Tag Archives: pancakes

Travel With Food Allergies

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Eiffel Tower-food allergy travel

First Steps

G is a bit of a home-body.  The rest of us are trying to convert him to loving travel.  We’ll drag him kicking and screaming over to our side if we need to.  I do understand his reluctance for travel.  Leaving the familiar can be a giant step when you have food allergies and travel to foreign countries where English may or may not be spoken can be frightening.  We figure if he gets comfortable traveling with us as his security blanket then when he is older he may come to enjoy travel adventures.

We didn’t jump off the high diving board into the deep end of the Czech Republic on our first trip with G, we started off wading in the baby pool.  We dipped our toes into Hawaii (usually with a self catering unit), Disneyland, cruises and visits to understanding relatives.  Over time we came up with some strategies, one of which is to plan ahead and bring lots of allergy friendly food.  For example we now make a batch of dry pancake mix ready for the soy milk.  Beware though… traveling with a large ziplock full of white powder may get you into trouble at the border, as we found out!  That story another time…

Two years ago we ventured overseas to the UK.  We had a house for a week in London so we did most of our own cooking.  Shopping was a dream!  Their labeling laws are fantastic.  Clear, easy to understand and I didn’t need my new dollar store reading glasses to decipher what the food contained.  I’m envious.  Here in Canada even young 13 year old eyes can have trouble seeing the print on some ingredient lists.

Then it was time to try a foreign language country.  Embarrassingly enough, even though I am Canadian, I do think of France as a foreign language country (my high school French just doesn’t cut it).  Being an EU country, France has great labeling laws as well and many of the foods in stores have English ingredients printed on the labels as well as the French.  Stick to these and you’ll do fine.  G couldn’t indulge with us in fresh from the bakery croissants for breakfast but he did enjoy homemade pancakes from the suspicious white powder.

Next stop the Czech Republic!  We’ll have to be extra prepared.  How do you say “Honest… it’s not cocaine” in Czech?

Pancakes – dairy-free, egg-free

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Pancakes - dairy-free. egg-free

This pancake recipe is the one that G was supposed to have followed when making me my Mother’s Day breakfast.  It is very simple (if you read the ingredients correctly – right G?) and they taste like regular pancakes (see caveat above).  We often have pancakes for breakfast with butter (dairy free stuff) and maple syrup.  While in Scotland we often have smaller sized ones, cold, for tea (or a snack) with “butter” and jam.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 heaping teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 cup soy milk

DIRECTIONS

Mix together dry ingredients.  Add soy milk all at once a beat well. If batter is very thick add a bit more soy milk.  You should be able to pour batter without it being runny.

Pancake Batter

You can use a frying pan on the stove or an electric pan to cook pancakes.  These pancakes stick easily so a bit of oil in the pan for the first batch is recommended even if using a nonstick pan. Set to medium heat.

Pour batter onto pan to form pancakes the size you would like and when bubbles forming on top begin to burst, they are ready for turning.

Pancakes cooking

Give about the same amount of time to cook the second side.

Pancakes cooking

** If you can tolerate eggs, cut the soy milk to 1 1/4 cups and add two beaten eggs.  Pancakes will be more tender.
Pancakes - dairy-free, egg-free

Mother’s Day Treat (?)

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messy pancakes

Did anyone else get breakfast made for them today?  I did, lucky me (see above).  Can you believe they tasted worse than they looked.  Sorry G.

My husband and A are in Our Nation’s Capital on a band trip so it was left to G to look after my breakfast treat.  The pancake recipe is pretty straight forward but somehow something was lost in translation and “3 teaspoons baking powder” became “3 heaping TABLESPOONS of baking SODA”.  My first bite smelled a bit funny as I brought it to my mouth, but being the good mother I kept going.  Once it was in my mouth I knew there was something terribly wrong.  I ran into the kitchen where G was still struggling to flip the next mess and I saw the dreaded baking soda container on the counter.  Through globby pancake still in my mouth (I just couldn’t swallow it) I choked “SODA!?  You used baking SODA?”   “Ya, 3 HEAPING Tablespoons” was the confident reply.  I guiltlessly spat out the mouthful into the garbage can and the two of us laughed til we cried.

You know, maybe G gave me the best treat I could hope for, a long hard laugh together and a story that still makes me giggle!

Happy Mother’s Day!