Safe Summer Root Mash

Delicious, light summer root mash. Apparently, the colors of this diet are white, yellow, and orange.
1 bag grape potatoes (found at Trader Joe's in a little yellow bag)
handful of organic yellow peeled carrots
handful of orange peeled carrots
sliced ginger
olive oil
salt
white pepper

Boil your roots. Add oil, salt, pepper. Mash with a fork. Enjoy alone, or as a side dish, or (now this is exciting!) spread over some ground beef and onions and bake into a Shepherd's Pie. Perhaps that's the destiny of these leftovers...

The Great Yeast Famine of 2009

So my acupuncturist thinks my bile nausea, bloating, fatigue, and neck-eye spasms might mean the candida are dying off. I've been depriving them of the yeast and sugars they thrive on. Interestingly, Wikipedia chooses to belittle my dear Angie. A quote:

Candida is accorded responsibility for symptoms as specific as hay fever, as vague as "brain fog" and as common as weight gain or flatulence. These symptoms are attributed by alternative medicine practitioners to the "overgrowth" of intestinal candida albicans, which they claim leads to the spread of the yeast to other parts of the body via the bloodstream.

Well, if my candida die off and with them go the brain fogs and eye spasms and blind spots and bilial nausea, perhaps I'll muster the nerd power to counter this judgmental crowdsourcing with a voice from the alt med choir.

Safe Dirt Carrot Date Muffins

Gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free carrot, date, buckwheat groat muffins (modified from http://stanford.wellsphere.com/celiac-disease-article/cinnamon-carrot-muffins-gluten-free/304885 to suit my needs). Not entirely successful - middles are still pretty wet, overall taste is kind of dirty, edges are burnt. And by "not entirely successful" I mean "taste so much like dirt that they're now gracefully topping off my compost bin."


Recipe

1 cup sweet rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup buckwheat groats
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp baking soda (someone tell me if this is dangerous? there's some cornstarch in there...)
1 cup grated carrot
2/3 cup coconut milk
2 tsp tapioca granules
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup agave syrup
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (next time I'll try a cooler oven, perhaps 375) and place 12 silicone muffin cups on a cookie sheet.

2. Simmer the coconut milk and tapioca for 12 minutes, stirring. Allow to sit while you put together the other ingredients.

3. In a large bowl, dump in the dry ingredients + carrots and stir together.

4. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together wet ingredients.

5. Pour the liquid mixture into the carrot flour mixture and stir. Take care not to over mix the ingredients. Then spoon the muffin batter into the 12 muffin cups.

6. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Safe Summer Squash Curry Noodles

Threw together a very satisfying dinner tonight - colorful, seasonal, simple.

Rice spaghetti

1 can coconut milk
1/2 tsp green curry paste
julienned yellow squash
julienned white onions
shredded carrots
salt
white pepper

Sautee everything together for about 10 minutes. Stir in cooked rice noodles and serve.

Next time: add basil, chicken

Buying pancake mix was an excellent decision

Today I used hemp milk in place of water and sliced in fresh bananas and chopped walnuts. Rich, nourishing, delicious.

Spot on after a late-night sushi feast prepared by a friend with awareness of my diet and my first brave foray into fearless raw fish eating, sleeping in too late to hit the DMV for my Washington state driver's license (which will not only cost money but also require a test!), reading a horoscope that says though my day may be an 8 I better avoid what's outside and watch my back, and finally allowing myself to read for pleasure, in bed, after over a month of headache-induced avoidance. Banana walnut pancakes, cedar incense, Djuna Barnes, Bill Callahan on the turntable - sounds like a prescription for Seattle's first rainy Saturday in months.

Safe Hydroponic Steak Salad

Delicious.

George Foremaned steak
avocado
radishes
hydroponic butter lettuce (seriously)

Dressed to the 9s:
fresh lemon
apple cider vinegar
$14 olive oil
white pepper
salt
pinch of cumin

One for today, one for tomorrow. Leftover elegance.








So long as I keep finding lettuce this alive and meat this perfectly Foremaned and avocados so intensely ripe and so long as my dressing shaking in jam jars continues to naturally flow sans recipe this whole foodless diet will be just fine. And with some natty dub on the turntable and a salty swim in my hair and a balance beam beach walk driving me forwards.

Thank You, Trader Joes

For the junk food!


Work has been a challenge this week - no Bakeman's turkey-cran sandwich to look forward to, no Twix at 2:30, no saltines for my queasy belly. So I went to Trader Joe's before yoga last night and blew $60 on safe junk food. My scores:

Larabar (cashew and cherry pie)
dried apricots
cashews
salted green bean chips
perfect bananas
sweet potato chips
dark chocolate almond bar ("low carb" by Simply Lite)

I also picked up some proper food that will come in handy, like steaks and sliced roast beast and herbed goat cheese and mini white potatos. Unfortunately, the fake butter mom recommended has soy in it and I only thought to buy one chocoloate bar - I sense frequent trips to Trader Joe's in my future.

Depressing, less

Depressing

Safe Buttered Noodles

Also known as rice fusilli with olive oil and a frozen basil cube (thanks, Trader Joe's), salt & pepper.

I'm feeling super sick today, perhaps because of too few calories and too much activity yesterday (hiked to Scenic Hot Springs on nothing but the morning's pancakes), or perhaps it's the diet fade-in, or the period fade-in. Poor body, that's plenty to deal with.

So I needed some simple comfort food. Easy to make, easy to digest. And the result? Nearly as delicious as semolina fusilli with rich fresh butter and garlic.

Safe Buckwheat Strawberry Pancakes

Thank you, Cravings Place. Your pancake mix was delicious - added seltzer instead of flat water to lighten things up, griddled in vegetable oil, and pressed sliced strawberries in while they were cooking, then served with delicious maple syrup. Perfect Sunday breakfast.

Majical powers

You know you're wondering
Wherever will she find the power?

MAJIC

Amulet for the power of transcendental transformation of self and spirit.

Six days of majic, one day of rest:

1 - Green sea glass, CLARITY
2 - Gold light bulb, $$INGENUITY$$
3 - Sage from smudge, EARTHWEIGHT
4 - Jade and twine knot, WISE ENTANGLEMENT
5 - Match tip, SPIRIT FIRE
6 - Ultram, PHARMALEVITY

I've just started a mixed media book for this year entitled THE INTERNAL ECOLOGY OF G—. Look for it at a majic shop near you in fall 2010.

Keygraphics

MAT pins FOOD ALLERGIES to the FRIDGE

Safe Curried Apple Chicken with Art School Rice

Found this recipe at http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2009/08/curried-apple-chicken-stir-fry-recipe.html and it looked delicious, so I tried it. Minor changes: dates for raisins (allergic to grapes means allergic to raisins!), no garlic, added a splash of coconut milk to try and make it richer. Not bad, but definitely not as delicious as the arty title and enticing photo led me to believe...I'll definitely try more of Karina's recipes though. They're simpler than many of the other gluten-free options I can find online.

Karina's version:

My version:

Safe Coconut Rice Pudding

2 cans of rice milk
2 cups of water
half a bear of honey (extracted with a butter knife)
1/2 c jasmine rice, rinsed
cinnamon and vanilla to taste

Simmering this up right now...way more practical than pancakes given the contents of my pantry. I'm so buying pancake mix. But pudding is a natural breakfast selection, and can be adorned with strawberries, which I have. (Based on a recipe found a recipezaar.com, with substitutions.)

Results: watery, not so much pudding as a loose rice cereal. Will still be my primary source of breakfast for the week.

Next time: stir more? less coconut milk?

. . .

Note to self: Do NOT write blog while cooking. Pudding boiled over and made a glorious sound. Caught it before it made an inglorious mess.

It's On

Day after my birthday, and I'm soggy with the birthday love hangover, gut sick from an extravagantly unsafe dinner (Italian, fancy, including 3 courses). Making coffee and poking around the internet to find an easier buckwheat pancake recipe...

START STRONG

Safe American

Steak, marinated in oil, vinegar, ginger, lime, pepper
Yellow sweet potatos, sort of peeled and mashed with olive oil, salt, pepper
String beans sauteed in garlic with salt and pepper

Hint for life: salt and pepper and olive oil. They make dinner.

The residue of the feast:

Countdown to official foodlessness

Tomorrow is my birthday, and the official fade in. Come Saturday, the start of Ramadan, I'll be fasting in the whitest possible way. Though I'm allergic to the body of Christ, so this is no Catholic Ramadan.











Unsafe Coke



***Breaking News***
"Do you know Jesus" says a 14-year-old black boy in the pop-up ad that just caught me. What's the product?

Zooey Deschanel is allergic to food too!

And she's hot!

I'm more gangster, though, cause I eat MEAT.

www.bravotv.com/top-chef-masters/season-1/dietary-restrictions

Trial and Error: Safe blackened filet of sole with avocado salad and Spanish rice

Error.
Looks delicious, right?

Not. Mouth-burningly salty. And still somehow boring. Blech. A nice palate cleansing cup of rose congou tea should help, and perhaps a dessert of creamed honey on a rice cake?




Lessons:

• never follow a recipe for seasoning (2 tsps salt! too much!)
• don't use broth as the only liquid for rice (too much salt!)
• most broth has sugar in it, and corn solids, and yeast - read labels carefully...
• it's hard to blacken without garlic (or a Cajun uncle)
  
• radishes alone are not a proper palate cleanser
  

Safe Summer Pancakes

The ideas are flooding in. Thanks to JMB for this possible gem (look forward to trying these Saturday morning to usher in the official diet days).

Caipirinha Pancakes

Pancake mix [substitute buckwheat for bisquick crap?]**
Limes [I assume these are OK since lemons are]
Regular old sugar [replace with preferred sweetener. If you use honey, mix with lime juice before applying to pancakes]

Pancakes with maple syrup is a breakfast fit for the winter, before you go out lumberjacking and whatnot. This version of pancakes is better fit for the summer…for weekend days you might spend at the beach. Very light and delicious and full of vitamin C.

How to do it:
1. Make some pancakes!
2. Put the pancakes on your plate!
3. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of the pancakes you just put on the plate. Some people like more sugar than others.
4. Squeeze about half a lime’s worth of juice over a plate full of sugary pancakes. This will dissolve some of the sugar.
5. Eat it up, go to the beach.

I'll have to make a mashup here, using, perhaps, this recipe found on Group Recipes:

Ingredients

1 cup buckwheat flour
1 tsp gluten and corn free baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp potato starch
1 cup + a little more coconut milk
2 Tbsp olive oil

Directions

Heat the skillet to medium heat while you are preparing the batter. (You don't want the skillet too hot; due to the thickness of the batter, they take a little while longer to cook than regular pancakes, so too hot will result in burning the edges and a raw middle.)
Combine the dry ingredients.
Mix in the coconut milk and oil until the batter is smooth.
Make sure that the skillet is hot, water will sizzle and jump if you put just a drop on.
Pour pancakes to the size that you prefer. I use a serving spoon or a ladle to do this. Because this batter is thick, you may have to even out the cake with the back of your spoon, this also makes it difficult to get perfectly round cakes. .
When bubbles start forming around the edges, cover the cakes with a lid for thirty seconds to a minute; this will stiffen up the top of the batter just enough so it doesn't drizzle off when you flip it.
When the pancake has bubbles throughout, flip it. Depending on how thick your cake is, you might not get a lot of bubbles.
Cover with the lid again for at least part of the time, so that you ensure cooking throughout.
When cut, the cakes will be dense, but should not be sticky in the middle.
Serve and enjoy!
If you are making a larger batch to serve, you can put the cakes on a cookie sheet and cover with tin foil and keep them in an oven set to warm.

Safe Guacamole

Avocado, schmeared on a rice cake, with salt.

Next time: Go to the store. Buy cilantro, and lemon. Mash (but don't pulverize) with a fork.

Before

The sexy bodybuilder girl at work teases me that I'm going to get skinny.






This calls for before and after pictures.


Before:

Iced Americano with hazlenut milk

Good texture, awfully nutty though. Tastes too much like flavored coffee. Time to seek out hemp milk. Rope is more coffeelike than any nut I've ever met...

Thank You, Fred Meyer

Hit the jackpot yesterday at Fred Meyer. I went in for a gold Indiglo watch ( original lost on a redeye, and thankfully now replaced) and stumbled upon a goldmine of gluten free glory.

Their "Healthful Living" section offered cheap rice pasta (to keep favorite dishes like spaghetti with chicken and broccoli alive, albeit sans garlic), buckwheat flour (need a recipe for buckwheat pancakes/crepes without milk or eggs - suggestions?), rice cakes, and fresh almond butter (at a 3rd the cost I was expected from my Manhattan grocery experience). I also picked up some muffin and loaf tins for future experiments in safe baking.

Now I just need to clear out the inflamers and get some nice fresh fruits and vegetables to get my kitchen ready for the adventure.

And the real jackpot came from Goodwill:

An early 90s water resistant clock radio!

Friends Are Awesome

The search for the best alternative milk is on.

Based on those I've polled (primarily Seattle coffeeslingers, who should know), the best milks that are derived from neither cow nor soy bean and that are available sugar-free are:

Human milk (unfortunately my lactation isn't sufficient to make a latte - any wet nurses in West Seattle up to the task?)
Hemp
Almond/Hazlenut
Rice

Foods I CAN Eat

• Meat
• Fish
  
• Rice
• Potatoes
• Olive oil
• Vegetables (with the exception of garlic, tomatoes, asparagus, and corn and light on lettuce, onions, and peppers)
• Almonds, filberts, walnuts
  
• Buckwheat
• Beans (except soy)
• Coconut
• Fruit (with the exception of pineapple, cranberries, grapes - light on peaches)
  
• Goat's milk (maybe)
• Honey, agave nectar, beet sugar (NO cane sugar or corn syrup)
• Cocoa beans
• Coffee (thank Christ)
  

The Bloodz

I'm sick. I've been sick for years, and drugs and acupuncture and yoga and meditation and all the other glorious things I've tried haven't fixed me.

So I had food allergy testing done.

In color, these pages start turning danger orange around II, and are properly red by IV. In other words, all those bars you see below? Foods that cause me inflammation; foods the doctor calls "evil," but which I choose to instead just call "inflammatory."

The plan? Eliminate the inflamers from my diet, entirely, for two months. Beginning the day after my birthday. Which means I have exactly 7 days to prepare. And this will be no wussed-out weak approach to "elimination" dieting. Fuck that. This needs to be gangster. Food needs to be delicious and exciting - if I didn't care about taste I'd take in my calories through a tube.

Read the bloodz, post your suggestions - recipes, favorite products I can still eat, supportive feedback - and of course, anti-food allergist anger is welcome. Asshole thinks he can tell me eggs are evil...