Birthday parties and allergies, sounds like a total nightmare doesn’t it! Just those 2 words in the same sentence…. Birthday party…….allergies……..

It’s one thing dealing with a single food allergy, add a whole load of allergies, and it becomes a bit of a nightmare. This year, it became even more difficult as Callum is now not able to have wheat either.

So, imagine, birthday party time rocks up. Usually, you’d go to the supermarket, keep things simple and easy for yourself, pick up some ready-made sausage rolls, quiches, pizzas, make some sandwiches, maybe pick up some fun cake treats, ice cream and some sweets. Perfect party food, right?

Wrong!

None of the above foods tend to be safe for the little dude. We could just about get away with it before, but now wheat is also part of the mix, most things are now out of bounds! I know, it almost seems cruel.

As a result, with Callum’s party fast approaching last week, I needed to make sure that I made all the food for him in the run up to the party. On top of all that, my mission was to make sure that every single bit of food that was available for the party was totally safe for him – I refused to have any foods on the table that he couldn’t eat, that would be just downright unfair!

I always do food for the adults as well as the kids. So, on the children’s menu for the party was:

• Mini pizzas
• Sausage rolls
• Cocktail sausages
• Cucumber and carrot sticks
• Crisps – poppadoms, bacon rashers, swirls
• Popcorn
• Chocolate crispy cakes
• Chocolate squares with buttercream
• Fruit salad
• Sweets
• Birthday cake

And for the adults:

• Thai inspired pumpkin soup
• Chilli con carne with rice
• Wine (medicinal of course!)

When you look at the list, it doesn’t seem all that different from what you would aim to get when you go shopping. And all of the children’s menu was dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, tomato-free, and wheat-free!

I’m not going to lie, it was an awful lot of work to get it all together, with some forward planning for things like the ‘nomato sauce’ for the pizzas, but it worked!

For anyone reading this and wondering/ worrying about how you could possibly make food that covers multiple allergies, birthday cake included (!!), it actually can be done, nothing is impossible!!