Boy no. 1 has been on his gluten free diet for a few months now and is adjusting well. I’ve had to rethink my after work/school weekday teas but there are plenty of things available to replace the old glutenny favourites almost like for like. It’s easy to get hold of gluten free gnocchi, pasta or fish fingers, and regular things made out of meat, fish or vegetables only need the odd tweak.

Weekday breakfasts have been a bit more trial and error. Cereal is the norm in our house and of course, the obvious choices are packed with evil gluten. In his first gluten free week, we ordered a whole load of boxes of different gluten free cereal, partly to make it fun, but mostly to try to find some new favourites. Unfortunately, we found that most of the gluten free cereal is either a bit bland or full of sugar or chocolate – no surprise there. I ended up having to endure some particularly cardboardy stuff that he understandably rejected.

His new favourite, non-chocolatey option became Kellogg’s GF Puffed Corn Cereal, which isn’t on their website, so here’s a link to it elsewhere. (In fact, bafflingly, there isn’t even any mention of anything gluten free on the Kellogg’s website, according to the search.)

Unfortunately, the Puffed Corn is coated with sugar syrup and molasses, so whilst it’s a favourite for him, it’s not something I want him filling up on first thing in the morning. But a few weeks ago, I had a bit of a brainwave. I realised that one of my cereals, Dove’s Farm Cereal Flakes, would probably make a rather fine replacement for his old favourite, Fruit and Fibre. So I added a box to the shopping order, along with a new cereal box shaped plastic tub, and a variety of fruity bits to add in:

banana chips
flame raisins – the big ones
coconut shavings
dried apple

I mixed a box of Cereal Flakes together with a handful of each of the fruity bits in a large bowl. The dried apple wasn’t quite as dry as I’d have liked and I thought the moisture might make the rest of the mixture soggy, so I put it on a baking tray at 100C in the oven to dry out more, which took about 45 minutes. Once cool, I added them to the mix and transferred the whole thing to the new tub. He was delighted at breakfast time the next morning. He still likes to sprinkle a few Puffed Corns on top but I can live with that.

I haven’t totted up what this cost, but it’s undoubtedly 2 or 3 times the price of a box of Fruit and Fibre. well, that’s being gluten free for you…