Scary food, blood red tomato soup with with witches fingers. Yes this is a Gluten Free Halloween treat for children and we will take a standard brand cream of tomato soup and decorate it to look like a spider web accompanied with witches fingers.
The Gluten Free Halloween recipe below will make 4 portions and from start to finish it should take you at most 30 minutes of cooking time, but do keep looking at the fingers to make sure that they do not burn. Before you start you should heat the oven up to 220°C , 425°F/Gas Mark 7
Our ingredients cover the soup and the fingers. For the soup you will need
- 150ml/ 1/4pt Carton single cream
- 2 Large cans cream of tomato soup
For the witches fingers you need to get
- 250g/ 9oz of suitable Bread Mix
- 1 x 5ml tsp Dried yeast
- 50g/ 2oz Ground rice
- 50g/ 2oz of grated mature Cheddar cheese
- 25g/ 1oz Pumpkin seeds for the witches hand warts
- 1 x 5ml tsp Mild paprika
- 175ml/ 6 fl oz Hand hot water
- 1 x 15ml tbsp Mild olive oil
- 25g/ 1oz pecan halves for the witches nails
First you need to prepare the gluten free whitches fingers.
- Combine the gluten free flour mix and ground rice in a medium size bowl. Also stir in the yeast, paprika, olive oil and half the cheese.
- Add the warm water to this mix and using a large fork stir the mix untilit has combined to a stiff batter.
- Spoon the mix into a squeezy tomato ketchup bottle with plastic lid or into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle to create a piping tool.
- Pipe the fresh mix out into finger lengths and sprinkle these with the remaining cheese. Push in pumpkin seed warts randomly over the fingers and position a pecan nail onto the end of each finger. Sprinkle all this with the remaining cheese.
- Cover the fingers with oiled cling film and leave to prove for about 40 minutes until slightly risen they are now ready for cooking.
- Remove the film and cook these gluten free fingers until golden.
Serving a Gluten Free Halloween meal is the important part to maintain the atmosphere, remember this is a haloween meal and should be scarey.
- Warm up the tinned soup and pour it into some haloween style bowls.
- Pierce the foil lid to make a smallpouring hole in the cream carton.
- Pour the cream into concentric rings on top of the soup to make a web pattern.
- Drag a knife from the centre of the ring out to the bowl edge at regular intervals to feather the rings to look like a spider web.
- Put a small gluten free biscuit at the center shaped like a spider
- Serve soup accompanied by the cooked witches’ fingers.
We hope that your Gluten Free Halloween meal went down well and no one got turned into a frog.
A Gluten Challenge is often recommended by specialists to their coeliac patients. It confirms the diagnosis of the coeliac condition; however it can be an unpleasant experience for the patient (and the parent!). For this reason, gluten challenges are only recommended for selected patients.
These include :
- Patients who lack histiological confirmation of their diagnosis, or where the original diagnosis was questionable.
- Patients who had already been on a gluten-free diet at the time of carrying out the anti-gliadine blood test and/or biopsy.
- Patients under the age of 2. In babies and toddlers, there may be other intolerances (such as milk), which cause the same side effects as coeliac condition (ie diarrhea, destruction of villi).
Our daughter fell into the last category of gluten challenge candidates. So, in January 2008, after consultation with the gastro-specialist, we embarked on the (dreaded) gluten challenge with our 10-year old.
Here are some Tips and Learnings from our experience :
- Should you tell them? We took the decision early on NOT to tell our daughter she was consuming gluten. Reasons were two-fold: it would be a struggle for her to eat it (based on our experiences getting her to take medicines!) and we also wanted to rule out any psycho-somatic reaction to the food.
- Make sure you have a “control sample”. We used her brother, a non-coeliac, for this. As per usual, the 2 children ate the same meal, drank the same drink (apple juice) and had a fromage frais for dessert. In this way you can be sure that the meal consumed by the patient is free from any bacteria, mould or anything else that could cause a stomach upset of food poisoning. The fact that the other (non-coeliac) child is free from symptoms enables one to make a more clear diagnosis of the symptoms which the patient manifests throughout the challenge. If there are no siblings, then I suggest one or both parents partake of the same food as the patient.
- Including gluten in the diet. How much is the first question….. For adults, the recommendation is the equivalent of 4 slices of bread daily. For children, I would guess that would be around 2 slices of bread daily. Our challenge was further complicated in that we chose not to tell our child that the gluten challenge was being performed on her. We had to carefully choose how to introduce the gluten into the foods. Some of the examples we used were: mixing in regular flour with buckwheat flour pancake mix, mixing in regular pasta with gluten-free pasta, adding flour to soups, casseroles and sauces or gravies, adding soya-sauce to dishes. It is important you label the boxes (I used “XX” ) which contain the “contaminated” products so that you can readily identify them once the challenge period is over.
- How long for ? For children, it is recommended you perform the challenge for 6 weeks, for adults 2 weeks would be sufficient. However, if the patient becomes so unwell, it is advisable to stick it out for 10 days and then book in a anti-gliadine blood test to confirm the diagnosis. In our experience, our daughter became ill within 3 hours of ingesting the gluten – we could not face 10 days of feeding her gluten! This would have serious consequences for her health if we were to persevere! So, we carefully documented all we did and we booked in an appointment with the gastro-specialist to discuss our findings.
- Find a support network. In our situation, I was able to discuss and compare notes with a colleague at work, who is a coeliac. She has had “accidents” in the past and she, like my daughter, reacts by vomiting within 3 hours of ingesting the gluten. Her mother, also a coeliac, reacts very different – she is unwell upto 48 hours afterwards, but does not vomit; she has diarrhea and bloating and stomach discomfort instead. My other coeliac contact is a girl, 12 years old, who used to go to my daughters school. She is also doing the gluten challenge this year, in the April school holidays. Unlike my daughter, this girl is aware of the challenge and she is looking forward to trying out all the foods which have been “off-limits” to her for the past 11 years! I look forward to comparing notes and adventures with her mother in April!
There are numerous lists of gluten-free foods available to coeliacs and the carers of coeliac patients. Lists of gluten free foods are an invaluable source of information, especially in the early days of implementing a gluten free diet.
The first and obvious of the lists of gluten free foods is the one from the UK Coeliac Society. Coeliac Societies in other countries also produce lists of gluten free foods. They can be hardcopy booklets or bound books – or many now produce “soft” copies of lists of gluten free foods; ie on websites. These can be consulted, sorted, copied and viewed online.
Other lists of gluten free foods are produced by the supermarket chains – Tesco, Safeway, Waitrose, Sainsburies all produce lists of gluten free foods on their websites, or you can ring them and they can send you a hard-copy one.
Often forgotten are lists of gluten free foods produced by restaurant chains. These include fast-food chains, such as McDonalds and Burger King. But it also includes restaurants such as Nandos, Frangos, Wagamamas, etc. These lists of gluten free foods detail the specific dishes on the menus which are gluten-free or they detail which dishes are gluten free providing certain items are omitted.
Other lists of gluten free foods are the ones which we make ourselves, or pass on to our friends and family. I’ve made list below with some gluten free foods which I’ve picked up during the past 8 years whilst coping with the gluten-free diet for my growing daughter.
Herewith follows my addition to the lists of gluten free foods; how to prepare, cook, pack lunches and entertain gluten-free!
- Gluten-free bread can be dry and “crumbly”. In order to re-fresh it, zap it in the micro-wave for 10-20 seconds and it will be moist and more pleasant to eat.
- Bechamel sauce made with cornstarch instead of wheat flour.
- Spread peanut butter on rice-cakes. Great for breakfast or tea-time treat!
- Pancakes with buckwheat flour (called “blinis” in Russia).
- Most Amaretti biscuits are gluten-free. Check the ingredients first though.
- Bind sauces with cornstarch instead of flour.
- Make gluten-free bread with a bread-maker.
- Prepare “Sushi” or “onigiri” for lunch boxes.
- Have a supply of gluten-free sweets where the child can “trade-in” gluten-containing sweets or treats for gluten-free ones.
- Angel Delight – a fast, easy dessert which you can have in the cupboard. Decorated with some fresh/frozen fruit one can create an instant dessert which can impress.
- Use separate butter/margarine dishes.
- Coconut macaroons are gluten free, or make your own.