Welcome Page

Hello, my name is Laura and welcome to my blog about my life living with a Coeliac and lactose-allergy sufferer. The aim of this page is to reach out to those not just suffering themselves, but to those whose life may have been up-turned by the discovery that a loved one can no longer eat gluten, wheat or dairy. 

When, two years ago, I met my boyfriend Ben I was secretly rejoicing when he said he didn't eat cheese (I don't like it, and this meant no chance of being made a cheese sandwich!), but he soon explained that it wasn't just a matter of taste, but down to an intolerance. At the time, I was just setting off for university, equipped with a basic knowledge of turning on the oven, placing frozen food on a tray and waiting for twenty minutes - a strategy not easily applied to a gluten- and dairy-free diet! 

After seeing how difficult, lacking in variety and expensive this diet was proving for Ben, I started to look at making healthy, free-from meals from scratch, but I'm hardly a Michelin-standard chef and free-from recipes often included ingredients I'd never heard of and definitely couldn't find in a supermarket that suited the student budget. I also found that basic, simple, everyday recipes were difficult to come by - I may have a lot of time on my hands as a student, but spending more than an hour trying to work out how to dice something in a particular manner for an unexplained reason wasn't likely to become my new hobby any time soon. 

Over the past two years I have been refining my limited cooking finesse to allow for more than chips or baked beans. Some of my creations have been... debatable, but with a little practice I have had more successes than I have failures. In the last six months, I have started to put together my own book of free-from recipes, but they have restricted use for just my own cooking and need sharing with the larger community of sufferers that are out there. 

I will be putting up my recipes as I get them perfected (sometimes takes a few attempts!), with all the information about the ingredients, where to buy them, how much they're likely to cost etc. I hope to eventually make some how-to videos for those who prefer to follow a recipe that way, but for now I'm starting with this blog. 

Thank you for taking the time to take a look around, and I hope there is something of help on here for you!