It’s hard for me to believe James has been grain-free for three years!

Most of the first two years were in Congo. People here in the US often wonder, “How could you do such a limited diet in rural Africa?” But I found the farmer’s market (huge likelihood that produce was organic), local grass-fed beef and help in the kitchen truly a blessing. I think the abundance of options is a bit overwhelming here in our world of Whole Foods, co-ops, online orders, etc. Farmers and butchers are few and far between – at least in cities! When I first entered my trusty old friend of a grocery store to realize there were maybe 3 items edible for James – it almost made me panic. I had been looking forward to clean long aisles full of food options, (pushing a shopping cart!), but this heavenly experience was soiled by the realization that there weren’t ‘food options’ in the average grocery store anymore.

Taking our family on the road also provided challenges. Gas-station snacks? Not really. Fast food? Nope. We found a high end steakhouse for a fancy family meal. I called their chef ahead of time. Do you have any grass-fed beef? Nope. Any pastured or organic chicken? Nope. Wild-caught seafood? Nope. So you don’t have any meat whatsoever that has not been fed corn & soy? Nope. What oil do you fry in? Soybean oil. ARGH! To their enormous credit, they were willing to let us bring in a raw grass-fed steak from Whole Foods and prepare it special in 100% butter for the special meal. Food is just way more processed and commercial than I ever imagined. It slightly helps that so many others are dealing with allergies too.

James is doing amazing. He grew an inch last week! His feet are officially bigger than mine. This year I have kept him full GAPS and added more dairy and he has been tolerating it for the first time in 2 years! He now does well on ghee, butter, kefir, yogurt, raw sour cream, parmasean, gruyere, comte. The occasional illegal treat of raw whipped cream or raw whole milk doesn’t seem to bother him either! No eczema, no chronic illness, no toileting issues, no emotional meltdowns, and lots of gaining ground! We were able recently to return to that steakhouse and order one of their grain-fed steaks (cooked in butter!) without reaction!

In GAPS, as people heal, they often see retracing patterns. Your body is working backward through the healing it wanted to do in the past. So issues that came up recently were dealt with first and issues that had been under the surface from the start are the last to heal. We saw retracing in four of us. James’ regression journey began with a chronic UTI and bad case of giardia. His giardia had been popping up every few months even on GAPS. Initially we would continue to treat with the recommended tinidazole antibiotic. After a while, kefir and garlic seemed to make it go back into remission after a few ‘windy’ days. And the giardia seemed to resurface less and less often. So when it seemed to come back (around a full moon, which is normal for parasites) in February, we began a regime of diatomaceous earth in water (a very inexpensive and gentle parasite/yeast cleanse) before dinner each day. I figured we all might have a few extra stow-aways after so many years in Africa. Within a week his giardia symptoms were gone and within a month he no longer had the bloated tummy that goes with it. We continued for several months. Initially he would feel something around a full moon, but now, 4 months later, we just had a ‘super moon’ and noticed nothing! Hooray for DE!

I feel like that was one huge last ‘frontier’ for James’ gut. He had to find a way to kill off the last of the parasites and keep things in balance. Healing that his body wanted to do when he turned three… We’ll have to see what time tells us, but we may have fought the ‘last battle’!

We had a great conversation last week:

MOM: James, is that eczema on your leg?
James: What’s eczema?
MOM: You know, the itchy spots you had when you were little?! (age 6 mos – 8 years)
James: Nope. No idea what you’re talking about.

(it turned out to be a few mosquito bites)
Hilarious.
I’m so thankful he doesn’t even remember nights when he couldn’t sleep for the itching.

James is headed for the teens quickly, growing like a weed, and becoming a wonderful young man. He is doing really well in math, still loves architecture and engineering, and Suzuki piano instruction. He still has an amazing capacity for patterns and in 6 months of piano instruction can play about 12 songs in almost any key you name. He has recently discovered a love of clay and molding figurines to order. He has finished Occupational Therapy for gross motor delays and has one reflex still not integrated. He has enjoyed playing baseball and soccer this spring. The biggest thing James accomplished this year was a week away from family at Summer Camp! He had to bring a cooler of food along, but he had a blast intertubing on the lake, ziplining through the forest and diving in the pool! Such a far cry from the 8yo who couldn’t make it through an hour with peers on his own…

My guess is that James will benefit from continuing GAPS foods for the majority of his diet, but that he won’t be limited strictly for too much longer. The only hesitation from moving on now is that for some kids (like myself) hormone levels and detox can get messy ages 12-14. We’ll have to navigate it one day at a time. So thankful for the wisdom of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride and GAPS!

James on homemade ketchup:

“Wow Mom! This ketchup tastes great!

It tastes so tomato-ey…  I bet this is the ORIGINAL recipe!”

Tomatoes in ketchup?

Happy thought indeed! (to borrow an Elizabeth Bennett phrase)

The next day from a guest…

“These peanut butter bars taste real, like they will put meat on your bones… What flour is in them?”

“No flour.”

“No flour at all? But how do they get so light and fluffy?”

“Eggs.”

I find it hard not to smile to myself when people are astonished that food tastes REAL. It is real.

Sad to me that real food, whole food, isn’t easy to find… couldn’t we all just move to the French countryside?

And I’m so thankful for farmers and gardeners who work hard to grow and make real food.

Cooking comes naturally to some people. I’m not one of them. When we lived out in the jungle (where it is definitely a WOMAN’s job to cook), people were often puzzled that Kent would help in the cookhouse. We skirted the impropriety by explaining that Kent studied Biochemistry. He was just doing chemistry!

As newlyweds, I was in the informal-learned-from-my-husband school of culinary arts. Lately, I do 90% of the cooking with trusted faithful recipes and we all can smile. But every now and again, Kent likes to get in the kitchen, make a big mess and experiment. Did I say ‘likes’? No, he LOVES to experiment. It must nourish his inner chemist.

My Congolese friends keep reminding me how good I have it. I do love that Kent enjoys cooking. While he tells funny stories about disastrous culinary inventions in college, nearly poisoning his innocent roommates; he rarely makes anything we don’t all eat with joy. I should have given him the credit entirely for adapting Recipe #1: Chocolate Nut Butter Brownies. It was his experimentation that drove us to find something better than we started with. And it is his experimentation I bring you today. The real trouble is that this is all in his head, and not written down. I will attempt to codify this genius:

Recipe #6: Banana Pancakes
This was adapted from Elaine Gottschall’s Peanut Butter Pancakes in her book Breaking the Vicious Cycle. We like the sweetness of adding banana to them.

Ingredients:

1 cup natural peanut butter, creamy (or other nut butter – we just live in peanut-land)
2-3 Tbs. raw honey
8 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla essence, optional
3 ripe bananas, mashed or blended

This serves 4 people, we usually double this recipe and snack on leftovers.
We stick everything in the blender and fry small (4″) pancakes on low-medium heat in oil or ghee. Because of the honey and banana, they will brown prematurely or burn if cooked on high heat. It means that you have to cook them a bit slower than ‘normal’ pancakes. If it is too thick you can thin it with water or your milk of choice.

These are not your white fluffy styrofoam McBreakfast pancakes, but they are so packed with protein that I can go hours without feeling hungry after eating just 3 small ones. We top them with aforementioned guava sauce, ghee, raw honey with mixed with water and maple flavoring, or fruit-only jam.

It’s still not the same as our favorite granola, but they are grain-free.
Yummy healthiness!

This is the last of the week of SCD recipes to give you a feel for what we are eating, and what is helping all of us feel stronger and healthier. These and a few others have become family favorites that we will likely continue making even after we go ‘off-diet’ someday. James’ birthday is coming up and almond banana cake with marshmallow frosting have been requested, flourless, sugar-free and grain-free. I’ll post pictures!

I spent most of this weekend in bed with a colossal headache, trying to figure out if I should be taking malaria drugs or antibiotics for a sinus infection. Thankfully, I chose the latter and am finally surviving without high doses of Tylenol. So today I am kind of copping out on the recipe run… I don’t know that fruit cooked with honey can officially be called a recipe…

But it’s tasty stuff! We use guavas because we have a whole tree full of them in the backyard, but any fruit would work really. We’ve also tried pineapple. Pretty much ends up tasting like canned Dole Tidbits. We love this with mangoes!! Mango sauce is the only way I like them. Yum! Too bad mango season isn’t here until December. Boo!

Recipe #5: Mapera (Guava Sauce)
Btw, this one does not come from a fabulous cooking blog. We just made it up.

1-2 gallons fruit (20-30 guavas in our case), washed and halved
2 cups filtered water
1 cup raw honey
1 Tbs. cinnamon

Wash and half all fruit into stock pot. Add water and simmer until soft. Run through an applesauce mill or food grinder if needed. Add honey and cinnamon. Put it piping hot into glass jars and hope they seal. Stick them in the fridge anyway just in case. (For me anyway. You have access to ‘real’ canning supplies, so you’re probably good to leave them on the pantry shelf a while.) Serve cold over cakes, in yogurt, on toast, on fried fish, on pancakes, etc. Ooh pancakes! Tomorrow!

I’m so distractable at this late hour of 8:15pm… If you want to be distracted with me today: This makes me think, which kind of hurts. But then I read this and pray. Finally, this makes me rejoice.

For those of you living in the land of grocery stores… this is a bit unnecessary. There are some beautiful coconut ice cream options made in Oregon by Coconut Bliss or So Delicious/Purely Decadent. If you can’t afford them, can’t find them, need to go sugar-free like us or are just one of those DIY foodies…

Our family tradition (at least overseas) is to make some form of ‘ice cream’ (stainless steel bowl full of something) in the freezer on Sat. and have it with snack foods for dinner and a movie Sunday nights. When starting this dairy-free, everything-free diet, my first two concerns were how will we do pizza night and what about ‘ice cream’?!

I tried mashed white bean – honey ice cream. Blech. Then mashed fruit sorbet. Ok. But I LOVE coconut milk, so I was thrilled to find:

Recipe #4: Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Inspired by this tasty goodness over at Elana’s Pantry, but for some reason James couldn’t get into Coconut milk on its own without some fruit, and we usually forgo the raw eggs.

Ingredients: (I double this for our family)

1 can coconut milk
1 large (or 2 small) ripe bananas
1/4 cup raw honey
1 Tbs. vanilla essence
dash sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon, optional
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (we use Enjoy Life dairy-free mini chips)

Blend bananas, honey, vanilla, and salt in the blender and then add the coconut milk later until no banana chunks remain. I add half the chocolate chips in the blender for a pulse or two just to chop some of them. Then I dump the whole thing in my metal freezer bowl. Two – four hours later I try to remember to come back and add the second half of the chips when things are mostly frozen. We don’t have an ice cream maker, so it can freeze very solid. Good to leave on the counter for 10 minutes or more before breaking your ice cream scoop… So yummy!!

I have added mango sauce before and it was very good. Haven’t yet tried warm jams or dried fruits… I hope soon to try adding cocoa powder and or peppermint extract… YUM!

It’s never too late in the year for ice cream. I know I can’t talk because I live in the tropics. But you can pair this with a warm ginger molasses cookie… a pumpkin spice latte… a piece of mocha coffee cake… I better stop before drooling on my keyboard.

Okay, so after 3 months without bread or grains, this bread tastes like dessert to us! We slather it with imported blackberry fruit-only jam. Joel likes it with honey or guava sauce poured over or sandwiched between. But they Joel likes most things, including baked perch topped with guava sauce. He says he’s preparing to become a chef. I digress…

I found this recipe over at Adrienne’s blog: Whole.New.Mom. She has her family on a similar diet for similar reasons, and has some great recipes! She says her family likes this bread with bean dip or hummus. Yum! We changed it up a bit and have not perfected it quite yet for our own use. The recipe makes a spongey thick 9 x 13 focaccia that would probably be better in two 9″ squares or 3-4 loaf pans.

The flax seed meal will lose most of its beneficial properties within 3 days of grinding, so keep refrigerated if you have extra, or bought it as ‘meal’. The less expensive option is to buy the seeds in bulk (either color) and grind them yourself! My blender can do this on high speed for about 1 min. per cup. To get the 2 cups of flax seed meal needed here, you’ll want to grind just more than 1 3/4 cups of seeds.

I suppose we could call it fabulous flourless flax focaccia, but that’s over the top. Hope you like this tasty way to get your Omega-3 oils!

Recipe #3: Flax Focaccia Bread
2 cups flax seed meal
1/2 cup almond flour*
2 Tbs. coconut flour*
1 Tbs. aluminum-free baking soda
1 tsp. sea salt
2 Tbs. raw honey
5 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup water*
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 375. Grease your pans (see note above). Whisk together dry ingredients (*we added almond and coconut flour last week in an attempt to decrease the cake-like texture and really liked it! We added a bit more water than the original 1/2 cup to compensate, fyi. They are optional.) Mix in wet ingredients until fully incorporated (no egg strings!). Now the strangest part: Turn off the mixer and leave the batter alone. It needs to sit and congeal for 2-3 minutes. It will start out looking watery and will soon spread like soft butter. Odd, huh? Spread it in your greased pan. Bake for 18 min. or until it springs back. Let cool. Cut in whatever shape you like!

It is a beautiful rich dark brown color. The opposite of white bread! Seriously! We’ve used a thin version for pizza crusts, we’ve made mini-sandwiches, we’ve smeared it with honey like a cornbread. It’s still a bit egg-ey to my taste, but we’ll keep changing it… There’s ‘our bread’ for now!