Gossip & Gatherings: Loads of ‘Free From’ News That'll Definitely Interest You!

The New Kid on the Block: BFree
A new Wheat Free and Gluten Free bread, BFree, launched December 5th in Dunnes Stores nationwide (on the mainstream bread aisles) shortly following a POP UP shop in Dublin’s City Centre (23-24 Duke St) which will remain open during the weeks leading up to Christmas for promotion.

BFree is an Irish company and is the brain child of Cuisine de France’s founder, Ronan McNamee, who has been developing the recipe for almost 3 years until it tasted just like wheat based products. Ronan also solicited the help of Prof. Dr. Elke K. Arendt to optimise the nutritional composition.

I haven’t tried it yet but if you want to hear all about it from the horses mouth this is what their publicists are saying:
- A range of wheat free and gluten free bakery products that are outstanding in terms of taste, freshness and nutritional values
- Independent research carried out Summer 2011, assessed BFree and its closest competitor products, and marked BFree the winner in terms of taste and nutritional values.
- At only 71 calories per slice, High in Fibre and Low in Fat, BFree bread is one of the healthiest in the bread market world wide including wheat-based breads.

But I'll review it shortly and get all the ingredients and free from attributes out to you as soon as possible!
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Dairy Free, Egg Free, Animal Free: Petite Treats Charity Coffee Morning

Yesterday my friend M. and I went to the Petite Treats Coffee Morning in The Two Sisters pub in Terenure. It was super hard to find as I cycled around and around in the ridiculous wind trying to find the pub, simply because the location is incorrectly marked on Google Maps BUT, once I found it I was in Dairy Free, Egg Free, Animal Free heaven (with a side of Soya Free & Gluten Free bliss)! Cupcakes and Brownies and Cookies and fabulous slab things with chocolate and biscuit which were AMAZING... However, the cupcakes still Rule All. There was also rice milk for the teas and coffees and even the Gluten Free cupcakes were top notch... like the real thing one might say. There were also really swish raffle prizes such as 2 Clarins gift baskets and a handmade necklace! The awesome bit is that they raised an excess of €1017 for their chosen charities and were discussing a potential monthly event....
And just to stress HOW good Petite Treats’ baked goods are... M. who is vegan, has got into the habit of ordering petite treats and sharing the surplus with her husband’s office... Her husband’s office, which are all gaming computer boys who are free from NOTHING like Petite treats SO much that they have started a weekly order, I kid you not. So don’t let ANYONE tell you that Free From Food has to be a lesser stuff.
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Making Web-Life Easy: FreeFromBlogs
A new Free From Food Allergy and Restricted Diet Directory is coming to town!! I’m Ohhh so excited!

If you’ve ever trailed the web looking for a blog on your chosen topic you have probably come across various types of Directories (the I Eat Everything Foodies have a few of them) but the great news is that a few free from girls, Lucy, Amy, Amy & Gemma, got it together and have decided to launch their very own Free From Blog Directory! ...Life just got soooo much easier.
It’s still just getting started and I think that the actual launch date isn’t until the New Year but if you blog free from you should submit your stuff!... And if you just read free from well then, there’s already some reading material to get stuck into, not to mention their very own blog... So Hip Hip Hooray! I love when things get easy :)
www.freefromblogs.com
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I Used to Eat Here: Juice
Juice is gone! I was walking down Georges’s Street when my friend S. asked me if I had seen Juice lately...I looked up and my jaw dropped! Juice is no longer... and it’s replacement isn’t even vegetarian! ... However... S. tells me that the buzz on the boards is that there is a 100% VEGAN restaurant opening somewhere in Dublin’s City Centre in the new year!!! (early 2012) ... now, these are rumours and gossip is never a good thing but if we all put our positive thoughts together maybe it will really happen!!!
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And that’s it... That’s all I’ve got!
So get out there and finish your christmas shopping

:)

A Fantastic Allergy Friendly Indian: Delhi O’Deli

I can’t tell you how excited I am about Delhi O’Deli which truly lives up to it’s slogan of ‘India Beyond Curries...’. I had read a couple of lines about this Vegetarian Indian restaurant (the first in Ireland) serving Vegan options and had been meaning to try it out for a while but I definitely wasn’t prepared for how amazing it was going to be! A few years ago when all the super cheap Chinese restaurants opened up on Moore Street the price savvy diners/students/bohemians flocked to Dublin’s famous market street to get ridiculously affordable, ethnic food. The venues were a bit shabby and some of the dishes such as ‘Triple Delicious’ were a bit more miss than hit but if you knew the menu you could easily get an affordable and tasty meal mixed with the wonderful vibe of the ‘real’ city.

I love Moore Street. It smells like old time city living. Although I like my luxuries and enjoy a slick design I can’t help mourn the loss of the ‘old’ Henry Street and the inner life of a thriving city. I feel like Moore Street is one of the few pockets left which haven’t been glazed over to resemble ‘success’ and ‘modernity’... It’s noisy and smelly and filled to brim with complete characters.

After a little while most of the Chinese restaurants closed down...possibly due to Health & Safety, although I never experienced a problem on the few occasion I ventured in but who knows what lies behind closed doors! There is still some great bargain basement Chinese and Korean cuisine to be found on nearby Parnell Street but the gap left on Moore Street has been more than filled by one of the best finds this year! ‘Delhi O’Deli’ is a Vegetarian restaurant that serves numerous Vegan options which of course translates to Dairy Free and Egg Free! I always think a good sign for an ethnic restaurant is when the nations nationals eat there and Delhi O’Deli is no exception. It’s clean and new and filled with the sound of Bollywood films playing on the television but lets get to the real topic:
I was bringing the food to my sister on her lunch break on the south side of the city so I got a take-away, although Delhi O’Deli is primarily a sit-down venue. Next month new menus will be available clearly labelling which dishes are vegan (aka Dairy Free and Egg Free) but even without the labeling I found the waitress to be thoroughly knowledgable about the ingredients. She asked me what I wanted and then she told me if it was suitable... There is yoghurt and vegetarian cheese used in some dishes but the Vegan options were plentiful and there were even some options which were naturally Tomato Free and Onion Free. In the end I ordered:

Stuffed Bread Pakora (Bread covered with chickpea batter, filled with potatoes, no cheese) €1.45
Pani Puri (Popular street food from Mumbai which is also known as water balls in the western region. Hollow fried crisps filled with potatoes, chickpeas, served with spicy and sour tamarind water) €2.95
Delhi O’Deli Chole Bhature (All day student favourite and popular north Indian meal. Seasoned chickpeas with onion and cilantro, served with fried breads called Bhatura. Pickle and salad served on side) €4.45 [note: this dish is not usually vegan adaptable or dairy free. The Bhatura is not vegan but the Puri can be substituted for bread -Ed.]

The left over fried bread from the Chole Bhature tasted AMAZing dipped in the tamarind water and the Stuffed bread Pakora, although a bit light on the filling, tasted thoroughly delicious. My sister said that the Chole Bhature was ‘very rich in flavour with quite a heavy kick of spice’ (not for the non-spice lovers) and was ‘similar to a hearty stew’... ‘the ultimate comfort food’... ‘really good’... ‘so good’.. ‘yum yum’.. etc, etc.

The only problem is that Delhi O’Deli doesn’t seem very aware of Gluten Free diets or the Coeliac condition. There was a bit of confusion around the similarity of the words ‘wheat’ and ‘sweet’ but I think with a little patience you should be able to find something free from Gluten as many Indian dishes are Gluten Free by nature. They also use Corn flour in some dishes so beware if you happen to be Corn Free.

p.s. try out the Daily Fivers! There is a buffet style set up at the back of the restaurant featuring five daily specials (the website tells you what features for each day of the week) all for only €5 per plate!

Delhi O’Deli
12 Moore Street, Dublin 1
Tel: (01) 872 9129
Web: www.delhiodeli.com
Opening Times: Breakfast 08:00 - 12:00; Lunch/Dinner 12:00 - 20:00

Fabulous Dairy Free Biscuits Found in TK Max

Last Wednesday I had the happiest morning! I was about to go downstairs and make myself my regular breakfast of oat bran with berries and ground flax seeds with a side of fruit when the doorbell rang and oh to my surprise - It was the post man with a package for me!! My very good friend C. had posted me some biscuits that she had found which just so happened to be dairy free! C. and her partner P. (also dairy free) had found some ‘Keep Calm and Carry On Fabulous Oatie Flips’ in TK Max (in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, Dublin 2), and had loved them SO much that they returned to buy two more packages AND a package for me!! Yum!
Now, I have technically just given up refined sugar but a gift is a gift,and it's not something that I want to become obsessive over as it's only a choice as opposed to an allergy - and a new choice at that! ... and Oh. My. Goodness.
‘Keep Calm & Carry On Fabulous Oatie Flips’ are Amazing! They don't actually look as good as they are because they are quite pale in colour but the flavour definitely makes up for that! I had to keep re-reading the ingredients because they tasted sooo unbelievably buttery and good that I just couldn’t believe that they were

- Dairy free!
- Egg free!
- Animal protein free!
- Wheat free! –although cross-contamination is always an issue when talking about oats
- Potato free

I had actually seen these ‘Fabulous Oaty Flips’ in TK Max in Portlaoise on a weekend trip but had been on a much stricter regime at that time and had already been far to frivolous that day to warrant buying them for anybody else... So you can imagine my extra delight on them being forced upon me!!
Needless to say, my very healthy breakfast quickly transformed into sugary fat-laden biscuits but not just any sugary fat-laden biscuits, the BEST sugary fat-laden biscuits that I’ve ever had (possibly an exaggeration, but they just taste so buttery!). They also make me wish I lived in the 1940s (minus the war) because these Oatie Flips are supposedly made according to the ‘Original Old Recipe Biscuits’ and if that’s what biscuits tasted like then send me back!

Oh, and they also come in a cool tin too :) So thank you C!

Ingredients:
Rolled Oats (48%), Vegetable Fat (contains salt, natural colours: annatto & curcumin, emulsifier E475 & flavouring), Sugar.
Nutritional Information per 100g: unavailable – and maybe it’s better for business that way!