hotel. Felt this might be a challenge – but I’m always up for that! My choices were a little restricted but I chose a plain meat dish, I asked the waitress what the fish dish of the day was, to which she replied there wasn’t one, so a steak was the choice to have, she informed me that this would be served with plain salad leaves and chips.

Now this is not what I would normally choose but needs must for the experiment so I said this is what I would have. It was actually really nice and the chips were thick cut and still had their skin on adding to the fibre content of the meal. The leaves were undressed and included a full grilled tomato. The dish also included a sauce, which was served in a separate dish so could be avoided, probably would contain at least onion and garlic, but perhaps I should have asked. Now for your sake ;-), I also decided to have a sweet to see how easy this would be, I didn’t have much choice as the dishes included plenty of pastry and baklava, I chose a chocolate coated meringue. This was huge, a veritable titanic iceberg! What utensils do you think they provided to eat this with? A knife and fork, yes, really! A real effort had to be made to prevent it from being propelled across the restaurant. More went on the floor than in my mouth, probably for the best – very undignified, but lots of fun! I only managed about a third of it in fact, along with my really lovely mint tea. A nice meal, perhaps not what I would normally choose, and not Moroccan, but it was more than acceptable and would mean that I could eat out FODMAP free, should I wish too.

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London, clockwatching and fermentable carbs – oh my!

It’s only a dietitian or perhaps those people with gut disorders who will understand the title to this post! This week I am in London to attend the Low FODMAP training by Kings – attended a short one day course in 2009, but much more knowledge has been acquired since then and this is the first time I have had enough free time and available funds to be able to attend the complete course.

I was very surprised on my last visit to find that the loo’s at both Manchester Piccadilly and Euston are 30p!!!! What happened to spending a penny? Hyperinflation is how I would describe it, although perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at that, but at least no increases since my last visit. It does somewhat grieve me, as you really don’t have much choice in the matter when you need to go. Perhaps my insistence on arriving at stations early is the problem here, as I then have a drink to waste a bit of time and then need to empty my bladder. If I attended at the time the train was due I could wait till I boarded perhaps, but this would not make travelling any easier. I am rather a stickler for timekeeping, worse probably than John Cleese in Clockwise, so I insist on arriving well before the time I need to! Oh well, you don’t need to hear about my frustrations.

I don’t normally advocate any companies as part of my practice but I will tell you that my room rate was £29.00 per night at the London School of Economics, Bankfield House – this residence is not available in term time as it is student accommodation however I am in the centre of London for the next four days and I doubt very much you could get cheaper accommodation. It is really worth looking at various colleges for out of term time accommodation. I will let you know how I get on and what the room is like, I suspect I may get disturbed at all hours, but only time will tell. It certainly is worth considering. I am now in a cafe with free wi-fi, enabling me to write this post at will, it has been a surprise to me how much reliance I now have to access to the web. I am really looking forward to my break in London, although as those of you who followed me on my last gluten-free London trip will be aware, I always feel slightly claustrophobic in cities. I will also try to include some foodie aspects of my visit, so you don’t get bored – perhaps we should concentrate on low FODMAPs this time, as this is the main reason for my visit. Although I do suspect that this is going to be somewhat more of a challenge that the gluten-free diet, but we will see!! The following posts will be written in retrospect as I do not have that much free time to spend on blogging – or funds to buy countless drinks to justify my wi-fi use!

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