Heart of Cooking

Lucky for all of you egg-free people, I’ve been experimenting more with egg-free baking these days than normal.  So I came up with a very yummy cookie that is egg-free, grain-free, gluten and wheat-free, dairy-free, and sugar free.  Yay!  I didn’t get a good picture of the actual cookies but you can see Elijah was enjoying his!

Cinnamon Walnut Raisin Egg-free Cookie Recipe (wheat, gluten, grain, sugar, and dairy free)

1 1/2 cups nut flour – I tried them with both almond and pecan flour and both are tasty

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted (you can use melted butter too)

1/4 cup honey or other sweetener of choice

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda (delete for GAPS)

2 heaping tablespoons nut butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup raisins or currants

1/4 cup or less water – start with less and add until you get a good cookie batter consistency

Steps:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 F.  Mix all ingredients except the water together.  Add the water after you have mixed all the other ingredients, a little at a time until you get a good cookie dough consistency.

2.  Grease 2 cookie sheets with butter or oil.  Make spoonfuls the size of tablespoons and plop them onto the cookie sheet, spacing them out so that you have about 12 to a sheet.  This batch makes about 16 cookies so you’ll need just part of the second cookie sheet.

3.  Bake for 12 minutes or until cooked through and a little crispy on the outside.  Remove from oven, let cool for about five minutes.  Then remove with a spatula and serve.  They remind me of Oatmeal Raisin cookies.  Yum!

Pear, Avocado, Almond and Coconut Butter Breakfast

It can be extremely difficult to give up certain foods you’re used to eating and depending on.  I have personally eaten eggs almost every day for the past “I don’t know how many” years.  I love eating them in the morning because they are easy to fix, don’t require defrosting or planning ahead, can hold me over all morning and are relatively inexpensive for a meal.  Then there is the whole “what the heck would I eat if I didn’t eat eggs” dilemma.

All of these reasons have kept me eating eggs, until up to about three weeks ago.  My belly had had enough.  I distinctly heard it say to me one day, “No More EGGS!”  Yikes!  What was I going to do?

Sigh.  Many people email me asking me for breakfast ideas, especially egg-free ones.  I have promised them a menu planner…soon.  I do have the Egg-Free GAPS Menu Planner available that has one breakfast idea for each week.

However, I have yet to deliver a complete list of recipes and/or menu planner for breakfast ideas that are free of eggs.  So, I don’t have a release date yet, but I am planning on compiling an e-book of egg-free breakfast ideas for people who feel just as lost as I do when I comes to facing breakfast in the morning on an egg-free diet. Hooray!

This morning my husband looked at my breakfast inquisitively.  He was obviously interested or maybe confused about what I was eating.  I told him it was avocado, pear, almonds and coconut butter.  He seemed a little impressed, but I don’t think he’s going egg-free anytime soon.

Here’s the recipe to my surprisingly filling breakfast:

Pear, Avocado, Almond and Coconut Butter Breakfast

1/2 avocado, cubed

1/2 ripe pear, cubed

1/4 cup almonds, soaked, dehydrated and chopped coarsely

2 Tbsp coconut butter at room temp. from Artisana

How to make it: Gently mix all the ingredients together and enjoy.

In the end, I had almost two helpings of this, but so far it has held me over and it’s just about lunch time as I write this.

List of Egg-Free Recipe Ideas (also grain, gluten and starch free)

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One of our meals last week was a delicious Roasted Chicken with herbs and lemon as well as Cold Beet Salad, Sauerkraut and Garden Tomato and Basil Salad.  The three salads looked so beautiful together, I couldn’t help but take a picture.  And they tasted great together as well.  The beet and tomato salads are very easy while the sauerkraut takes some time and effort, but all were very delicious.  So I thought I’d share the Beet and Tomato salads with you today and keep the Sauerkraut for another day…

Garden Tomato and Basil Salad

Garden tomatoes – as many as you’d like, chopped up into medium sized chunks

Fresh basil, chopped – about 1/4 cup to 2-3 large tomatoes

Dressing: About 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 olive oil  (you can play with the proportions – I usually don’t measure but simply pour onto the tomatoes)

Apple Cider Vinegar or Balsamic Vinegar (not GAPS friendly)

Olive oil

Salt and pepper, freshly cracked, to taste

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy.  You can chill ahead of time and the flavors will mingle together.

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Cold Beet Salad

4-5 beets, peeled, cut into chunks and steamed until tender, chilled

Fresh mint, chopped – about 1/4 cup (I actually didn’t add mint this time but it is very good with the beets)

Same dressing as above for the tomato salad

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy.

For the beets, you will need to chill them before serving.  Enjoy!

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I hope you enjoy these simply delicious summer recipes for these really hot days we’re having!

I was craving cereal over the weekend (doesn’t help that my husband buys cereal I can’t eat!) so I finally tried out a recipe I had found for Raw Nut Granola.  It is a bit of a process but it was so worth it.  It turned out as raw granola bars that you can break up into granola for cereal.  So you really get two recipes in one!

This recipe does require a dehydrator so if you don’t have one, you may be able to bake the mixture at about 300 degrees F until it is crisp.  You may want to put it on parchment paper or just grease the pan very well.  You’ll also want to make the mixture quite thin on the pan.  This does kill the beneficial enzymes in the nuts and seeds but it is an option if you don’t have a dehydrator.

I did make some adjustments to the recipe, simply due to not having dates, lemon, pumpkin seeds or vanilla.  But here is the original recipe as well as my adjustments.  For me, it made two  full sheets of granola on the Excalibur dehydrating sheets which later fit almost into two quart sized jars (one is already gone…)

Raw Nut Granola (egg-free, dairy-free, grain-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, soy-free)

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This pizza tastes like summer!  Enjoy!

Zucchini and Basil Pizza with Almond Flour Pizza Crust (gluten-free, grain-free and yeast-free)
Adapted from: Breaking the Vicious Cycle by
Elaine Gottschall

Ingredients:
Crust:
2      eggs (EGG-FREE:  2 Tbsp flax meal combined with 6 Tbsp. hot water)
2      cups blanched almond flour, or more as needed to make a stiff and not sticky dough
2      tsp olive oil
1/2  tsp garlic powder or 1-2 cloves of garlic
1      tsp honey
1      tsp salt
2    tsp dried herbs, such as basil, thyme and oregano
(optional)
Sauce:
8      oz. Bionaturae strained tomatoes
1-2   Tbsp. Bionaturae tomato paste
1 tsp. Italian seasoning or a mix of basil, oregano,
marjoram and parsley
1/4  tsp. garlic powder, to taste
1      tsp. honey
salt and pepper to taste

Toppings:
1/2   onion, diced

1-2   zucchinis, cut into half moon slices

1/3  cup chopped fresh basil

grated cheese (optional)

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What did you eat this week?  I’d love to hear about your meals, and share mine with you!

This past week was one of those weeks where I decided pretty much a few hours before dinnertime to decide what to make, but everything turned out yummy (well, in my opinion at least!)

My GAPS Weekly Meal Un-Plan

(gluten-free, dairy, free, starch-free, sugar-free, soy-free, legume-free)

Dinners (leftovers for lunch):

• Turkey Tacos with Cabbage wraps
• Coconut Fried Chicken and Mashed Cauliflower
• Beef Marinara with Zucchini Noodles
• Salads:  hard boiled eggs or chicken, peas, shredded carrots,  pea shoots, garden tomatoes, cooked and cooled beets, etc.
• Egg wraps with Sautéed Cabbage, Shredded Carrots and Onions
• Chicken Legs with Barbecue sauce and Steamed Broccoli

Desserts:

• Blueberry Muffin Cake
• Coconut Vanilla Bean Ice Cream – I had a have a filling on a cavity this week so eating vanilla ice cream seemed only natural…

Breakfast:

• Blueberry Yogurt Smoothies – just yogurt, blueberries and bananas
• Banana Pancakes – just bananas and eggs
• Eggs…

Ferments, etc:

• Soaked and Dehydrated nuts
• Kombucha
• Yogurt

Well, that’s me!  I’m always looking for new ideas so please do share!

It’s blueberry season here in Maryland and Elijah, my mom and I ended up going picking this past weekend.  We had a blast picking 8 lbs in less than an hour and Elijah got to eat all he wanted.  The farm we went to was called Frog Eye Farm and they had over 200 blueberry bushes!

I love blueberry muffins – but I don’t always like cleaning muffin tins – so I made a Blueberry Muffin Cake with the berries we picked.  It was yummy and very easy.

Blueberry Muffin Cake with coconut flour (grain-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free)

1/3 cup coconut oil

1/4 – 1/3 cup honey

4 eggs

1/3 cup coconut flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda (not GAPS legal -delete for GAPS)

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

If the coconut oil isn’t melted, gently melt it in a pan on the stove on low.  Combine the eggs, honey and oil together until smooth (make sure the oil isn’t too hot though).  Add the flour, soda, and salt and beat until well blended and there are no lumps.  You can also put everything into a mixer or food processor.

2. Add the blueberries at the end and fold into the batter.  Grease an 8 x 8 pan with coconut oil or butter.  Pour batter into the pan and spread over the bottom of the pan.  Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until it is firm in the center.  Sorry – I don’t remember exactly how long it took.

Enjoy!

If you are grain-free, this lasagna is just for you!  Or if you’re gluten-free and can’t eat regular rice noodle pasta, this is a great alternative for you to be able to make lasagna again!

I came up with this recipe this past spring and I really love it.  I wanted to try to find something to replace the noodles other than zucchinis to make it taste a bit more like regular lasagna while still being grain-free.  So I ended up using very thin crepes made just from eggs for the noodles.  The result was very good and it was even better the next day after the flavors had melded a bit more.

I did use cheese on the top of the one in the picture.  We are now able to eat a particular brand of raw cow’s cheddar cheese and I am so happy about this!  It’s been so long since we’ve been able to enjoy cheese without reacting to it.  I would say this is mainly due to the healing we have been doing through being on the GAPS diet – hooray!

However, if you can’t eat cheese, I have cashew cheese sauce that works great if you can eat nuts.  It’s in the recipe below.

By the way, if you plan on making this, my tip is to make the egg noodles ahead of time because it gets to be quite a bit to make the noodles, sauce, and veggies all in once sitting…

So, here’s the recipe for you!

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So what is this post really about?

It’s about these lovely little egg crepes that I make that are great for multiple uses…wraps, pancakes and yes, noodles.

My post following this will be about lasagna and how I use these little egg crepes to make delicious tasting gluten-free and grain-free lasagna…stay tuned!

A few tips:

For noodles: The recipe below is specifically for making the noodles for the lasagna.  They are very thin and quite delicate.  But they work great as noodles for this reason in the lasagna.

For wraps: you will want to use more than 1/8 cup egg batter that is recommended in the recipe below.  I would use just less than 1/4 cup for making one wrap. This will make it more durable.  You can use these for grain- free tacos or any other kind of sandwich topping that needs bread or a wrap.

For pancakes: now these aren’t your regular pancakes.  But my son loves to eat these just with honey and butter.  They are extremely easy because there is only one ingredient.  If you want more of a pancake, you may want to use a little bit more than 1/8 cup egg batter per pancake.  If you’re after crepes, then 1/8 cup should work great.  And you will want to delete the garlic powder.

So, here is how to make them…

Egg Wraps or Pancakes or Noodles (grain-free, starch free, gluten-free and dairy-free)

Ingredients:

8       eggs
¾      tsp salt
¾      tsp garlic powder

(Again, this is the amount you will use for the lasagna.  If you’re making pancakes or wraps, start with 3 or 5 eggs).

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Okay, so I keep alluding (on Facebook and previous blog posts) to the fact that I am working on a post about my mental breakdowns that I had postpartum.  Mental breakdowns that basically made me into a crazy, rageful, out of control monster for about 5 minutes when ever I would happen to have one.

I’ve been working on the post for six months now.  I have to admit it’s been difficult for me to get it written so that I can actually share it.

Part of it is that these experiences still feel very close at hand and they’re not easy to talk about.  Most people who know me don’t know I’ve had these experiences over the past couple of years.  Even now, when I am out of the woods and no longer experiencing these crazy episodes where I thought I was going to lose my mind – even now, it is still hard to get it all written down.

Another part is that there is so much to it.  My life has completely changed from being on GAPS.  Not only am not having anxiety attacks and mental breakdowns, I am just a completely happier and at peace person now.  I really can’t believe how much has changed, really.

So I thought I would start with the basics and just write down all the points in my life that have changed after going on the GAPS diet.  Then I can talk more about the more juicier aspects of visiting the crazy side of life in a future post.

If you don’t know about GAPS, it is a grain, starch and sugar free diet that can help people with all sorts of mental problems such as depression, which I experienced for years since being a teen.

You can read more about the diet here.

As far as the chart below goes, many of the symptoms listed are things I have dealt with my entire life.  The only thing that only happened postpartum were the mental breakdowns, etc.  However, now that I say that, I did have some mental breakdowns during pregnancy and even before that.  But they weren’t as pronounced and I didn’t find myself beating the daylights out of inanimate objects.  They were more like crying fits and feeling utterly depressed.

And everything on the list became more pronounced after giving birth.  The whole experience of pregnancy, birth, exclusive breastfeeding and motherhood basically shined the light on a part of myself that was already in need of healing and made it imperative that something had to change in order for me to live as a normal person.

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