Flavour and Favourites...

Flavour:
When I started this blog I asked on twitter for some ideas of what I should cover in this blog. Since I am currently (still...more on that in a minute) in the elimination phase of this diet, I am avoiding onions and garlic altogether which makes getting flavour into dishes a lot more complex than you'd imagine, especially if you generally avoid chili and "hot" spices as I do anyway.

A massive regular dish in our household is sausage casserole. We make it a lot, with all kinds of things and all kinds of sausages because it's relatively cheap, filling and my daughter likes sausages! We also mainly do it in the slow cooker, because it's a good standby for nights where things are a bit pear shaped. Ten days ago my daughter asked for sausage casserole for ballet night. Ballet night is always a bit hectic, though thankfully not as far away now as it used to be. But by the time we get back at 5, she is charging hungry and dinner needs to be ready RIGHT NOW! So I asked my DH to put dinner on, since I was out most of the day.

I don't have a recipe (again, I am working on doing this) but it was a fairly average casserole, but obviously no onion, no garlic and no stock cubes. Tomato based (passata type) and contained sweetcorn, finely chopped green beans, possibly red pepper and carrots.

Cinnamon, and caraway seeds.

Yep, you read right. It gave an almost smoky quality to the dish, which was very enjoyable. There were leftovers which we froze, and I ate on Friday night for tea. The caraway (as it often does) had continued to infuse the dish. Delicious.



Favourites
I first came across northsouthfood from this article
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/19/eat-well-tight-budget-benefits
and it's no secret anywhere that Miss South's chicken cobbler became a staple in our diet. It's a wonderful dish for leftovers, we often make our own stocks anyway. However it's not easy to doctor for fodmap since I am avoiding leeks, onions and mushrooms!

Substituting other veg wasn't that difficult, neither was subbing lactofree milk in the gravy.

Plain yogurt for the cobbles was unobtainable since I do not use soy yogurts for other reasons. So I chose a low fat greek yogurt - as have been told that this is low lactose - and we used GF flour. GF flour is notoriously difficult to use for anything that needs moulding or rolling.

It did not work well. The cobbles had lost their acidic creaminess, they tasted of cardboard.
The underneath was ok, but sadly the dish had lost some of its combination charm. I do not want to live without this dish on my regular menu so I am determined to find a way to make it.
It's just going to have to go in the "not at the moment" pile.

Other stuff
I made bread with the recipe on the Doves farm bread flour. I think I may have used the wrong dried yeast. It is ok, but still not right.
Udi's bagels were back in the supermarket this week! Huzzah! They are the GF thing that's most like it's "normal" equivalent.
I have painfully resisted my daughters birthday cake.
I miss fruit. Much of the fruit that is FODMAP friendly is large and cumbersome - like pineapples or melons and we're allegedly only supposed to have one portion of fruit a day. I am the only one in my house who likes/eats melons, so something like that can take me the best part of a week, by which time it's going funny even in the fridge. The other stuff is tastier (strawberries etc) but much more expensive. Expensive is a major issue.
My friend is going to lend me her icecream maker so I can have a go at making a lactofree icecream. Yum! (hopefully)