Grain Free Meal success

In my grain free cooking adventures this week, I finally cooked something really good. A week ago I wasn't grain free nor planning to be. I have turned my nose up at all the paleo-grain free people out there, especially when it seemed every real food blog or website I came across was geared towards eating without grains. I have done low carb diets in the past with no results, and then when I started eating them again, I gained weight.

So to be honest, I am fat. But I'm probably the healthiest fat person out there, as in, I've worked SO hard for the past 8 years to get rid of the weight. I've tried everything except hire a personal trainer or run a marathon. I have spent a lot of money on things that just didn't deliver as well. So, I didn't want to jump on this paleo fad thing for those reasons.

But, I do think I have an overgrowth of candida, and they need sugar to live. So, in order to cut off the food supply I have to not eat anything that turns to sugar in the body. But, since I am also taking something called diatomaceous earth which kills candida and other parasites, I don't think an extreme diet will be necessary for many months. My plan is try to stay grain free until August, then work into eating gluten free grains, then on to regular. My hope is that some weight will be lost, but that's not my goal, and that helps take the pressure off. I'm really at peace with it, and it hasn't been stressful for me.

Now just because I'm not eating grains doesn't mean I'm only eating meat. I'm still eating plenty of veggies, berries, some sweet potatoes and squash and if I'm in a situation where nothing else is available, I'll eat a little starch. Yesterday we took our girls to a waterpark and I ate as grain free as possible, but I did eat some bread and chips to give me a little energy boost midday. Oh well, I did actually lose 5lbs in one day though!

So today I made something good I saw somewhere online. It was cheeseburger spaghetti squash. Then I made a hamburger type salad with a condiment dressing and it was so good! I was really hungry too though...but my husband loved it, so that makes two of us.

 

Cheeseburger Spaghetti Squash

Ingredients:

Approximately 1.5lbs ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

1t garlic powder

1 T McCormac hamburger seasoning

salt and pepper

cheddar cheese-1 cup

 1 small-medium sized spaghetti squash

 1-2 T ketchup

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut your squash in half and remove the seeds and junk. Place cut sides down into a pan with sides. (I used a casserole dish that was oval shaped) Pour in about 1/2inch of water and bake for 30-35 minutes. 

Next, brown your beef, add the seasonings and veggies and cook through. When squash is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool until you can touch it. Using a fork, scrape all the squash threads into a bowl. Next add your meat, the ketchup and the cheese. Refill the squash with the mixture and top with some additional shredded cheese. Put back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. 

For the salad, I chopped some green leaf lettuce, sliced some fresh garden tomatoes, some white onion and chopped up some hamburger dill pickle chips. For the dressing, I just guessed here, but this is what I think it was:

Condiment Dressing

2 T mayonnaise

1 t yellow mustard

1 T ketchup

1 T honey

2 T apple cider vinegar

salt and pepper

garlic powder

2 T olive oil

I put it all in a small mason jar and shook it up to combine. It was mildly sweet and tangy-perfect for me. It was good enough for company!!

Today I also tried coconut flour pancakes, which were ok, but not awesome. I also made some brownies with sweet potato and coconut flour- those were a yes!! I may post those later as I get them perfected :)

Real Food 2

Ok so to continue what I was talking about yesterday- food changes. This morning I took some pictures of stuff I've been doing, because if you're like me, I like to see what other people do in their homes. I guess I'm just really curious, or nosy, but curious sounds nicer.

So, I'll start with breakfast. Last night I made some mostly grain free granola. I've made granola a lot, and even though it usually turns out well, this time it wasn't perfect. I didn't use a recipe or measure, and got a bit too much coconut oil in the mix. And then it slightly burned. But here it is:

 It is a combo of coconut, cashews, almonds, pecans, coconut oil, honey, cinnamon and vanilla. After I finished baking it I added lots of dried berries. For breakfast I put some in a bowl, topped with plain full fat yogurt, honey and blueberries from our local farm. Pretty good!

So, sitting around in my kitchen I have a crockpot full of homemade chicken stock that I started yesterday. No pics...I also have this! A new thing I'm trying- homemade probiotic soda.
 (this picture looked better before I uploaded it, sorry it's dark. It's a pretty pink color)

Up close of the bubbles which I was really glad to see since it meant that my ginger culture worked!

 The ginger 'bug' or culture that I started last week, which is how you make the soda.

 I learned about it here and used this recipe.


In the fridge I have lacto-fermented sweet pickles. My husband's parents have an abundance of cucumbers, and my plants didn't do so well, so they  have passed them on to me. I found this recipe, not sure where I got it I just searched for sweet fermented pickle recipe and found one. They taste pretty much like a sweet pickle.

And then I also make dairy kefir. Kefir is so cool because one it's very easy, and the friendly bacteria it creates actually go into the digestive tract and take up residence. Yogurt is more of a 'keep it clean and tuned up' but kefir helps repopulate the gut with the good bacterias that help keep us healthy. I made it for a long time and then when pregnant, it repulsed me and I quit. It's taken me awhile to get back into it, and I mainly use it in a fruit smoothie or a replacement for buttermilk. The 'grains' are very healthy and active!

Not pictured is my sourdough starter. I will get that out later today and feed it, which gets the culture active and get it ready for bread making. I use a white flour starter at this point, and will gradually make a whole wheat sourdough bread, but I'm still slowly introducing all this stuff. So, for now it's white sourdough bread.

Today is a very big day. I have been growing cabbages for months, waiting for those things to get big enough for homemade sauerkraut. My whole family- cousins,sister,parents etc.- loves the homemade kraut and have been anxiously waiting for this LOL. Today is the day- I'm straining my yogurt to get the whey that I use to help the good bacteria proliferate and keep the bad from growing. In awhile I'll go dig these up and wash them and start the sauerkraut making process! Yay it'll be ready in time for the 4th of July bratwursts and hot dogs.

The purple or red cabbages aren't quite ready yet. I'll leave them and pray the grasshoppers leave them alone! Our garden is in sad shape...really sad. But I have to say that this is my husband's domain, and he's been busy and a little negligent...my plants however look pretty good! A few years ago this was not possible, I just killed everything, but for some reason I seem to get it now!

My plants- a red geranium that I revived, my second basil plant, some kind of begonia that got revived and an aloe vera that was at death's door but has made a miraculous recovery!

The front yard plants. We have lots of shade and for once I made good plant choices! They have done really well and I have actually remembered to water and fertilize them:)

And in all fairness, here is my peppermint plants. I haven't neglected them, but they aren't doing great. I think they need bigger pots but I don't have any and keep forgetting to get more.

Here are some of the things I got in my box of veggies from our local farm- giant green tomatoes! I guess in typical southern fashion, I should fry them. But I don't really remember what they taste like. I found a recipe for a vegetable relish that use green tomatoes and I might do that, at least with the big one. The ripe tomatoes are ours.

Today I'm also working on some herbal stuff that I'll blog about another time. So what are my children doing during all of this? Their cousin is over and they are playing dress up, legos, school in our school room, and making lots of rubber band jewelry. I am basically just feeding them and then they run off to play. Swimming is coming up shortly I'm sure!

So, there's a glimpse into my abnormal kitchen concoctions. We like it.

Getting back to Real Food

A long time ago, approximately 8 years ago, I and my family were suffering from several health issues. I had been into more natural health and eating years before and I knew the connection between food and health. I discovered a book called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Wow! It was chock full of info that I had never heard before. It took me several months to read it, and I slowly began changing not only what we ate, but also the way it was prepared. I was pretty nervous about some of it, but I desperately needed help.

I was dealing with Irritable bowel syndrome, among other things. At the time, I felt like if I didn't get this fixed my life would be over. I first began having symptoms when I was 21, after the birth of my second child. I went to see a gastroenterologist, a past colleague actually, and his diagnosis was that I need to take an antidepressant and exercise. Thanks.

How that was supposed to help really bad diarrhea at inopportune times I don't know. So I came home, cried, and also prayed for God to show me what to do. Immediately I did an online search and found a doctor who used herbs for everything, ordered his stuff, and things were on their way to getting better. One of the things that learned about was probiotics, and I began taking supplements. However, they were really powerful and sometimes exacerbated the intestinal issue. When reading Nourishing Traditions, I learned about living probiotic foods, or lacto-fermented foods that people used to make hundreds of years ago. They didn't have refrigeration, so there had to be some way to preserve things right? They ate naturally fermented sauerkraut, yogurt, even meats like corned beef and Asian fish sauce. Since then I've noticed that I do so much better when I eat the living bacteria rather than supplementing with probiotic capsules.

Of course that's only part of it. The other big part was saturated fat! The big no no---turns out our bodies need the fat in dairy products, meats, eggs and things like coconut oil. The things that taste really good :) Also,in the book it describes properly preparing whole grains, which means predigesting or soaking  to make them more digestible. So, I started all this years ago, fell in love with it and all was good. I didn't really lose weight, but my body looked leaner and more proportioned, not to mention things like IBS disappeared. (One thing to note, I was also standing on the healing scriptures God promised us in the Bible. The diet changes helped a LOT, but ultimately, Jesus did it)

When I became pregnant with our fourth baby girl, I kinda lost steam. I could barely function at all, much less do all that food prep. I did get back into it later and ate as well as I could while pregnant. Even with all that saturated fat I didn't gain any weight until the last few weeks, and was very lean. After she was born, it became a huge burden. All I could manage was the homemade formula in the book for her, and a few other things. It was so stressful I had to just let it go. This turned out to be a good thing. I needed to focus on the Lord, and let Him be our Source. I needed to learn to eat healthy not out of fear, which is what I was doing. I've tried here and there to 'pick it back up', but could never find a good rhythm. I still cooked from scratch, but that's it, no culturing or anything-and we have been healthy! I learned what He wanted me to see.

But lately I've felt a calling come back to this lifestyle. I've slowly, slowly began getting back into it. The cool thing is that this has become so popular, that now I'm nearly surrounded by grassfed meat farms, raw milk dairy farms and local vegetable farms. There's a brand new huge health food store nearby, there's all kinds of stuff available on amazon, and now I don't sound so weird. We also have our own chickens, although egg production came to a halt when something broke in and ate them, the chickens that is....anyways.

I'm doing this in a certain way though; if at any point I get stressed out about food, I will just stop and not focus on it for awhile, and allow God to lead me. There's no point in getting wore out from food preparations. I've been on a low carb diet that stressed me out so much, that after 3 months, I had lost zero weight and had no health improvements! Stress negates any of the good things you are doing.

This time, I am also going grain free. I am not a fan of low carb diets, but the only reason I am doing it, is because I think I have candida overgrowth in my body. I am taking a supplement (diatomaceous earth, more about that later) that kills the candida, but reducing their food supply should help too. They eat sugar, so anything that converts to sugar is out as well. I only plan to do it for a short time, because I believe whole grains are good for us. But it's kinda fun to experiment, and I really feel relieved and at peace about it. And, if I am really wanting something starchy then I'll eat some.

So, all that to say, that I've had a lot going on in the kitchen today! Since it's summer I have the luxury of spending a lot of time going around picking up food and spending lots of time in the kitchen, which I did. It was fun, the girls were great, and it was adventurous driving around getting food. The whole time we're driving, I'm talking to them about what we're doing and why, so they're getting an education too.

Wow, this is a long post! I guess I'll continue in another post...