What is inclusive cooking about?

Inclusive cooking will not make you thin, it's not a health blog and neither is it culinary genius. It is about you being able to feed everyone who comes to eat at your place with the minimum of fuss, and for me it is a way of life.

Let me explain.....

After years of struggling with ill health my husband decided to cut wheat and gluten out of his life and quite quickly his health started to pick up again. 6 years later and he never seems to have a day off ill. We are not medics, we can't say for certain that he is allergic to gluten only that he is clearly intolerant of it as on the few occasions when he has slipped many of his symptoms have return.

During those six years we've been lucky enough to have two beautiful children. After a fair bit of research we decided that when we introduced solid food we would follow the path of Baby Led Weaning in short that means eating family meals together with a focus on cooking things that could be classed as finger-foods (carrot cut into sticks etc.) so I had to find meals that would suit them AND be safe for my husband to eat. 

And finally there's me. I'm either allergic to or highly intolerant of, palm oil and coconut. Sound easy enough to avoid? Let me tell you, it is far from easy, you wouldn't believe the stuff those two things get into - dried fruit, noodles, breadsticks and butter-type speads to name just a few. Honestly it is every where. Also I can't eat most other nuts but luckily they don't kill me they just make me very ill.
But the biggest reason for Inclusive Cooking comes from experiences over the last 25 years of being vegetarian.

The 'Special Dish' 

The reasons I chose to be a veggie are mine alone and belong in a separate post, what I want to talk about here is the dreaded 'special' dish.   Whenever I ate at someone else's house or even a restaurant in the early days I had 'the special dish', something different to everyone else. Generally the other people looked at you, looked and the dish and thank god that the cook knew how to cook their meal. And it wasn't just the 'experimental cooking' that upset me. Imagine you went to a toga party and everyone is wearing togas but they make you wear a ghost costume. It's still basically just a white sheet, but you are different. People watch and clearly feel sorry that you can't quite fit in (for except perhaps when the ghost costume is really glam with cool glow effects then everyone is 'ooOOoo, I almost wish I was a ghost too').  During the few years I tried being vegan it was even worse. OK so I was born an original and I don't want to die a copy, I like standing out sometimes but I don't always want to stand out, especially if standing out means another bland vegetarian lasagna or a ratatouille with lumps of over-salted and undercooked aubergine.

I feel that if you are all eating the same meal together then you should ALL be eating the same meal. So as a cook I cook to the common denominator (no I don't cook by fractions) that is to say I take everyone's dietary needs into account and come up with ONE DISH that suits us all. It's inclusive, we all share the same experience. Plus it comes with the handy advantage that I don't have to come up with 2 menus and we all get to eat at the same time. Group meals, especially family meals are important bonding sessions.

In my family inclusive cooking can be a pretty complicated affair, as I explained I'm veggie with an allergy to nuts, palm  and coconut, my darling husband (DH) is gluten and wheat intolerant and my two kids are just intolerant of anything new/spicy/packed with veg. I'm kidding, they eat plenty that most kids wouldn't but they are not 'food motivated' (thank goodness) and that makes in my experience, for a picky eater. Plus the children have at least one friend who we sometimes cook for who can't eat eggs and another little pal who (due to a medical condition) will be on a reducing diet for a very long time. Add to that my insistence that every meal must be flavoursome and not bland (a reaction against too many insipid vegetarian lasagnas) and nutritious and wow, that's one heck of a challenge!

So here is my promise to you, every recipe I stick on here is going to be

1. Easy to cook and adapt (even for the ardent meat eater) 
2. Veggie (and hopefully adaptable to vegan)
3. Nut free 
4. Gluten and wheat free
5. suitable for small children
6. as nutritious as I can make it
7. as flexible for other allergies as I can make it.

Oh and they will all be delicious. OK?