Clare Constant

When my daughter was six months old she had a severe allergic reaction to dairy and wheat as well as a less severe reaction to a number of different kinds of fruit. Through our allergy paediatrician, we discovered that she should also avoid soya, nuts and fish too. Trying to wean her became a nightmare - I could not easily find ready-prepared meals that didn't have these ingredients in them. Nor could I find the right cookbook to support me. As I battled through the experience I realised I was not alone in my dissatisfaction with the cookbooks available at that time - and although dieticians could tell parents what foods our children should avoid, they did not have the resources to give us all the recipes and information needed to make every-day family life work easily.

Fortunately, my neighbour introduced me to Suzanne Wood who was successfully completing a Cordon Bleu Diploma. She has an allergy to milk, soya and food colouring and so had adapted her course recipes so that she could avoid these key ingredients but still successfully pass the diploma. Suzanne's advice was a lifeline.

Suzanne's professional background was as a Home Economist working with recipes for the food and appliance industry - mine was as a best-selling author of educational text books. I knew that, together, we could help other parents who were struggling to cope with the same situation. That's why we researched extensively, spending many hours developing tasty recipes that real families (like ours) would enjoy. Although using non-allergenic ingredients changes the taste of a classic dish our aim was to make sure each one would still taste delicious.

We wanted to produce a cookbook where every recipe could be used for each member of the family no matter whether they could eat all, some or none of the key foods. All too often we had found allergy cookbooks gave us only one or two usable recipes if more than one key ingredient needed to be avoided. In our experience, it was a real nuisance when, having spent time preparing an allergen-free dish, our children who didn't have allergies did not want to eat it. As often as possible, we wanted to cook only one dish for everyone to share - or provide the same dish cooked with slightly different ingredients so that no one felt 'different'. That's why we developed our 'every recipe for everyone' system.

Having children of different ages (Suzanne's are older than mine) we developed recipes that suited the different stages in children's lives from babyhood to leaving home. And since, if you are a life-time allergy sufferer, you are going to have to cook extensively for yourself we wanted to include recipes that children would enjoy cooking while they learned those vital skills.

We also wanted to share the useful information we had discovered about dairy, wheat, soya and nuts; how allergies are diagnosed and how to make 'real life' shopping, cooking, healthy eating and family living work. To make sure that what we said was medically accurate we asked Dr Diab F Haddad MD MRCPCH Consultant Paediatrician, St Peter's Hospital Surrey, Honorary Consultant in Paeidiatric Allergy at the Evelina Children's Hospital, St Thomas' London to check our manuscript. His help was invaluable and his enthusiastic written response became the book's foreword.

Now you know what inspired us - we hope that Dairy-free &/or Wheat-free &/or Soya-free BUT Always Totally Nut-free Family Cookbook will support you and your family and help you enjoy mealtimes as much as we do.

Please click below to buy your copy online at:

Amazon     Play    Tesco    Waterstones    WHSmith 

You may also find these websites useful:

helpforbusymums         mumsknowbest            talkallergy         talkeczema