Momma Jen's Hypoallergenic Kitchen Adventures

Mushroom Leek Quiche (GAPS-friendly)

2012-01-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

As promised!

This recipe was based on Julia Child's version of Flamiche - Quiche Aux Poireaux. It is SO rich that one small slice is enough to fill me completely up and zaps any sugar craving for about two days. I increased her original recipe again by a half (give or take a little here and there) to fill a deep-dish 9" pan. I also cooked it a bit longer and at a lower temperature for the sake of the coconut flour in the crust. Also, I chopped the mushrooms to make it more child-friendly, but I needn't have bothered since she didn't like it anyway. Next one I'll slice them.

Also, the coconut flour crust browns way too easily. Ours got very brown, even though I covered it with foil half-way. Here is a possible solution that I have not tried, but might work - end the crust at the level of the pie, possibly adding the pie crust edge with 12 minutes to spare on the baking. Let me know if that works.

Mushroom Leek Quiche

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients

Pie crust:

1/2 cup sifted coconut flour
1/2 cup flaked coconut
2 eggs
1/4 cup ghee or butter, melted
pinch salt

Beat the eggs. Slowly pour in the ghee while stirring so as not to cook the eggs. Add the rest of the ingredients, finishing it with your hands when it's too thick for a spoon. See here for more information on how to roll out a coconut flour crust.

Before making the filling, spread a thin layer of cheese at the bottom of the pie crust.

Filling:

about 3 1/2 cups sliced, cleaned white of leek
about 1 cup chopped or sliced mushrooms
1/2-3/4 cup water
1 tsp sea salt
4 Tb butter or ghee
4 eggs
2 cups coconut cream or milk
pinch nutmeg
1/2-3/4 cup grated goat jack cheese (Swiss would be nice, but we can only do goat's or sheep's milk, so it wasn't an option for us)
1 Tb ghee, cut into pea-sized dots

After slicing the leeks, submerge in a bowl of cold water to clean out the dirt that collects between the layers. Boil them over moderately high heat with water, salt and ghee until the liquid is partly evaporated. Add the mushrooms. Cook until the liquid is almost evaporated, then turn the heat down to simmer, cover the pan and stew gently for 20-30 minutes until very tender and aromatic.

Beat eggs, coconut cream and seasonings in a big mixing bowl to blend. Slowly add the mushrooms and leeks bit by bit so as not to cook the eggs. (Julia suggests at this point that you taste to check the seasoning.) Pour into the pie shell and distribute the rest of the cheese and ghee over the top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until puffed. (Ours didn't brown, presumably because of the lower temperature. In our case, a knife came out wet but more or less clean at the end.)

Breakfast Quiche

2012-01-22T10:46:00.001-08:00

This is a mushroom-leek quiche based on Julia Child's recipes, substituting coconut cream for dairy, a coconut flour crust, and goat milk jack cheese for Swiss.
Recipe to follow...

Fructose overload!

2012-01-13T20:59:00.000-08:00

Our daughter hung out in aftercare today because a meeting ran late and I just couldn't make it back in time. The past aftercare teacher was very aware of overdoing it with fruit. When I mentioned to her that I was concerned about too much sugars and that I considered fructose to be in that category, that teacher knew exactly what I was talking about. I was so relieved! This time, not so much...

There's a new aftercare teacher - a lovely woman, very gentle, caring and firm with the kids. Unfortunately, I just learned that she is unaware that giving kids too much fructose can be harmful. When I came to get our kid, she had in front of her a bowl-full of what looked like an entire sliced banana coated liberally with gobs of honey! There were grapes on the table and rice bread, also covered with honey. There wasn't a pat of butter or even a bit of olive oil to be seen, or anything that had even the slightest amount of protein in it, except for a container of Trader Joe's cream cheese (which probably has very little of any nutrient left in it). I was amazed. When I commented on the amount of fructose made available to the kids, and indicated that I didn't want our daughter to ingest quite that much at a time, the new teacher seemed to be taken aback (and was possibly a bit insulted. I was sorry about that but when it comes to our kid's diet, I believe that I should say what's necessary,) and then reassured me that fruit only had "good sugar" in it, that it doesn't make children hyper or cause any kind of problem. I just shook my head and began to say that according to our pediatrician that there are no "good" or "bad" sugars, only sugars. I could tell that she wasn't ready to hear that, so I just said that our family's choice is to limit fruit, please. She still seemed surprised. I was surprised that she was surprised.

Now, I have no problems with sweet treats in the afternoon - we have them all the time! Little Moo has custards, cookies and cakes with garbanzo flour, rice flour, honey, maple syrup, etc. She has all kinds of fruits. The difference is that she has ONE or TWO treats, no more. For instance, if she has two small cookies, she might have a pixie tangerine with that. She seems to be quite happy with that amount. I'll also offer her some cheese, meat, a hard boiled egg if she's not had two for breakfast, or some bread that has nut flour as well as rice flour in it and I always spread it liberally with ghee. I take issue with a bowl of bananas covered in honey followed by grapes and honeyed rice bread, eaten at the same meal. To me that's excess.

I wish with all my heart that more people realized that fructose can be just as, if not more harmful than sucrose, (here's more about that...and even more - for that last link, scroll down to near the end where Dr. Mercola composes a whole paragraph and a table on why cutting back on all sugars, including natural fruit sugars, is desirable. Lastly, here's an article on the problems with agave syrup,) and that whole, preferably saturated fats are good, especially for children. Then our kid wouldn't have to be so set apart in her eating habits. That's been the hardest part of transitioning into school.

So, one of my resolutions for this new year is to start supplying the school with foods that I feel will be more appropriate for snacks to supplement the fructose. I think I'll bring in a jar of my crispy sunflower seeds and maybe the pumpkin seeds. Little Moo won't touch them, but perhaps other kids will benefit from their presence, especially the ones from vegetarian and vegan families. I'll also invest in a jar of almond butter, an extra loaf of rice-almond bread, a nice hunk of cheese and maybe some of Little Moo's favorite crackers. Oooh. And I'll make an extra batch of ghee this week and will bring that in as well.

Wish me luck!

Game Hens, Caffeine, Unintentional Puns and other things that have fallen by the wayside.

2012-01-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I know. I promised the game hen recipe. Now it's kind of late in the game (unintentional pun,) so the exact recipe has slipped through the sieve-like pores of my tired, late-holiday brain, but I can write up an overview that explains how it worked so that you can figure it out for yourselves.

Honestly, it wasn't hard.

What I figured out was that the difference between a basic chicken and game hens is how much fat you use and how. They are smaller than chickens, so the heat penetrates more quickly and cooks the breast faster. I'm not sure whether they are also not as fatty, or perhaps the smallness of the bird simply requires more fat to keep it moist. Either way, they do well with stuffing and adding lots of fat. So this is what I did. I also noticed plenty of recipes that stuffed the birds with something sweet like one that suggested a few peeled grapes or a dice of apples with cranberries and rice. I thought that perhaps the gaminess of the flavor did well with that kind of sweetness.

If you're on GAPS like I am, stuffing is starchless, but not necessarily without sweetness, so I made up a nice slow saute of lots of ghee with diced onions, the cooking making them even sweeter and a nice golden color. Then I added a dice of carrots, celery, and a few other vegetables. (I had hoped for mushrooms, but without thinking, had used that week's mushrooms in the burgers I made a day before. Oh well...) Between the time that the onions were complete and when I added the vegetables I added some oregano and a small amount of salt with the idea that because of the smallness of the birds that too much salt would drain them of juices too quickly during cooking, but a little would make the birds flavorful and make the juices run just enough for early basting.

I lay the stuffed birds on a bed of chopped greens with enough broth to cover the bottom of the pan. Then I rubbed them with garlic, drizzled them with the juice of a lemon and coated them liberally with ghee. After all of that I covered the breast of each bird with a double layer of cheesecloth.

I roasted the birds at a slightly lower temperature - 325, I think, with an oven initially preheated to 350. It would be fine, even, to go lower, as long as basting happens often. I basted at intervals of around 10-15 minutes. I can't remember how long they cooked for. A few recipes for stuffed birds indicated that they required between 1 and 2 hours to cook. Ours finished somewhere between those, perhaps at 1.5 hours.

So that's the story on the game hens. Next time I try them I will do my best to get a real recipe up there. These turned out really well...

So, onto other things. There was eggnog that turned out so rich that really, the bottom of a mini mason jar was quite enough. Three cups of this stuff disappeared by day three.

Then, last night I stayed up WAY too late. This morning I had the first cup of green tea that I've had in, oh, years. I stopped drinking caffeine about 7 years ago when we were trying to get pregnant and only tried a few sips a year ago or so when it was offered at a gathering. It was a terrible time to try it - I hadn't eaten anything in a few hours and my stomach immediately clenched and I was buzzed in a very uncomfortable way for about an hour, then I fell asleep.

This morning, though, I tried a very weak cup of green tea with breakfast. So far, so good. I have no plans to go back onto it - I still feel strongly that stimulant foods and drinks are bad for our bodies and our culture, both economic and social. (See Sidney Mintz's book Sweetness and Power. Ironically, it's very dry, but goes down well.)

So my challenge now is to go to bed at a reasonable time, like when time is notated in double digits without an "am" afterwards. Ha.

Game hens, ahoy!

2011-12-25T16:51:00.001-08:00

Here they go...if they work I'll post the recipe.

Coconut, GAPS-legal Eggnog!

2011-12-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

The presents were wrapped, the tree sprayed and watered against the incredibly dryness we've been having, music was playing...and I couldn't settle down. So I came up with this recipe for eggnog.

Why, do you ask, did I not make it with the lovely raw egg yolks and raw milk, as the WAP'ers prefer? The reason for that is that in this part of California at this time of year we don't get pastured eggs. I could, if I wasn't thinking about the incredible number of food miles on them, buy pastured eggs from Texas. Every other week we get pastured eggs from Montana, and even that makes me feel guilty (and honestly, I see the color on them and kind of wonder what those chickens are eating since they look and taste just about like our local organic eggs). We happen to be out of them just now.

We can have raw goat milk, but that also appears to be on hiatus for winter, not to mention that the goatiness would be wrong for nog.

Not to mention that coconut milk is SOOO good for you, and when you can't get pastured eggs, that organic egg yolks do suffice. I don't feel quite right eating non-pastured eggs raw, so...

So this recipe does call for gentle heating, coconut cream and milk. (I recommend Wilderness Family Naturals, but any kind that doesn't add stuff and is BPA-free is good.) I thought I'd made a huge amount, but it appears to be half gone and we haven't even started the day yet!

I can't have honey, and I won't use sugar, hence...dates, and a blender. You could, though, substitute raw honey to taste added at the very end. You could, if you have raw cream and milk that you digest well, raw honey and beautiful pastured eggs, simply warm the spices in a bit of the milk gently for a while, then toss it all in a blender and whip it up. Seriously, it's the best of all worlds. Meanwhile, here's what we had this morning...

Coconut Milk/Cream Eggnog

Ingredients:
2 cups coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg plus more for garnish
5 or 6 whole cloves
1/2 vanilla bean
1 cup coconut cream
5 egg yolks
3 dates
4 drops stevia

In a saucepan, combine the coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and stevia. Carefully split the vanilla bean, scrape out the caviar and add both caviar and bean to the mixture. Gently warm the mixture until warmed through. While stirring, heat to medium, so that it steams and bubbles a tiny bit. Avoid a rolling boil. Heat for 3-5 minutes.

In a blender put the dates, yolks and coconut cream. Blend well, until the dates are liquified.

To temper the eggs, add the hot coconut milk to it by the spoonful, stirring or whisking well so as not to cook the eggs. When it's yellow and warmed, slowly add the egg/cream mixture to the milk/spice mixture on the stove and stir or whisk until slightly thickened and warm. Remove from heat. Strain out the spices. Transfer to a mason jar. Seal well and chill, or drink warm. Warm or cold, it can be garnished with a bit of nutmeg.

Chez Moo has become The House Of Apples.

2011-12-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we had our first annual wassailing party. On a lark I went and bought a ton of organic apples, which were on sale because although they tasted pretty good, they had a kind of mealy consistency that didn't lend itself well to raw snacking. Then I got a bunch of bulk spices, including star anise, which is just gorgeous. I had no idea how many apples I needed, so I got too many. Just a bit. (Understatement. )

I went crazy with the juicer and made two big jars of apple cider, then I heated it up, wrapped a bunch of spices in cheesecloth, and tied it will twine. It simmered for roughly 30 minutes and was just amazing. It was a bit spicy, but even the kids were enjoying it.

This is my recipe for the mulling spices. A few things are estimated. I didn't use ginger because of allergies, but if you can tolerate it, I'd add about 1 tablespoon or so of dried ginger or a about an inch or so of a fresh root.

Cider Mulling Blend

For a large pot (spaghetti-sized) of cider:

4 cinnamon sticks
4 star anise
1 tablespoon of whole allspice seeds
3 or 4 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods.
The skins of one orange and one lemon, cut up into manageable pieces

Put into a big tea ball, or wrap everything into two or three layers of cheesecloth and tie securely.

Heat up the pot and add the spice blend. Simmer 15-30 minutes or to taste.

It's possible to make this for storage or gifting if you cut off and dry the rinds three days in advance.

It's been four days. The cider has been packed away into the freezer and small brown spots started to show up on the gazillion apples that were still left. Then came the Winter Solstice and suddenly it was Hanukkah, too, so Little Moo and I decided to get down to work and get on the baking.

I came up with an apple cake, and we made another cobbler.

The cake was covered with raisins, which wasn't the best idea, but Little Moo wanted to use them, so we did. I wasn't sure which side would be prettier, so it's kind of a right-side-up-upside-down cake that can't seem to make heads or tails of itself.

I have to say that it's delicious, light, a bit eggy and I believe that it will be nicely dense once it's chilled. We enjoyed it topped with kefired coconut cream. Also, it's a blender cake, but only because, as usual, I cream dates into the eggs for sweetness. You could totally substitute 3/4 cup or so of another sweetener (some kind of sugar - honey would be too much liquid) and make it in a food processor or even by hand. Also, this is not a very sweet cake. If you decide to indulge your sweet tooth, add about two or three more dates.

Solstice Apple Cake

Ingredients

12 eggs
1/2 cup melted ghee
1/2 cup coconut cream (or milk)
6 dates
4 drops liquid stevia
2 pinches salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sifted coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup chopped apples
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon
(Optional: 1/2-1 cup raisins)

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a blender, blend the eggs, coconut cream, dates, stevia, salt and vanilla until smooth. While spinning, add the ghee. Add the baking powder to the coconut flour. Add the dry mixture into the moist and blend well.

Pour into a large bowl and mix down any lumps that are left. Toss the apples (and raisins) with the cinnamon and swirl them into the batter.

Grease the sides of a 9" round pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the pan. Decorate the top if you like with apples. We also used about 1/8 teaspoon of sugar to sprinkle on the top.

Bake for 50 minutes-1 hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Here are pics of the cake in progress:

Great article on how ghee doesn't cause coronary diseases

2011-11-30T13:22:00.001-08:00

I ran into this today, written by an Indian-American doctor. It's about ghee. She also discusses what could be causing health problems that are rampant in the Indian-American community.

India Rediscovers The Health Benefits Of Ghee by Niraj Patel, M.D.

Turnips

2011-11-10T18:05:00.001-08:00

If you hit it just right with the peeler it'll do a triple lutz into the sink.

(More) Sauce!

2011-10-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

Since we've been eating cooked tomatoes, general-use sauce has been very popular around here. It's very basic - slow-sauteed onions, garlic, oregano, basil, tomatoes, ghee and broth.

Here's what I found today at the farmer's market for a very reasonable price...

The plan is to make a huge pot of it, distribute it among all of our recycled yogurt containers and freeze it all for winter.

Tonight's menu and cooking plan

2011-10-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

As my work schedule speeds up I need to do more cooking at once, but only twice a week...Sundays and Thursdays.

The ghee is almost finished.

Tonight is "pizza night" which is actually a fun, easy meal. I'm making the crust first. The pizza actually takes about 10 minutes once the crust is done. I suppose I could actually make and freeze a few of those crusts...hmm.

There will be steamed cauliflower and roasted fennel with our pizza. (The fennel just showed up in our box and I was at a loss until I found this:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roasted_fennel/

Simple. Nice. Looks tasty.

Then I have to make two entrees for the next four days. Once chicken and one beef.

I am hoping to put together either a fun ice cream type thing or an apple/pear pie.

It's going to be a late night here...better get back to work.

Pie Crust Revealed!

2011-09-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

Coconut flour has a few qualities to it that make it more difficult to work with and one or two that make it easier. It doesn't bind well to itself like wheat flours do. It's also not starchy. For those reasons, it tends to crack and requires a lot of eggs to hold it together. It's dehydrated. It's also a fat-based material, which means that melted fats moisten it much better than water-based liquids. It tends to have the consistency of a rich pound cake when thick, or when thin, like a crispy, very delicate cracker. Dryer breads work well as crusts for pizza or pie. Moister versions work well as pancakes or pan breads.

I've usually found that coconut bread texture actually improves with refrigeration.

Because of many of these factors, it's also a crust that does well with patching, which is good, considering how easy it cracks.

This was actually the bottom crust to our pumpkin pie, which was not deep-dish. On a deep-dish pie pan the crust needs to be a little thinner than in this case. Either way, this is the technique I've found works.

The top to the apple pie was my first attempt at it. It went surprisingly well, but I still don't have quite enough to document that process yet.

Apple Pear Raisin Pie (GAPS-friendly with one alteration)

2011-09-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

The pie was fantastic. There's only about 1/5th of it left. I love that our daughter goes to a school where a festival spread has a gluten-free table. Then I love it that someone asks me what's in my pie and when she finds out says "That's perfect," takes a big piece, then enjoys it!

One note on the type of apples: They should have a bit of bite to them. Granny Smiths are a classic choice. On the other hand, our pie was made with Macintoshes (Little Moo's choice) and it was delicious.

Here's the recipe.

Deep Dish Apple Pear Raisin Pie

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

Double Pie Crust
3/4 cup sifted coconut flour
3/4 cup flaked coconut
3 eggs
1/3 cup melted ghee
generous pinch salt

Blend dry ingredients. Beat eggs. Slowly add the ghee to the eggs while enthusiastically beating the mixture so as not to cook the eggs (but not so much that you decorate the walls!). Add the wet to the dry ingredients and blend well.

Divide so that one piece is slightly larger than the other. The larger one will be for the bottom. Roll out the bottom dough between layers of waxed paper on a large cutting board to fit the pan. Carefully peel off the top piece of paper. Lay the pan on top of the dough. Flip the whole cutting board over and with the last piece of paper still on the dough, carefully squash the crust into the pan. Peel the top paper off and form the edges of the dough to the pan. Don't let too much crust stick out or be too thin since coconut flour will dry and burn very easily. (See next post for a detailed description of how to make a coconut crust with pictures.) Roll out the top portion and set aside. Don't do this too far in advance or it may dry out too much.

Filling
4-5 large apples, pared, cored, thinly sliced
4-5 large pears, pared, cored, thinly sliced
1/2 cup water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup raisins
2 teaspoons maple syrup (optional)
1/4 teaspoon liquid stevia
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
pinch allspice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon sugar - palm, date, or other granulated/crystalline form (optional)

In a large saucepan or dutch oven simmer apples and pears in water, covered, stirring occasionally until slightly soft, but still with some body. This could be between 5 and 10 minutes depending on the consistency of the fruit. Add raisins, stevia, (maple syrup,) cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and vanilla. Continue cooking until the fruit becomes tender. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

Fill piecrust with the mixture. Cover with the top pie crust and seal the edge. Carefully cut several slits in the top crust to let out steam. If you are using sugar, sprinkle it over the top of the crust.

Bake for 12 minutes or long enough for the edges to start to brown. Open the oven and cover the edges with long folded strips of foil wrapped around the top and bottom of outer edge of the pie. Continue to bake for another 5-6 minutes. If your oven tends to be hot, reduce the heat after 12-14 minutes to 350 degrees F.

Ah...coconut crust tip for a single-crusted pie

2011-09-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

When you've got that thing nice and thin, peel off one layer of waxed paper. Flip your cutting board and keep that last sheet of paper on the other side of the pastry. Using the solidity of that last sheet of paper, push it down into the pie pan. Pieces will fall off the sides. It's okay.

Then gently peel that last sheet of waxed paper off and patch with the fallen bits of crust.

And there it is...

More on Apple Pie

2011-09-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

After wondering how I should post this recipe, I thought that I should, first, discuss the recipes I used to make this pie...both are questionable, in my opinion, although each has some good points, too. Then after tomorrow's event when the pies are cut and eaten, I'll get responses and will then post the recipe if the responses are good. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board!

The first apple pie recipe is the one I learned from a friend as a teenager. It's a classic apple pie that's full of sugar, corn starch and spiced well with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. We'd spend the first half of a day peeling, coring and slicing apples to make two or three pies. It was a recipe that made the best of the sudden bounty of apples in the fall on the East Coast. It was my friend who taught me that a few pears give the pie a lot of depth, and also that the number of apples used in most recipes is never enough. Unfortunately, if I removed all the sugar and the corn starch, there's not much left to it.

The second recipe is Bruce Fife's from his Cooking With Coconut Flour, which you might have noticed has been my go-to cookbook for a while. I made a double basic crust. I added pears. I used more raisins than he called for and substituted a smaller amount of maple syrup with his called-for 1/4 teaspoon of liquid stevia for sweetness. This is a pie that will be shared, and will be eaten by a group that has some kids and adults with gluten intolerance and Celiac's Disease. There are some who are vegetarians and a few who are dairy-free because of ideology, not medical necessity. A very few of the families also cook with Weston A. Price in mind. For those reasons, I chose to use ghee. I could have tried some gelatin in the apples, but I decided that it was both more work than necessary and also would have meant that an awful lot of the people at this event tomorrow would refuse to eat it.

The crust is very challenging. Coconut flour does not hold together well, so, as you can see from the picture, it's pretty rocky near the edges. It also browns very quickly, so I'm a bit concerned about the state of the crust inside. On the other hand, it bakes up so fast that it's probably fine. I nearly prebaked it, but the recipe called for it to be raw going in. So that's what I did.

Fife only calls for four apples. I'm wondering what size pie shell he has. Twice that barely filled this deep-dish version. Also, I left off all thickeners - I discovered that while stirring the filling that it thickened just fine on it's own. I also added a few teaspoonfuls of ghee which will make it thicken a bit when chilled. Then, as a compromise towards aesthetics (coconut flour crusts are not that pretty) and for a bit more sweet, I did sprinkle a bit of unprocessed sugar on the top - barely 1/4 teaspoon.

So that's the story of this pie. Please send both it and me some good thoughts for tomorrow!

And now...pumpkin pie.

Almost done!

2011-09-22T10:50:00.001-07:00

Thursday is Pie Day!

2011-09-22T08:45:00.001-07:00

Random Thought

2011-09-17T20:31:00.001-07:00

Practicing harmonizing while slicing mushrooms is a bad idea.

A few facts about coconut custards

2011-09-17T15:48:00.001-07:00

Thanks to my flirtations with culinary disaster, you get the benefits of hindsight.

One...coconut milk does curdle when overheated with egg yolks.

Two...good eggs don't need to be cooked at all. They just have to be warm enough to harden when cool.

Three...don't try to make a custard with a time limit or when under stress. They're best the next morning anyway.

Four...don't experiment with the last box of coconut milk.

Needless to say, no photos are a available. *deep sigh*

The Elephant In The Kitchen

2011-09-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

It's been three years since I started the GAPS Diet and somewhat longer than that since I became acquainted with the work of Weston A. Price. It was soon after that I began to notice something that very rarely gets mentioned and seems to stick out like a two-ton pachyderm hiding behind the refrigerator door.

Food is one of those things in our lives that is way more than the sum of its parts. The relationships that we have with food, the way we get it or raise it, cook and eat it speak loudly to how we live on the earth, relate to each other, and to what are our most deeply held opinions and values. Our eating habits, rules and taboos make us part of a tribe, or not.

People like me who cook and eat along the lines of Weston A. Price/Nourishing Traditions tend to be on the right of the political/cultural spectrum. Those who are more on the left seem to be more likely to be vegetarians and appear to be in a different reality when it comes to food and nutrition. This isn't always the case, I'm sure, but so far I have, as yet, to be proven wrong.

There. I've said it. Throw your tomatoes now, if you like. It's true. It's weird. It puts me in company that ordinarily would never share any kind of mental space with me and my ilk and visa versa. Or at least, that's what I thought before I started researching how to improve my family's health through diet.

It's a lonely road being a political and cultural liberal with this kind of nutritional philosophy. Occasionally I hear other progressives speaking out who have discovered that current science points human beings towards pastured animal-based foods rather than a solely plant-based diet, like Lierre Keith and my original mentor, Julie Matthews. It's a relief when I do hear a voice that speaks of eating compassionately for the environment and for our bodies, that the cycle of life includes death, and a world of intensive agriculture without animal husbandry is a scary one to contemplate. It's rare, though, that I meet a liberal in person who is either on GAPS or following WAP's philosophies. Our family fills our plates with rich stews, fermented condiments and vegetables, raw milk yogurt and cheeses while just about everyone we know is avoids too much fat and feels that they should apologize if they choose to eat chicken instead of soy products. It's not fun to eat alone, even when the food is delicious. I keep hoping to find liberals who are on a similar journey, but so far that's not been the case.

On the other hand, I've recently come into contact with a cousin that I never knew that I had. Like many folks on that side of my family (most of whom I have never met and am only now learning exist) she is a conservative and a Libertarian. She also packs her freezer with local, grass-fed beef. She cooks locally and from scratch, believes in giving her beautiful and healthy children whole fats and good food, at least as our family would know it. When I post a sharp comment on Facebook about genetically modified organisms or the undeclared toxins in commonly available toiletries she often posts supportively with all my liberal friends. We are careful not to talk politics since we're both pretty opinionated. We've made many a connection through how we feed our families and it's a blessing.

There aren't too many situations these days in which rightwards- and leftwards-leaning people can connect like this. I am thankful for this one.

Sauerkraut Making Night!

2011-09-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

We took advantage of a quiet holiday evening to fill our crock again.

Adding peppercorns.

A little extra height is nice for leverage.

Nearly ready!

Curried Drop Biscuits With Beef

2011-08-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Last night we thoroughly enjoyed our savory stew after all that birthday food. After days of making stuff for our daughter's big day, it was time to make stuff for me. I was in the mood for something like bread, so I made some therapeutic biscuits. These are based on one of Bruce Fife's recipes.

Curried Drop Biscuits With Beef

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1/4 cup ghee, melted

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 2" turmeric root, peeled and grated (Or 1 teaspoon dried turmeric)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon coriander powder

3/8 teaspoon (1/4+1/8, that is) sea salt (if you don't like salty food, go down to 1/4 teaspoon)

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 cup precooked ground beef

1/3 cup sifted coconut flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Melt ghee in small frying pan. Pour out all but enough to fry the spices. Under low to medium heat fry the mustard with the cumin seeds until they just start to pop. Add grated turmeric and garlic, turn down heat, blend well. Add coriander, pepper and salt. Blend and take off heat.

Blend together the eggs and the unspiced ghee. Slowly add the spice mix, very slowly if it's hot, whisking as you go. Add the baking powder to the coconut flour and add together, mixing well. Fold in the beef. Drop by spoonfuls onto a pan covered with parchment paper. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes.

These turned out especially well because the beef had all kinds of lovely vegetables in it, as well...

Deviled eggs...

2011-08-28T16:43:00.001-07:00

And here they are, the true edible stars of the afternoon. These were my first deviled eggs since I do not come from "the Mayonnaise People," or what my husband calls his tribe. To be honest, they're too mayonnaise-y for me, but the flavor is nice. We had two loaded plates and the kids made them disappear in about 5 minutes. They were made with homemade mayonnaise a la Sally Fallon, more or less. I added pickle brine to the final mixture with mustard powder, paprika, lemon juice, tarragon, salt and pepper.

I've rethought mayonnaise over the last few years. Of course in my old low-fat vegetarian days I'd have thought these scandalous, but really, it's just olive oil and whole eggs. I've never liked mayonnaise much, although I do like this better than storebought. Nourishing Traditions uses creme fraiche or something similar. Now that would be more to my liking, and with raw cream it would be truly spectacular, but until we can go back to cow's milk that's not a possibility. Some day!

Little Moo, of course, discarded all that lovely nutrient density in the center - she only eats yolks when they're scrambled with the whites or cooked slightly in poached or fried eggs. Oh well. At least the other kids enjoyed them.

Vanilla layer cake

2011-08-28T16:42:00.001-07:00

Bleh. Babycakes NYC frosting, er, sauce.

2011-08-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem to matter how I make it, or what I substitute. It just NEVER turns out to be more than some kind of sauce. Which is what it is...and like many foods made for vegan eaters it's waaaaay too sweet, not to mention it has rice milk and rice milk powder (yuck and more yuck!) in it. So the cake was au naturel, double decker with banana slices between, but with the sauce on each piece and fancy birthday candles, it went fine. As usual, I don't get to taste it, but I had reports that it was good.

So, a good, nutrient-dense, not too sugary frosting anyone? I used to make an amazing frosting from blended dates and coconut oil, but this year Little Moo wanted pink. So pink, she got.

I have a feeling that I'll have to figure out a real buttercream thing for next year, assuming that she can eat it by then...I wonder if you can make buttercream icing out of ghee...?

Sorry - the party was completely crazy and I didn't get any pictures. :(

I'll post the images I took of them cooling last night...

This year's birthday cake!

2011-08-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

Wish me luck. I've been charged with the creation of pink icing.

Pictures to come.

Actual Pizza!

2011-08-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the pictures aren't so perfect. They're a bit blurry, but I just had to post them to show how happy we all were with the pizza crust I baked tonight! In order to make it completely GAPS-friendly, just leave off the leavening, or try baking soda.

Here's a link to the recipe I tried.

One minor thing is that the batter needs to have a consistency like toothpaste and it took nearly 3/4 cup of coconut flour to make it so, instead of 1/2. I'd make it according to the recipe, though, then add until it's the right consistency. I used goat monterey jack cheese and fermented "ketchup" as sauce. It would be super-tasty with some sauteed onions, or greens, or mushrooms and olives. Tonight we trapped pieces of one of my veggie/beef burgers under the cheese.

In the oven, before flipping.

I tried to get a shot of the whole pie, and failed!

Enjoying their pizza and cream of rutabaga soup.

We ate it all...

Turmeric and black pepper

2011-08-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have been taking turmeric, in the form of curcumin, since my awful experience coming home from a long trip with a terrible allergic reaction. Initially, it didn't do all that much, although I do think it kept the worst reactions at bay. Then I came home and made Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup, and my symptoms improved in about 3 days. I mention in that post about how turmeric works hand in hand with cumin, coriander and other spices. I did not mention pepper. I also did not use pepper in the recipe on that page because a doctor had told me that it had inflammatory qualities.

Then the other day I was at Other Avenues, and noticed that Gaia includes black pepper with its curcumin supplements, so it got me thinking. I began to add small amounts of pepper to my breakfast after taking my curcumin, and lo and behold, it did seem to magnify the effect of the turmeric. I don't know anything, yet, about proportions or amounts, although it does seem like not much pepper is required to "turn on" the turmeric's anti-inflammatory properties.

Interesting, isn't it, that a food which, on its own, is inflammatory, has what appears to be the opposite effect in the right combination with other foods?

It's like salad, only warm!

2011-08-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

We got our first box of vegetables today from Guerrilla Organics today. It was just lovely, with a big bunch of chard, 4 large pat-a-pan squash, celery, grapes, onions, beets, rutabaga, pluots, radishes and a big, beautiful head of romaine lettuce.

I took one look at that lettuce and just sighed. I love salad, but ever since I had a hernia repaired about six weeks ago, I've taken a few steps back and seem to relapse each time I eat too many raw vegetables. I seem to be able to handle a few carrot sticks or slices of cucumber. Each time I eat a salad I get sick for about a week. No fun.

Then I remembered an amazing salad I had years ago which was made of warm, wilted greens, and decided to give it a try.

So I took apart the head of lettuce, popped it in a pot with ghee and a bit of broth where I cooked it gently until it was wilted, but the ribs in the middle were a bit crunchy. I topped it with our favorite dressing, which is a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, mustard powder and tarragon. It was really good and so far I'm doing fine.

Back to basics: Fermented Cod Liver Oil/High Vitamin Butter Oil

2011-08-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

All you smarties probably already know this, but it's been a while since I did any reading about why the heck we take this stuff.

I've been on plain high-vitamin CLO for about 3 years now. When we can afford it I splurge and get a bottle of HV Butter Oil, as well and we always seem to benefit from it. One of the first things I noticed was that my body becomes more elastic and less dry, both in the joints and the skin. Little Moo has been taking that stuff since she has taken food and she is a hardy, sturdy, slim but densely built kid.

After some recent experiences with family members who suffer from painful and debilitating arthritis, I've become very aware that it runs in our family, so I'm thinking deeply these days about how to prevent it. A few weeks ago I ordered the Blue Ice brand of fermented CLO, which has natural instead of synthesized vitamins added back into it. The dosage is somewhat different, as well. I can take one or two teaspoons instead of one or two tablespoons to get the same effect.

Here's a page from The Weston A Price Foundation's site on the manufacture and benefits of CLO. If you scroll down there's a letter from an osteopathic doctor named Rosann Volmert in Pasadena, which outlines the benefits of fermented cod liver oil. The first part is very interesting - David Wetzel has been researching the creation of his own brand of fermented CLO. I'd be interested to hear from folks out there if it's available now and if they've taken it, what they think.

http://westonaprice.org/cod-liver-oil/update-on-cod-liver-oil-manufacture

Multiberry Custard Pie...a preview

2011-08-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

It's summer and I was determined to put our farmers' market berries to some use. I came up with a GAPS-friendly pie, assuming that a person can eat fruit comfortably. There's no added sugar. There are eggs in the custard and the crust, but no dairy. It is not sugar-free, though, since the fruits, although low-sugar, are still sweet and I added dates to the berries to give it a more dessert-like quality.

I can outline the recipe here, but I'd like to do it again before I put it out there officially, since it didn't quite become what I intended.

As you can probably see, it didn't quite make it to the table long enough to get a photo of it whole. :)

Honestly, if you're a die-hard low sugar eater and you're looking for a dessert to really enjoy, this is the one. If you're used to high sugar desserts, then this is one to modify. It was very, very fruity, (Snackboy said that it smelled like a Pop Tart) and had a nice coconut flour crust. The custard was made extra special because Little Moo and I had a great time slicing and scraping out a vanilla bean into the heating coconut milk. I also added our last box of coconut cream to the mix.

It was a three-stage pie. Little Moo was my very excited assistant. First we made a coconut flour crust, based on Bruce Fife's recipe. (See Cooking With Coconut Flour) We lined the crust with three sliced bananas because it tends to be a bit dry. Then we made a gently stewed mixture of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries with a spoonful of ghee and a goodly amount of gelatin mixed in. I added chopped dates to the mixture for some extra sweetness. That was allowed to cool for about 10 minutes or so and added to the cooled crust. We put two boxes of coconut milk and one of coconut cream into a pot, added the seeds of one vanilla bean (I wish I had some pictures of that! We had so much fun that we didn't bother to shoot any!) and a few drops of stevia to the coconut milk. It took about 5 egg yolks, more ghee and a tablespoon of gelatin to turn that into a lovely custard that was unlike anything I've ever made before. I think it was the vanilla bean, which had been sitting on a shelf for months awaiting the right day to be used. And so it was.

I let the custard cool for a few minutes, then added it to the top of the fruit. We decorated it with sliced strawberries. It was covered with waxed paper and put in the refrigerator to chill.

My sense was that the fruit did need to be a bit gooier and the custard could have used a bit more gelatin or egg (although the bit that didn't fit in and wound up in a ramekin was perfect!). I suppose I could have given in and added some maple syrup or something. Maybe date sugar. On the other hand, I pride myself in fully sticking to the GAPs protocol, at least as my family eats it. (That's no sugars or syrups, although added fruit is okay. Stevia's bending the rules, actually. Honey is okay, but not for my allergies. Maybe someday.)

This pie, though, could also be eaten with some egg-laden coconut bread or after an entree of scrambled eggs for breakfast, since it is a bit more like fruit and cream than a super-sweet dessert. It's all good, I guess.

I'll keep thinking and will try this again soon.

Chicken a la Bedelia

2011-08-06T18:55:00.001-07:00

Sorry - no recipe today. I just wanted to share this funny picture.

I ran out of cheesecloth so the chicken is wearing a dress.

She asked for "Sun Eggs"

2011-07-31T22:26:00.001-07:00

So that's what she got!

Kale Chips, part 2

2011-06-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

It took about 45 minutes all told. I used too much salt, I think, (I adjusted it for the recipe below) but it's still delicious, even salty. You may prefer to use less oil than I did.

Kale Chips

Ingredients

1 head of kale, de-ribbed, well washed and dried
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon unrefined sea salt

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Salt and thoroughly oil the kale leaves. Spread on a big cookie sheet or pan with enough of a rim that the oil won't drip off. Bake until done, or about 45 minutes, stirring and turning after each 10 or so.

Yum!

Kale Chips!

2011-06-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know why it never occurred to me - Little Moo loves those little snack packs of nori, which are my only concession to packaged snacks. I love the idea that she's eating seaweed, getting all those trace minerals and a good dose of iodine to combat the radiation from Japan that our government has refused to admit has been hitting our shores.

On her second day of camp, Little Moo's camp teacher made kale chips, then told me how. I was surprised at how amazingly easy it sounds. It's not seaweed, but good detox all the same, and has that same salty tastiness. She used a 325 degree oven for 5 minutes, but with olive oil, I'm going down to 250. It will take more time, but I think it will retain more nutrients that way. Evidently, Little Moo just kept munching the kale all afternoon. The teacher was very impressed. That's our Little Moo. She's a good eater. She's got a mother on GAPS and she's had nutritionally dense food since she started on solids. What can I say? The kid knows what's good. Here's what it looked like when it started. More pics to come...

Cardoon

2011-06-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Yes. It's called "cardoon." It looks like a giant piece of celery, or a stalk of rhubarb that has just seen a ghost. It tastes a bit like a cross between celery and artichoke and I found one single piece of it at one of my favorite vendors at the Fort Mason Farmers' Market today.

Little Moo was fascinated. She thought it was called "cartoon," which was fine by her.

I cooked it up tonight just to see what it did.

Peel the top, not the bottom.

It seemed very hard, so I pulled out the leeks that we got today, as well and sauteed them in ghee for 12 minutes. I threw the slices in, and discovered that they required about 25 minutes plus a dousing with hot broth to get them to soften up decently. Not the prettiest vegetable I've seen, but nice-smelling. Little Moo wasn't having any of it, but Snackboy and I decided that it was very nice paired with leeks. I think next time I'll use it in a slow cooker recipe. Interesting taste.

Was jam, now...?

2011-06-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

So, the jam had too much gelatin in it, so it's pretty solid. If you'd like to make this jam, I'd cut the gelatin amount at least in half.

Meanwhile, it's still tasty, so here's what was for dessert tonight.

Burger with ketchup

2011-06-26T16:41:00.001-07:00

Here it is...the final result! So far, so good. No rashes.

Blueberry Jam...?

2011-06-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

I had no intention of actually making real jam, but we did, and in almost no time, too. It's technically GAPS-legal, since it has honey in it instead of sugar, and I'm not sure about pectin, so I used gelatin. I say "technically" since it's so sweet that, at least for this GAPS person, it should be saved for a tiny treat and not eaten all the time. On the other hand, Little Moo has been clamoring for jelly for ages because her best friend lives on PB&J and she wanted her own. I just couldn't stomach getting jars of whatever for her, especially the jams, since they're such mystery foods, and so full of sugar. Organic mindfully sourced almond butter is evidently something like $20 a jar, so I got good organic almonds, soaked, roasted and blended it into butter.

This jam has about 1/2 cup of honey in it to 4 cups of blueberries (about 3 cups from the farmers' market, 1 from our freezer), 1/2 a lemon's worth of juice and 1/4 cup of Bernard Jensen's gelatin. That's it. I simmered it down until it went all thick, then added the gelatin melted in a bit of boiling water at the end. 4 cups of berries plus other ingredients fit nicely into a pint jar in the end, that had been sterilized by boiling 10 minutes.

Tomato velvet, day 3!

2011-06-20T11:05:00.001-07:00

Who knew that it would take quite this long. I think it's nearly there...

Tomato Velvet/Paste, chapter 2

2011-06-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Today the tomatoes got simmered for about 4 more hours, all told. I think there's still too much liquid in it to really make paste, but our strainers are too fine to get anything really thick through, so I decided to strain it as is, then maybe I'll simmer it some more tomorrow.

The plan is to have it ready for when Little Moo is done camp tomorrow and then we can make ketchup together...

Secret Ingredient Guacamole

2011-06-19T18:28:00.001-07:00

I wanted to call this Methuselah Guacamole because it has a secret ingredient that gives it extra long life, but that doesn't sound too appetizing, which this definitely is. It tends toward the salty, but deliciously savory. I often have to restrain myself with the salt.

There are no raw tomatoes because we can't have them yet, but you could chop some up and throw them in. Here's a picture of the latest batch. It's pureed smooth because that is how Little Moo likes it, although it's just as good blended with a ricer and nice, chunky bits of onion and cilantro.

Secret Ingredient Guacamole

3 large ripe avocados
1/3 or so cup cilantro leaves, chopped
1/4 white onion, chopped
1/8 tsp ground cumin or seed, toasted and cracked
3/4-1 tsp sea salt
juice of 1 lime

and...wait for it!

1 clove of fermented garlic, chopped fine (tasty and keeps it tasty for a while - none of this three-days-and-it's-compost guac.)

(Also, if you substitute a teaspoon or so of sauerkraut brine for the salt, not only will you have yummy results, but the guacamole will last for a really long time!)

Chunky version

Blend the avocados with a fork or ricer, add cilantro, onion, cumin, sea salt and lime. Finish with adding the garlic. Yum.

Smooth version (You don't even have to chop anything!)

In a blender, add all the ingredients, with the cilantro, garlic and onion on the bottom. Blend well.

Guacamole salad

Chop some celery and/or cucumbers and/or watercress, blend into the guacamole and serve on the side

Guacamole salad dressing

Drop a dollop of guacamole on top of green salad with vinaigrette. Blend well.

Starting tomato velvet.

2011-06-18T22:15:00.001-07:00

The first of three steps to a modified ketchup. First come the tomato paste. The canned stuff doesn't agree with me - probably because of whatever trace amounts of corn, soy or preservative find their way into them - then it gets mixed with herbs, garlic and other good stuff. Then comes the fermenting medium and three days later it's ketchup!

Wow. It's moving fast. Better turn down the burner.

I haven't made this in a long while, so no recipe yet. Hopefully I'll get it right then it will get posted.

For now I send you the aroma of simmering tomatoes. :-)

Another way to eat it...

2011-06-18T12:31:00.001-07:00

"Cherry Smash Sandwich" (Named by Little Moo)

As promised...

2011-06-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

Coconut bread with coconut cream cheese. (This is the blueberry version of the bread.)

Cultured Coconut Cream Cheese! Seriously.

2011-06-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

NO dairy-free person can be without this stuff. If you like to ferment things, then you must try it!

I discovered "cream cheese" accidentally when I ran out of coconut milk for kefir. I had some coconut cream and just used that. Initially it made a lovely, crisp, tangy kefir the texture of clotted cream. Then, a few days later, I noticed that it had separated somewhat. The liquid at the bottom was about the consistency of coconut milk, while the cream lined the sides of the jar. On a whim, I stuck a knife in and spread some of the cream on my strawberry coconut bread. It's just like cream cheese - rich, tangy, creamy and just slightly sweet. It was like strawberry shortcake.

One quick disclaimer is that I have been using the coconut milk and cream in the little boxes from Wilderness Family Naturals. The taste is much better than the cans you get in the store, the products are organic and BPA-free. I also used Yogourmet's kefir starter.

Lest you say that my tastebuds are skewed from more than a decade without gluten and about 2 years without cow's milk, I gave my kid and my husband slices of strawberry-studded coconut bread slathered with this stuff and they ate it so quickly I thought I'd forgotten to give it to them.

Sorry. I'll have to shoot a picture next time. I ate it already. :-)

Coconut Cream Cheese

6 boxes WFN coconut cream
1 packet Yogourmet kefir starter

Warm the cream in a pot until it's between 150 and 180 degrees F for 3 minutes. Allow to cool to 110 degrees or below. Dissolve the starter in a small amount of the cream, then add the cream/starter mixture back into the cooled cream. Blend well. Pour into a large mason jar. Screw on top lightly without a seal. Allow to sit out for about 24 hours, then refrigerate.

Enjoy small amounts of the coconut cream for a while, until the cream separates and the cream cheese starts to congregate on the sides of the jar. Get a nice long butter knife and your favorite spreadables vehicle: coconut or nut bread, celery sticks, bowl of fruit, etc. Try to save some for the rest of your family. :)

Triage

2011-06-14T19:58:00.001-07:00

Hard to see, but it's another curried soup.

On the menu this week...

2011-06-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

I'm planning Little Moo's first meal schedule for camp. It's a bit daunting. I usually don't plan a full 5 days ahead, so I did as much actual cooking tonight as I could. There are a few more things for tomorrow, but the big work is done.

Finished - roasted chicken, veg. timbales (slightly fallen, but still tasty,) vegetable stew, pasta and tomato sauce (which she says she doesn't like. Oh well, more for us...) Still to make: beef burgers with onions and zucchini. Leaving the coconut bread for tomorrow! I'll slice up carrot sticks, chop up fruit for her yogurt the night before...

Anyone else out there making good stuff tonight?

If I can get these timbales right so that they don't collapse I'll post them here...they're super-yummy, even if they're not aesthetically gorgeous.

Finally, a freezer!

2011-06-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

After much convincing by my parents...to the point of obsession in the case of my father, we finally got ourselves a 5 cubic foot freezer. Even Little Moo is excited, mainly, I think, because I'll have more big blocks of time to play with her.

Notice how it's already being used for the alphabet magnets. It's destined to be an art gallery, as well.

Now for that meat share that will make our lives so much easier...

On Corn Bags

2011-05-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Since this is a blog, I can preface this by saying that corn-base PLA bags, cups, flatware and food containers make me crazy. I can't stand them.

There. I said it.

Now for the list:

1) Polylactic acid (PLA) plastic made from corn is generally made from the genetically modified variety. Firstly, yuck! Toxic runoff and pesticides infiltrating even farther into our everyday lives, not to mention the horrendous doings of companies like Monsanto (see links below to the case against Percy Schmeiser). It may only be a food container, but as I experienced (see #3), the material clearly leaches into what's in it. Secondly, do we really want to continue to subsidize the GMO corn industry? Thirdly, there are already too many giant fields of this Monsanto monster that could be planted with something useful, like greens or olive trees, or apples or lettuce. Fourthly, yuck. Really.

2) It does not biodegrade the same way that other compostables do. From what I read it requires a special facility, since it tends to break into pieces instead of degrading all at once. These facilities are not as widely available as they could be, so if you just toss that corn bag away in the compost, or worse, the trash, it is still simply garbage, albeit much less toxic garbage than PET.

3) You don't often hear about corn allergies, but it's been an issue for me, personally, and I'm sure there are plenty of corn-allergic people who may have problems with the material. Here's what happened to me: If you put food into a corn-based container, even if I am in no way allergic or sensitive to that food, I will react to the corn that leaches from the container into what went into my mouth. The last time I experienced that was about three years ago when I was testing agave syrup. My skin reacted exactly the same way I generally do to corn. I went back to the co-op to ask if there was any corn in the agave and was told that there wasn't. It took me a while to figure out that it was the container. I took home 1/4 cup of olives and reacted the same way.

4) Why more disposable food containers? This industry is simply supporting a throw-away culture that has to face up to the fact that we simply can't go on using things once and then discarding them. What's wrong with oiled paper, cloth, glass, or even a simple paper bag for certain food items? There are plenty of places to get a nice reusable bag, jar or box and some seriously spiffy thermoses out there. It's also perfectly possible to wash your plastic bags and reuse them for those food items that need to be encased in something soft and airtight for a short time. I've never been one of these "no waste/no trace" people, since I do understand the stresses of everyday living with kids, and I use (and usually reuse) many plastic bags, but as the years go on I move more and more toward that stance. Those Ball mason jars are amazing.

5) By using food to make non-food items we're just moving things around economically. It's bad enough that food is as expensive as it is, but as we've seen with the use of corn (surprise!) for fuel, it makes the corn used in food scarcer, and as a result, more expensive. Then fuel gets more expensive, so that the trucks that cart around all our food become more expensive and what the trucks carry get even more expensive. (I've managed to use the word "expensive" five times times in two sentences. Sounds like my life, really. :) )

(To read some of the same things I did about the pros and cons of corn bags: Smithsonian Magazine, About.com, Boing Boing.)
(To get a seriously spiffy thermos and other nice food containers, coffee filters, and even straws: Reuseit.com.)
(For more information on Percy Schmeiser: Democracy Now interview, his website, from Wikipedia.)

Hi everyone...

2011-05-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

Wow. I've just discovered "stats" on the Blogger Dashboard and am completely surprised to find out how many people out there. Most of you are finding this blog through Google searches. It's fascinating to read about what people typed into their search engine. Just some of the many search terms:

"hypoallergenic desserts" (plenty here, depending on your allergies)
"is rice a disaccharide" (it's a grain, but does have lots of starch in it - very glycemic, too, from what I hear)
"lacto fermented mustard" (yum!)
"gaps desserts" (also yum!)

This blog started a while back when our little girl was an infant and I was alone in a barely functional kitchen trying to make food that didn't give us terrible reactions. From there I stumbled into more hypoallergenic ways to prepare food, discarded packaged ingredients, and started to get more creative with things. Then, in 2009 I saw a doctor who put me on the GAPS Diet, and Little Moo started a modified version of it. We moved into a better place with a great kitchen, which made life easier. Two and a half years later, both of us have clear skin, less toxicity, and good health all around. I'm still on GAPS although I go off of it occasionally in small ways. We can even go out to eat occasionally. (Roam Burgers - basic, fresh food, with gluten/dairy-free options and no soy or corn in the kitchen. They make great sweet potato and zucchini onion fries - the catch is that they coat them with rice flour before frying. I splurge a bit when I'm there...so far, so good, as long as I'm sure to drink my broth for the next day or so.)

I hope you enjoy your stay here...pull up a chair, grab a plate and serve yourself something. I'm also interested in hearing what kinds of creative ideas other folks are coming up with in their kitchens.

Be well and enjoy!

Spring juice!

2011-05-15T16:08:00.001-07:00

I knew over the last few days when I didn't have time to create dishes with their usual hidden vegetable content that Little Moo would most likely not get the vegetables that she needed. Luckily she's able to eat sheeps' milk yogurt every few days at this point, so she's not completely without calcium intake. Even so, I like to make a habit of juicing occasionally to fill in the necessary places in our diet. It's also something that Little Moo can help with, which she likes.

Today I hit the farmers' market and then got odds and ends at Whole Foods afterwards.

The cherries and apple make it a bit sweeter than usual for us. To our palette it's perfect, maybe a bit too sweet. For those folks still drinking super-sweet bottled juice it might seem a bit earthy, so adjust to taste...

Spring Juice

about 7 fresh carrots

4 stalks celery

2 small red beets

2 large leaves kale

1 medium apple, cored

7 pitted sweet red cherries

1 peeled lime

Bread (End) Pudding (and some thoughts on other ends)

2011-05-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

(not GAPS, just GF/DF/CF/SF)

Many things have happened in the last week or so. The biggest one is that Osama Bin Laden is, we are pretty sure, dead. I am one of those unfortunates who has the tendency to break out in hysterical laughter at all the wrong times, so of course I've been walking around this last 24 hours or so with "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" going on rapid fire loop in my brain.

There. I've said it. It's completely inappropriate...or maybe it isn't. It certainly isn't serious enough to honor all those who've died on both sides since September, 2001, but it insists on rattling around up there.

...and there it goes again...

"But we've got to verify it legally, to see
(To see?)
If she
(If she?)
Is morally, ethic'lly
Spiritually, physically
Positively, absolutely
Undeniably and reliably Dead?"

Okay. That's done now, which leads me onto the next tangent, which is that the Munchkin Coroner was, I believe, a history teacher at the first (I think) high school where my dad taught way back in the late 50s. I hear he was amazing with discipline and inspiring to my dad, who was a new, young and very impressionable music teacher. Speaking as a small person (albeit small within the norm,) I can say that we have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously by people who can physically look down at you, which is most of them. Even my kid mistakes my size for being "kind of like a child, really," which is okay, I suppose. She lets me in on what she's doing and I can fit into bouncy houses with her. I have no idea what I'd do if confronted with a class full of teenagers with attitudes, though. Meinhardt Raabe died in 1997. Evidently he also spent about 30 years doing something with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, teachers' salaries being what they are.

Endgames, though. I'm avoiding the topic, aren't I? Or just being cagey on-line about how I feel about politics. Yeah.

We keep getting shoved into that mindset so that we're always on edge, waiting for the next bit of the insane wartime narrative that's feeling more and more like a violent movie with way too many 3-D effects and enough hidden xenophobia that I can't watch it past the start of act 2. It's the crazy wave that's going to break, rushing us all headlong into some kind of armageddon, valhalla or convergence where the blessed few get snatched out of their cars and the rest of us get to drive their Jaguars for a while before the terrible finale (especially for Jews, so I hear). We keep waiting for the redemptive end so that the credits can roll and we can return to the happily-ever-after. Only it's actually the happily-ever-before our loss of innocence, a satisfying erasure of everything that we've done that ever had awful consequences and boy, are there many of those. Then the great director in the sky can make a new movie that we can all star in. Maybe next time it will be a romantic comedy.

Or maybe we're never at the end, just in the middle, continuing the long, strange trip, which just gets longer and stranger and more horrible in a weirdly banal sort of way as I think about things. It's not that bad, really. Life could be that odd, and everyday life is it's own kind of horror if we're not used to engaging with it. When we're too used to full immersion in media unreality we can't wrap our brains around what is really there. Which includes that if you forget to set your timer, that what's in the oven might burn.

So, if you dare, this is a great use for all those gluten-free rice bread ends that have been living in the freezer for the last six months, waiting for the finale. Here it is. (At least dinner can truly be finished with in style. Roll credits if necessary.)

Gluten/Dairy-free Bread Pudding
(based on Joy Of Cooking with many liberties taken)

Serves 8

Preheat oven to 350 F

Toast bread until dry, especially if it's icy from the freezer. Cut off any burnt parts and dice well. Soak for 15 minutes:

5 cups diced bread

in:
3 containers coconut cream (I used Wilderness Family Naturals' and can attest to it being the best tasting I've ever had. http://www.wildernessfamilynaturals.com/product/coconut-products-coconut-milk/CC250.php)

Combine/beat:

4 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla

add:

grated rind and juice of 1/2 lemon (or a whole one if they're really tiny, like the little one I got at the farmers' market on Sunday.)
1/3 cup raisins mixed with currants

Pour these ingredients over the soaked bread, stir until well-blended. Beat egg whites until stiff, then fold them gently into the mixture. Pour into a greased baking dish. Bake set in a pan of hot water for about 45 minutes.

The recipe, more or less

2011-04-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Before I forget!

It came out almost cheesecake-like, but if you add the beaten egg whites, I could imagine it would be more like a chiffon pie, only then you'd have to figure out a way to bake it after...or you could top it with the meringue and get it into the oven and out again fast enough to bake the meringue and not the pie. This seemed like too much trouble. I just didn't want to chance that the pie would have too short of a shelf life. We eat our pies slowly in this house. Unless we don't, of course. :)

The banana slices at the bottom of the pie take care of the fact that the crust tends to be a bit hard and dry and that I can't use honey to sweeten it.

Also, I used the coconut cream in a box. You could also use canned coconut milk. My feeling is that I didn't quite use enough water, that 2 1/2 cups would have filled the shell up a bit better. Maybe adding a bit of fat - coconut oil or ghee - to make up for the density.

Lemon Coconut Banana Pie

Ingredients:

Filling:

6 egg yolks
4 pitted dates
The juice of 3 lemons, plus the zest of 2
1 box of organic coconut cream
2 cups hot water
1 large, ripe banana
6 drops liquid stevia
3 tablespoons Bernard Jensen Gelatin

Crust:

1/2 cup sifted coconut flour
1/2 cup flaked coconut
2 eggs
1/4 cup melted ghee
pinch salt
Another ripe banana (there might be banana left over)

Crust:

Mix flour, coconut, eggs, ghee and salt together. Carefully roll out between two sheets of wax paper. Peel off the top, lay carefully over the pie pan, shaping as you go. Peel of the last sheet of wax paper and patch as needed. Bake at a 350F oven for 10-12 minutes. Remove to cool.

Line the bottom of the pie crust with banana slices.

Filling:

Heat up the water and add it to the coconut cream to rehydrate it so that it is coconut milk. Put the egg yolks, dates, lemon juice, 1/2 banana and coconut milk into a blender. Blend well. Add the stevia a bit at a time until it's sweet enough, stopping at 6 drops. (Too much will leave a bitter aftertaste.) Mix in the zest. Pour the mixture into a double-boiler. Add the gelatin, and heat, beating constantly, until the gelatin is dissolved and the mixture thickens. Transfer to a bowl and chill for about 40 minutes or so, stirring frequently. When it's somewhat thicker, but still pourable, pour the filling into the pie crust. Embed sliced bananas all over the top. Cover and chill overnight or until set.

Lemon Coconut Banana Pie: The Outcome!

2011-04-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

It's a little dense, but I think that's because I used the coconut cream in the box and rehydrated it to 2 cups. I have noticed that the canned stuff is much lighter. Recipe to come!

Today's GAPS Iron Chef challenge...

2011-04-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we visited my cousins who have an orange and a lemon tree that needed some harvesting. We came home with a big bag of the fruit. I decided that it was time to try another custard pie. I have to say that I'm a bit intimidated since the last time I used gelatin it didn't work. Here's some early pics:

Wish me luck!

Prying myself out of my chair...

2011-04-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

...this on a day when I drifted off for 15 minutes I didn't have in the rocker, only to be woken by Little Moo poking me and saying "Mommy, you can't sleep now."

She was right.

Yum. Coconut Flour Zucchini Muffins

2011-03-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

I have to try these Coconut Flour Zucchini Muffins by Jill at Realfoodforager some time.

If I ever wondered...

2011-03-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

...if I could bake a coconut bread in my sleep, now I know. The answer is "yes," while I completely forget about everything else. Sigh.

Squip

2011-03-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

It's funny how people don't really think clearly about how they talk or where their habits come from. My mother just turned me onto something that I say often that seems to be hereditary to ethnicity or region. That's the use of the word, "nice." A "nice" piece of cake, or a "nice" bowl of soup. Or "It turned out 'nice'." Her comment was "That's Jewish. Jewish and Italian." I think that it's maybe old time Philadelphian or east coast, too. Either way, I can remember my grandmother and her cousins saying it, who were all her age. Then there's,

"Oh, a bit of this and that"

as an answer to

"What have you been up to?"

I don't exactly say it in those words, but it's close. I've been on the west coast now for about 15 years and still, I have the old time lingo.

Of course, there's the classic phrase made famous by Aaron Sorkin's West Wing characters,

"Not so much,"

as an answer to a question about personal preference. Little Moo gave me that answer last week when I asked her whether she still liked a color that wasn't pink (I think that's what it was - it could also have been a food preference, although that's not so important at this point).

This is the easiest thing I've made in a long time. I used to make it a lot, then I had to stop when I stopped digesting winter squash. Now, thanks to BioSET, I'm back and, although I'm cautious, I'll make something squashy every once in a while for as long as the season holds out. It's very pretty if it's one of those bright orange ones like a butternut, or super-sweet if it's made from kabocha or delicata. Add a bit of cinnamon for a more holiday feel or vanilla just because it's "nice."

Squip

Ingredients
One winter squash, cooked, cut up.
2 tablespoons ghee (I use 4 for a large butternut squash - if you intend to chill it into a pudding, add up to oh, say, 6)
pinch cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla (non-alcohol)
2 teaspoons coconut milk kefir or coconut milk (up to 1/4 cup for a larger squash)

Put everything into a blender and whip it up. That's really it. Top with fruit if you like, or insert into tart shells and chill.

Moving through the world - a larger picture

2011-03-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

I've been doing this thing now for, oh, about a year. It seems somewhat off-topic for this blog, but in a way, it isn't.

I take off my shoes.

I also take off my shoes and run.

This may seem odd. It also may seem like no big deal, but to me it's huge. It also brings me back to the diet thing.

I was born inwardly rotated at the hips, with very loose joints. My childhood nutrition was pretty average for a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. I was lucky that I nursed. I needed no teeth pulled when I got braces, but they were pretty odd when they grew in. (Those of you up on Weston A. Price will get that reference - basically the state of a person's teeth is an indicator of their overall health. People with excellent nutrition as kids will have wide palates, where all the teeth grow in straight and without impingement, including wisdom teeth and few cavities. That would be our Little Moo so far. Not me. Snackboy had to have at least 2 teeth pulled when his were straightened.)

The doctors took one look at my soft little feet and clapped me into orthopedic clown shoes from the moment I took my first step. I had bars - a wide bar that held my little legs stiffly apart and straight - for a year worn at night when I was 2. As a kid I always had supportive shoes and orthotics because my feet were formless and extremely pronated. Ballet helped somewhat, but not entirely. I had foot, leg and hip pain by the time I was in my teens. My family blamed it on ballet, but to be honest, ballet was the one place I felt good. It was where I took off my shoes. I believed the doctors, though, and kept thinking it was just specific to my incapable feet.

I ran track in high school. I hated it. I was the slowest kid in the group. I used to joke that I was like the tortoise. I used to place during the 800 and longer races where I could jog slowly and wait for everyone to fall down exhausted. I had to recover for days after meets. I stopped running soon after starting college. It hurt too much.

I left college half way through to become a ballet dancer and used to build little supportive wedges and assists for my pointe shoes to keep me from pronating quite so badly. Like I said, the movement helped a lot, but it was designed for people with high, rigid arches, not flat, pronated feet. I stopped that, too and went to graduate school in SF, doing bits of contemporary dance here and there.

Then came the back injury. I had been poorly nourished for a long time and by my mid-twenties, had also been vegetarian for about 7 years. My feet were like a foundation of a building that was made of sand. My building gave out. I hit bottom with a decade-long back injury. I went to graduate school, finished and got a job in the tech journalism industry. Sitting all day made it worse. So did the stress. I changed jobs and started working at UC Berkeley. The commute was terrible. I needed a disabled parking pass for a year.

So I found Pilates and the work of Judith Aston (Ronnie Oliver has no web address, but she made a huge difference in my body as well as how I perceive of bodies. I've studied with her and been a client for about ten years.) and slowly started coming back. Very slowly. In 2001 my doctor took a look at my rash-covered self and pronounced me food-allergic. After tests we discovered that my allergies were multiple and unusual. The big one was gluten. There were several others, including peach, honey, almond, salmon and ginger. I did an elimination diet. I was never able to reintroduce the foods. Any time I stopped a food, the reaction would get worse when I returned to it. The doctor was less than helpful and I fell between the cracks.

Four years later my back was healed but fragile. The fat pads on my feet were gone. Walking barefoot on uncarpeted surfaces was like stepping on glass. My sacrum and neck were constantly going out.

I became pregnant in 2006. By then, the only foods my body would accept without breaking into a rash were meat and roots. My daughter was born by the time I realized that there were ways to deal with this. I saw Julie Matthews who turned me on to traditional cooking. Improvement was constant, but slow. When it looked as if Little Moo also had allergies I took both of us to Dr. Cowan, the GAPS guy in SF. He put me on the GAPS Diet and Little Moo got a modified version of it. I started BioSET (Vivian Kushner) with Little Moo at the end of last year and have slowly been able to reintroduce foods, more for her than for me. It's clear, though, that my digestion is much hardier and my reactions are different and less intense.

After over 2 years on the GAPS Diet, I have padding on the bottoms of my feet again. I noticed a few months ago that I could once again wear shoes with small heels.

When I realized that my diet was close to a paleolithic diet because of my allergies, I looked it up and found links to barefoot running. I thought it sounded interesting, so I looked farther and found Daniel Lieberman's studies and videos.

I took off my shoes and started to really look at my feet. Then I applied what I'd learned as a Pilates instructor who works with injury and weakness. I never thought I'd be able to run. I was happy with simply walking. The progress went slowly. I discovered new ways to release and tone my feet manually so as to stimulate atrophied muscle and to release the tight places in the arches and the heel. I learned where the joints were and began to mobilize the trouble spots - the outside calf, the relationship between talus mobility and fibula, the talo-navicular-crural joint (I love that term - it just means the relationship between the arch and the ankle, which is critical for good running.) - we have 26 bones in our feet! I developed mobilizations, releases and exercises for the parts of the body that need reawakening due to low functioning feet - the hips, the calves, the ribs. It took several months, but now I can hold up my arches and my pronation has improved to the point where I can finally walk without any pain at all. My bunions are practically nonexistant. I can move my toes using the intrinsic muscles of the foot.

A year later I am not only barefoot, I'm running. It's actually easier than walking. For those of you who've tried barefoot running - I'm a forefoot runner, specifically because I have the calf muscles and still have a tendency to pronate. I find that my metatarsal and lateral arches are more dependable than the posterior ones. I come down on the ball of the foot, press into the space between the big and second toes, feel the posterior arch lift, then let the heel drop without a speck of pronation. With each step I can feel my body realign, strengthen and release thanks to a harmonious relationship with gravity. At forty three I'm in better shape than I was in my mid-twenties. I'm not interested in competition, or anything that starts with the words "extreme" or "ultra." I'm happy just to have my body back. Some day I hope to run with people again.

These days, with timing and schedules the way they are with a kid going into kindergarten next year, my runs have mainly been in Vibrams on a treadmill at the Y at odd hours, but I'm craving a return to the track at Kezar, the beach when it's warm, or maybe somewhere new. Pavement and cement have been off-limits to me so far because of how soft my foot structure has been in the past, but looking at my feet now I think that perhaps nothing is impossible.

I have a project that I'm starting with my Pass The Torch mentor, Elizabeth Larkam - I'm looking for people with "minimal feet" - soft arches, pronations, atrophied muscles due to relying on "supportive" shoes - who want to feel the ground in their bare feet, to walk pain-free without assistance from shoes. I'm also looking for folks who want to train into barefoot running and who are just interested in being able to shed their shoes without pain. We'll bring their feet back to life together.

If you are one of these people, and you live in the Bay Area, just leave me a comment and we'll talk.

A coordinated GAPS Vegetable Stew/Beef Simmer - the chatty version!

2011-02-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

This post is for my mother, who likes my stews, but also because it seems like a nice time to get this up there to share. I keep hearing about folks on GAPS who flail around during the intro and the first few stages trying to figure out how to get things to taste good, how much fat or meat is right for them and what combinations of vegetables to use. Here's the way we do it, more or less. It's infinitely variable for each family's tastes and preferences.

So it's taken me about 2 years to get to the stage where I have come up with a clear method for a nice all -purpose supper that lasts for a few days. It's basically a development of the stew from the early phases of the GAPS Diet. I do use herbs. Our kid likes her eggs so much that I leave them out of the stews and serve them in the mornings for breakfast. So if you're in the early stages of the diet, this should be fine, depending on what your food sensitivities are.

At least for us, the key is saturated animal fat - ghee and drippings, mainly. We also use olive oil, but it's not as healing as the other two. We can't have lard, so generally it's tallow or schmaltz and the gelatinous leavings from whatever roast or simmer I've made. To our early 21st century eyes and palettes these recipes look frighteningly out of whack with the mainstream dietary advice you'll get from your doctor, but I've found that it is the perfect balance of fat to flavor for dealing with our allergies, migraines, general health and digestion, including sugar digestion. This is a meal after which our kid almost NEVER asks for dessert.

I try to coordinate the making of a soup and a roast so that I can use the fresh drippings in the soup. Occasionally my cooking will be out of sync and I'll store the stuff in a jar, then use it from there. It still tastes good. I've included a simple and thrifty ground beef simmer in this post. The reason I make the meat separate from the rest of the stew is that we opt for meatless meals after 3 or 5pm. This works well whether I'm working late and eating alone or on regular weeknights when Snackboy gets home from work at 7. We include the actual meat for lunch or breakfast, but leave it out for dinner. (Both the stew and the meat make nice additions for breakfast scrambles, too.)

The recipe also takes for granted that the day or so before you've made your week's worth of ghee (which for us is a full 2 cups!) and your week's worth of broth. I also have either storebought or home made sauerkraut ready. If we could we'd alternate with a good sour cream dollop instead, but that's not happening with us for a while. :)

By the way, the big news is that Little Moo has nearly made it to the end of her second food trial with her favorite treat, sheep's milk yogurt, with nary a spot on her, a sniffle or an "ahem." Good news! This is after I forgot her dose of enzymes before her breakfast this morning and suddenly remembered it mid-meal. So tomorrow, unbeknownst to her, she gets another two large teaspoons full. Joy will ensue. It's been over a year. Yay!

So here it is...I'm sure that you will come up with your own fun variations. Try different veggies - midwinter's a good time for hard greens and roots. Those can get interesting. We're just starting to see new spring veggies come in. Asparagus, peas and string beans are nice additions. Just remember that the softer the vegetable, the closer to the end you add it. If it's a very tender vegetable, you might want to do a quick or even flash steam and add it at the very end to the hot soup so as not to overcook it. The warmth of the broth will continue to steam it at a nicely low temperature so that the color, texture and flavor stay put.

Lastly, you'll notice that the stew only has 1/2 teaspoon of salt, even though it's a pretty big pot-full. The reasoning for this is that it's meant to be served with a ferment which adds tang or saltiness at the end.

Ground Beef Simmer & The Ultimate GAPS Vegetable Stew

Ingredients for simmer:

2 teaspoons ghee
1 medium (or so) onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon unprocessed sea salt
1 lb organic, full-fat, pastured ground beef
1/4 cup broth (we use chicken or beef - I think it's tastier with the chicken, but it's whatever you'd like)
(optional) 1/2 cup or so well-cooked gizzards from the last long-simmered chicken soup, chopped
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Ingredients for soup:

3-4 tablespoons ghee
1 large onion or two small, sliced
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon unprocessed sea salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 small leaf of dried sage or a small pinch of the bottled stuff
drippings from the simmer
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
1/2 to 1 cup mushrooms
1/2 head of yellow cabbage
1 BIG bunch of hard winter greens or a blend of a few. (Kales, collards are both nice - chard is sweet and pretty, especially if you have a pinkophile like we do. Mustard and dandilion are kind of bitter, but can be offset with the high fat content or by blending a small amount with a bunch of something sweeter. We stay away from spinach for calcium absorption reasons, but this can also be a nice addition. Don't cook it as much as the harder greens.)
1/2 gallon (or so) broth
(optional) a softer spring vegetable: peas, chopped string beans or asparagus
sauerkraut or sour cream

Get out 2 pots. One should be like a large skillet our round-belly saucepan for the simmer. The other big enough for a soup - either Dutch oven or spaghetti-sized. (I recommend NOT using iron for the beef, the reason being that at the end you'll have to lift it and pour out the drippings. If you have wrists of steel, go for it. Consider it part of your weightlifting regimen. :) Iron makes tastier simmers, anyway.)

If your beef is frozen start defrosting it in a bowl of warm water.

Melt the ghee for each recipe in the corresponding pan at medium-low temperature. Chop or slice the onion for the stew. Chop the onion for the simmer. Put into the corresponding pot. Set your timer for 15 minutes, minimum, cover the pots and stir occasionally. The longer the simmer on the onion, the sweeter it gets and the less structured. If you like nice solid onions, continue the recipe at 15 minutes. Everyone else, turn the heat down a bit and keep simmering.

Okay, so you're waiting now. If you're like me, you stop for a bit to blog or procrastinate. So here we are.

I keep hearing that onion is good for both digestive and immune systems if simmered between 25 and 35 minutes in ghee. I also read a post on Dr. Mercola's page recently where, below all the usual hype he revealed that there had been some study somewhere that showed that onions eaten regularly help boost calcium absorption. (No word on how to cook them, or why onions do that, or if the onion eaters were also doing weight-bearing exercise, eating well otherwise, standing on their heads chanting a sea chanty etc...so take with a grain of salt! So to speak. Sorry for the pun.)

Back to the recipe.

Once you've safely turned down your onion simmers, crush your garlic into each pot, then add the salt. Add the herbs and any previously stored drippings to the soup pot. Keep both on the lowest temperature. No worries about overcooking - there's no rush. Just keep it low. Turn it off and keep covered if you're concerned about burning. Let it steep.

If you have time, pots and space, bring your quart of broth to a boil, then turn it down to simmer. I often don't have any of those three things so I add it cold, but I don't think that's necessarily the best way to do it.

Get out a big bowl, fill it with filtered water and a teaspoon of vinegar or 2 teaspoons sea salt and prepare your greens. Different greens need different prep - kale gets the ribs stripped clean away, mustard gets some of the ribs stripped. Dandelion ribs are fine. So are chard. Go for it. Have fun. Put them to soak in the bowl. The salt or vinegar will encourage any freeloaders to jump ship. Set aside ribs for another broth at another time if you wish.

Chop the harder veggies first. I like carrots either in small dices or half-rounds, roots like turnip or rutabaga in dices, and celery in slices but there are no rules. Keep the pieces to a small bite size and try to make them more or less the same size with the harder vegetables smaller or added earlier. One exception to this rule is mushrooms. I like to add them early, sliced or coarsely chopped, since they are twice as amazing when they've absorbed the herb-scented ghee before the broth.

So you should be nearly done chopping, slicing and dicing by now. Your timer may have gone off, or you may be like me right now and have let the onion mixtures steep for a while in the ghee. Get the temperature of the skillet or round belly pot up a bit, then add the beef. Chop it up with a fork for a bit, then add the lemon juice - it breaks down the fat in the meat so that it starts to break up a bit. Add the chopped gizzards if you are using them. Then add the broth and blend well. Cover and simmer on low, stirring occasionally until done - about 10 minutes. Be careful once you add the meat not to overcook. Even the fattiest pastured meats cook much quicker and drier than the feedlot stuff. If you got good, clean, grass-fed meat it should be fine with a bit of pink. If you don't have that option, cook it until the pink is gone. Turn it off and set aside.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch...

Bring the heat back to a cooking temperature on your stew pot. Heft up that pot of meat and pour the drippings into the onion/garlic/herb mixture. Add the mushrooms. Stir well and allow them to absorb the niceness in the pot. Yum. Then add the hard veggies - carrots, roots, cabbage. Follow with celery, zucchini, string beans and other medium-hard vegetables. Stir and coat. Put the top back on. Chop the well-washed greens to a nice bite-size and add them on top of the rest of the mixture. They should just about fill the Dutch oven. It will look like they're taking over. Don't worry. They shrink. Stir to coat and put the top back on for about 5 minutes or until the greens look a bit wilty. (At this point either add your soft vegetables or put them on to steam.) Add the broth. Bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer. Simmer well for about 15-25 minutes depending on how long you've simmered previously. Take your steamed soft veggies - asparagus, peas, pea greens, etc - and add before serving.

A nice way to re-make the stew in its meaty hearty version is to take a dollop of the meat and a nice portion of the stew in a third pot (this is assuming that it's the next day or the day after and you're pulling out a nice instantaneous lunch that you can get from fridge to table in - get this - FIVE MINUTES, yes indeedy,) and heat them up together so that they blend nicely. If you do eat starches you can pour the mixture over rice, but if you're a hard-core GAPS follower, eat it as is topped with sauerkraut or sour cream.

Enjoy. I'm going to go chop vegetables now. :)

Latkes redux

2011-02-23T21:18:00.000-08:00

This is a reference to the Chanukah GAPS Latkes, which are here. I just made them again tonight, this time adjusting the egg and coconut flour. They were just about perfect with 5 eggs and 4 1/2 tablespoons of coconut flour. I think they could take even more coconut flour, but this way the flour didn't overpower the taste of the roots, which was nice.

Thoughts on meat and GAPS

2011-02-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

I have about five minutes to type this...but it was one of those things I know that I will forget as soon as I move on with our incredibly busy day, so I'm flipping open the computer and getting it down quickly.

If you're a vegetarian, be forewarned. I'm about to go into meat eating in detail.

I read all the time about how GAPS seems so meat-centric. It's actually not. When I'm doing it right, and everything feels good, our version of GAPS is mostly vegetables, then whole fats, then bone broth. When we're a bit under the weather it's more bone broth than vegetables. The fats are more important than the meat itself, and we eat a minimum of meat after 3pm. I find, at least for me, that I don't digest meat well after 3, although I do okay with tallow, schmaltz, olive oil or ghee until pretty late. I have a large portion of some kind of protein - eggs for breakfast, some kind of meat for lunch - before 3. For us dinner is a big bowl of some kind of vegetable stew in bone broth and those who partake get some rice or kasha that has been well pre-soaked or fermented before cooking in yet more broth and fat. Each meal has a big dollop of some kind of ferment, either vegetable or coconut milk.

Some months ago I read an interesting bit - I forget where now. It may have been in the Wise Traditions magazine. Anyway, it talked about how primates, when given meat to eat would usually discard much of the muscle fiber in favor of the fat.

I don't think that human beings were meant to eat big slabs of boneless, skinless, fatless meat. On the other hand, a chicken leg, which has a decent amount of fatty meat with gristle and other stuff on it makes an awful lot of sense.

On that note, I have to get Little Moo to her 2:30 playdate and lunch is sitting on the table still uneaten while she delves into the deeper points of her latest pretend universe...

The Cat Shepherd goes into action. More later.

Onions.

2011-02-16T18:15:00.001-08:00

I've landed in an alternate universe if I reach the end of the day without chopping at least one onion...

A plan for more broth, slightly improvised.

2011-02-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

I don't have time to make both a broth and a beef stew, and we're a bit low on stuff, so I'm going to make a cross between the two. Here's the plan:

I have 2 bags of those lovely little meaty soup bones, but no knuckle bones. (They're actually tastier to me, at least, than oxtail, which are about three times the price, if not more...)
I have some chicken broth - just a half a jar.
I'm low on carrots and celery, but have some nice big onions and a bunch of kale ribs saved over from the last 2 bunches.
I have a big bunch of chard and (surprise!) a bag of mushrooms (I don't remember getting those!).

Now it's just a matter of deciding whether or not to include the kale ribs or to make a separate kale broth...Either way, I'll make a nice broth with a bit of carrot, celery and I'll saute the onions instead of putting in a raw one. I'll put in a decent amount of garlic, add ghee and maybe a bit of gelatin for richness to make up for the lack of a knucklebone.

I think I'll make a chard, onion and mushroom saute on the side instead of putting them in the pot, and I'll brown the beef, do the whole thing in the slow cooker and fish out the beef bones either before bed or first thing, and take off the meat, then replace the bones and maybe add some roast drippings.

Or maybe tomorrow I can take that broth and start a stew then with veggies and some ground beef...? When that will happen is beyond me, but I can dream. :)

This is what I do to make a broth when we're starting to be low on things.

Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup

2011-02-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

I don't travel well, even in the best of situations. I always have to take over our host's kitchen. I've noticed in various parts of Bosnyphlwash that the water is especially toxic to me. Then it's the additional expense and effort of getting, drinking and cooking with all bottled water...which bugs me, because I just hate how harmful all that plastic is to people's bodies and to the environment.

Speaking of which...oh, of course. Now I know what I'll do next time!
http://www.multipureco.com/h2oonthego.htm

This time, when we went away to visit family in upstate New York, it was deepest, snowiest winter, and hardly a vegetable in sight, much less an organic one. The ones we did get were shipped from so far away that they were limp and barely fresh. A grocer proudly led me to what he called "organic chicken," labeled clearly "all-natural." He was surprised when I told him that the label actually had to say "organic" on it for the meat to actually be guaranteed to conform to those standards. I couldn't get giblets. All of the available beef was from feedlot cows.

I guiltily drank bottled water for the first day or two, then stopped when I thought about all those bottles and that we didn't have recycling in our hotel. The rashes started immediately after. Later I was surrounded by cat hair and particularly heavy dust. I found myself relying on nuts (!) for breakfast and travel food. I had wind burn. By the time I came home, it was as if I wore a mask of cracking, bleeding skin on my face with hives, bumps, rashes and you name it, from the top of my head down to my belly. One of my eyes had started to swell shut on the plane home. Benadryl and cortisone made absolutely no dent in my discomfort.

Just like the good old days. You'd think I had never been on the GAPS Diet. The only thing that saved it from getting any worse was the addition of curcumin supplements that I found at a health food store there. I was craving turmeric.

Luckily I knew just what to do. I had a container of frozen chicken broth in the freezer, waiting for us when we got back. Our family downed that in about a day. We stopped out for supplies on our way back from the airport and I immediately put on another batch of broth, cooked a batch of split chicken legs, and started chopping vegetables.

I had a feeling that the best edible salve for my skin would be something with a strong curry - something with warming spices and a big shot of turmeric. I've read that eaten turmeric is too easily digested by the stomach to work therapeutically, but in my experience it actually works best in collaboration with cumin, mustard seed and coriander powder, and ingested as part of a series of fairly heavy meals eaten over a week or so with a decent amount of fat. I have taken the pills - which are pretty large doses of curcumin - without the other spices and noticed less difference.

It was to be a supper meal, so I left off the big hunks of meat and decided to add the chicken meat after the fact the next day.

This is possibly the best curried soup I've ever come up with. I think that the drippings made it so. Because we'd been so long without fresh veggies I splurged and got a few things that weren't in season. Also, the white and crimini mushrooms smelled funny so I got shiitake mushrooms and just settled on having fewer - they were delicious.

Finally, there is no ginger in this recipe because I'm allergic to it, but if you can tolerate it, and it does nice things for you, grate some into the spice mixture at the beginning.

Best Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup

Ingredients

1 ginormous onion or 2 small ones, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons ghee
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 large clove garlic
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
drippings from the last roast (I used chicken, but other meats would be fine, too - if you don't have any drippings try adding extra fat and a teaspoon full of Bernard Jensen's gelatin for similar effect.)
about 6 sliced mushrooms (I used shiitake, but any kind will do)

1 carrot, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 halved and sliced zucchini

1 bunch of chard, chopped, or another type of hard winter greens

1/2 a package of frozen organic peas

approximately 1 quart chicken broth

Heat up the broth. Melt the ghee in a separate soup pot on medium heat. Add the cumin and mustard seeds. Right after you hear the first pop turn the heat down and add the onions. Saute 15 minutes or more until soft and aromatic. Add garlic, turmeric, coriander, sea salt and drippings. Cook until aromatic. Add the mushrooms and mix them in so that they absorb the fat a bit. Then add the carrots, celery and zucchini. When they're well blended, add the peas and cover for a few minutes to fully defrost them. Finally, add the greens and allow to saute for moment or two. Cover with the broth. I wanted a thicker broth, so I eyeballed it, but it would be good as a thinner soup, too.

Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. It will be a nice greenish gold with lovely orange bits and peas all floating around. Serve in bowls or mugs. For a nice kick, top with chopped fermented garlic cloves.

If you partake of grains at all, it's a good topping for a nice bowl of rice or quinoa.

After eating this stuff about twice or three times daily for the past day, my skin is nearly normal again! Yay!

Quick kale broth/tea

2011-02-13T18:25:00.000-08:00

On those days when you've run out of bone broth and suddenly need a cup, try this. It's not nearly as good, but will do in a pinch, also good for getting your greens in...

Quick Kale Broth

Ingredients

2 tablespoons ghee
(or 1 tb ghee and one tb olive oil)
(or 1 tb ghee and the drippings from a batch of roasted chicken or beef)
1 heaping teaspoon Bernard Jensen beef gelatin
1 large or 2 small garlic cloves
ribs from at least 1 bunch of kale (or any hard greens)
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
1 small to medium onion

Warm the fat in a smallish stock pot (the size for spaghetti or a Dutch oven sort of size rather than the giant thing for beef broth). Chop the onion and add it to the pan. Gently saute it for about 15 minutes. At about 12 or 13 minutes crush the garlic and add that. Coarsely chop the carrot, celery, and add it to the pan, coat well with the ghee/onion/garlic mixture. Add the kale ribs. Pour in enough water to make a pot of broth. Bring to a boil, add the gelatin and mix well, then simmer about 30-45 minutes.

Remove the kale ribs and serve with the vegetables.

This also does well as a base for soups, although there's less bone-happy goodness in it.

Carrot/Meyer Lemon/Coconut Creamsicles

2011-01-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

You're probably wondering what the heck we're doing making popsicles in midwinter. Well, for one thing, San Francisco breaks into spring about a week after New Year's Day. Of course, it is currently a clammy, rainy 53 degrees F out, but still.

It's been about a month since Little Moo has been talking about popsicles. I realized that I should just jump the starting line and look for a kit for the summer. It came yesterday. We got in late, exhausted, from a show and without thinking clearly, I left it on the countertop in the kitchen. Little Moo discovered it this morning and came rampaging into our bedroom, shouting at the top of her lungs (which are considerable),

"Mommy, getupgetupgetup! We have to make popsicles now!!!!"

So here we are, in the end of January, making popsicles. I'm hoping it clears up outside tomorrow. 53 degrees in San Francisco usually feels a lot colder in the rain because it's so damp. All the same, I will probably try one of these. We had too much juice so we all got a sip or two. Yum.

Carrot-Meyer Lemon-Coconut Creamsicles

Ingredients:

6 or so large carrots, cleaned, with the ends cut off
or
about 1.5 cups fresh carrot juice (note that we did have too much in the end...eyeball this for your own popsicle kit.)

2 peeled meyer lemons (or any 2 small sweet citrus fruits...if you want to use regular lemons, add a little sweetener)
or
the juice of 2 meyer lemons
or the juice of 2 sweet oranges
or the juice of 2 lemons with a bit of sweetener

1 cup coconut milk
(optional: 1/2 or 1 teaspoon virgin coconut oil, melted)

(If using whole carrots and citrus.) Using a juicer, juice the carrots and the lemons. Set aside.

(Blend oil with coconut milk and allow to cool.) Add cool coconut milk to the juice.

Pour into the popsicle kit and add sticks. Freeze well. Drink the leftovers. Enjoy!

I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow!

Tip of the day...

2011-01-29T10:20:00.001-08:00

Can't eat black pepper and like it? Every time I eat mustard greens that's exactly what the taste recalls. If they're too bitter, slow-saute at least one medium onion, sliced, then add the mustard greens after at least 15 minutes. Add a dash of salt - a whole half-teaspoon for a large pan's worth of greens and onions to bring out the flavor that lies under the bitterness that's just so darned good for us. :) I've found that Real Salt from Utah has an unusual, mineral-y, also slightly peppery flavor that makes me wonder whether it's rich in magnesium, which is always a nice thing.

Dairy Cravings

2011-01-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

A little background...

Little Moo has food allergies. Her allergies are the reason I got serious about building up our health through nutrition. She was covered with rashes from about the age of 2 to very recently.

We've been seeing Vivian Kushner, a nutritionist who practices BioSET. We went into it as a last resort after months of Chinese medicine that Little Moo hated, food trials that had confusing and unhelpful results, modified GAPS Diet that only seemed to limit the range of foods she could eat and make her tired of eating nuts and coconut milk kefir, horrified stares from other parents and useless allopathic medical advice. After about a month of BioSET and homeopathic support her rashes are GONE. Occasionally, when she's fighting off a virus she gets itchy again, but the rashes appear to have disappeared for good. For the first time in a while we have a clear picture of exactly what Little Moo's allergies and sensitivities are. For a short while we eliminated grapes, bananas and eggs. Vivian treated her for allergies to vitamin C and, of all things, salt. She's eating them all again comfortably and without a single relapse.

Little Moo loves dairy. She especially likes yogurt, particularly a storebought kind that is made of sheeps' milk that you can buy for an exorbitant price at one of the San Francisco co-ops or for even more from Whole Foods plus the keys to the pied a terre in Paris. (No, we don't have one, if you were wondering.) Since we've started seeing Vivian Kushner there's been more hope that her sensitivity to lactose, casein and whey will be finite, so now she has a plan and it's moving into her pretend games. I love that her answer to "I want that" is "I'll make it myself." Better yet, if it's food, she'll get it directly from the farm, then she'll cook it from scratch.

She's four and a half, which means that about 95% of the time she's only here in body. The rest of her is on flights of fancy that we mere mortals can only vaguely follow. Today's game is taking place on our family dairy farm. (We don't have one of those, either.) Evidently, Snackboy is the master of a flock of sheep and a herd of cows. Little Moo got up at the break of day to milk the sheep and went right away to the task of making her own yogurt. She is, at this moment, hosting a tea party in the living room with sheeps' milk yogurt, and tea, while she talks in detail about all the recipes for things that she can make with the yogurt, including "sticky chocolate tops" for cakes that she baked.

Vivian...if you're reading this, much creativity and chefly imaginings are focused on the promise that she will be able to ingest dairy soon...

A fermenter's palette

2011-01-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

Just something I've noticed...each vegetable has its own lovely color when fermented. Some are a surprise. Here's a list:

Cabbage: white, absorbs other colors
Turmeric: golden yellow
Red cabbage: purple to blue
Garlic: anywhere from teal to white
Carrot: BRIGHT orange
Zucchini: white, absorbant
Daikon: white, very absorbant

So our recent batch, uncrocked yesterday, is bright teal, purple, yellow, orange and white. I was trying to figure out what the heck the teal is when I realized that it was the garlic, possibly reacting chemically to something else in the mix.

Anyway, it's delicious. :)

...and again with the housework...

2011-01-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

Little Moo is sick. She's been sick since Monday and such a stoic that we went out for a while yesterday before I even realized that she was feverish again. I vowed to keep her in one more day, although she's much perkier and her fever has barely returned. So we cleaned according to the teachings of Carol Channing in "Free To Be You And Me:"

Your mommy hates housework,
Your daddy hates housework,
I hate housework too.
And when you grow up, so will you.
Because even if the soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach
That you use is the very best one,
Housework is just no fun.

Children, when you have a house of your own,
Make sure, when there's house work to do,
That you don't have to do it alone.
Little boys, little girls, when you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To seem sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it together!

She's been asking me recently if I don't like to do housework ("hate" is a word that we avoid in our house and she's kindly leaving it out of her question here) and my answer to her is "sometimes." The truth is that I am the kind of person who is desperately organized, but not terribly neat. I don't mind cleaning, but I always feel as if there are so many things to do that are more important than a spotless or organized house. There's the writing or research I do for work, the various projects around the house, whether it's applying for kindergartens or cooking. Then there's the endless stream of video editing, marketing, planning, soundtrack-making, and communication that goes into running even the smallest of performance projects.

When I was a kid my mother told me that being with me was more important to her than a perfect house, which was what she'd grown up with. Her mother was always deep into some housework project that kept her from relating to my mother and her sister. That attitude rubbed off on me, too.

Besides, like I've mentioned before...or maybe I haven't, I'm an idea person, one who runs off with tangents only to discover that the thing that distracted me is the point of a whole new string of things that I just have to follow for a while. So here I am, typing, while the little piles of swept-up dirt on the floor of the dining room just sit there.

Meanwhile, I'm cleaning the floors and neatening up in the dining room which is more of a task than it sounds. This is especially true because our child, who doesn't have a room of her own, spreads her toys out all over the place. Each room has a play area in it, but there's no real storage for her stuff other than some wicker baskets and pirated areas of the family bookshelves. Someday she'll have her own space. Someday.

Back to the little piles and the never ending stream of other messes.

Work/Life/Home

2011-01-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

I am listening to Joan Williams speak on Your Call Radio about the disjointedness between the way our economy and workforce function, the needs of families, of women and men. It's a great show. So interesting that I wanted to add my own .02 about how people and their work is valued in our country.

Women were at one time trapped in the home with no means of independent support. Her homemaking was only compensated by the protection and support of a husband. If a woman was suddenly a widow or divorced she was caught in a system that would not let her work at all outside of the home, and if she did, it was for a paltry paycheck. (The irony that a single mother's paycheck would be the lowest when it's generally her who supports the kids!). With the advent of second-wave feminism, women went back to work in record numbers, leaving their families so that they could help support them financially. They still made less than men, but were able to contribute in some way. Meanwhile, the kitchen arts died out almost completely after all the short cuts and bad advice of the mid-20th century. There was a new term, "latch key kids," that described the children of working mothers who let themselves in after school in the afternoons. Thirty years later U.S. women have to work. Most of us have no choice. The cost of living in many places is high and health insurance costs are unreal. Too many people get sick and die simply because they can't get care. Because we have no idea how to cook real food, and because women come in tired after work at 6pm every day, undernourished, overeating people get fatter and sicker. Our public school system is depleted and sick enough to drown in a bucket, turning out more and more kids who can't compete in the workplace, and so the circle completes itself.

Jobs are few and far between if your line of work isn't in computers. Women are actually more likely than men to be in the workforce. I know two men who spent their children's baby years as part-time working, stay-at-home dads, simply because their wives were much better employed than they were at the time. I'm just guessing that a lot of these gainfully employed mothers make less than their male counterparts, that many large employers go for female employees because they know that they can pay them less than if they were male.

Meanwhile, men sit at home, waiting to hear from someone at some company somewhere to give them a job offer. This is especially true for manual workers who do not own their own businesses. Unless, of course, they want to move to China or India and take a major pay cut (not to mention that in certain lines of work they'd be in sweatshops with kids). This is also a huge issue, both emotionally and socially.

I'm certainly not criticizing mothers who went back to work in the 70s. It was a huge gain for women at a time when they were second class citizens. My complaint is with a system that took advantage of lots of cheap female labor that desperately needed that paycheck to support their families, with money and health insurance.

Then there are the Michael Pollans of the world whose writings, however insightful, also have a huge blind spot right at the point where women, their work and family have a critical disjuncture. Specifically this: how is a woman who works all day and still often does most of the domestic tasks around the home, to cook whole foods from scratch so that their families can eat every day? It simply does not work. Also, I have never met a man who is either interested or comfortable enough in the kitchen to take up that particular gauntlet (and I mean the full-on-homemaker dad who does laundry, is a member of the PTA THEN lines up his monthly sauerkraut crocks and gets his bone broth in order every week). Maybe they're out there. If you know one, please tell me, because I'm certain that he's a myth. So what is to be done?

Our labor system - the value given to people and what they do - simply must change. Anyone who takes up the domestic tasks of raising a family has to be compensated in some way. People in the workforce need to make a living wage. Someone in our government needs to grow a spine and finally take on the insurance companies.

Now I have to put my stew in the refrigerator for later and get myself to work...I won't be home until after 9 tonight, but everything's fine because the food is done and half of the laundry is folded. :)

Ginger Cookies

2011-01-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Little Moo has been craving ginger. This is a complicated thing for me since I can't have ginger and if I cook with it, I cook blind. If Snackboy is around he gets to taste everything, but if I'm alone, it's an issue.

Anyway, she's been craving ginger, so ginger it is. When we went to the store we talked about how ginger was a root and it was like the turmeric that we occasionally get that turns my hands yellow. I was about to take down the ginger powder in the spices section and she shook her head. She wanted to see the root. Whatever, I thought. It might be a nice challenge to make things with fresh ginger root, and maybe healthier? Who knows. Fresh always feels better to me.

So she had pasta with ginger and vegetables and then last night I baked ginger cookies to take to a little friend's birthday party. (Little Moo refused cake in favor of ginger cookies...can you believe it?)

It is based on the Vanilla Maple Cookie recipe. The main differences: it's a gooier, stickier dough and won't work with cookie cutters. It contains honey, not maple syrup. I used an egg instead of guar gum because it's a yes food now for us, binds better and and has more nutrition than guar gum. The cookies are cakier, softer. It is not GAPS-friendly. Nor is it Jen-friendly, so most likely I won't be trying to make it so any time soon. On the other hand, it might be kind of fun to try the vanilla version with coconut flour and dates.

Ginger Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup garbanzo flour + 1 or 2 more tablespoons as needed
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 beaten egg
pinch salt
1/4 cup honey
3 to 3.5 tablespoons melted ghee
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 heaping teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. (I added some ghee to it just in case because the batter looked SO sticky.) Melt some ghee. Take it off of the flame or out of the oven to cool.

Combine the garbanzo flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. In a separate, smaller bowl, beat the egg, then add the honey, vanilla and ginger and whisk well. Slooowwwwwlllyyyy pour in the melted ghee while whisking like a maniac. Well, a maniac who keeps it in the bowl, anyway. (Hot butter+cold raw egg=scrambled eggs, which is fine for breakfast, but not in a cookie recipe.) Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. At this point I thought it looked too wet, so I added 2 more tablespoons of garbanzo flour.

Drop by spoonfuls onto the parchment-covered cookie sheets. Bake for 13 minutes or until slightly browned on top.

A step beyond applesauce.

2010-12-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

We have a philosophy in our family that no one goes without. That means that even though we don't eat gluten, dairy, soy, corn, processed sugar, packaged food or other kind of Standard American Diet fare, that everyone gets something delicious to eat and if you want dessert, you get dessert. And it's good. Not just good. It's the dessert that all your friends wish they were eating instead of theirs.

This is a take on applesauce that wound up becoming a seasonal pudding that is sweet enough for dessert, yet has enough fat in it to keep that fructose from turning our not-exactly-placid child into a superball in play at 6pm.

Just be aware, for those of you watching your sugar intake, that one small serving of this pudding is at least one apple's worth of the sweet stuff, so limit accordingly. If you can have dairy, make layers of whipped cream between layers of the pudding, or serve a small amount over a slice of stevia-sweetened or unsweetened coconut bread, or add a layer of ground nuts to the serving dish to lessen the amount of the sugar per serving. (I could see a possibility for a nut/apple/persimmon pudding, too, which would also cut the sugar.)

Apple Persimmon Sauce (or Pudding, depends on how you spin it, really)

Ingredients:
4 or 5 apples
1 nicely ripe fuyu persimmon
2-3 tablespoons ghee
1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
a spritz of water

Peel, core and cut up the apples, peel and cut up the persimmon and put in a saucepan with a bit of water. Bring to a boil and simmer until soft. Drain. Put the hot fruit into a blender. Add the ghee and blend well. Add vanilla if you like. Chill well.

The ghee makes it stiffen slightly when chilled.

GAPS Latkes!!!!

2010-12-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to say that for the first time in 2 years I have eaten latkes with my family on the first night of Chanukah. Happy Chanukah, by the way. :)

So, here it is. It mainly speaks for itself, but I will say that these are probably the tastiest latkes I've had, and since they're not white potato, they don't turn that odd purple color when your back is turned. They're not mealy and turn this glorious golden yellow color when fried. Our four-year-old somehow ate 4 large ones before I could even get to the table. She actually favored her latkes over the slices of apple on her plate. (No time to make applesauce tonight, so everyone had some fresh apple pieces.)

My one issue is that there's not enough starch in these roots to really bind them together. Ours had that consistency of "Chanukah Chash Browns" in places, which was fine. If the solidity of the pancakes is very important to you, more eggs would be helpful, as would a period of draining and more coconut flour.

GAPS Latkes

1 rutabaga
1 celery root
1 kohlrabi
1 onion
1 teaspoon fresh chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
pepper to taste
3 eggs
about 3 tablespoons coconut flour (more if necessary to sop up the moisture)
enough grapeseed oil mixed with ghee to fill a skillet to halfway up the sides of each latke.

Wash, peel and grate the roots, put in a big bowl. Finely chop the onion and add to the bowl. Add the parsley, oregano, salt and pepper. Beat the eggs. Add the eggs and mix well. Add enough coconut flour to absorb the moisture (ours were a bit wet, but it cooked tasted fine).

Heat the fat. Fry the latkes on both sides - they take longer than you'd think.
Get to the table fast before everyone eats your share while you're cooking the last few!

Serve with a combination of apple something and something creamy. If you do dairy, raw sour cream would do the trick with applesauce. If you don't do dairy, double culture some coconut milk kefir until it thickens, then put a dollop of that with the apple stuff. I could see a combination of the cream with some nice fresh apple shavings, too.

Pie, take 2

2010-11-26T18:18:00.000-08:00

Here it is...or was. Even the gluten and dairy eaters seemed to enjoy it. I've noticed that the coconut milk plus ghee non-dairy version cracks no matter how delicately it's baked.

Ugly, but tasty

2010-11-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

That ugly, ugly pie was absolutely fantastic, by the way.

Now to make another one. Sigh.

I forgot to mention that our Thanksgiving meal (and our leftovers for the next three days, of course) include a jar of my raw cultured cranberry sauce. I think the recipe is on last year's blog. I'll dig it out and will provide a link...

Here it is:

http://mommajenskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-keep-forgetting-cranberry-relish-raw.html

This year's changes. I'm watching the lemon juice for Rain and there's no nuts for me. In general I'm trying to vary our foods as much as possible - I included the meat of one hachiya persimmon instead of pear, substituted one peeled orange for lemon juice, left off the raisins and the nuts and used a few drops of stevia. I also thought there was enough cinnamon in our meal, so I left that off, as well and let the taste of the persimmon come through more.

The Pie

2010-11-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving. The apple persimmon raisin bread is baked (and a small piece will not be missed). The duck is defrosting. The vegetable soup is made and awaits reheating for tomorrow's dinner. The pie...

The pie.

The pie is overcooked.

Before I say another thing, I have enough squash, eggs, ghee (oh, dear, and I have to make more of that tomorrow!), dates, etc for one more. But there's nothing more difficult for my late night ego to deal with than a final recipe botched. (Did I ever mention that although I appear to be a night owl, that I'm more functional in the mornings?)

Today I FINALLY bought an oven thermometer. I intend to check the temperature on that dear appliance tomorrow because it's almost certainly too hot. I've known this for a while, but after a busy day the pie didn't start until after supper and I was already tired. I waited 43 of the 45 minutes before suddenly remembering its overwarm tendencies. By then it was too late. Snackboy has proclaimed it a "breakfast pie." It doesn't smell burnt and the top, although too brown, peels away to reveal a lovely, golden orange interior. That coconut flour crust is the most temperamental I've ever baked. Now that's got to be peeled off the sides of the pan. That was something of an experiment and I should have known better. The last pie crust had to end at the top of the filling because it burns at the drop of a hat. There's no way it could survive the initial 425 degree baking temperature for this pie (that was no doubt more like 450 in our oven...).

It wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that this pie is our showcase donation to dessert at our friends' Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow. Thanks to our food limitations as well as this month's insanity we've decided to have our own Thanksgiving the way we like it. We'll have vegetable soup, roast duck and rice-bread stuffing, apple raisin persimmon bread (GAPS-friendly - only slightly sweet), steamed green beans, sweet potato rounds with cinnamon and ghee. Then we'll bring out the pie to our friends' place. I figured I'd get that done tonight. Oh well. One more thing to do tomorrow.

After we have pie for breakfast, of course.

Yay! Eggs are back! Coconut stovetop custard...

2010-11-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

So we're back eating eggs again and Little Moo's rashes are looking much better. BioSet has made a huge difference. If you're wondering what that is, go here: http://kushnerhealth.com/bioset-nutritionist-allergist.html.

Meanwhile, we had an amazing coconut milk custard tonight. It was fine for my (now modified) GAPS limitations. The only sweetener was a handful of raisins and a few drops of stevia. The fat from the eggs and the coconut milk made it so delicious that no one missed the extra sweetness. The gelatin adds goodness and healing for the gut.

Ingredients:

1 can coconut milk
1 teaspoon Bernard Jensen's gelatin
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 handful of raisins
2 drops liquid stevia

Put the coconut milk, gelatin and vanilla in the top of a double boiler. As it heats, whisk well. Add the raisins. Cover until it's hot to the touch, but not boiling. The sweetness from the raisins should leak into the mixture.

While whisking, slowly add the egg yolks and continue to whisk until the mixture thickens slightly. (Be patient here. Coconut has a different chemistry than dairy. I've found that it takes a bit longer to thicken. On the other hand, it's much more forgiving, too.)

Remove from heat and beat the steam out for a moment or two. Add about 2 drops of stevia while beating. Then pour into cups and chill well for a few hours.

This is also a great way to make a sweet or unsweet coconut milk cream for tea, cake topping, filling, parfait layering, ice-cream making, etc. For a harder custard add more gelatin.

Blogging the Borscht!

2010-10-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

I made borscht tonight.

Now when I was a kid, borscht was this awful cold watery stuff that was a magenta color that nothing in this world should achieve naturally. It was generally out of a bottle with a thick blob of sour cream in the middle. And the taste. Ugh. It was weirdly sweet and dirty tasting with an edge of chemical preservatives. Ew.

Since I started this thing with traditional cooking I've discovered that many of the adulterated dishes I'd hated as a kid are something else entirely when made from scratch. Borscht is one of those things.

First of all, Sandor Katz's version is made with home-pickled beets. About 2 weeks ago I diced up 5 lbs of beets, added brine and caraway and sealed it up for a week. When it came out it was delicious - sweet/sour and with a brine that was like blood. We discovered that it is amazing with any kind of meat and even better mixed into salad.

Today I made his borscht. Here's a variation on it:

Saute about 2 or 3 onions in a soup pot until brown in grapeseed oil. I had giant ones so I just used 2 and I sauteed for over 15 minutes.

chop and add:

2 carrots
1 root veggie (he calls for potato, so I used celery root. I'm sure turnip or something similar would also be good and add less salt to the result.)

Add 2 cups of pickled beets
Add 6 cups of water

Toast and grind up 1 tablespoon of caraway and add that.

Bring to a boil, then simmer 30 minutes. Put into blender and blend until smooth.

Allow the soup to sit in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours and possibly all night, since it's better the following day.

Heat it up, put in a bowl and drizzle with a few spoons full of coconut milk or dairy kefir or yogurt.

Seriously, it's amazing. My one complaint is that it's a bit too salty. I think that next time I will rinse the beets before adding and will probably use a root other than celery.

10 things I've learned about food.

2010-09-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Food is precious, as are the bodies and beings who eat it, and the land, sun, air and water that creates it.
Food production is like great art and should be valued highly.
Food preparation is an art for everyone. Going the other way, everyone deserves to have good quality, well-prepared food in their life. They should also know how to make it themselves. It doesn't have to be fancy, just nutritious and well-made. We've lost the thread of mothers teaching young eaters of both sexes kitchen wisdom. I think there's just as much wrong with a culture that forces parents to overvalue the workplace and undervalue the home as there is with one that traps mothers at home and doesn't allow them to work at all.
Good meat that is grown and slaughtered mindfully is good food. If it's expensive, we eat less of it. We don't bother with the other stuff.
With that in mind, our family is not built for vegetarianism, too much sugar (including fructose) or a low-fat diet. Maybe some people out there are. Not us.
Between my allergies and my daughter's, if it comes in a package it's not an option. Besides, it often takes just as long to heat up a package of stuff as it does to prepare the ingredients from scratch. Homemade always tastes better.
If a sweet food doesn't taste rich enough, add ghee, not sugar. If a savory doesn't taste satisfying, add a dash of unprocessed sea salt and more ghee or dress it with olive oil. If it's still not quite right, add a bit of lemon or lime juice.
When a person wants to eat just one thing that's generally the thing to which they're sensitive or allergic. When that food goes away, the diversity comes back to the taste buds.
For heat: Turmeric, cumin, mustard, cinnamon, fat, broth. (I'd add ginger, too, but I'm allergic to it.) Cook it, preferably slow-cook or steam. Eat soup before or as a meal.
For cooling: Add a raw veggie or fruit like pear or apple. Add coriander or yogurt. Eat a salad before a meal.

Water Kefir! A sort of cottage industry.

2010-07-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

It's delicious and it makes you feel like you've just gulped down a strong dose of well-being. (If I'm remembering correctly, that's what kefir means, actually.) Unfortunately, I can't have it.

But this is not where this story ends.

A few weeks ago I got some grains from a person in Bernal Heights and started making jars of this stuff. I drank a small amount each morning for a week, and started to notice that although my digestion was FABULOUS, that I had started getting hives, itchy scalp and itchy eyes again. In short, the candida liked the kefir also, and rather too much. At least it wasn't like it was over a year ago when I started making kefir before and immediately had severe candida symptoms right after I drank it. Then, it took weeks to get rid of the infection. This time it took less than one.

I'm still not finished this story.

So I'm making it by the gallon, literally, and it has to be renewed each night in a new batch, or the grains will die. Already I've had to give away 1/4 cup of grains to a friend. Now that I can't drink it my husband puts away a large glass of it each night and my daughter loves the coconut milk version, but there's still, oh, a gallon minus one cup each night that sits in the fridge for days.

I started giving friends a small jar here and there and was promptly told by one afterwards that she'd pay for me to give her a jar each week. So here I am. It's $5 a jar, easy to produce and everyone's happy. My friend was surprised, she said, by how little I charge. I'm not greedy, and honestly, it's nearly all profit on my end at this point.

Once she started, then two other people who know both of us jumped in and said they'd each take a jar. One of my clients bought one and another said she'd try it this week.

I'm excited to be able to make something useful and healthful for folks that they can use. I also believe in the health benefits of true kefir (as in, made from grains not from starter), even though I can't tolerate it at this point, myself. It's also great to be doing something financially useful at this rather too-lean time for us.

Meanwhile, the kefir factory keeps bubbling and I look forward to spreading around the well-being.

(If anyone out there is in San Francisco, and you'd like to buy a jar, drop me a line! It's $5 for water kefir, $7 for coconut water kefir, $10 for coconut milk kefir! Each jar is about 14 oz or so - all recycled.)

Amazing Mint Tea!

2010-07-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the most amazing cup of mint tea I've ever had. Seriously. It was also unbelievably expensive, especially considering what it had in it. I picked up some herbs at the market yesterday and today made a cup that was just about a duplicate of the storebought one. Ready? Here it is.

Amazing Mint Tea

makes 1 cup or a small pot

1 small handful of crisp spearmint leaves, freshly picked off the stems
2 fresh sage leaves
1 fresh basil leaf
1 green cardamom pod

Put the herbs and the pod in a cup. Boil water and let sit for a few minutes. Pour the water over the herbs. Infuse for as long as you like. I thought it was still tasty after sitting about 5 minutes. Strain if you want. Or just dodge the leaves as you drink. :)

An Evening In The Life

2010-06-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our kitchen. It's a cooking day, which means that I get back from taking Little Moo out or from work, put my apron on and multitask for several hours, both before and after dinner. It occurred to me that I never actually documented one of these insane evenings. So, here goes.

This is one of these days when I have NO food to eat, other than a soup that disappears soon after breakfast. Right after I got back from work I threw together these coconut muffins so I'd have something to eat between breakfast and dinner besides fruit (the sugar is just too much). This is one of two boxes. I also made a coconut custard with papaya and dates that's already in the refrigerator. I wish I could have included more protein in it, but I'm off nuts again. :(

The cauliflower is the first thing made for dinner. It's steamed, with a bit of salt and olive oil. Since it takes such a short time and holds up well after a while sitting out it went first.

The next thing I do, once I set out the rest of the dinner-makings, is to set up a few things for the next day or so. Here's a jar of dried navy beans that will be good in the braised lamb dish that's already started in the fridge (or if the beans aren't soaked enough by tomorrow it will go into a soup of some kind the day after). I soak the beans with brine (yep, red cabbage!) and put it up next to the coconut kefir I made earlier.

Next, it's time to make a new batch of ghee. That takes roughly an hour of oven time, but nothing else is in there tonight, so it's okay.

Next I put on the entree, which is some very nice looking rockfish with ghee, dill and lemon. The non-GAPS eaters are having rice pasta, which is on the burner next door.

Here's the fish, all done and ready for eating. There's fermented veggies, and broth for everyone, too. The cauliflower is off to the side. Notice that the broth is made pink with brine - that's a technique I often use to get our resident pinkophiliac to drink at least some of it. (And, yes, for those of you wondering, Little Moo usually prefers to come to the table with as little clothing as possible.)

While Little Moo is in her bath I strain the ghee. This time, for some reason, it took forever. In the meantime, I start cleaning up and loading the dishwasher.

Then, while Little Moo is in the bath, I prepare her evening supplements. What a trooper. Not even a peep of complaint tonight.

Then, the little person has to go to sleep. At the moment we're using the living room rocking chair and her daddy's lap, which means that the kitchen has to be dark. Here's the finished ghee about to go into the refrigerator. I still have stuff to do - the meat has to be browned for tomorrow's stew - but it's too dark, so I thought I'd start this entry...

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's a sample of an evening around here. Of course, tomorrow, I get to put the stew in the slow cooker right before we leave the house at 11:30 and then later I get to relax before dinner. :)

Peachsplosion!

2010-06-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

FYI...use a nice, big jar...bigger than the one I used. Be sure to keep at least 1" open at the top and keep that top on loosely!

Luckily, I caught it just as it was expanding. There's just a small puddle of cleanup. :)

Summer Stonefruit Preserves

2010-06-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

This started out as a chutney, then I thought twice about making it too spicy since it's also for Little Moo and there's a good chance that I will still be just as allergic to peaches as I was three years ago, so she and Snackboy will have to eat it all themselves...

I chopped up several small plums, three nectarines and three peaches, added some dried cherries, dried papaya and about 3 chopped dates. Finally I added a teaspoon of salt and the juice of one lemon (it was hot here for a few days...) I dropped in about 4 drops of stevia, then added 1/4 cup of coconut milk kefir.

It didn't fill up high enough, and I thought that perhaps the dried fruit might want to soak up some liquid, so I added about 1/4 cup filtered water and filled the rest of the jar up with the kefir.

It's been sitting for about 24 hours when these photos were taken. I tried a bit of one of the plums and it's quite delicious. Sort of sweetish, super-creamy, but with a bit of salt and tart. A nice balance. (If you were wondering, yes, that is an old-fashioned transistor radio leaning on the jar.)

The best gluten-free bake-book...

2010-05-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

If I haven't said it before, it's Babycakes by Erin McKenna.
One of my two complaints, though, is that it's all too sweet and uses too much sugar. They're not bad on the fat, and they do use coconut oil, but do not specify that in order to bake at 350 and higher the coconut oil has to be REFINED, not virgin.

I think it's the vegan thing. People who don't get enough good, whole animal fat and proteins in their diets crave sweets and starches. There's also this tendency that we all have to jump onto a simple bit of information and lose all sense of context. What Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism." There's a lack of information about smoke points and detailed information about what makes food good and good for a person - people just glom onto a factoid, and discard the system that surrounds it: "blueberries have antioxidents," "spinach is super-good for you and has lots of b vitamins," and "agave is less glycemic than sugar" or "coconut oil will do everything including help you lose weight, help your immunity and organize your closets." If coconut oil is damaged in too high of a heat, (or if your spinach is unaccompanied by a good fat,) it's not doing anything good for anyone!

Our other fantastic allergy-free bake-book, which is also vegan, is the same way with the over-sugaring, but better with the nutrition information, although they've bought into the mainstream myth that low-fat is good. I always cut out at least 1/4 cup of whatever sweetener is used and occasionally remove all the sweetener and replace it with applesauce or raisins or whatever.

Some recipes for Nicola...

2010-05-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

These are especially for Nicola, who's older boy has recently gone gluten-free.

All these ingredients are available at Rainbow. Some of them are at Whole Foods.

One of my favorite books for allergy-free baking is the Food Allergy Survival Guide by Vesanto Melina, Jo Stepaniak and Dina Aronson. My only complaint is that there's too much sugar and the recipes are too sweet, so I cut them down quite a bit and add more liquid to compensate if it's honey or maple syrup.

Flour Mix from Food Allergy Survival Guide:

3 cups potato or tapioca starch

2 cups chickpea/garbanzo flour

2 cups brown or white rice flour

1 cup arrowroot starch

This can be kept in a jar or airtight container for months. It seems to almost behave like wheat flour, which makes it nice for substitutions. FYI, though, the potato flour is SUPER absorbent. I much prefer the tapioca starch for consistency.

Super-easy one bowl muffins:

12 muffins

2 cups flour mix

1/3 cup honey or maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon guar gum or 1 egg, beaten

large pinch of salt

2 cups nondairy milk or water

1/2 cup coconut oil, grapeseed oil or ghee, softened

Preheat the oven to 375F. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with baking cups. Blend together all dry ingredients: flour mix, guar gum (if using it), salt, in large bowl. Whisk in milk or water, oil and blend until smooth. (Add egg here if you're using it instead of guar gum.)

Spoon into cups being careful not to overfill. Bake until lightly browned, and when cake tester or toothpick comes out smooth from middle of a muffin, about 25 minutes. Cool on a rack.

These will be best the same day and still tasty the next am. After that, freeze them and they'll keep a long while.

The muffins can be varied with just about any blend of fruit, nuts, spices, etc.

Hee Hee. "The Totally Insane Cook Goes To Town"

2010-05-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

So this is one of those evenings when I'm cooking for the entire week. First there was dinner to be had tonight, early - Baked chicken, coriander beets, cauliflower, green salad and rice pasta for those who partake, (and no one did tonight) - then Little Moo and I baked cookies because she hasn't had any in at least 3 weeks - then I whip into gear and clean the kitchen in preparation so that I can start a whole bunch of stuff for the week. There are nuts to soak, one batch to drain, rinse and get to drying in the oven and an oxtail stew to start to be finished tomorrow. The stew comes complete with a battery of fine veggies that make it a pretty much complete meal, including roots, greens, onion, garlic, and finally, broth. If I have a spare burner I might put on a batch of coconut milk custard cause I can just ignore it until it's done.

So I was on Facebook and just finished a thread with this little tidbit, which I think completely embodies the crazy evenings of cooking that happen here about twice a week. A friend commented that I should write a book with recipes and stories about our journey with allergies and GAPS and the rest. This was in between a few tasks and while doing a few others:

Oh, what about a cooking show that doubles as a comedy called "The Completely Insane Cook Goes To Town." Each episode would feature a Julia Child impression, a song for each recipe, plus one tearful confession while I chop numerous onions...sort of like a more sane Glenn Beck if he actually did anything useful. Then there could be, at the end, "This show was brought to you by the letter G, for garlic...yep. Lots of garlic."

My apologies. It's another long evening in the kitchen and I'm already half way to insane."

Thought my readers might appreciate that.

And, no. I'm absolutely not being serious.

A moment of weakness, then it's over.

2010-05-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me also probably know that we have food allergies. They're not severe - so far, no one has wound up with anaphylaxis. But we do get covered with itchy hives and have all kinds of secondary symptoms. One of our allergies is gluten, which has all kinds of repercussions. If you know me then you also probably know that I'm generally not one to complain, but tonight was just awful, I'm exhausted and at my wits' end and, so here I go. One whiny blog entry and then I'm done.

Ready? Here it goes.

Another of our allergies is corn. Yet another is soy. Both of these are so ubiquitous, especially corn, that we don't buy any prepared product, unless we know for sure that it has none of our allergens in it. I can count those products on one and a half hands. Frozen organic spinach, mango chunks, berries, coconut milk, Food For Life rice breads, coconut butter, rice pastas, rice crackers. That's it! We don't even use spice mixes since often they have fillers in them.

We are the ones sitting in the park with our big steaming thermos of whatever is for lunch that day with a side of homemade sauerkraut. No restaurants, no takeout. Generally no food cooked by anyone other than me and a few people who know our situation. It's extremely limiting. We often can't break bread with friends...unless it's rice bread. Whenever we bring L. Moo to a birthday party I've generally been up baking the night before so that L. Moo can bring a batch of cupcakes that she can eat and share with her friends, who are also stuffing their faces with whatever storebought vanilla or chocolate corn/gluten-filled confection that would be sheer poison for us.

I'm fine about this. The only room I inhabit besides the bedroom is the kitchen. I've accepted that fate and try to make it as enjoyable as I can.

There are nights, though, that try my patience. This is one of them. One of our main issues is getting Little Moo down to sleep at a reasonable hour. She has always been reluctant to sleep. Any obstacle to getting to bed keeps her up. For a long time we couldn't get her down before 10. Now we push dinner as early as we can, which is difficult when so much from-scratch preparation goes into it. I try to make food for 2 or 3 days at a time, but that's not always possible. We eliminated all but the smallest amounts of meat at night. This means that her big protein meals are the first two, and more cooking for me during the day. Her breakfast is now hearty dinner fare, which is fine. I'm perkier in the morning, anyway.

Tonight we got her dinner-filled, bathed and in bed by 8:10, at which point, I went comatose in front of this screen and left her with my husband who tried to get her down until he suddenly remembered: Supplements!

Ack. The supplements. Chinese herbs for immune boosting, inflammation-taming, and rash-soothing, all in a tiny pink Ikea teacup with a bit of water. Little Moo is a trooper. She takes them morning and night, every day, rain or shine. If we miss a dose, she wakes up the next day with bigger rashes and noticeably more itching. Morning supplements go hand in hand with a teaspoon of cod liver oil, one drop vitamin D3, high vitamin butter oil and probiotics. Luckily, she likes the taste of the oils and her little spoon of dairy-free yogurt paste. But the supplements taste awful. I've heard this kind of wretched drink prescribed by Chinese Herbalists called "mud tea." Really, for a little kid, she has absolutely fantastic discipline, but still, she's only 3!

Each day there's a new way to get her to take them.

"When you take the supplements, you get a slice of fruit/a few raisins/dried mango."

"Do you want to go to swimming? Well, we're not going anywhere until those herbs are in your tummy!" (We've never yet missed a swimming lesson for this reason.)

"Your friend, who's a very big girl, most certainly takes her supplements all by herself!" (I know for a fact that the little girl in question takes no supplements at all and if she had to take them all #@!! would break loose...)

"Look, either you take them yourself, or I can help you take them." (It's never fun, and it makes me feel like Joan Crawford of the Chinese Herbs, but sometimes she just can't do it by herself.)

For the first month or so, we were nearly 40 minutes late to preschool each day, then finally in the last 2 months it's gotten easier during the day. Her evening dose is another matter, especially when I screw up.

Tonight I was exhausted from last night's insomnia and completely forgot to mix the herbs at the right time. I'm usually obsessively habitual about it, but I just couldn't focus tonight. By the time the herbs were taken, one batch had been spilled on her blankets and she was mad and decided that the time had come to stop cooperating.

So here I am, seeing tracers and posting this.

All done ranting. Now it's back to the kitchen for me where a batch of half-made coconut milk kefir awaits its mason jar before I can call it a night.

(Almost) Instant Mango Lime Sorbet

2010-05-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

The key to this is a powerful blender, like a VitaMix, although you could just as easily do this with a blender and an ice cream maker.

For a vitamix:

2 bags frozen organic mango chunks, or about 4 frozen mangos
Juice of 1 lime
3 drops stevia or 1/2 tsp honey
1/2 ripe banana
1/3 cup coconut milk or coconut milk kefir

Put in blender. Blend. Scoop. Eat. Enjoy.

If you don't have a vitamix:

Blend the above ingredients until smooth. Put into ice cream maker. Churn for the appropriate time according to instructions on appliance. Scoop. Eat. Enjoy.

If you have any left over, you can either freeze it (reblend before serving if you're using a vitamix), or if you use kefir in the sorbet, you can plunk the rest in a jar, let sit overnight and call it preserves. Add to nut butter on some kind of nut butter delivery system (toast, lettuce leaf, celery stalk, spoon, finger...etc.)
Or, use to top something else tasty, like a 1/2 cup coconut milk yogurt or kefir, or nut yogurt. Use your imagination. It's super tasty.

Jam, sort of.

2010-03-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

When Little Moo refused all attempts to get her to eat nut butters (even super-delicious toasted cashew and pecan butter - go figure,) I'd all but given up, until she requested "jam." I think the sitter keeps it around and maybe Little Moo got a taste. Who wouldn't like a super-sweet sugar-filled mouthful of something that isn't really fruit but claims it is? Not me. But Little Moo now has "jam" on her mind and let me know.

So one morning I dropped her off at school, dashed down to the co-op, bought our weekly groceries, carted them home, and in my last hour of freedom, while I put them away and made myself something to eat, I dumped one bag of frozen organic blueberries and one of raspberries into the blender with some coconut milk kefir. Then I blended the heck out of them for longer than I probably should have, because I was multitasking. I scooped the delectable treat that came out into a jar (and put the overflow into a nice little bowl, 'cause, really, what resulted was a kind of berry sorbet and I couldn't resist) and left it all day and overnight to ferment.

The next morning I presented Little Moo with a "nut butter and jam sandwich," which she wolfed down with wide eyes and a face full of nut-buttery purple goo after.

Heh. No sugar. Only fruit and a bit of coconut with some kefir-y goodness.

So, no recipe today, only a nice idea. Try it out...I think any fruit would work. And if you like the sorbet idea, that's a lovely treat, too if you start with frozen fruit.

A Surprising Easy Everyday Lunch

2010-02-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

Hey, GAPS people! Squash idea! Although I'm sure it's been done before. I've always avoided it because it takes so long to prepare. It's also a bit testy on the digestive tract for me, but this version is bathed in good fats. The ghee and coconut butter formed a kind of creamy sauce, which is very tasty and seems to be acting a bit more kindly going down.

So, I peeled a whole delicata squash, scooped out the seeds, and cut it up into about 1/2" squares. I steamed it for 8 minutes in a metal steamer. Then I added about 2 teaspoons of ghee and one of coconut butter.

Super delicious - and the one issue, for me is that it's a bit low on protein. But then, we don't have the butter, nut or egg options and we're between batches of soup and meat.

Kitchen Sink Soup - GAPS style

2010-02-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

I know it looks like all I make is desserts, but really, that's what I do for fun and many of them I can't even sample because they have too many disaccharides.

Okay. So this is what I eat for two, sometimes 3 meals in a day, in as many variations as is possible to come with over a year and 3 months.

This version was started with bone broth from buffalo ribs that had lots of meat on them.

Then I sauteed a whole yellow onion for 25 minutes. Generally I use ghee, but I thought I'd take a break and use grapeseed oil and drippings from yesterday's chicken. Then I added chopped spring garlic and continued until they were almost transparent - just a few minutes more. I added vegetables I had around - a bunch of chopped spinach, some peas, about five stalks of celery chopped and continued to saute it until everything was coated and the spinach was slightly wilty. I stuck a sprig of thyme, a pinch of oregano and a bay leaf in a bouquet garni bag and tossed it in, then added 1/2 teaspoon of salt, then the broth. It boiled, then settled to a simmer until done. I think this one took 15 minutes. Remove bouquet garni. Put in bowl. Add either kraut or coconut milk kefir. Eat. Enjoy.

Oh, I forgot to mention that somewhere along the way I like to add a bit of Bernard Jensen's gelatin. Generally about a tablespoon for a large pot of soup. I look to see if it gels when it's cold. If it's hard or almost hard after a night in the fridge, it's enough gelatin. If it's watery, add more.

Another Realization

2010-02-14T22:02:00.000-08:00

Heh.

I never talk about stews and all the meats I cook. They're just too banal-seeming for that, I guess. But next time...

Maybe I'll talk about the joys of a good bone broth stew or something? *Snort* Especially since that's pretty much what I'm eating two and three times a day right now. :)

An unintentional cavewoman.

2010-02-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

Last week I saw John Durant on The Colbert Report and a lightbulb went off. Sort of. I mean, diets are all in the eye of the beholder, and the eater, to a certain extent. I'm sure that there are some folks in the world who are better adjusted to a menu that contains grains and vegetable matter than I am. I just don't know where or who they are, necessarily. I remember, as a youngish dancer meeting a colleague who was actually raised vegan who was in excellent shape, not counting some laugh lines that could be chalked up to a smoking habit. On the other hand, then we were 20-something. Now we're all nearing or in our 40s and I don't see her much, (although she's still dancing, as far as I can see) so I don't know what her health is like. I also have a friend who is amazingly creative in the kitchen as a vegan and manages to make some spectacularly varied macrobiotic meals for her family. She's also from an ancestry that ate lots of vegetables and rice. So perhaps that's a good fit, as well.

I do know that my years as a vegetarian helped to ruin my health. I lost several years just trying to get my life back. First there was the wild moods of my adolescence - I'm sorry, folks, but that kind of emotional mess is NOT normal for a kid. Then there was my back injury, constant rashes and infections. My gut was a mess, too. I had chronic dysbiosis. I've been allergic to gluten (perhaps Celiac's, I'm not sure...) all my life, but my childhood and later vegetarian diet was full of it. This was on top of the routinely overused antibiotics given to kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s and too many foods that came out of boxes and cans. At least I ate fish, eggs and dairy.

My ancestors ate meat, including organ meat (during lean periods in the form of stews, most likely), fresh and preserved fish, poultry, bone broth, roots, fermented drinks, dairy and vegetables. They had soured breads, black breads and kasha, nuts, honey and probably some dried fruits. In the summers they had whatever vegetables they could grow. My great grandmother had 7 children, six of whom lived. Two of her children she birthed in her forties - at the turn of the century. My mother tells me that her favorite part of the chicken were the feet. She was also unusual in that she was a birthing assistant, basically what we now call a doula. She believed in nursing, rather than the bottle feeding that was forced on mothers at that time. She nursed all her babies. So did my grandmother. My mother nursed me until about 16 months. My maternal grandmother lived to a ripe old age of 97 with little illness and amazing bones. The fact that my mother nursed me as long as she did probably saved me from even more difficulties.

Since the turn of the century, the health of my extended family has suffered as the diet changed to packaged and processed foods. Few people actually die of old age. Instead, we have cancer and diabetes. Many of the women have fibroids, including me. (I currently live with nine of varying sizes. It was a bit like having a multiple pregnancy, with only one coming out at the end. We named them after the Seven Dwarves with two extra whose names changed often - Annoyance and Irritation were my favorite.) I have a theory that there are lots of unnoticed food sensitivities and allergies, especially gluten.

I started GAPS diet over a year ago and watched as layers of dysfunction peeled away, sometimes painfully, usually with relief. I still have a few, but I have hope that these will go at some point, as well. One thing that hasn't happened is true relief from my food allergies. I still can't have peach, honey, salmon, oranges, ginger or nuts. I have occasional problems with nightshades, broccoli and can't eat any vegetable raw. The diet doesn't allow any soy or starches, so I don't know (and actually don't care) if I can eat grains, soy or corn. My child is off of eggs and dairy. Since we're still nursing, so am I.

That leaves meat. Lots of it. It's my main protein since legumes are more of a starch. Then there's ghee, drippings, well cooked vegetables, fruits that aren't from the peach family, herbs and spices. I did discover that although I couldn't really eat nuts that I could eat coconut so I do, although my great grandmother probably would have thought it a strange food. I'm suddenly remembering that coconut was a favorite food of my maternal grandmother's. Go figure. I like to think that's a sign. Of something. I'm not sure what, though.

Since the GAPS diet, I'm physically much stronger than I was. I've always built muscle quickly - a curse to a ballet dancer - but now that I'm in my 40s and eating more or less a paleolithic diet, I'm finding that the extra muscle mass feels good and is probably good for the rest of my body. I digest fats well and definitely use them for energy, although small amounts of GAPS-legal well-soaked or sprouted beans or fruit give me a little extra when I need it.

Little Moo is definitely a carnivore, as well as a what...a lipidivore? She likes fats. She's never liked grains or starches all that much. If her preferences indicate what sort of instinctive diet our genetic makeup should eat, then we're definitely talking caveman here. That is, if cavemen enjoyed mustard and kraut.

I just looked up some of the offshoots of this food movement and thought that at least on the surface it was a bit simplified and also on the macho side. There's lots of talk about what the body looks like, weight loss and ketosis, building muscle (yep, that's a man typing) and lots of pictures of well-muscled male abs and arms doing pull-ups and the like. I read a little more on the Primal Blueprint site and found some deeper analysis, but not quite as much as on the Weston A. Price Foundation's or Natasha Campbell-McBride's.

One thing I just love...and it has nothing to do with food, so please excuse this digression...I adore the idea of barefoot running. I have terrible feet. Always have. My theory is that when I was born with inwardly rotated femurs that from then on doctors insisted that my feet be shoved into hard little "supportive" shoes. I don't think that my feet fully developed. The ligament that runs around the arch on both feet is lax and the tendons on either side of the foot work too hard. My talus doesn't move very well. I have all kinds of foot pain and have needed orthotics all my life. The only place I don't, though, is when I'm dancing and warmed up. I do my best to get to that state these days and to take off my shoes whenever I can. I love wearing sandals that let my feet move, even if I can only tolerate them for a short time. I do think that I'm doing myself a favor.

Little Moo, on the other hand, has great feet. From the time she started walking my instinct was to let her go as barefoot as possible. I loved the Robeez shoes that were like soft little sheaths for developing feet. I wish there were similar shoes for older kids! I let her take off her shoes (always as soft as I can find, but with protective soles) at clean parks and climb things while her toes wrap around bars and ropes. Two days ago we found an empty dance studio. We took off our shoes then ran and danced together until we fell down laughing and exhausted....now that's a great time!

GAPS Apple Pie

2010-02-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

We've been finding that the squashes are getting sort of late-season unpredictable. I finally made another squash pie, but it just wasn't quite as spectacular as past pies. That was when Little Moo made some suggestion about apple pie.

So I thought about it.

It would be great for Little Moo who is right now GF/DF/EF/CF/SF.

I'm off nuts, so, no crust.

I can't have honey, sugar or syrup, so that's not an option, either. Of course, I'm always one for the low glycemic option.

The doctor suggested that I eat cinnamon, so that's a go. No cloves or allspice, though.

I cut up a bunch of apples and pears and layered them deeply in a pie pan (that's a buttload of fruit, by the way), sprinkled it generously with cinnamon, then poured over it a small amount of water mixed with lemon juice, vanilla and about 4 drops of stevia.

I stuck the thing in a 350 oven for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

It's basically a cross between a baked apple and a pie, or a crisp, or something. Only there's no crust and no crisp.

It's amazing...it actually seemed to form a sweet syrup, even without added sugars.

It's even better cold! I tried it a few days ago with cold coconut milk kefir and it's super that way. It would even be better if the kefir was turned into ice cream. (Can you tell it's warm here now? Heh.)

Sconage!

2010-02-01T01:42:00.000-08:00

I can't eat these, since they're made from garbanzo flour and have tapioca in them, as well, not to mention maple syrup, but they're fine for Little Moo, who managed to fill up on them for one day, then wouldn't touch them again.

Recipe to come...