Allergies, intolerances, personal preference, and fashion

[ailbhe]

I can't tolerate soya. Neither Linnea nor I can tolerate cow's milk or derivatives thereof. A friend's children are presumed allergic to nuts because their father is. One of them is definitely allergic to cats. I feel nervous eating regular farmed meat, due to latent vegetarian principles. Rob can't stand Chinese food, especially takeaway, because at one point Chinese takeaway made him sick. Linnea doesn't much like tomatoes, raw or cooked. I love coffee but much more than one cup a day upsets my stomach. Emer loves the idea of food but if anything actually comes loose in her mouth, like off a spoon or a bit of something bitten, she gets cross and sometimes even upset, and if it gets as far as a swallow, she may vomit until it comes back up again.

Really, even now, we're much better off than we used to be. When I met Rob, we lived on pasta bolognese, or mashed potatoes with vegetables and either frozen processed fish, or frozen processed meat, or baked beans and sausages. For special occasions we'd have a fry-up or lasagne. When eating out he was a little more adventurous, but not much. It got to the point that I refused to eat mashed potatoes for months, after months of having them at least once a day.

Indian food was the first to come, then Mexican. Having tried them a few times he became enthusiastic. Later he agreed to stews, casseroles, and the like - he'd grown up disliking them, apparently, and some years ago decided he didn't like them, and didn't examine the issue further. Turns out he loves them, especially my mother's chicken casserole. He also likes moussaka, roasted vegetables (if they're good vegetables) and all sorts of salads, not just potato and grated carrot.

Then there's fashion. Now that Rob and I have a fairly broad range of foods we'll agree to eat, and a narrow range of things I can't eat, we're only limited by what's available in the shops. Bagged rocket is easy to find; fresh parsley, still-growing basil, pine nuts, extra virgin olive oil, organic sausages, blah blah. But many of my favourite cuts of meat are not available from the places we get our organically raised meat, which seems bizarre - I mean, surely happy pigs have all the same bodyparts as sad pigs? - and the only place to get gooseberries is at the Farmer's Market. That's where we get dairy-free pesto, too, because I'm too lazy to clean basil out of the blender. Oat icecream used to be available from one health food shop in the town centre, but they stopped stocking it and have no idea why. Everywhere but everywhere stocks dairy-free chocolate, when three years ago it was very hard to find.

Organic fair-trade bananas are gold dust.

Comments

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Arrrrgh! I don't have anywhere near as many restrictions as you, but I have the same frustrations with 'fashion' in food. I nearly went spare in a shop one day in January when they had a huge selection of out-of-season fresh fruit flown in from abroad, but I couldn't find cranberries (which are grown locally and in season) anywhere.

We recently found an affordable source of Canadian-grown organic blueberries, so that will hold us until the rhubarb comes into season. And assuming my newly-planted black current bush survives the snow storm we're currently having, next year I will be able to freeze my own fruit! Yay!

[ailbhe]

I dunno, 'all vegetables' is pretty broad...

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but that's more to do with method of preparation that food purchasses. Most vegetables are fine so long as they're pureed, some are fine so long as they're chopped small enough, and a couple of broad categories (potatoes, sweet potatoes & squashes) are fine no matter how they're prepared; so it's more a menu-and-recipe issue than a shopping issue.

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

You might want to ask the health food shop about the oat ice cream; I know the co-op down the street from me will special order things like that, though there's sometimes minimum purchase amounts.

[ailbhe]

No, it's the health food people who (a) didn't know they stocked it until I found it in the freezer, and (b) don't know why they stopped stocking it. It's actually more of a "protein shakes and diet replacement pills" shop than a health food shop, really.

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

Ah, *that* kind of health food shop.

Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[angelmine.livejournal.com]

Tesco?

Food fashion drives me crazy too... Atm, everything has chili (which I am allergic to) in now when it didn't always :-(

Re: Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[wingedkami.livejournal.com]

I think I've seen organic fair-trade bananas in my local Tesco. What frustrates me is trying to find loose bananas rather than big plastic-wrapped bunches. I only buy bananas three or four at a time because I like them a bit green and I can't eat them fast enough if I buy more. Plus there's the 'wanting to be green and use less packaging' thing.

I need to find a proper source for fruit and veg, where I can buy stuff that's in season and preferably organic and not overly expensive, and open when I want to go shopping. The last part seems to be the trickiest...

Re: Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[rmc28]

The last part is why we subscribe to a veg box scheme (it helps that our house is fairly safe to leave a box of veg outside).

Re: Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[wingedkami.livejournal.com]

I've considered the veg box option, but I have this horrible fear of coming home to a box full of courgettes, aubergines and fennel and having to give it all away or throw it out.

I've found one place that looks promising (no mentions of aubergines so far).

Re: Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[rmc28]

The place we use has some standard boxes, but seem quite happy to take instructions like "never put X in". In our case X was "bagged salads" - ironically we'd be quite happy with lots of courgettes and aubergines, and I'm thinking about switching to their "Mediterranean" box in order to get things like that more.

Re: Organic fair-trade 'nanas

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Stick the remainder in the freezer (no need to wrap) and then use them later for banana cake?

All you need to do is let them thaw, then peel one side of the skin down and scoop them out with a spoon. No need to mash them!

Fair Trade Organic Bananas

[(Anonymous)]

Are availible from our two ASDAs. You may find the same.

Re: Fair Trade Organic Bananas

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Kinda defeats the object though, doesn't it?

[alison.hemuk.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

[alison.hemuk.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Dunno what happened there, I got an error message and hadn't expected anything to have posted! Can't remember what I'd written - something about gooseberries I think.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Your favourite cuts are probably also the favourite cuts of a restaurant and get bought up by them. There was a thing on R4 at the weekend about organic food and a couple of free range chicken farmers were saying that Sainsers is dead keen on their chicken breasts but only the breasts, but that left them with the rest of the bird. Luckily they'd been taken up by a local restaurant chain who "balanced the carcass" by taking the bonier bits. I have a feeling they talked to a pig farmer about balancing the carcass too.

Then there's fashion.

Yes. It annoys me to see in Morrisons their FreeFrom range advertised as being for "alternative lifestyles". Health is not an alternative lifestyle. Allergies are not an alternative lifestyle.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Oddly, Indian and Mexican (in that order) are serving as the gateways here as well. clawfoot, when we met, didn't like fruits or vegetables. I'm vegetarian. We had a LOT of pizza (plain cheese if it was just us and one pizza, two separate ones ordered together if okoshun was along to help out), veggie burgers and sloppy joes made with veggie "ground beef" substitute. I started to get really sick of it. We've found since that she can be tempted into Indian. Lately she's been venturing some Mexican. Still a long way to go to what I'd call a broad overlap, but it's starting to get there.