@HealthJourno joins @FoodsMatter team!

We are delighted to announce that @HealthJourno, better known to many of you as Alex Gazzola, coeliac commentator, blogger, paid-up Italian-Welsh foodie, cake-lover, FreeFrom Food Awards judge and ‘voyeur’ of the annual FreeFrom Food Awards ‘bash’, deputy editor of SkinsMatter and fellow founder/organiser of the FreeFromSkinCare Awards……….. has joined our newly-formed social networking team!

As those of you who tweet and Facebook will know, last year our lovely American intern, Amy, took us firmly in hand and got us thoroughly on track but, sadly (and shortsightedly?), the provision which allowed foreign students two year’s worth of working visa once they have finished their degree has now been with drawn and Amy has been dispatched back to Chicago leaving us to fend for ourselves!

However, she instructed us well and we have now got the bit so firmly between our teeth that we are dramatically expanding our social media activity to include dedicated Facebook and Twitter accounts covering not only FoodsMatter, CoeliacsMatter, SkinsMatter and our two industry FreeFrom Awards (for foods and skins) but FreeFrom Foods and FreeFrom Recipes.

So please welcome (and please ‘like’, ‘follow’, ‘share’, ‘tweet’ and post about…) @FreeFromFood and  FreeFrom Food and @FreeFromRecipes and  FreeFrom Recipes.

The two FreeFrom Food accounts will focus on all that goes on on the FreeFromFoodsMatter site –  all our new product reviews and our huge freefrom manufacturer directories, currently underoing going a major revamp and due to go live in mid of August. Plus, of course, useful articles and research reports related to freefrom food – and any exciting news, events or special offers in the freefrom world.

The two FreeFrom Recipes accounts will focus on our FreeFromRecipesMatter site which is also undergoing an ‘upgrade’! It already contains over 600 ‘freefrom’ recipes covering dairy and lactose-free, gluten and wheat-free, soya-free, egg-free, nut-free, corn-free, nightshade-free, yeast-free………  main courses, starters, salads, vegetarian dishes, desserts and cakes, breads and biscuits. The vast majority of these come from the FoodsMatter archives and have been dreamt up, tested and tasted by yours truly. But there are now so many excellent freefrom cooks around that it seems a shame not to make use of their expertise and offer you a far wider selection of dishes.

So, although I will certainly not stop cooking, or inventing recipes, from now on my recipes will be heavily interspersed  with those from guest chefs, cooks and cookery writers all of whom have now, for personal or professional reasons, made a study of freefrom cooking. Kicking off , this weekend with recipes from the lovely Caleigh – known to many of you as The Gluten Freek. Caleigh is one of, thankfully, only 600 people in the UK who are unfortunate enough to suffer not only from Crohn’s disease but also from coeliac disease  – but she still manages to lead an amazingly full life – she was a judge at this year’s FreeFrom Food Awards among many other things. You can read her own account of how she copes with both conditions here and here is a sneak preview of her recipes…

But meanwhile….. back to Alex! Because Alex is already an active Tweeter and blogger and and is just about to start up his own Facebook page – and because he knows the FoodsMatter sites and all that we do so well, he seemed the ideal person to recruit to help us manage all of these new outlets.

So as from August 1st, Alex and Cressida and I will all be tweeting and Facebooking on all of these accounts – although I think Alex will be in charge with Cressida and I just filling in the gaps! However, a  freefrom hamper to the closest guess on who tweeted/posted what!!

But whichever way round, do please join us. We have a huge amount of information about every aspect of freefrom food (and of course, on our FoodsMatter and CoeliacsMatter sites, on all the allergy, intolerance and sensitivity problems that would cause you to need to eat freefrom) and even if we cannot always sort out every freefrom problem ourselves, we are pretty sure that we will always know someone who can!