using rice dream in cooking

[klc]

i was wondering if i can cook with "rice dream" and add it to foods for a 6 month baby. basically, my little girl is dairy and soya intolerant and so i am looking for a healthy alternative to milk to give with her porridge. i currently express milk to give her but i would like some more options. any ideas?

[Pam]

Yes you can cook with rice milk, though Provamel recommend that you don't boil their rice milk (but it has never been a problem for me). You could also try oat milk and there are milks made from nuts, potatoes, pea protein and quinoa. You could also ask your doctor for some hypo-allergenic formula but this smells and tastes yukky so not many babies like it to start with.

Rice milk in ready brek is delicious but oat milk might as well be water, you are just adding oats to oats.

[klc]

Pam, thanks for the reply, I'll give it a go. I've got some hypo-allergenic formula, but have seen a number of comments that it's not very nice.

[Bet]

I have used Rice Dream to make pancakes and yorkshire pudding and the results have been very good - in fact there is not much difference between using this and normal milk. Have also tried using Nutramigan for these two things and the results were both disastrous!

Rice dream is also good for mashed potato when I have made shepherds pie.

My daughter is milk and soya intolerant - I read somewhere that up to 40% of children who are milk intolerant are also soya intolerant - my daughter showed much the same symptons for both.

Keep on experimenting with the rice dream as it does seem to work well when used as an alternative to milk

[klc]

Thanks Bet,

so what do you give your daughter as a cheese alternative if she is both dairy and soy intolerant? is there anything available? and what about yoghurt alternatives ? how old is she? Is it a case that she has to have calcium supplements?

I am hoping that my daughter might grow out of the intolerances as she is only 6 months old at the mo(fingers crossed). I even tried Nanny infant formula based on goats milk but that gave her hives and vomiting too. My mother is a coeliac (gluten problems) so I am only hoping that we don't have that to contend with too!

[Bet]

I'm afraid I havn't found an alternative for yoghurt or cheese yet - my daughter started to really enjoy the provamel soya alternatives but then all the old symptons of intolerance started again which is when we realised she couldn't have soya either.

She is 4 and a half now but we only realised she was soya intolerant about 6 months ago, even tho' the doctor gave her soya milk as an alternative when she was a baby!

I was prescribed calcium-sandoz as a supplement for her when I managed to convince the doctor she wasn't interested in the alternative milk, but I'm not sure what age you can start giving this from. I know they say that rice milk should not be used as an alternative until 2 years as it dosent hold all the necessary nutrients a baby needs.

Now that my daughter is 4 she has just been prescribed vitamin tablets by the hospital dietician as well - I'm not sure if she will be able to swallow the tablets but will find out in a couple of days!

I remember phoning the cust service line for Nutramigan and they sent me a pack of recipes which could be used with nutramigan in - maybe their own recipes would work better than our own?

It must be hard trying to find alternatives for your baby - my daughter has ended up on a very bland, plain diet as a lot of manufactured foods have soya in. We have also just bought a bread maker as a lot of bread has soya flour in it. There are products out there which are both soya and milk free but I do seem to take a lot of my time trying to find them!

Let me know if you need any more advise - particularly with the soya intolerance