In today's Bite: Allergy awareness and winning afternoon tea recipes

Banana cake, sausages with mashed potato, summer salad and za'atar and feta pinwheels. Photos / Bite

Find all your favourite bits from today's Bite magazine online. Follow the hyperlinks in Jo Elwin's editor's letter and lose yourself in bite.co.nz.

With around one in 10 children likely to have a food allergy by their first birthday we must be keeping nutritionists very busy, not to mention Allergy NZ. Throughout November, in the lead-up to Christmas, the charity is reminding people of the importance of taking food allergies seriously. Allergy adviser Penny Jorgensen shares some interesting facts with us and the gluten and dairy-free banana cake recipe will live permanently on bite.co.nz for those times, which is becoming more often than not, when we have to cater for those with allergies.

Our nutritionist, Mikki Williden, can also tell us a lot about allergies but today she's busting some myths around snacking, confirming a statement that is used regularly in my family when any of us complains about weight gain: "stop snacking".

Mini doughnuts, rib-eye beef and muffins. Photo / Bite

Bite contributor Bevan Smith has been busy writing a new book - Riverstone Kitchen, Another Helping is now available at bookstores at riverstonekitchen.co.nz - and he is sharing three recipes from the book with us: Summer salad with green goddess dressing, mini banana and chocolate doughnuts with chocolate sauce and rib-eye of beef with potato salad and summer slaw.

Beef with a fresh tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. Photo / Bite

We were presented with another set of incredibly good reader recipes to judge for our afternoon tea recipe competition. Sunita Fernandez is our winner with these za'atar and feta pinwheels. We also loved Ann's muffins and Rose's chicken, pine nut and basil fingers.

Chicken and pine nut fingers. Photo / Bite

For dinner tonight? Some of New Zealand's finest grass-fed beef with a fresh tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. Or maybe it's one of New Zealand's finest sausages, now that Peter Gordon is bringing back the sausie with piped mashed potato down the middle trick.