Paleo Lunch Bowl

I really like how my lunchtime meals have changed since going Paleo.  Food seems to be so much more interesting and creative.  This is what I had for lunch yesterday.

Beef bone broth and onions, left over kale and garlic mushrooms with homemade turkey meatballs!

Ingredients:

Beef broth
I make beef bone broth in large batches and freeze it in mason jars so I always have some available.  I use a fantastic recipe from Nom Nom Paleo that takes about an hour in a pressure cooker!


Meatballs
At weekends I sometimes make meatballs to freeze for snacks or to have on hand to make a quick meal.  For this lunch bowl I used some frozen Turkey Meatballs I made this weekend. The recipe came from The Spunky Coconut Cookbook. I had made them before several times, but this time I used turkey instead of chicken and made them about the size of small golf balls - 5 was the perfect amount for my lunch bowl!


Vegetables
The night before we had mushrooms and kale as our main dinner meal vegetable.  I melted some coconut oil, added some chopped garlic and chopped mushrooms and sautéed for 10 minutes.  I added half a bunch of washed and torn kale leaves and sautéed for another 5 minutes.  I then seasoned with finely ground Montreal Steak Seasoning, added a 1/4 cup of water and braised for another 5 minutes with a lid on the pan.   We had about a half cup left so I put it in the fridge not really knowing when or if I would use it. Half a cup of garlicky mushrooms and kale was just the right amount to use in the lunch bowl!


The combination of pre-made ingredients and left-overs made for a wonderful lunch!  And while I was heating up everything in the microwave I even had time to chop a spring onion for garnish...much better than the boring cheese sandwiches I used to eat!

Kale Chips - What works for me!

There are a lot of kale chip recipes out there, they're all similar and pretty simple. For some reason I can never remember exactly what to add and what temperature;

• 325, 350 or 375 degrees Fahrenheit?
• Olive oil, grape seed or what?
• Put the seasoning on before baking or after?

I have tried making oil-free chips in a dehydrator - they looked wonderful but they had a horrible taste with a thin cardboard texture.  So the dehydrator is out which is fine since I'm using it to dry celery for a low-salt celery salt today! I think you just need to experiment and see what works for you in your oven.  Below is a list of what I've learned; 

• Choose a kale variety that has smoother leaves, the more undulating the leaves are, the more difficult it is to evenly bake them.
• Plan to bake an entire bunch of kale...it is addictive and the chips will probably not survive 24 hours!  Trust me :-)
• Heat oven to 350 degrees and go from there (if they start to burn drop the temp to 325, if you end up with soggy leaves bump up the temp to 375 next time). 
• Cut out the stalks with scissors and pull leaves into palm size pieces.
• Put kale into a salad spinner, wash and thoroughly spin dry, lay leaves on a towel to dry.
• To speed things up, and to make sure the leaves are completely dry, you can put them between paper towels and roll out the moisture with a rolling pin.  Don't worry about harming the leaves!
• I have tried various oils like olive oil, grape seed and coconut, but my favorite by far is hazelnut oil.  I recently read that avocado oil works well too, so I may try that next.
• Pour some oil (~1 tbsp) into a small dish that you can dip the tips of your fingers into, and massage the oil onto both sides of the leaves. Make sure you use the oil, if you are economical with oil the leaves will not be protected and you're more likely to end up with dark singed and burned edges.  This is not a recipe where reducing oil will work - if you're worried about the calories in oil don't make these chips.  If you try and be lean with the oil you will increase the risk of uneven baking and half your chips will turn out brown and inedible!  Been there, done that!
• Spread leaves out onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, give the leaves some space and don't overlap.  Place in the oven on a middle rack and set a timer for 10 mins.
• At 10 mins keep an eye on the color of the leaves, you want them green with not even a hint of brown.  As soon as you see any slight browning, pull them out of the oven.  You can always pull out the cooked ones and put the rest back in the oven for a few more minutes; all the leaves are a little different so it makes sense that they will bake slightly differently.
• Mine generally take about 11 to 12 mins depending on how many leaves I load on the tray - I usually split a bunch of kale in to 2 or 3 batches in the oven.
• When you take them out of the oven immediately slide the parchment paper onto a cooling rack or cool granite surface to prevent them from cooking any longer, and season with salt.  I'm currently having a love-affaire with Herbamare seasoned salt, but you can also use garlic salt, paprika, ground steak seasoning, whatever makes your taste buds happy!

So to summarize;

1. Set oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Cut stalks from leaves 
3. Wash leaves and dry really well
4. Massage in oil (don't skimp)
5. Place leaves on a lined baking tray (make sure leaves don't touch)
6. Place in oven for 10 mins (keep an eye on them)
7. Season after they come out of the oven!

Enjoy your crunchy, salty little leaves of green!

Gringo "Chiles" En Nogada

I love, love, love Chiles en Nogada!!!!  This recipe is inspired by Chiles en Nogada, and arose from a desire to eat walnuts and cream for dinner, use up some orange peppers and make a dairy free and gluten free meal.

This can (should) be made with Poblanos but if you can't find them or want a milder version, you can use peppers -  Peppers en Nogada? Or  fill large tomatoes and use as appetizers!

This is also a quick and dirty low sugar version, so I haven't included any dried or candied fruits in this recipe.  The cinnamon and sweetness of the cashew cream is enough for my developing paleo pallet!

This is what you need:

Filling

• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• 1lb of ground buffalo or grass-fed beef
• 1 small tin of tomato puree (I used homemade)
• 1 cup chicken or beef broth (I used homemade beef broth)
• 1/2 a large onion (finely chopped)
• 2-3 garlic cloves (finely chopped)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup hot green chili or salsa - I had some very hot green chili in the freezer, so I used that
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 3-4 tbsp cashew cream

To put the filling in

• 2  poblano chiles, or peppers or tomatoes 

To garnish

• cashew cream with chopped walnuts
• cilantro
• pomegranate seeds
• guacamole

This is what you do:
Melt/heat the coconut oil in a pan, add chopped onions and saute on medium heat for 5-10 minutes...don't rush this part.  Add garlic and saute for another 30 secs before adding the ground meat.  Saute until the meat is brown and there are no red pieces left, 5-10 minutes. Add the tomato puree, cinnamon and broth, bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.  Add green chili to taste (I added a little more than 1 cup), chopped walnuts and cashew cream and simmer for another 10 mins.  Taste to see if you need some salt (my broth had salt so it didn't need it) or more cinnamon.  If you like a more creamy mixture add a couple more tbsps of cashew cream!
[You can freeze the mixture at this point and defrost when needed.  I tend to spend my Sunday afternoons cooking and freeze partial meal items for use later in the week/month]

1. If you use poblanos, cut the top off and remove the inner seeds.  Place in a heat-proof glass dish and bake in an oven at 350 F for about 10 minutes.
2. If you use peppers, cut the top off and remove the inner seeds. Submerge in boiling water for 10 minutes.
3. If you use tomatoes, cut the top off and scoop out the insides, no further preparation is needed at this time.

Allow poblanos/peppers to cool, then stuff with the meat mix.
[You can save the stuffed peppers overnight in the fridge.]

Place stuffed peppers in a heat-proof glass dish and bake in the oven at 350 F for15 minutes until the stuffing is bubbling.

I like to server with a side of guacamole and sprinkle with chopped cilantro...yummy!  You can also drizzle with a cashew cream and walnut mixture, and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds if you have them.

For this version I drizzled with straight cashew cream, garnished with fresh cilantro leaves and served with Nom Nom Paleo's Cauliflower Rice!    

The Gluten Free World

Controlling an increase in carbohydrates....a not so healthy side effect!


Good Intentions

I got swept up in the emerging Gluten Free (GF) world, the camaraderie of all the blogs, the appreciation for alternatives....100s of recipes to make cakes, brownies and cookies without gluten! Pizza bases, pie crusts recipes and recommendations for commercially prepared bread and such!  For a while I got sucked in to this alternative universe where ground rice and xanthan gum are king!  You replace one type of flour with 10 different flours, and all GF recipes need a combination of at least 3 of them before you can create anything!

The overwhelming reason for such recipes is a good one - they are to protect our digestive tract and ensure good nutrient absorption, they help us recover, feel better and live well. But all this alternative flour testing and experimentation seems to be to the detriment of some basic nutrition.  Our quest to be free of gluten has clouded our basic nutritional values, we have GF goggles; we're willing to eat crap so long as it has no gluten.  Also, most GF foods concentrate on baked goods as if that is all we eat - we cannot possibly miss out on the fun of eating brownies, and cookies and sweets, oh my! We need our pizza, so there are 100s of recipes that provide a cardboard-like base for our toppings. And after a while we forget what the real version tasted like and settle into our new GF world. 

But wait....it's not a 1 to 1 flour exchange

GF flours generally have a high carbohydrate content (they have no gluten protein, well, duh!).  So many people, when they switch to a GF diet, inadvertently increase their carbohydrate intake (and decrease protein intake). There is also a psychological effect too, we tend to eat more baked (GF) products because we've been told the world of baked goods is now forbidden. Poor me, I can't eat bread, or pasta or cookies.....I must make or buy mass quantities of the GF version. These counterfeit baked good are generally not as  nutritional as their gluten counterparts.

Those darn hormones

An increase in carbohydrates (read - high glycemic index food) in our diet will stimulate more frequent Insulin secretions that will cause our bodies to put all excess carbs in our bloodstream into fat storage for a rainy day!  If you're not exercising or literally starving when you eat carb-laden food, Insulin will be called upon to mop up the excess and put it into fat storage. We forget Insulin is a hormone that is involved in carbohydrate and fat metabolism.  You have to think of Insulin as a bad guy, you don't want to feed him too often, because if you do, another fat fairy gets her wings!  And as far as I'm concerned I have way too many fat fairies in my thighs already...I can see them fighting under the cellulite!

Don't get caught with selective amnesia! 

We completely forget about Glycemic Index when we're eating GF food.  We tell ourselves our guts are healing, our leaky guts are now able to take up nutrients, a little weight gain is to be expected.  We feel bad for our kids who can't eat the foods we ate as a kid, we feel bad for ourselves for being inflicted and deprived. 

Don't Feel bad!  Be Healthy!

• Be aware of sugars and carbohydrates in your food. Based on daily values for a 2000 calorie diet, we're supposed to eat around 300g of carbohydrates a day.  I aim for 100-150, if I want to lose some weight all I need to do is drop below 50g a day.
• Try to minimize rice-based flours and foods.  Try almond flour or coconut flour. Try quinoa pasta instead of brown rice pasta.
• Train your pallet to prefer less sugar.  You trained yourself to like GF food, you can modify your desire for sugar; start by using a 1/4 cup (instead of 1/3) in your next recipe.
• Introduce more non-baked goods into your diet.  What would you do if there were no GF substitutes? What snack would you eat instead?  A handful of nuts, a boiled egg, a piece of fruit?  
• Modify recipes to be naturally GF. Instead of deep-fried chile rellenos, try baking them naked (I mean without breading - please wear an apron)! Try quiche without a pie crust. Once you get the hang of using lettuce wraps you won't want buns for burgers or hot dogs!  
• Compare the number of sugars in similar products. Always buy the product with less sugar; 3 or 4 grams less sugar will add up over time. Nut flours have more calories than rice and grain flours, but they also have protein and will keep you feeling full longer so ultimately you eat less!
• Try and eat minimally proceed food.  Eat products that have few ingredients, do you really need a GF bread with 6 different flours. If you don't recognize an ingredient, don't buy the product!  

Look after yourself.  Don't get lost in the GF marketing buzz!

My New Years Resolution - A Progress Report

I have not been doing a very good job of sticking to my New Years Resolution, but I am not going to beat myself up about it.  This year's resolution is probably the biggest resolution I have made, so a slow ramp up is okay.  My resolution is to follow the Paleo lifestyle.

I was happy with my resolution choice. I had been trying to find my place in the dietary world. I need to be gluten-free, but wasn't sure if my regular diet should lean towards vegan, vegetarian or low-carb.... for some reason I need to classify myself.  Ethically I wanted to follow a vegan lifestyle but since I didn't eat soy, due to the phytoestrogens, so that made a vegan diet very limiting, not impossible, but very limiting.  Another plus is now I have characterized myself, it makes it so much easier to find good recipes.  I don't need to wade through the high carbohydrate, GF rice flour-laden baking recipes, if I do a "paleo" search, simple, healthy recipes come up.

What I realized is Paleo is not all steak and bacon!  Half the diet is vegetables!  If I follow a Paleo diet I will eat more fresh vegetables than I ever did before.  When I am being good and eating Paleo I eat a little more meat, but the carbohydrate part (bread, pasta, potatoes, rice) is mostly replaced with vegetables.  Instead of a chicken breast with broccoli and a baked potato, when Paleo it becomes a chicken breast with more broccoli! Meatballs are crammed with vegetables and stews are full of vegetables and comprised of only 1/3 meat protein.  Though I'm sure 2/3 of my calories come from proteins and fats. I've also noticed that because the Paleo diet is made up of compact nutritious food, I am eating less; less in terms of volume.  I think I'm eating about the same calories, I just eat less because Paleo food takes longer to digest and also stops me from getting hungry sooner...I don't snack so much!

My progress after month one;

• I still have difficulty staying away from potatoes and rice, but I'm eating less.  I don't miss pasta, so that is an easy one.
• I still could eat more vegetables - the main issue here is I don't buy enough.  I start the week with a lot more vegetables in the house than I used to have, but I still come up short by Thursday or Friday. I may try freezing some prepared vegetables since the veg draw in the fridge is now always full at the start of the week.
• I need to be more organized and plan my week. When I plan ahead it is so easy to stick to Paleo, when I don't plan well enough I end up eating whatever I can find in the house.

The still feel the time is right for a Paleo me, and there is a lot of help out there...I just need to stick to it!

Trust!

I'm always happy when I find out a restaurant has a gluten free menu.  I am very appreciative and feel I am with people I can trust (read - a kitchen that will be careful with my food).  Why else would they have a GF menu?  They must care, right?

Last summer we were in the mountains for a weekend and went into a Mexican restaurant I used to go to with work friends years ago. I was overjoyed when the waitress said they had a GF menu.  We had a wonderful meal, I felt safe and I knew I would come back to the restaurant next time I was passing through.  

Fast forward to this past weekend. We decided to go there for lunch. We got there before the skiers came down off the mountain for lunch and found seats at the bar.  The barman asked if we wanted to start with chips and salsa - I said they needed to be gluten-free.  He immediately jumped into action and said they had some GF chips that were made in a GF kitchen, he lined the chip basket and came back with pristine chips and 2 wonderful salsas!   Oh life is so good now that GF is moving more towards an acceptable mainstream request, I thought.  

I ordered, spinach enchiladas with black beans and rice, off the GF menu and the man ordered a humongous bean burrito (no cheese) from the regular menu.  In no time at all, a server arrived with two huge (for lunch) plates, checked with the barman who told him who was eating what, and we made space on the bar for our feast.  My plate looked fantastic and the man's did not have a hint of cheese - quite often they remember and don't put cheese in the burritos and then completely forget and sprinkle cheese on the top....it was perfect!

I took a couple of large mouthfuls of my wonderful spinach burrito and then took a second look at the tortillas....they looked a little puffy and white. I panicked!  I asked the man if he thought they were flour tortillas? He compared them to his burrito and said he didn't think they were as it was breaking like a corn tortilla.  I took a piece and rubbed it between my fingers...it was gummy.  The light in the bar was not good, but the more I looked the more I knew I must have been glutined, that or someone had worked out how to make killer GF flour tortillas.

The barman came over to find out if we were doing okay, I apologized for my paranoia and asked if he could confirm these were corn tortillas.  His face went serious and he squinted at them in the dim bar light.  He picked my place up and hurried away.  He came back empty handed and apologetic, are you going to be okay, I'm so sorry, the kitchen made a mistake.  Crap!   Literary crap (for the next 2 weeks, I thought)!

He asked if I would be okay, I said I would notice it.  I really didn't want to get into details about my digestive tract during lunch hour with people around eating.  Though I really wanted to mention the shits for 2 weeks, aches and pains, brain fog and the general malaise I would experience for most of the month of February. The man felt some sympathy for the barman and said I was not epi-pen allergic!  He looked relieved and said he would bring out a real GF meal.  The man then dug a deeper hole and said the effect was like a bad hangover.  I was a little miffed and thought about it for awhile - I needed a line to describe what happens without overly grossing people out.  I said it's a bad case of food poisoning. The barman apologized again.

When I got home I ate some fiber gummies to hopefully move things along a little faster, I took an All Flora probiotic pill and drank a 750 ml bottle of Pelegrino.  I felt sorry for myself and ate some probiotic chocolate...that did make me feel better :-)  As the twinges in my upper colon started, I sorted out my vitamins - I try to take them every day, but during recovery time I need to take them daily.

I understand accidents happen, I need to look after myself and not assign blame. I will put this down to experience.  I'm not a prima-donna, I don't like too much attention and I hate being the fussy woman at a table, but I learned/reinforced a few things this weekend;

• I need to look after myself
• Don't blindly trust something is gluten free
• Question the GF menu
• Always look carefully at the food you are given
• Don't feel bad about confirming your order
• Let people know it IS a big deal

A case of the Mondays!

Negative

A couple of years ago my blood test for Celiac disease came back negative, but from what I have read since, a negative result doesn't mean much.   http://www.celiaccentral.org/research-news/does-a-negative-celiac-test-mean-you-are-safe-to-consume-gluten/

I thought it didn't matter whether I persevered with further testing since I feel so much better without gluten. I know I shouldn't ingest gluten, what does it matter if I am Celiac, allergic or intolerant? Just don't eat gluten!

Frustration

Unfortunately I have been going through a cycle of being clean and feeling great, followed by mistakenly ingesting gluten and feeling crap. I don't seem to be able to go more than 3 months without an incident and I am starting to wonder how bad these gluten poisoning cycles are for my body!

Eating Gluten by mistake :-(

When I am mistakenly "glutened" I sometimes sneeze within the first hour (my initial clue), then I feel a pain on the right side of my stomach (I think that's where food enters the intestines from the stomach). I feel a mild tightness in my chest that makes me feel I need to take deep breaths to stretch my lungs out to get enough oxygen (asthma runs in my family, but I have never been diagnosed); I can breathe well when my body is gluten free.

The gluten also affects by brain; my handwriting is scratchy and difficult to read, my typing is almost dyslexic and my short-term memory recall is ridiculous!  At one time I may have put the memory issue down to natural aging or tiredness, but I know that when I am gluten-free my mind is sharp, I have good recall, my vocabulary comes back, I am witty and funny...I like being alert and alive!  I hate being glutened and stuck in a cotton wool cloud where communication is difficult, frustrating and I get more headaches. The worst is, it can take me a full 3 weeks to recover and feel "normal" again.

Everything I eat also runs though me faster after I have been glutened, and it takes a week or two for it to return to normal.  Mornings are not good after being glutened, my joints are stiff when I get out of bed, and my muscles are weak. Instead of bouncing downstairs for morning coffee I hold the handrail very tightly and carefully step downstairs hoping my muscles will hold me and I do not fall and break my neck. I feel like a 90 year old lady! When gluten is in my system I can wake up with numb arms and hands, my back aches, my jaw aches (I must clench or grind my teeth when I sleep), and waking up is generally a chore; I don't wake up in a good mood.

It happened this weekend!

I was glutened this past weekend and I am not happy about it at all.  I have come to the realization I really should not eat out at all; no exceptions!  The only way I seem to be able to maintain a completely gluten free body is to eat at home.

The rollercoaster from a euphoric feeling of well body and mind to being plunged into 3 weeks of imprisonment in a lethargic body with a brain at half capacity is beginning to drain me. It is so depressing, I lose confidence in myself and have panic attacks about everything. I lie in bed at night and worry about life, will I have enough money to pay bills or enough for retirement, how is my health, do I have cancer? The  paranoia is the worst, it can keep me up all night.  Some concern is natural, but these strong thoughts are extreme and I don't get them when I am free of gluten.

Not happy!

I'm so annoyed that I allowed myself to eat something tainted...I should have known better.  My mantra should be, if in doubt - go without!  I should never ever eat anything that I don't trust!

Do I personally need a diagnosis (of "something")

Am I unconsciously not taking my gluten intolerance seriously enough?

What are these gluten poisonings doing to my body and brain? The gluten must be tearing up my gut each time, subjecting my body to reduced nutrition and clouding my brain - am I risking long term damage to my digestive system and promoting brain damage?  I think my concern stands (viable or not) whether I had been diagnosed with Celiac or not. But would I be more careful about gluten if I had a legitimate diagnosis?  I should be conscientious either way, I suffer the effects regardless of what medical issue I have.