Hi, I’m Kayla, Mum to three kids Ashton (nine), Felix (five) and Hazel (three). All three of my kids were born with food allergies. You can read more on each child’s journey with food allergies by clicking on their names above.
Having three kids with allergies has challenged me to overhaul all of our eating habits and relearn how to cook, bake and create using new ingredients, and combinations that I never thought existed. In a way I am so blessed because it turns out I have quite a knack for recipe creation and development using allergy friendly ingredients and I have created all sorts, from egg free quiche and dairy free cheesecakes to cheese made from zucchini! Don’t worry though, I am a busy mum of three, reined in by a food budget! You won’t find too many strange ingredients or twenty step recipes. I like to keep things as simple as possible, with ingredients that are accessible to everyone.
All the recipes I share are free from dairy, soy, wheat, artificial colours, flavours and refined sugar. I also provide options in many of my recipes to make them gluten, egg, nut and coconut free (and I’m open to absolutely anything – so please ask if you need help modifying the ingredients and I will see what I can do!) As I breastfed my daughter for 2.5 years restricting all of the above.
One thing that is very dear to my heart is good nutrition, and healthy food. I have used this to vastly improve the quality of life of all of my kids, and have seen ‘unexplained’ and rapid reductions in their allergies in a short amount of time, by focussing our diets around nutritious whole-foods. Food can be medicine – and we are only as good as what we eat.
As a former primary school teacher, I have had a sneak preview into my fair share of school lunch boxes over the years. As I have learned more about health, nutrition and ‘real food’ I have seen that the food advertised and packaged for lunch boxes does not provide the best nutrition or nourishment for growing and learning bodies. I’d love to help fuel a change in what we feed our kids. This year I took the first step towards this by creating a Lunchbox ebook – and Facebook support group. Ironically, I now actually homeschool my kids, but this book is awesome whether you need it for lunchboxes or not.
As if dealing with kids and food allergies wasn’t enough, in October 2020 I began my own health journey after a shock diagnosis of crohn’s disease and emergency surgery to remove half of my bowel. Since then, my recipe development has been very slow as I am unable to eat many foods and have been suffering from debilitating brain fog and fatigue while we try and get the inflammation in my gut under control. Currently we are unravelling a huge picture and slowly gaining all the pieces of the puzzle, which I hope to slowly rebuild into a better, stronger version of myself. I am taking a break from Gutsy Kitchen while I navigate this journey, but am leaving all my content here for you to browse and enjoy until I get back.
Thank you so much for stopping in, I hope you enjoy my content, and recipes. If you have any questions about what we eat, FPIES, breastfeeding and allergies, allergies in general or about my kids and our experiences with allergies, crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease, SIBO, low FODMAP diet or my journey to diagnosis, don’t hesitate to contact me, I am more than happy to discuss and can refer you on to to right people if you need some help.
Kayla x