Refried Adzuki Beans

Adzuki beans are small, easy to digest and you don't have to soak them before using them.  They are the only dry bean allowed on the diet because of how easy to digest they are.  They also have an odd flavor compared to my personal favorite, black beans.  Black beans are deep, rich and have a very full flavor all by themselves.  Adzuki beans have a higher flavor, not as rich or rounded, so they need some help when they are the main part of the dish, like in these refried beans.  So I've added onions, garlic and a bit of spice make the flavor richer and more well rounded.

Refried Adzuki Beans

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped, or around 1 cup chopped onion
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp salt
2 pints home canned adzuki beans, or 3 cups cooked beans, drained

Add oil, onion and garlic to a 2 quart sauce pan.  Cook the onions on medium-low heat until browning and translucent.  Add the spices and cook for 30 seconds or so.  If you like chunky refried beans, add beans to the pot 1 spoonful at a time, mashing them with the back of the spoon and stirring them in before adding the next spoonful.  Or if you like smooth beans, just dump them all in, stir them good to blend the spices and onions, and then use an immersion blender or food processor to blend them smooth.  Continue cooking over low heat stirring often until the beans are as thick as you'd like, then refrigerate. 

These beans are best the day after they have been made, to allow time for the flavors to blend.  And they sure are tasty on tacos!

Yield: about 3-4 cups

Kim-chi for the Elimination Diet

I made some of this a few weeks ago to prep for the ED when I was reading Wild Fermentation.  Here is my modified version that I will definitely be keeping in stock as a condiment!  This is an incredibly flexible recipe: the onion, garlic, ginger paste (I left out the chilis that are usually a part of the paste) is the basis for all kimchi, and then you can add whatever you have on hand or sounds good!  Here's what I put in mine.

Kim-chi for the Elimination Diet

1 lb bok choy, rinsed well and chopped into thin, short strips
5-6 radishes, coarsely grated
2 carrots, coarsely grated
any other veggies you have around that sounds good

1-2 onions (or onion type things like leeks, shallots, scallions, etc)
3-4 garlic cloves (or more!)
3 T fresh grated ginger (or more!)

2-4 T salt

When preparing the kim-chi, I keep in mind that I'm going to be using it as a condiment, not as a dish by itself.  So I focus on keeping the pieces small enough to eat in bites with other things.  I coarsely grate the carrots and radishes instead of chopping them so they can add their flavor to bites without being large pieces that fill up the bite by themselves.

I cut the leaves of several stalks of the bok choy into about 1 inch strips, and then cut those into about 1/4 inch strips.

I cut the stems in half (or even thirds if they are wide enough) lengthwise and then chop them fairly finely.  

 

Mix a brine of about 4 cups of water and 2-4 T salt, depending on how salty you like things.  I don't like them terribly salty, so I only used 2 T.  Stir well to completely dissolve the salt and pour over the veggies in the bowl.  Put a plate or a plastic bag filled with water on top of the veggies to weigh them down and hold them below the brine.

 Let it sit for a few hours or overnight, until the veggies are tender and flexible.

Drain the veggies, reserving the brine.  Taste them for saltiness.  You want them to be salty, but not unpleasantly so.  If they are too salty, rinse them off, if not salty enough sprinkle a teaspoon or 2 over them.

Chop the onion, mince the garlic and grate the ginger, then put them all in a food processor and process them into a paste.  Mix the veggies and the paste together and pack it into a clean quart jar, pressing down until the brine rises.

 

After packing it all in, if the brine is having trouble staying over the veggies, add a little of the reserved brine from soaking the veggies.  You want it all to be completely submerged so it can safely ferment.

Once it is all in, I like to use a 4 oz jam jar in the mouth of my wide mouth jar to weight down the veggies and keep them under the brine.

Then I write the date on a coffee filter turned upside down over the top of the jar and and screw a metal band on top of it.  This allows the kim-chi to breathe and prevents random things from getting inside.  If you have a fermenting lid with an airlock, that works great too.

Put the jar in a bowl (to catch overflow during fermentation) and set it in a room temperature environment, some place out of the way, but where you won't forget about it.  If you aren't using an airlock lid, the smell of the garlic, onion and ginger can get pretty strong, so take that into account.  I get small food safe buckets from my local bakery, and I've delegated one for smelly ferments.  I just put the jar in the bucket, put the lid on loosely and then it doesn't smell up the whole house!  It has the added benefit of catching any overflow from the bubbling ferment too.

Let it ferment about a week, and then taste it to see if you like the tang.  Keep tasting it every few days until you like the flavor, then remove the weight, put a lid on it and place it in the fridge.  It will keep for months, and I'm finding it a very delicious condiment for my tacos!

Yield: 1 quart

Cranberry Green Smoothie

I ran out of blueberries for my blueberry smoothie.  I was very sad.  But I found some cranberries in the freezer and decided to try those.  If you've ever had a cranberry, you know they are super tart, so I also added a date, hoping that just one would be enough to make it drinkable instead of puckerable, lol.  It was really good!  So I thought I'd share :)

Cranberry Green Smoothie

1 1/2 oz greens (I used 3/4 oz baby kale and 3/4 oz spring salad mix)
3/4 C coconut water
3 oz cucumber, sliced
3 oz frozen whole cranberries
1/2 oz fresh ginger, sliced
1 large medjool date, pitted

Blend the greens and the coconut water together for a while, then scrape the sides of the blender and add the rest of the ingredients.  Blend until smooth and enjoy!

Yield: about 2 cups

Chicken Bone Broth

This is another workflow mindset post.  I realize it's not possible for everyone, but perhaps it will help get you thinking of how you can streamline things to get more benefit for less work.

The last time I did the diet, I had real trouble trying to keep us in cooked chicken and stock for making soups and such.  Granted, I had fewer tools then, specifically no pressure canner, but the workload for making just 2 whole chickens and juggling space in the fridge was just ridiculous.  I've been thinking for quite a while how to make it easier this time around.

The key to this whole thing is that my sister found a local chicken farm that raises their chickens organic practice (though not certified) and they do their own butchering and packaging at the farm.  They don't officially sell to the public at the farm, but if I call ahead, they are happy to work it out, and I can get better prices than going to a local store that carries their products.  I can also get things that aren't sold at the stores, like stripped chicken carcasses and bags of chicken feet...  All for reasonable prices.  It's $4 for a bag of 3 carcasses, and when I opened up the first bag, I couldn't believe how much meat was left on the bones, and how much fat!  I guess it makes sense, because they are only interested in taking off the official cuts, like boneless breast, thighs, legs, wings.  But it leaves the fatty tail and all the meat on the back, the neck and all those bits in and around the breast that aren't part of the cut of meat!  They didn't have feet when I was there this time, but I'm looking forward to trying to get some next time I go, they are supposed to be wonderful for making broth, rich in the collagen that is so good for us.

I used to pay around $30 for 2 whole organic chickens at Costco, which I then had to bring home, rub with salt to dry brine, clear space in the fridge for them to sit while they brined for a day, then I would usually rotisserie them, have to take them apart, and finally be able to make broth with 2 full carcasses, with half the fat already cooked off.  I'd only get around 5 quarts of stock from this, and it was pretty watery to make it stretch that far, and it was a real struggle to accomplish this every week....  This way, I can buy 2 bags of carcasses, or 1 of carcasses and 1 of feet, bring it home and immediately throw them in the pressure canner to make broth.  And while I'll still be spending around $30 at Costco for chicken, it will be boneless, skinless thighs that are super easy to store, prep, and cook, and are the dark meat that I prefer instead of the dry tasteless white meat!  I'm soooo excited to be saving so much time, and not spending all that much more money!  I've also purchased quite a few wings, which are their cheapest cut, and my very favorite part, so I'll also be saving those bones and freezing them to add to the pot when I make broth.  This is what my sister does exclusively, but she doesn't use as much broth as I do.

Chicken Bone Broth for the Pressure Cooker

6 chicken carcasses from my chicken farm
6 quarts of water
1 whole dry turmeric root (found at an Indian grocery store, I love these for the flavor, color and amazing health benefits of turmeric.)
splash of vinegar

NO salt, I never salt my stocks or broths.  It allows me to salt each individual dish to taste and not worry about the salt content of the broth or the fat that I save.

I use my 16 quart Presto pressure canner to make this broth.  It's pretty darn easy.  Throw everything into the canner, nudging the carcasses so everything is mostly submerged.  Put the lid on and let it come up to pressure, this typically takes mine around 30-40 minutes.  Once it is at pressure (I default to 15 lbs just because I'm lazy) set a timer for 3 hours and go sit down and chill out, or putter around and do some chores.

After 3 hours, turn the burner off and set a timer for 30 minutes, and set up for processing the broth.  I set up a small stock pot with a wire mesh colander over it to scoop the meat, bones and broth into, a large bowl to hold the meat and bones, and a large stock pot to measure the broth into.  I also set out my jars, lids, 4 cup measure, 2 cup measure and a large ladle.  Set out a few extra jars also, to skim fat into and to have a place to put extra broth.

 After 30 minutes, my canner usually isn't depressurized all the way, but since I'm not canning or cooking meat I want tender, I take the weight off and let it finish depressurizing quickly.

Once it is depressurized, remove the lid and set it aside.  Use the ladle to scoop out broth, bones and meat into the wire colander over the small stock pot.  Press down on the solids to get much of the trapped fat and broth out.  I love it when the bones crumble when I do this, it means all their goodness is in the broth!

Dump the colander into the large bowl as it gets full.  When the small stock pot starts getting full, I set the colander over the large bowl and then use the 4 cup to measure out the broth into the large stock pot, keeping count of the quarts as I pour them in.  Continue until the pressure canner is empty.

There should be around 6-8 quarts in the large stock pot now.  If there wasn't a full 7 quarts, you can fill up the remainder with water.  Put that pot on a burner and start heating it up again.  Skim the fat off into the 4 quart measure, and then if you are like me and get half fat and half broth when you do this, carefully pour the fat off the top of the measure into a spare jar, skimming with a spoon or the ladle when the broth starts pouring out under the fat as well.

 

Return the broth to the pot and repeat until the fat is mostly gone.  If it starts getting hot enough to simmer, turn the burner off until you are done skimming fat.  Save the fat in a jar in the fridge, it is wonderful for cooking with and adding to stuff like soup and porridge to make it richer.  I got just over 2 cups of pure chicken fat off this broth!  There didn't used to be enough to bother skimming any off when I did whole chickens before.

Let the broth simmer a bit, occasionally using a small wire mesh strainer to skim off the crud that floats to the top while you clean the pressure canner.  Make sure to clean the seals and pressure gaskets very well even if you don't see anything there, because even a little food can clog them and make it so they don't seal.  Once it is very clean, set up the pressure canner to can and get it heating up.  While it is heating, use the 2 cup measure to scoop broth into the 4 cup measure.  Pour 3 1/2 cups into each of the prepared quart jars.  My canner can hold 7, so I continue until 7 jars are filled.  Wipe tops, place lids and set into the canner.  If there is any leftover broth, pour that into a jar to go into the fridge and use soon (like in porridge, yum!).  The Ball Blue Book says to process broth at 10 lbs for 25 minutes, but because I'm lazy, I do it at 15 lbs for 30, just to round up.

All in all, it's still labor intensive during the process of taking the broth from the canner to a stock pot, skimming fat, cleaning the canner, putting into jars, etc.  But it is certainly a lot less work than having to deal with whole chickens, and then still having to do all that.  And this broth is far superior to what I used to be able to make, and I get all that lovely fat to use elsewhere.

Yield: 7-8 quarts unsalted bone broth and around 2 cups rich chicken fat

Honey Spice Muffins

Hubby and I were eating at Jason's Deli one day, and someone walked by with a small plate of the lovely gingerbread muffins they have out on the salad bar for everyone to enjoy.  We hadn't eaten there since he went gluten free, and he turned pleading eyes to me and said, "I forgot this was the place with those muffins!  They are gluten free, right???"  "No," I had to tell him, "they aren't.  But I'll make you some."

So I went to Ali's blog Nourishing Meals, certain that she would have a wonderful gingerbread muffin recipe, and sure enough, she did!  I made it and it was pretty good, but not spicy enough, so I traded the maple syrup for more molasses and increased the spices and we both decided that they were just as good as the ones at Jason's Deli!

I was glancing over the recipe again the other day, and noticed that except for the teff flour and the molasses, they are completely ED friendly!  I did the substitutions and made them today and they are fantastic!  So much better than the muffins in the ED book....  I will post an update on how they age, the only problem with the gingerbread is that they were dryer than I'd prefer.  I traded 1/4 cup applesauce for 1/4 cup coconut oil when I made these to try and keep them moister than the gingerbread was.

Honey Spice Muffins, adapted from Gingerbread Muffins by Ali at Nourishing Meals

Dry Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups (215g) superfine sprouted brown rice flour
1/4 cup (30g) tapioca flour or arrowroot
2 teaspoon baking powder (Bakewell Cream link)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup (170g) prunes
1 cup very hot water
2 tablespoons ground chia seeds
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.

Place the prunes, hot water, and ground chia into a blender and let soak for 10 to 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, in a large bow,l whisk together the dry ingredients.  Measure remaining wet ingredients into a bowl to make adding them to the blender easier.  After the soaking time is done, puree the stuff in the blender, then add the rest of the wet ingredients. Puree again until very smooth. Pour into dry ingredients and stir together until combined. Spoon batter into muffin pan. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. They will still be heavy and feel dense after baking, so don't over bake them because you think they aren't done.

Yield: 12 regular muffins or around 30 mini muffins

Update 1/27: They still had an odd, dryish texture the next day and I'm not sure what is causing it.  It was easily solved when I put on in the microwave on high for about 20 seconds though! 

The Hunt for Starch Free Double Acting Baking Powder

The last time I did the diet, one of the things that was hardest to compensate for was the lack of a true double acting baking powder.  Most baking powder has corn starch as a filler, and corn is not on Phase 2 of the Elimination Diet.  The only other baking powder I could find had potato starch instead, which is a nightshade and off Phase 2.  There are recipes all over the web for using baking soda and adding cream of tartar to it to make baking powder, but this is only single acting.

What's the big deal, you might ask, and that was my question too when I started this process.  The problem comes down to this: single acting chemical leveners (baking soda) are activated by acid present in the batter.  They activate rapidly and have a very short life span.  So rapidly, in fact, that it is very difficult to finish mixing the batter and spooning it into muffin cups or pouring it into a loaf pan before it is finished.  It is impossible to finish cooking waffles or pancakes before it is finished, leaving the last ones flat and dry.

Most people solve this problem by adding the levener after the rest of the batter is thoroughly mixed, but this still has the problem of the time taken to spoon into muffin tins (especially if making mini muffins) and the additional problem of getting it all mixed in evenly.  Adding a powder that often has small lumps in it to a wet batter is just asking for it to be unevenly mixed.

The solution to this problem is double acting baking powder.  This has 2 leveners as components: the acid activated one and another heat activated one.  The acid one activates when mixed with the liquid ingredients, exactly as it does with the single acting levener.  This adds air and lightness to the batter, giving it a head start on creating a nice crumb during baking.  The second levener activates once the batter reaches the proper temperature, building on the work already done by the acid activated levener.  This creates a lighter, fluffier final product than could be reached by either levener individually.

I really wanted to make waffles.  Really, really!!! wanted to make waffles (for hubby, you know?).  So I searched, did research, read a whole bunch, learned more about baking powder than I ever thought I wanted to know, read some more, learned new search terms, and....

I found some!!  A company in New England called Bakewell Cream makes a starch free, true double acting baking powder.  It ends up being a bit expensive what with shipping and all, but there isn't much about this diet that isn't expensive, and it was totally worth it to be able to make waffles again!  There are a ton of other uses it has as well, I'm sure you will love it as much as I do.

Guacamole

I have a new favorite way of making guacamole!  Have you ever seen one of these?

It's a hard edged pastry cutter which you can pick up in any restaurant supply store for less than $5, or on Amazon for slightly more.  I don't know if I'm wierd, but I like my guac with chunks of avacado in it as well as a nice smooth base.  So I don't just blend it up with my immersion blender, I've always used a spoon to stir and cut and stir and cut....and stir....and cut.  Takes a while, but I've thought the end result is great.  Well, I'm not sure what clicked in my brain today, but while I was scooping out avacados, I remembered my pastry cutter and thought it might make cutting and stirring easier.  And it sure did!  With 5 blades instead of 1, and a wide flat plane instead of a round slippery one, making chunky guacamole was super easy and fast. It took about 2 minutes instead of 15, totally worth getting something else dirty (I just throw it in the dishwasher anyway...).

I like my guac simple.  I used to just take a spoonful or 2 of a nice chunky salsa, mix it in and call it good.  But I needed something different for the ED.  So I got to thinking, something crunchy is great, and a little spice is nice, but not too much to overpower that delicious avacado flavor.

Elimination Diet Guacamole

4 Avocados (because you can never have enough guacamole, right?)
1/4 C finely chopped onion
1-2 garlic cloves, VERY finely chopped.  I didn't use my mincer for this, I did it by hand and used the flat of the blade to reduce the garlic almost to a paste
salt to taste

Yield: 8 servings, or 1, if we are being really honest... :- )

Savory Black Rice Porridge

I love porridge.  It's so creamy and soothing and satisfying.  I grew up on Malt O Meal and Cream of Wheat, and as I've gotten older porridge of any kind has become a comfort food, especially during the cold months of winter.  Ali has a recipe for rice porridge in the Elimination Diet book, which calls for grinding the rice in her Vitamix, but the last time I did the diet was in summer, and I was craving the cooling smoothies more than porridge. 

Since then, hubby and I have discovered black rice, also called forbidden rice, and have fallen in love with its rich, nutty flavor and the way it makes us feel.  Doesn't hurt that it has as many or more antioxidants as blue berries either!  It makes a lovely rice pudding that hubby enjoys for breakfast, but I can't eat sweets like I used to, so I've been working on a recipe for a savory version of porridge.  I haven't tried grinding it in my blender, but I imagine it would work ok.  Instead I use the mill that was my birthday present last year, so I've included instructions for using that.

Set stones til they are just barely brushing, then grind rice.  Should also be possible to coarsely grind it in a blender or a coffee grinder that is specifically used for spices.  Don't use one that grinds coffee though, or it will be cross contaminated if you are doing the ED, or just taste like coffee.  Here's my attempt at showing the texture it should be in a 1/4 cup measure.

 Savory Black Rice Porridge

1 C cool chicken stock
1/4 C coarsely ground black rice
2 tsp dried chives
1 tsp dried parsley
1/8 tsp (dash) turmeric
1/8 tsp (dash) coriander
1/16 tsp (pinch) cumin
salt

Add all ingredients except salt to a pot and cook for 10-15 minutes.  Start with a medium temperature burner, stirring constantly.  When it starts simmering, turn the temperature

down so it doesn't burn but is still lightly simmering and let it finish cooking until thick.  Salt to taste, depends a lot on whether your stock has salt in it or not.

ED add ons: caramelized onions, chopped sunflower or pumpkin seeds, cook with some finely chopped veggies like green beans and carrots...use your imagination!

Yield: 1 serving

Tip: Using cool ingredients and stirring constantly while it all heats up avoids lumps in your porridge.  They are almost impossible to avoid if adding ingredients to hot liquid.  Once it is simmering you can relax a little bit, but there's the risk of it burning, so don't ignore it.  Also, you might want to invest in these little measuring spoons so you can measure less than 1/4 tsp reliably.  I found some years ago and use them all the time!

Elimination Diet Roux

I've been learning a lot about roux lately.  Which is pretty neat considering a few months ago I didn't know what it was.  I was working with my Dad to make gravy during the holidays.  He usually uses a shaker to mix in wheat flour to thicken it.  I've read articles that say you can use arrowroot instead, but I've never had that work at all.  But then I ran across a reference to roux.  And voila, the answer to our gravy problem.  The gravy at Christmas dinner was much better than the one at Thanksgiving, lol.

Making roux is easy.  You just use equal parts by weight of a flour and a fat, cook it for a while and then let it cool.  Then you mix it into whatever you are wanting to thicken.  Here is a neat guide I found about it.

I've been trying to think of a way I can make sauce for casseroles and such while on the Diet, but most of the ones I know use dairy as a sauce.  And I know gluten free roux can be made with sweet rice flour and olive oil, both of which are ED compliant.  So I'm thinking I can make some roux to use to thicken sauce to make nice savory saucy casseroles with!  I'm excited to try it!

Elimination Diet and Palio AIP recipes

So, my sister did the Elimination Diet earlier this year with us, and kept at it after we had to quit.  Just before the holidays she challenged dairy and discovered that she has a pretty serious dairy allergy!  Yikes, but so glad she found it!  That is what the ED is all about, finding what you react to.

So I went looking for dairy free recipes to use during the holidays, and discovered an incredibly helpful thing!  It turns out that the Palio Diet spin off, the Auto-Immune Protocol, is very similar to the Elimination Diet, and there are tons of recipes out there for it!  This is wonderful, because while I am a very proficient technical cook, I am not a very creative one.  I've gotten rather good at substitution to convert recipes either to gluten free or ED friendly, but coming up with new stuff?  Hardly ever happens.  And I can't wait to try some of the things I found!

Blueberry Cucumber Ginger Smoothie

Most green smoothies have quite a bit of fruit in them to help sweeten up the typically bitter greens, but this was causing the same upset stomach and general feeling of unwellness when I have too much sweet anything.  I definitely didn't want to give up the smoothies, so I started trying to think of things that might be able to sweeten up the greens without so much fruit.  I came up with cucumbers!  They have a lovely sweet, mild flavor that mellows the flavor of the greens nicely.  I also put in some blueberries, which are not very sweet in general for a bit of flavor balance, and some spicy ginger I bought that is too hot to do what I bought it for (making syrup for ginger ale).  This smoothie has become my staple smoothie the last week or so, and I'm not sure I'll be changing it any time soon!

Blueberry Cucumber Ginger Smoothie

3/4 c coconut water
2 oz greens (I'm currently using 1 oz baby kale and 1 oz of a spinach arugula blend)
3oz cucumber, washed and unpeeled
3 oz blueberries
1 oz (or more) fresh ginger, sliced against the fibers
a good sized pinch of broccoli sprouts

Blend coconut water and greens until smooth.  Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth, adding a bit more coconut water if needed to keep it flowing in the blender.

Yield: about 2 cups