Squashing out dinner invites and squashing in recipes!

Tonight, as one comment suggested, I made butternut squash fries.

Delish. Peel the squash, pull out the seeds and gunk from the middle, and cut it into "fry" like pieces. Put 'em in a bread bag, add no more than a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a generous pinch or two of natural sea salt, and all spice (pumpkin spice seasoning - aka cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg). Bake them in the oven at 425 for 20 min, flipping at 10 min. I added a little extra sea salt when I flipped them. They weren't crispy, but they're squash. They were soft and yummy and I enjoyed them immensely. Thank you for the suggestion.

On the topic of squash, I think it's my new favorite thing to eat. My husband and I visited friends last Saturday night, and acorn squash was on the menu. I was so thankful for our host. She tried so hard to get all my eating requirements right, and overall, she did a fantastic job. She has a friend who is a naturopath who helped her out. It resulted in acorn squash with a lovely risotto spooned into it (I've never made a risotto and I really want to try). Okay, the risotto had chicken broth in it, which obviously has loads of salt, but other than that, everything else she made was wonderful. Chicken with some olive oil and lemon to flavor, and loads of fruit for dessert.

Since I'm now a person with a restricted diet, here's my take on going over to other people's houses to eat. I figure it's a heck of a lot of effort just to cook for myself right now, so asking someone else to avoid the numerous things I can't eat is pretty senseless, and not very considerate to them, particularly if they invite you over for dinner. I suppose it might be easier if you were to say, "oh I'm a vegetarian" because avoiding veggies is pretty obvious - a veggie is a veggie. But who's going to know what to look for when trying to avoid potato? So in the future, I'm either going to eat whatever is on my plate or bring my own food. I mean, it's tough cooking for someone who has food intolerances and a particular diet. I remember having to prepare food for someone with a restricted diet before I had any real knowledge or interest in what I was putting into my body. It kind of makes you groan - "oh.....what are we going to cook for him/her if they come" kind of thing. I wish that sounded more charitable, but somehow it's true.

On the ezcema front, I'm still a major itch-bomb, but I do notice the appearance on my hand is slightly less angry, less red, and a but less raised from the skin. I wouldn't claim anything promising yet, but at least it's not spreading any further. I am hopeful though. And a major bonus is that I've dropped about 3 pounds-ish. As I was saying on my Facebook page, I was able to zip up a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans for the first time since I last wore them. I don't think I'd wear them anywhere just yet, but I'm close. This is good news.

I made Ginger Pork for supper tonight. Lovoni Walker has a ginger pork recipe on her website which I based this off of, (see the link if interested) but I didn't have everything in my cupboard, so it looked a little like this:

3 boneless pork chops thinly sliced. Took the chops and marinated them for 1/2 hr in the following:

• 4 tbsps of Tamari sauce (replaces regular soy sauce)
• say about 3 tbsps of honey (replaces granulated sugar)
• the juice of half a lime (Lovoni uses sherry in her recipe. Sherry can also be replaced with a mixture of grapefruit juice and a little apple juice, which I have used before, but I didn't have either on hand. I actually really liked the lime better I think)
• Pepper to taste
• Arrowroot starch (recipe calls for cornstarch but this has potato source in it)

Put the following in a wok or frying pan on med-high heat:

• 2 -3 cloves minced garlic
• half an onion or some shallots
• couple tablespoons of peanut oil (I didn't have any so I put in natural peanut butter and a little olive oil)
• 2 tbsps minced or zested ginger root
• 1 tsp dried red pepper flakes

Cook the above for a couple minutes or until fragrant. Add the chops with the Tamari marinade. As it cooks, you can add some sesame oil (I love this. Not too much though, it's quite strong). Lovoni also uses rice vinegar which I have added in the past but it too has sugar in it so I omit it for now.

We served it over baby spinach. Someday I will try it with real bok choy.

Until the next meal!

Meatballs and fudge!

Okay so I realize I'm posting twice in one day but I'm falling behind with my daily food intake...so I thought I'd share with you a couple of things I made over the past couple days.

First, meatballs. From scratch. And when I say, from scratch, I mean I had to make my own breadcrumbs from scratch. I'm a little irritated about that! It was very time consuming! The recipe I have used up until my new potato free, sugar free journey calls for breadcrumbs in it, and I was too lazy and too hungry to risk trying a new recipe without them for fear of it not working. So anyway, off I go, toasting my own homemade bread in the toaster oven, numerous times, to make sure it was hard and dry enough to crush with my heavy-duty Paderno silver bullet rolling pin. (I kid you not when I call my rolling pin the silver bullet. If I ever thought someone was breaking into my apartment I'd go for this rolling pin to defend myself, see attached picture). Anyway, it took me something like 30 minutes to crush the toast to get a cup of breadcrumbs. The of course the groundbeef wasn't fully unfrozen, but just soft enough to get in there with my hands. So my hands were freezing, and then with all this raw meat handling, there was a lot of hand washing, which I am sure did not help my ezcema covered hands. Oh well.

Anyway, they turned out lovely, I made 36 of them, ate a few, and froze the rest. I made a quick dipping sauce out of Tamari Sauce (sea salt based, Natural Soy Sauce) and honey. I wanted to add mustard, but I can't, because there's processed sugar in that... the honey and soy wasn't that great, but like I said, I was hungry, and it made do for now. My husband came home later and added the mustard to it and said he liked it.

Here's the Meatball recipe. If anyone has a good meatball recipe that does not call for breadcrumbs....pass it along! I'm not so into having to make my own every time!

2 eggs

3/4 cup of milk substitute (I used Rice Dream original non-enriched drink, but you could also use homogenized milk which has no potato source in it)

~ 1 cup of breadcrumbs from a bread with no potato source in it

A bunch of green onions

A couple cloves of garlic, minced

A family pack of lean ground beef

~ 1 tsp of oregano and dried parsley each

Baked in a 400 degree oven for about 15 min.

Secondly, I would like to share a quick and easy recipe for Fudge substitute passed along from my ND. I made this because I was craving a sweet and wanted to see what it was like. It's not bad. It's definitely sweet, but very heavy and rich. Couldn't eat too much of it in one sitting. And although it was good, it definitely is not the real deal. Nonetheless, it helped sway the craving.

Freezer Fudge Recipe

1 cup nut butter (I used salt free natural peanut butter)

1 cup cocoa

3/4 cup maple syrup

2 tbsps water

Melt all the ingredients in saucepan over medium heat. Transfer into a small square pan and place in freezer or fridge.

Chicken Noodle Soup, yes?

So I imagine after my last post perhaps you're wondering what I've been eating for the last few days.

Side note: can I just vent for a second? This is taking a lot of effort! I feel like everything I make needs to come from scratch. Between caring for my 5 month old and making homemade food, I've got little time for much else since I started this thing....

...however, moving on. On the topic of "from scratch," I am proud to say I made chicken noodle soup from scratch, all by myself, and it was delicious, and completely potato and processed sugar free. While breastfeeding my son, I channel surfed to entertain myself in the wee hours of the morning and found VIVA network's Simple Fresh Delicious cooking show, with Lovoni Walker. Besides the fact that I really like listening to her accent, I also really like the way she cooks. Anyway, a show recently aired where she made her own chicken broth and chicken noodle soup (hit the links and it will bring you to her website and you can watch the video on how-to). Anyway, we had a whole small chicken in the freezer so after putting it in the slow cooker, I took the carcass the next day and boiled it in some water, with the carrots, onion, garlic, celery etc. Lovoni actually uses the whole chicken to make the broth, which in hindsight I will do next time, because then the chicken is cooked and I can easily use it in salads, sandwiches, etc.

Regardless, it turned out quite lovely. The key was using no-additive sea salt. Everything else was natural, except I can't use whatever noodles I want, because most pastas from the grocery store are enriched (translated: thiamine, riboflavin, and/or niacin in them). But, Superstore's PC Blue Menu pasta is non-enriched. I just took it and broke it up into little pieces before adding it into the soup. All in all it was a lovely meal, although I must say it was more time consuming than I would have liked. Because my son takes short naps, it was an all day affair of unfreezing the broth, peeling carrots and other vegetables, boiling the soup etc etc.

Check out the links to Lovoni's page if you're interested in making your own chicken noodle soup. I imagine after doing it a few times it would go a lot quicker and easier, and it was easy to make it potato free.

The ins and outs of Potato Free, Sugar Free

Have I mentioned at this point I have major cravings for sugar? In a minute, you'll understand why.

Before I post any other recipe or cooking adventures, here's the lowdown on what a potato free, sugar free diet entails, according to my ND. Let's start with potato.

See, potato is cheap, and so a lot of food makers put it in things to add to taste. So it's not just white potatoes, sweet potatoes or yams that I am supposed to eliminate from my diet, but all other things that have potato added to them. Here's a list of "words" I am supposed to avoid in labels, that indicate that some form of potato source was used in a product:

• Potato flour/starch (this includes baking powder, and it's also very very common in cereals)
• "Enriched" ie: enriched flour. Also known as "thiamin, riboflavin and niacin" <- or one of any of those three
• Vitamin A Palmitate (this is in milk and butter! The thinner the milk is, the more Vitamin A Palmitate they put in to add to taste! That being said, I am allowed to have homogenized milk. Yogurt, though is off limits, since it's all based on skim milk....very sad)
• Dextrose (this is in canned foods, bacon, lunchmeats etc)
• Salt and most sea salts (yes, salt. The iodine in salt is based from potato, can you believe that? And believe me, salts in almost everything)
• Yeast (most yeasts have some potato source. This makes most beer and breads off limits)
• Modified food starch (haven't seen this one much)
• MSG - also known as "natural flavoring" (who would have thought natural flavoring would be anything but natural?"
• Pantothenic Acid (I really don't know what this is but haven't seen it yet on a label)
• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (haven't seen this one yet, either)
• Propylene glycol
• Vegetable Broth
  
• Tapioca

Now here's the worst: What words must I avoid on labels for a sugar free diet?

• Sugar, Glucose, Sucrose
• Molasses
• Brown sugar
• Turbinado (I have to research this one out of curiosity because I saw it at the Bulk Barn)
• Sugar cane, cane juice
• Sugar beet
• Fructose corn syrup
• Splenda/sucralose (not that I ever used these anyway)
• ....and finally, erythrobate (I have no idea what this is)

As you can see, that eliminates a LOT of stuff, particularly the sugar part. Sugar is in practically everything in the centre section/aisles of the grocery store. And sweets made with traditional brown or granulated sugar are out. So is chocolate, except unsweetened. I was jonesing chocolate the other day and took a big bite into the unsweetened stuff and thought my life was over it was so terrible. Then I gave some to my husband and I won't repeat what he said. Thankfully, cocoa is okay. And, thankfully, my ND gave me a list of substitutes for processed sugar. Hence, honey has become my best friend. As we speak, my husband is going to the grocery store to pick me up some maple syrup, which can also be used as a sub, because the sugars are natural.

No salt is particularly hard, as well. It's in tons of stuff. Even most seas salts have potato source in them, so a non additive sea salt is necessary. Still tastes good. I wonder why more people don't use it.

So let's put it this way - this is going to require some ingenuity and effort on my part to learn to make more things at home instead of buying ready-made. I am thankful I am on maternity leave now, or it would be extremely difficult to find the time to learn a bunch of new recipes and search for new ingredients or brands I had not used before. I warn you, I won't claim I'm a particularly good cook. I've just gotten into cooking more in the last year, and I'm grateful for that, since I learned some basics. It would be terribly hard if I didn't like cooking or have any skill in the kitchen to start changing my diet in this way.

Anyway, there's a peek into the limitations I have at present. I'll explore more into what that entails, and possible substitutes for this stuff, as the cooking continues.

No yeast? No Store Bought Bread....

So I've got a bit of explaining to do about what you can and cannot eat when trying to avoid both potato starch and processed sugars. But I also have had to eat to live since I've started this thing, and that's meant having to start experimenting with food! So before I get into all the do's and don'ts of a potato free, sugar free diet, I thought I would share with you my little bread making escapade. I've included links to some of the products I used.

If you didn't know, most types of yeast used in making bread have some source of potato in them.

News to you? Definitely news to me. So although I am not gluten intolerant, it came as surprise to me that during my 6 week "cleanse," I cannot eat most types of store bought bread. That's a problem for me. I like bread, I like toast, and I pretty much eat it everyday. So there's got to be a solution for this obstacle.

So Ezekiel brand bread was recommended to me by my ND, because they make a yeast free bread. So I went to Superstore and bought a loaf, but at $5.99/loaf, I'm not so into repeat purchase. I phoned my parents, who have a breadmaker they aren't using anymore, and decided to investigate how to make my own yeast-free bread, or at least make a bread with a yeast I could use.

Anyway, the yeast my ND recommends is Bakipan brand yeast. Apparently it is made with no potato products, amongst other potential allergens and intolerances. It cost me $6.45 for a 113 g bottle, and generally you are using a teaspoon or so, so it should last for quite a little while.

However, making homemade bread has a couple other obstacles if trying to avoid further potato sources, as well as sugar sources. Additional items of concern: sugar, milk and butter. "Milk and butter too?" you're thinking? Yes, I thought the same thing. But believe it or not, there's potato source in those as well. I'll get into that in another post, but for now, trust me on these substitutes. Use a non-enriched (we'll talk about this in another post as well) Almond milk or Rice milk to replace the milk, and olive oil to replace the butter. Honey replaces the sugar. Oh, and make sure you use a non-enriched whole wheat flour as well.

Here's the recipe I used to make my own whole wheat bread, potato free and processed sugar free. It smelled delicious baking in the machine, and turned out nice and soft on the inside. Albeit, whole wheat bread is a little heavy, and won't rise as nicely as if you used bread flour or white flour, but we'll get into why you can't necessarily use those in another post as well.

Bread Machine Potato Free, Sugar Free Whole Wheat Bread (1 +1/2 pound loaf)

Water: 1 cup + 1 tbsp

Honey: 2 tbsps

Non-Enriched Almond or Rice Milk: 1 tbsp

Olive Oil: 2 tbsps

Whole Wheat Non Enriched Flour: 3 + 1/2 cups

No additive Sea Salt: 1 +1/2 tsps

Vital Wheat Gluten: 2 tbsps

Bakipan Fast Rise Yeast: 1 +1/2 tsps

Combine the wet ingredients in the bread pan. Combine flour, salt and wheat gluten and pour over the wet ingredients (do not mix the wet and dry, the dry should sit over top the wet). Tap the bread pan to level the ingredients. Dig a small well in the dry ingredients and pour the yeast into it (yeast must not get wet). Place bread pan in bread making machine, choose Whole Wheat Setting, medium color.

It took a little experimenting. The first loaf I made was only a 1 pound loaf, and I didn't use vital wheat gluten, so the loaf turned out pretty stubby and short. Bearing in mind like I said before that whole wheat bread made in a bread machine generally doesn't rise very much because of the weight of whole wheat flour. Every bread machine is different too, so the measurements for each may be a little different. Basically I took a recipe from the bread machine manual and subbed what I needed. But the receptionist from my ND's clinic also emailed me a recipe for her bread machine, and I thought I would include that as well for others to try if they are interested. I definitely will be trying it as well! Mmmmm bread.

2 tsp yeast

12 oz water

1 ½ tsp salt

2 Tbsp honey or malt

1 ½ Tbsp Oil

4 cups flour ( see below)

Rapid setting dark crust

Options:

3c whole wheat and 1 cup oat gives light large loaf

2 c whole wheat , 1 c rye, 1c oat gives a low dense loaf with a fine grain

"Eczema free in 6," says she....

As I write this, I am eating an unsalted rice cake, with unsalted peanut butter, and a big slob of honey. I am very very very thankful for honey right now...

Okay, so here's the deal with this whole potato free, sugar free thing. I have really bad eczema. I have it everywhere. From my legs, to my abdomen, to my hands and yes, even small spots on my eyelids, on occasion. You name it. I have been struggling with this eczema itch since Fall 2006. How and why? I was stung by a wasp and broke out into widespread hives. Once the hives went away, I was left with itchy spots on my skin, most notably on my legs. Dermatologists couldn't help, and the eczema was annoying, but bearable. Until I got pregnant in 2008. It got worse. And following my son's birth in 2009, it went nuts. I was desperate. It was suggested to me to visit a Naturopathic Doctor, and here I find myself ready and willing to do whatever it takes.

My Naturopathic Doctor (herein called ND) is confident that my eczema will settle on the following basis: Most people have allergens and intolerances. Imagine your intolerances sitting in a small bucket. You can only have so many intolerances - or reactions to intolerances, before the bucket fills up. Once the bucket fills, it has to spill over. If you're a lucky one, your bucket never spills over, and you never have a problem. However, if you're like me, my bucket's been leaking since 2006 when I was stung by the wasp. According to my ND, my weakest system is affected by all the extra load up of toxins from my overflowing bucket of intolerance. Thus, I have widespread eczema.

So today I'm posting a picture of the worst spot of eczema I have, on my left hand. Now, I have a 4.5 month old, and I'm a little obsessive about hand washing, so I'm sure that's not helping. But I'm sure you'll agree when looking at the picture it's pretty bad. I may warn some of you that it might be a little gross. But at the end of 6 weeks, I'll post another picture to compare and see if this potato free, sugar free diet has made an impact.

Here's hoping it does, anyway, because like I said previously, I'm pretty much desperate.

I'll start posting about food and recipes soon.

So long potato chips. It’s a sad day.

Welcome to my little experiment on the internet. I am one of many people who have likely visited a Naturopathic Doctor and have been told I need a lifestyle change. A change in what I eat, that is. After 26 years of eating mashed potatoes, French fries, starch, pastries, dairy, desserts, you name it, I’ve been told I am intolerant to potato starch, the day after I just learned to make sweet potato fries.

Did I mention that apparently I am intolerant to processed sugars, as well? :(

So, under the wing of my Naturopathic Doctor, I am trialling 6 weeks of no potato starch and no processed sugars in my diet. And I thought I'd write about it, for a few reasons: The first being that I googled potato intolerance to find recipes to support this lifestyle change and really couldn't find a whole lot out there, just a lot of gluten-free stuff. Which is all fine, but I can still eat wheat. I don't need any more intolerances in addition to the ones I have! Second, I'm conducting a little experiment to see if a medical condition I have will diminish or disappear completely by cutting these intolerances out of my diet, and I want to document the process. And third, although the thought of me posting part of my life on the internet kind of freaks me out, a little support or a few ideas along this dietary journey might be nice.

So if you'd like to follow along or have something to say or add, welcome to this little, potato free and processed sugar free spot on the world wide web :)