Autumn Squash Custard

When I set out to make this I was aiming for GAPS-friendly pie for the fall, but wound up with something between flan and pumpkin pie.

It has no sugar or syrup. The sweetness comes from ground up raisins, banana and the natural flavor of the squash. It tastes like a dessert, but could also be breakfast - it contains nut butter for a bit of protein. It tastes great topped with a bit of homemade sour cream.

Ingredients

1 can coconut milk

2 tbs Bernard Jensen Gelatin

1 orange-fleshed winter squash, baked and scooped out of its skin

1/2 banana

raisins to taste (I think I used about 1/2 cup...it really all depends on how sweet your squash is. If it's super sweet, use less. This one was a bit bland)

2-3 tbs nut butter (pecan butter was delicious and very autumnal)

1 tb non-alcohol vanilla

3/4 ts cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

In a double boiler, heat the coconut milk and the gelatin until hot enough to dissolve the powder.

While the coconut milk is heating, put the squash, banana, raisins, nut butter, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg in a strong blender and blend until smooth. Pour in the coconut milk/gelatin mixture and blend completely. Pour into a pan (I used a 9" pie pan) and chill until gelled.

Mango Chutney

After months and months of lactofermented veggies (for me it's been a few years, actually) it was time for something different. I tried a mango version of the Nourishing Traditions Papaya Chutney. It's delicious. I left off the rapadura and it's STILL amazing.

Basically, get a small onion, bunches of mint and cilantro, respectively, 3 big mangoes, a red pepper, and mix them up in a bowl. Cube the fruit, julienne the pepper, and chop the leaves of the herbs coarsely. Chop the onion, too.

In a separate bowl, mix together a few ts salt, 1/4 c whey, 1/2 c lime juice and 1/2 c water.

Put the fruit mixture into a quart mason jar, punch it down with something like a meat hammer or a ladle. Add the liquid, adding enough water to fill to 1" above the fruit. If anything floats to the top, try to push it down.

Seal it up and keep it in a warm place for 2 days, then refrigerate.

The trick here is that almost anything blended with whey and left to ferment tastes great. So, for a small jar of mustard, relish or whatever gets a few tablespoons and a quart gets 1/4 cup.

Like Buttah

We're back to eating a bit of ghee every 4 days or so...and the "or so" means whenever I run out of other things to cook with or spread since everything else Little Moo eats is also on a 4-day rotation.

The deal is that ALL the lactose must be out. For me, too. Here's the latest innovation in butter-

straining improvisations.

GAPS-friendly white bean, eggless pancakes

Mwahahaha!

Today is bean day on the 4 day rotation diet. So at some point I have to bake something and pancakes are sometimes easy. Sometimes not. They don't like to hold together and today is NOT egg day. Sigh. Julie Matthews turned me onto the possibility of chia seeds as a binder. Actually, it's the gel they make in water. Unfortunately it was nowhere nearly enough. I think I'd have to use way too many seeds and the cakes would taste weird at that point. If I had a ton of flour to try stuff with, I may do that sometime, but I only made 1 cup. Thilly me. So I added guar gum. That seemed to do it, although it's not perfect.

White navy beans make a great neutral tasting flour. To make them GAPS and digestion-friendly I presoaked and dried them before grinding (it also makes the batter testing a bit more easy on the gut).

To make up for the missing fat from the egg I made sure there was a nice amount of extra added. I used nut butter with the dairy so that I wouldn't have to make them too dairy-centric and because today is also nut day. :)

I would think that you could substitute nut milks or coconut milk (kefired or not) for water and sour cream, more nut butter, beef tallow, lard or coconut oil for ghee. We have to stay away from coconut for a while. :(

Lastly, please feel free to play with the amount of banana. Little Moo kept noshing as she mashed so there may be a bit more or less since I added as she subtracted.

White Bean Flour:

2 cups white navy beans, soaked overnight in 2 tbs baking soda and 6 cups water in a mason jar.

Drain and thoroughly rinse beans. Spread on a big shallow pan and dry in an oven at the lowest temp until dry. (Several hours to overnight.)

Put into a VERY STRONG blender and blend into a fine flour.

White Bean Eggless Pancakes

1 c white bean flour (see above)

2 tbs melted ghee

pinch salt

1 small mashed banana

1 tsp chia seed gelatin (soak and strain 1 tsp of seeds...keep the gel)

1 tsp guar gum

4 ts (1 1/2 tb) nut butter

1/2 c water

2 heaping tb sour cream

1 tsp soda

1 tsp vanilla

Blend together everything but soda in a bowl. Add the soda. blend well.

Fry in pan with a bit of ghee. It takes a while to cook. When they're done they're quite brown, but very tasty. Little Moo gobbled them down with maple syrup. I'm on GAPS, so I had a smear of nut butter and some fresh mango on them. Yum.

A GAPS variation on Coconut Milk Custard

If you look back to last August, you'll see that I came up with a coconut milk custard to make for Rain's 2nd birthday. Well, I planned on making that today, only GAPS friendly* so I could partake.  My idea was to add gelatin and remove the sugar so it would be more gut-friendly. 

Everything seemed to go wrong. I thought the egg curdled, the stevia smelled weird to me. It seemed too liquid. I actually went to the store to get more eggs and made the one from August with rapadura in it. I figured that Snackboy and Little Moo could enjoy but I'd sit on the sidelines, perhaps trying the ruined version. 

Both of them enjoyed the rapadura version. Little Moo liked hers so much that she took offense when I tried to clean her - she wanted to lick it off!

Anyway, the first version was INCREDIBLE...and no sugar! Just dates and a few drops of stevia. Here it is:

1 can whole organic coconut milk

3 egg yolks, preferably from pastured eggs

1 tb Bernard Jensen's gelatin

5 drops stevia

4 or 5 dates, pitted and chopped

Take 3 or 4 custard cups or little canning jars and set aside. Line the bottoms with dates. Heat the coconut milk in a double boiler. Add the gelatin, stir well. Beat the egg yolks. Add them slowly while stirring with a whisk until the yolks thicken the mixture slightly. Remove from heat. Add the stevia, then pour on top of the dates. Allow to cool somewhat, then cover and chill for a few hours. 

Another lovely addition to this would be about 1 ts vanilla, added at the end with the stevia. 

*Well, almost GAPS friendly. It has a small amount of stevia in it. It's entirely possible to leave that out, too.

While I chop late season celeriac... (Recipe: Coconut Kefir/Pear Shake)

It's been a while.

That's the trouble with GAPS. Just when I figure out something interesting to say, the kitchen calls again...time to make yogurt, or chop veggies, or take the bones out from soaking, or time to put the chicken in, or take it out...etc.

It never ends.

So here I am, overdue with my own preparations to get our girl into bed, chopping celery root for tomorrow's (not even today's) soup. Never mind that I have to put that 24 hour yogurt away, too.

It takes an amazing amount of effort to keep us in food, and to keep food around that keeps Little Moo's interest. It's not like she's a sweets addict like some kids and won't eat anything else, but she does turn on and off of things unpredictably.

The other news around here is that after several fine months of pleasant and harmonious dairy ingestion it appears that both she and I are reacting to the yogurt. For me it's digestive - boy is that new - and for her, it's rashes...very similar to mine and in the same places. For me cheese, ghee and 24 hour sour cream appear to be fine. I'm not sure about her. I know that the precious sheep's milk yogurt that she adores gave her a rash in about 15 minutes after eating. Of course, it's packaged, no matter how pure, and is probably only cultured a few hours, so it could be lactose. 

Either way, we went dairy-free again today and the rashes are fading. Yay!

Here's a recipe that went over very well with the family these last 2 days:

Coconut Kefir/Pear Shake

2 ripe pears

1 1/2 cup coconut milk kefir

1/2 small ripe banana

dash cinnamon

dash nutmeg

Peel, core and cut up pears. Cut banana into a few pieces. Add these to blender. Add kefir to blender. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to blender. Blend well. Enjoy. It hardens to a spoonable consistency in the fridge, which makes it very pleasant for a girl who's craving rich yogurty goodness. Adding some nuts to the blend would make it a more complete meal. 

I have an idea for a sort of coconut kefir mango lassi sort of thing that I intend to try tomorrow. 

Highlights from 4 months of soup...

On the GAPS Diet you eat soup. Soup for dinner, lunch and even breakfast. Since I've cut out sugars, I'm even more reliant on soup than before. I also eat lot of soaked and slow-roasted nuts now that I can eat them. 

When you eat that much soup, sometimes it's just a matter of pouring the broth in the pan, chopping vegetables while it's boiling, whatever's in there. Once it boils, turn down to simmer, add gelatin if necessary, add chopped veggies and soup meat, stew for 25-35 minutes. Put in bowl, allow to cool slightly, add lactofermented food item of your choice plus a whole fat. Stir. Eat. Eat seconds cause usually I'm still hungry after. 

Occasionally I have a plan. But when you eat that much soup, the best ones are accidental.

I have some favorite soup combinations and here they are:

Super-gelatinous beef broth made with shoulder and knuckle bones with stewed ground lamb, brussel sprouts, onions, carrots, mushrooms served with homemade creme fraiche, a bit of ghee and a big dollop of sauerkraut on top. Ours is pink, which makes it quite exciting to look at.

or with celery root, onion, carrot, and a bit of kale with ghee and yogurt.

or with bok choy, onion, brussel sprouts, carrots, with chopped stew-beef or ground beef, creme fraiche and lactofermented raw garlic chopped fine and soaked in a few teaspoons of cold-pressed olive oil. This one's also good with sauerkraut. Oddly enough I enjoyed this quite a lot with a handful of salty cashews. 

Cheeseburger Soup:

Beef broth with greens of some kind, ground beef and lamb cooked with spinach, lots of onion, lactofermented garlic in olive oil with cubes of floating raw jack cheese getting all melty. This one is also good with cubes of ripe avocado in it.

The last beef one is similar to the top one, only I mixed up both homemade lactofermented ketchup and mustard in it and left off the dairy. Instead, I cubed up some avocado. 

Super-gelatinous chicken broth made with a whole carcass, necks, backs and feet with small-chopped carrots, rutabaga, onion, celery root, served with ghee and with homemade lactofermented mustard stirred around in it.