Dairy-Free Halloween /Christmas treats?

[tigerlily]

Hi, I'm new to this site.

I was wondering if any of you knew where I could get some HALLOWEEN/CHRISTMAS treats for my daughter?

Vanessa.

[Pam]

For Halloween there are usually lots of jelly type sweets around but probably not much in the way of chocolate.

For Christmas Kinnerton usually do a dairy free advent calendar by mail order (you have to contact them through their web site), it costs about £5 though and is dark chocolate. I either use one of those advent calendars with pockets and fill it myself or dismantle a standard advent calendar, remove the milk chocolate and refill it with melted dairy free chocolate, then put it back together again. Most tree decorations are milk chocolate and selection boxes tend to contain chocolate too, though I found a non chocolate one last year that had fruit pastilles etc in it. D&D chocolates do christmas novelty chocolates but these are dark chocolate and quite expensive http://www.d-dchocolates.com/ and http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/sect/I.html have a lot of dairy free stuff to choose from as do www.veganstore.co.uk

Above all, plan ahead and order in good time as things tend to run out or take longer than expected for delivery.

[Nic]

A decent health food shop might have some non-dairy sweets such as the 'whizzers' which are a non-dairy version of those little sugar covered milk chocolate eggs you get in packets. And there's some others, too. But you'll probably need to go to an independent store, Holland & Barrett doesn't seem to do them.

If you're anywhere near a Fresh and Wild (they're in various parts of London and Bristol) then it would probably be worth a trip.

Any chance of persuading your little girl that dried fruit is a treat? That would make life easier...

Nic

[cnc]

For things like Halloween and Easter we used to get something like a book instead (this might not be appropriate at her age) but maybe you could adapt the idea. We never minded not having chocolate and preferred getting a present we could actually keep- I was eating dairy at this time!

[tigerlily]

Yes, books are a good ideas and I'm all for it (being a translator and bookworm) and she's got a whole "library" of her own, but at Eden's age it's a little difficult to convince her of that! Also, because she has heart problems and had a lot of problems in the past (she hates dried fruit but loves bananas, by the way), including life-saving surgery at 15 days of age, I decided to let her eat sweets. There were times when all she would eat were bananas and Alpro yoghurts! She is very fussy and on the slim side, no worries there then! Besides, the good part about many dairy-free/soya prodcuts is that they are Cholesterol-free (good for her heart!).

[cnc]

Lots of sweets are dairyfree, I've had some rather nice foam bananas from Julian Graves, which as far as I remember were dairy-free. Sweets are easier to get than chocolates. Marzipan fruits are dairy free (well they are at the confectioners near me)

I'm on a hunt to get a dairy free advent calendar as well!! Think my mums coming to see me just before Halloween so will take her sweet shopping as well!

[matt]

i'll be getting out the wooden advent callender as normal and buying choccies to put in it for my daughter. best purchase ever from lakeland.

[tigerlily]

I think I may get her the LEGO Advent Calendar....if I "help" here build the models! They can then go on the tree! £ 12.95 at www.amazon.co.uk

Vanessa.

[Pam]

Gillian at Kinnerton will be able to tell you if they are doing advent calendars this year, g.phillpot@kinnerton.com but as I said, they are mail order only and in limited supply most years. I think any profit made from the sale of their free from calendars goes to the anaphylaxis charity.