It’s been a whole year…

I’ve just realised that I’ve not posted on here for a year.

A YEAR!

Oops!

That’s pretty bad of me and I apologise.

It’s been one hell of a busy year – going from being a Mum of one to a Mum of two; getting used to a life that’s a LOT busier whilst adjusting to changes that have been rather tricky at times and have made our lives a tad more complicated.

Plus, I returned to work and have had to juggle that with nursery and school runs, which is just sooooo much fun…
But it’s been great! Watching our two children grow and develop their own amazing bond with one another has been delightful and we’re now at the stage where our toddler is demanding ‘tuddles ‘ (cuddles) from her big brother pretty much every minute! 
On a dairy-free note, we’re still on that path and we haven’t got very far on the milk ladder at all, which is somewhat annoying. But we’ll get there, I’m sure!

Which leads me very nicely to my showing off bit! 

I’m gradually getting better and better at birthday cakes and I’m pretty proud of the dairy/nut-free things I’ve made this year! 

Hope you like them too! 

The transformers cake was made by following a YouTube tutorial from ‘Zoe’s Fancy Cakes’ and the 40th cake was adapted from one I found on Pinterest. 

There are so many great things out there to help people get started – I’ve completely taught myself via YouTube/Pinterest! 

Master Clothbum is FIVE!

I’m totally writing this blogpost to show off (plus – I’ve got this now for posterity) but – look! Just looooook! 
Now I’m the girl who could never bake.

I burnt EVERYTHING.

I destroyed the simplest things and I don’t quite know how I managed it.

I’m still not great at a lot of baking stuff but I’ve got birthday cakes sorted. 

When you’re an allergy mum, you don’t really have a choice. Those lovely easy shop-bought cakes just aren’t an option and if a professional cake maker hears the word ‘allergy’ then – BANG- the cake price goes up massively.

It’s, quite frankly, a total pain.
I’ve now perfected the art of banging out a pretty good Mary Berry Victoria Sponge and now I’m getting more adventurous with my icing and decoration.If I can attempt this stuff, then anyone can! Pinterest and YouTube tutorials are your friends in your cakey journey! 
So – yes. I made that lovely piratey cake!

Pretty cool, isn’t it! 

Accidentally Vegan welsh Rarebit Cheese Spread

I miss cheese! I REALLY REALLY miss cheese. 

But as someone who is breastfeeding a dairy-allergic baby, I really can’t have any of the lovely gorgeousness that is a chunk of cheddar; a bite of Brie or a smattering of Stilton.

The fact I’m actually lactose intolerant means I shouldn’t have it anyway – but, hey, you only live once…!

Anyway – I digress. So, yeah. I miss cheese and I’ve been trying lots of vegan nut-free alternatives. But I’ve yet to find a spread that ticked all the boxes for me as I like my cheese strong.

SSo I think I’ve come up with, for me, a bit of a winner.

I got the following ingredients-

Violife Cheddar; Oatly cream; Very Lazy Garlic; Vitalite dairy free spread; Marmite; Marigold Engevita nutritional yeast.
I chopped up the Violife cheddar and blitzed it in a handblender along with a smidgen of the garlic and a teaspoon of Marmite to turn it into a paste. 

Then I added the other ingredients little by little to create a paste/spread that suited me. 

It worked out at about the following amounts –

Half a pack of Violife cheddar; a teaspoon of Marmite; teaspoon of very lazy garlic; tablespoon of Oatly cream; teaspoon of Vitalite; teaspoon of the Marigold nutritional yeast.

It’s SOOO tasty and fantastic either spread and heated up on toast; stirred through pasta or just cold on crackers! 

Real Nappy Week 2016

  

Just a little post to let all your lovely people know that Real Nappy Week 2016 has begun!
If you pop over to Go Real, you’ll be able to find out all about Real Nappy Week and see if there are any events happening near you. 

The most exciting thing about this week are all the deals that online retailers are putting out there for their customers! You can always get a few really good deals at this time of the year, so I’d recommend having a good look around at what’s available!
Good luck! Hope you grab some bargains! 

And then there were four…

  
Blogging has taken a back seat this year for one very good, squishy and cuddly reason. I’ve been pregnant for most of the time and it’s been an interesting ride. 

It’s been amazing to be pregnant again – something that we never thought would happen again, and I’ve been absolutely over the moon and very excited.  Every stage, every kick and movement have been savoured. 

However, over the past nine months, I’ve had Hyperemesis, bad SPD/PGP that left me temporarily disabled and off work and then several preterm labour scares from 29 weeks which have hospitalised me on five occasions (all 3-6 night stays).
So, as a result of the above, my consultant decided to induce me at 38 weeks.
 I got everything as ready as possible and went to bed the night before feeling, understandably, a little anxious. I had a natural, spontaneous waterbirth with our son, so an induction was the unknown…
Nature clearly had other ideas as I woke up at 5am on the morning of the induction as my waters had broken! Next thing I know, we’re zooming off to hospital! I then spent most of the day contracting irregularly, waters gushing, with the consultants telling me that I had until 5pm that night for spontaneous labour to happen or they’d intervene.

Nothing happened at all for a long time. I was getting really annoyed and impatient, so I got up from the hospital bed at 3.30pm and sat on a birthing ball. 

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. I was getting quite strong contractions and when the midwife checked me, I’d gone from 1cm to 4cm in a very short space of time.

They whisked me downstairs quickly into a wonderful water birthing room and started to fill up the pool. My contractions were still irregular but quite long and strong. But as soon as I got in the water, it all changed. Suddenly I was hit by a barrage of contractions they seemed to blend one into the next. They never stopped and it was incredibly intense. The water was amazing for my hips and I’d read up on which positions were best for me (although, to be honest, I just went with what felt right at the time) 

Then the need to push hit out of nowhere. I’d only been in established labour for just over an hour and this second stage lasted all of five minutes! Three very intense, slightly screams pushes later and our beautiful 8lb 10oz daughter was safely born! I got the waterbirth that I had desperately wanted and was absolutely elated! 

So – now there are four of us and we have a squishy new clothbum! 
Life is slowly starting to get into a vague kind of routine and I’m loving using all our little newborn cloth nappies again. It’s so rewarding to know that two babies have used them and saved so much waste from going to landfill. 

I’ve got a few new nappies too that I’ll be blogging about very soon. My favourite at the moment are the Close Parent Pop-in newborns. 

Quietness has a reason…

Goodness me! It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve put up a blogpost on here. I hope you’ve all been having a truly wonderful time over the holidays. 

Ours has been a little different this year, due to one very very special little reason.  

There’s no alcohol-laden food; smelly stinky cheeses; gorgeous cured meats or pretty much any rich food for me right now, but I really don’t care! In just over a week we’re going to be meeting our little girl for the first time and whilst I’m obviously nervous, I’m so so excited. I’m being induced for medical reasons and I’m so relieved that I have an amazing consultant. 

Unfortunately, I’ve had a really tricky pregnancy, which has included Hyperemesis, many episodes of threatened pre-term labour that has hospitalised me countless times and crippling SPD/PGP which has left me signed off from the job I love and reliant on crutches. Not fun. I’ll be blogging a bit about these (to hopefully help others and give people links to sites/groups I’ve found useful) 
Anyway! So, today marks our little girl being full term. I can relax! 

What an amazing feeling! 

Dairy Free Creamy Leek & Potato Soup

  
We’ve been experimenting more at home recently and came up with a bit of a dairy-free winner that we’d only ever previously made with cream. We used the BBC’s Good Food recipe as a basis then tweaked it a bit.

All that you to do is the following (obviously you can double/triple the ingredients for more servings) This made about 4-6 servings.

You need – 

2 leeks (washed and chopped); 3 medium potatoes (peeled and chopped into 8ths); two crushed cloves of garlic; Oatly cream and Oatly milk; heavy-bottomed saucepan and lid; olive oil; 500mls of vegetable stock; a Knorr mixed herbs pot; seasoning (salt, cracked black pepper and mixed herbs)

Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil in your pan (We sloshed it in!!)

Then add your leeks, potatoes and garlic and toss around in the oil to coat. Fry gently for about ten minutes to soften and colour the onions.

Pour in your vegetable stock and then pop in most of the Knorr mixed herb flavour pot to add even more flavour. Cover with the lid and simmer for about 15/20 minutes, or until the potatoes and leeks are nice and soft.

Once everything is cooked enough, blend into a smooth soup (we used a stick blender). Add as much of the Oatly cream and milk as you want to create a lovely, creamy soup. The cream will leave a thicker consistency and the milk will thin the soup.

Season to your required taste and serve with preferably chunky bread (we only had sliced white, but a crusty loaf would have been far nicer!) 

Yummy, tasty dairy-free creamy soup! Delicious!
daisytheclothbummum has not been paid for this post. 

Dairy free mini quiches (packed lunch ideas)

  
As the start of little Master ex-Clothbum’s first term at school is getting ever closer, I’ve decided that I’d better up my game and start thinking about what I’m going to put in his lunchbox.
Sandwiches can be soooo boring and after looking at the school meal plans, I’m unsure that they will be able to cater for a child that can’t have (deep breath…) dairy/nuts/oily fish/salmon/sesame/strawberries and oranges. Yeah – it’s quite a list, isn’t it!

So, I got some see-through lunchboxes and ordered some fantastic personalised multi-allergy labels from Allergy Lifestyle, plus a lunchbox and multi-allergy bracelets. At least I now have some peace of mind that my little man will be protected a bit.

Yesterday, I decided to start experimenting a had a go at making mini quiches. They were A DODDLE to make and taste amazing either hot or cold.

I got a pack of  Green Just Roll Puff Pastry pack of puff pastry and preheated the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. 

I then greased a cupcake tin, used a large flower cutter to press out shapes from the pastry and pressed the into the tin to create little pastry cases. 

I added some ceramic baking beans and blind baked the cases for about ten minutes.
Whilst they were baking I finely chopped up a large red onion, a yellow pepper and a large clove of garlic and fried them on the stove top, along with a few bacon lardons that I’d trimmed a lot of the fat off.

After they had softened, I added a teeny bit of marmite, a sprinkle of sugar and carried on frying to caramelise the mixture. 

Once the pastry was ready, I made sure all the ceramic baking beans were out of the cases (no broken teeth wanted here, thanks!) and spooned the mixture about 3/4 of the way up into all 12 little flower pastry cases

I then beat up an egg with a bit of Oatly Cream, seasoned with pepper and mixed herbs, and carefully topped each pastry case with the mixture.
I baked these for about 15 minutes then put them on a wire rack to cool. They’ve turned out to be delicious! We’ve had them warm, straight from the oven; cold the next day for lunch and I’ve just freezed some to see how they taste once defrosted!

Do any of you have foolproof dairy free lunchbox recipes that you’d care to share?!!!
daisytheclothbummum bought absolutely everything mentioned in this post. It is,in no way, sponsored. 

Dairy Free Delights- Birthday Cakes

Now, I know I’m massively sporadic in how I’m posting texts at the moment and for that, I apologise. But life is so busy and hectic that there just don’t seem like enough hours in the day.

To be brutally honest I’m mainly posting today to show off! I’ve been getting rather despondent at the vast array of stunning birthday cakes that other people can buy or have made for them that my little man just can’t have because of his allergies/intolerances. Plus, the amount some cake makers charge for a dairy/nut free cake is astounding. 

So over the years I’ve had to make his birthday cakes. I was SO bad at first but I think I’m gradually improving. 

Fondant figures – a massive no-no as mine tend to look mental! But all the other stuff is coming together a bit more now. It’s so nice to be able to make him things he likes! 

I swear by the Mary Berry Victoria Sponge recipe. All I do is swap the butter for Vitalite dairy-free and add a bit of flavouring. Then for buttercream, for every 200g of icing sugar, I use 70g Vitalite dairy-free/ 30g Trex and then add my flavouring until I’m happy. It doesn’t need any oat milk in it as the Vitalite is far looser than normal butter and Trex helps it firm up!

   
 Safe to say. These went down a treat this year! He had ‘The Snail and the Whale’ for his nursery party and ‘Paw Patrol’ for his actual birthday! Only issue has been making them when the smell of fondant sets off nasty hyperemesis attacks…

Yes. You read that correctly. 

There will be more nappy blogging in the near future! 

Real Nappy Week 2015

Well, I have to say – I apologise! It’s nearly the end of Real Nappy Week 2015 and I’ve only just around to blogging about it.

Bad bad Daisy!

But, there’s still a few days left of this fluffy, cloth-loving extravaganza and as it’s mostly held online, you’re usually never late to the party!

If you head over to http://www.goreal.org.uk/real-nappy-week you’ll be able to find out lots of information about what Real Nappy Week is all about and why it’s so much fun.

There’s loads of exciting competitions around, including the brilliant (and my personal favourite) http://www.greatbritishnappyhunt.co.uk where you can go searching for the mightily cute ‘Billy the cloth-bummed Kid”.

There’s also the more complex, but still fun, game of http://www.reusablenappyassociation.com/reusable-pursuit2015.html which can be played online, alongside the offline version of Passport Pursuit.

But …. (and this is the best thing about RNW 2015)

The online retailers always have some stonkingly good deals on at this time of the year!

So – if you’re expecting a little cloth-bum or just want to up your fluffy stash, then NOW IS THE TIME TO GO SHOPPING! There’s loads of good deals out there, so have fun and just try your hardest to not melt your plastic bankcards from too much use!

Have fun!