Monday 16 February 2015

Paleo Chocolate & Cinnamon Banana Bread

When life hands you overly ripe bananas, it’s time to make banana bread. Or in my case, buy as many bananas as you can carry and wait until they turn properly spotty so that you can bake to your hearts content. I cringe thinking back on all the bananas I used to throw out after they went too soft to eat. If only I knew what I was missing out on all those times! 

I’ve tried a fair few variations of banana bread recipes over the last few months, but my current favourite has to be my cinnamon chocolate bake. I feel like this is a happy medium between the dominating chocolate flavour that Mike fancies and the cinnamon topping that I prefer.










INGREDIENTS
For the bread:

4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup (85 grams) honey or maple syrup 
2 mashed ripe bananas - the darker/spottier, the better
1/2 cup (55 grams) melted butter (or coconut oil/ghee)
1/2 cup (48 grams) almond flour
1/2 cup (56 grams) coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

For the chocolate cinnamon:

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips or semisweet chocolate
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon coconut oil


METHOD

1. Preheat your oven to 350F/178C
2. Beat the eggs in a medium sized bowl.
3. Add the vanilla, the maple syrup, and the butter/oil to the eggs, mixing thoroughly.
4. Combine the mashed bananas to the rest of the wet ingredients.
5. Mix the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, sifting to remove any clumps.
6. Pour the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth. You can do this by hand, but I preferred using an electric mixer to achieve a smooth batter.
7. Grease your loaf pan, or line with parchment and scoop your batter into the pan. Set aside.
8. Place all of your chocolate cinnamon swirl into a small sauce pan on low heat until melted. Stir the entire time to keep the chocolate from from burning to the bottom. You can do this part in the microwave if you prefer - just set the time or 30 second intervals and stir in between until melted.
9. Pour half of your chocolate, cinnamon mixture over the banana batter and use a knife to swirl the mixture through the batter.
10. Place in the oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until a knife going into the center comes out clean.

11. After letting the bread cool for about 10 minutes, remelt your chocolate-cinnamon and drizzle it over the top of your loaf. 


This recipe suits experimenting with different add-ins. Try chopping up spare nuts, raisins, or better yet - more chocolate. 




Saturday 14 February 2015

February 14




Better yet, if you’re anti V-Day, Happy Organ Donor Day/Ferris Wheel Day/World Whale Day…according to my very brief Google search at least. No? Happy Saturday – who doesn’t love Saturday?




In an effort to practice my food photography/styling skills, I played around with my breakfast this morning and took these babies. I've always been one to play with my food. 


I promise I’ll put up the recipe soon, it just needs a teensy bit of tweaking. I just feel like our breakfast was too good not to share - which in the spirit of Valentine's Day is exactly what we did. After whipping up a bit of coconut cream (no pun intended) and throwing on some fruit, I may have stumbled upon a new favourite breakfast combination that’s quick, easy, and I think fairly healthy as far as breakfast foods go. 


So for the mean time, don't mind me leaving these here to salivate over as I continue working on getting my recipe up to par.


Thankfully, I think my culinary skills surpass my photography skills - that's still a bit of a work in progress. 



Wednesday 11 February 2015

Plantain Brownies

Courtesy of my Colombian mother, I had an early exposure to plantains in life – along with arepas aka the greatest food in the entire world, but that is another love story entirely.

 Considering the number of Sunday mornings spent stuffing my face with fried plantains, I don’t quite know how I went 23 years without ever having cooked with them myself. All those years I had no idea just how versatile plantains could be. After getting a little too enthusiastic at a local market and purchasing as many plantains as I could carry, I quickly had to figure out different ways to use up my new fortune.

So tonight, we feast on brownies.



BONUS: I decided to make an almond butter drizzle to top off with because chocolate and nut butters make for such a happy union, why not? 
 

Brownie Ingredients

  • 2 yellow- black plantains, peeled and chopped
  • 2 eggs
  • ¼ cup (57 grams) of coconut oil, melted (you can also sub for butter if you’d like)
  • ¼ cup (85 grams)  honey
  • ¼ cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ tsp sea salt
  • ½ cup cacao nibs (or chocolate chips)


Method

  1.  Preheat your oven to 350F/177C
  2. Throw everything except for the cacao nibs in a blender and blend until smooth before stirring in the nibs.
  3. Pour your brownie batter into a greased 9x12 in baking glass
  4. Set in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
  5. Cool for at least 10 minutes before eating. 


Almond Drizzle Ingredients

  • 1 ½ tablespoon almond butter
  • ½ tablespoon maple syrup, or honey
  • 1 teaspoon coconut oil


Method

  1. Add everything to a small sauce pot and stir at low heat until the mixture becomes slightly runny.
  2. Drizzle over cooled brownies. If you drizzle too soon, it will just melt into the chocolate.


Tuesday 10 February 2015

No-Mato Marinara (Nightshade Free)


A life without marinara is hardly worth living…I’m only somewhat exaggerating that statement. Spaghetti and meatballs, margarita pizza, cheese ravioli: carbs have no meaning when you’re talking to me about Italian food. I have shared far too many happy memories with my family over a plate of my Grammy’s lasagna to ever think about giving up some of my favourite foods.

Thankfully, I came across a nightshade-free marinara that I can honestly say tastes nothing like squash or beets and 100% like the real, unadulterated tomatoes. Even if tomatoes weren’t something that we had to give up, I would still happily make this instead.

Ingredients

  • 1 ½  cups 1" cubed carrots (about 2 medium)
  • 3 cups peeled, 1" cubed Butternut squash (from a 1 1/2 lb/680g squash)
  • 1 ½  cup 1" cubed red beets 
  • 6-7 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 ½  cups diced yellow onion (1 medium)
  • 3 tablespoons Ghee or other fat for frying 
  • 1 ¾  cups water 
  • ¼ cup  apple cider vinegar
  • ¼ cup (60ml) lemon juice 
  • 2 whole bay leaves
  • 2 tablespoons dried Italian herbs (Rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, sage)
  • 2 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste
  • 1 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper, or more to taste

Method


"Courgetti" and Meatballs
courgette = zucchini for my fellow Americans
Place the cubed carrots, squash, and beets in boiling water for 30-40 minutes on medium heat, or until they are soft enough to easily pierce with a fork. Use a steamer or pressure cooker to cook the carrots, butternut squash and beets together till soft.

As the veggie mixture is cooking, melt the ghee over medium heat adding the garlic and onions to caramelize.

Drain the water from the vegetables, then add the veggies along with the onion mixture, water, vinegar and lemon juice to either a blender or bowl depending on your blending tool of choice (I used my an immersion blender) and blend till smooth.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan when it’s smooth, adding the herbs and pepper. Simmer and stir over medium heat for 15-25 minutes.  

Remove from heat and enjoy! This makes about 1 US quart, so you may need to store/freeze for later use.

Paleo Pizza Dough & Vegan Mozzarella


*Recipe adapted from The Urban Poser

Thursday 5 February 2015

Paleo Cinnamon Coconut Granola


Mornings have always been my favourite. I love sitting down with a warm cup of coffee, mentally preparing myself for the day in store.

If you’re someone with PoTS, however, mornings are a downright bitch. Not in the typical, ‘I don’t want to leave the toasty confines of my bed’ kind of way. Not in the, ‘I’m just not a morning person, so there’ kind of way. Not even in the, ‘it’s 3AM and no one should have to get up this early for work?!’ kind of way.

Mornings with PoTS mean heightened symptoms of dizziness, palpitations, nausea, and zombie-like fatigue. From Mike’s experience, and from what I can gather here on the Internet reading about other people’s experience, the symptoms usually last the first couple hours after waking up.

For months, I woke up every morning and prepared breakfast for both Mike and I. It wouldn’t have been quite so tedious if we were able to have the same breakfast every morning, but as Mike was in the business of putting on weight, I was not. Eating a two egg omelette with four pieces of bacon and 1-2 potatoes would have put a serious damper on my own health goals, as tasty as it was.

I really don’t know why I didn’t think of making my own cereal before. Determined to find an easier way to enjoy my mornings once again, I started playing around with a few different grain free cereals and granolas. We’d seen a few Paleo granolas for sale online, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend £9 on a box of granola that would only last about three or four days.

So, equipped with the goal of making both of our mornings easier, to save a little in cost and convenience, and to satisfy the cravings of my inner child and her love for breakfast cereal without compromising calories or nutrition, I came up with this cinnamon and coconut granola. It’s grain, nut, and dairy free, and can easily be made vegan.



INGREDIENTS

  •    1 1/4  cup unsweetened shredded/desiccated coconut
  •       ½ cup sunflower seeds
  •       ¼ cup chia seeds
  •       1 Tablespoon cinnamon
  •       Pinch of Sea Salt
  •       1/3 cup honey/maple syrup
  •       ½ Teaspoon vanilla extract
  •     1 egg or egg substitute of choice. I actually prefer using a gelatin egg for this recipe.

Method

  1.  Preheat the oven to 325F/162C
  2. Mix together the dry ingredients.
  3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture.
  4. Spread your mixture evenly onto a baking tray lined with parchment and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until it turns into a golden brown, turning the half way through.
  5. Cool for about 15 minutes and store in an airtight container.
  6. Enjoy!

ME,Coeliac Disease, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and PoTS

For the sake of providing a little background information on what we are dealing with, I’ve outlined the most prominent health problems that Mike has been diagnosed with along with links to further information.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is exactly as it sounds – long term, debilitating exhaustion persisting longer than six months, interchangeable with ME
Myaligic: muscle aches and pains
 Encephalomyelitis: inflammation of the brain or spinal cord.

CFS/ME is a controversial illness for a few reasons. There is no one test to diagnose a person with CFS/ME. It is up to the discretion of the Physician to label a person with this condition after observing a set of symptoms associated with the condition, which isn’t always easy because the symptoms and their severity range from person to person. There is also no proof of inflammation in the brain or spinal cord, which brings the “Encephalomyelitis’ into question. While doctors often use the Chronic Fatigue name, patients often prefer the ME diagnosis because the Fatigue in CFS doesn’t accurately describe just how debilitating the accompanying exhaustion is.

There is no known cause of CFS/ME, just theories. One popular theory is that it is triggered by a viral infection like influenza or glandular fever. It is almost as if the person affected becomes ill with a flu like virus, and then never fully recovers the strength they had before becoming ill. Everyday is a fog-filled fight with aches, pains, and debilitating fatigue. Not everyone with CFS/ME is set off by an illness however. Other known triggers are: poor immune system, imbalance of hormones, stress, depression, emotional/physical trauma, and possibly a genetic predisposition.

Treatment for CFS/ME is virtually nonexistent and vague at best. Patients might be advised to take on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help deal with the diagnosis, given graded physical therapy, or prescribed pain relievers or antidepressants to help manage the pain. It is also advised to avoid stressful/traumatic situations, avoid caffeine, sugar, or other foods that might cause reaction, and to relax more.


Autoimmune:
relating to disease caused by antibodies or lymphocytes produced against substances naturally present in the body.
In other words, your body attacks it’s own cells.

Coeliac Disease in an autoimmune condition where the body recognizes gluten (the protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and more) as an unwanted foreign object and responds as such by attacking healthy tissue throughout the body. Symptoms for Coeliac Disease are often associated with gut issues i.e. abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhoea, but can also include things like mouth ulcers, weight loss/gain, hair loss—the list could go on. Symptoms can also result in more serious problems when left unattended for too long, such as: arthritis, infertility, osteoporosis, and possibly even cancer of the small bowels.

In a healthy gut, the small intestine is lined with villi (small finger like projections). The villi works to absorb nutrients and electrolytes from food as it passes through, leaving the larger undigested food particles to continue on to the large intestine. When a person afflicted with Coeliac Disease consumes gluten, the small intestine becomes damaged and the villi is unable to absorb the nutrients of the food as these particles pass through which in turn leads to malnourishment.

The only known treatment for Coeliac Disease is to remove gluten from the diet entirely. Unfortunately, this is a classic case of easier said than done. It’s not just a matter of ‘don’t eat bread and pasta’. Coeliac’s must also be aware of what’s in their medicines, lip balms, and vitamins because gluten is commonly found in everyday products. Cross contamination is also a very serious problem that people with gluten intolerances face. Since gluten/flour is an airborne substance, food prepared in factories and kitchens that work with gluten containing products can and do easily contaminate seemingly gluten free foods. It’s also transfers from worktop surfaces, and through frying oils. To put it bluntly – this is a total bitch for Coeliac’s who want to eat out in restaurants like everybody else.



Leaky Gut Syndrome is the plain English name for “Hyper-permeable Intestines”. In other words, the small intestine in the gut becomes porous due to intestinal damage, allowing undigested food particles, known as macromolecules, to leak out of the intestine and into the blood stream. When the macromolecules enter into the blood stream, your body reacts as if foreign invaders are attacking the body and attacks right back. This can result in a wide range of inflammatory responses like brain fog, headaches, IBS, arthritis, etc etc. Now, not only is gluten considered the enemy, by formerly safe foods can set off an inflammatory response because of the macromolecules entering freely into the blood stream.

The problem with Leaky Gut Syndrome is the fact that it is not yet formally recognized fully by the medical profession as being a legitimate condition. While it is known that consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, undergoing chemotherapy, eating dairy products, and taking antibiotics can irritate and damage the seals between cells causing the gut to become temporarily porous, this is only seen as a temporary reaction of the body. According to the NHS “Leaky gut syndrome” web page, certain diseases are also known to cause inflammation and damage the gut for a limited time. Treatment usually involves some sort of elimination diet to give the body time to heal itself or by taking Probiotic supplements to balance out the flora in the gut.  

The theory of Leaky Gut Syndrome is currently too vague of an idea. It hasn’t been proven wrong, but it hasn’t been proven to be right just yet.




            Postural: posture
            Orthostatic: moving in an upright position
            Tachycardia: abnormally rapid heart rate
Syndrome: a set of symptoms that cause or relate to one another

In other words, people with PoTS experience an abnormal rise in heart rate when moving into an upright position which then triggers a number of different symptoms like: dizziness, headaches, brain fog, fatigue, palpitations, nausea, and fainting. The trouble with PoTS, is that most of the symptoms (aside from the fainting) are invisible. Symptoms often get blamed on other problems: dehydration, exhaustion, stress, not enough food, or like most invisible illness symptoms get passed off as being; “all in the head”. Because of the lack of awareness and understanding surrounding PoTS and the difficulty in detecting visual symptoms, it can be a tricky disease to diagnose which is why the final diagnosis cannot be made without wearing heart monitors or performing a tilt table test. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is even listed one of the possible treatments for PoTS patients, not because they are dealing with an imaginary illness, but because PoTS patients often develop other forms of health anxieties after being told for so long that their symptoms do not actually exist.








Tuesday 3 February 2015

Where to Begin?

I’d like to start off by saying a couple things.


Thing One: I am not a dietitian/nutritionist. As much I would love to be, I am unfortunately not made of money and for the time being, one degree in English will have to suffice. I’m not giving up on that dream though…just putting it on hold for a bit.


Thing Two: I’m learning as I go, so bear with me at times.

It’s difficult to say where to begin with this story, but some sort of background is definitely in order.

Mike and I met in January, 2011. At the time, I was a first year student at Arizona State University working towards my English degree I mentioned earlier. Mike was…not really doing all that great. Diagnosed with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at 12 years old, he suffered debilitating fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, malnutrition, rheumatoid arthritis, IBS…the list could go on. Because of his ill health, Mike couldn’t attend school because he was rarely well enough to go, and on days when he was well enough to exert energy, he paid for it in the days and sometimes weeks following.

I should also mention that we met online and that I lived in Arizona whilst he was in England with 5,000 miles separating the two of us.

All roadblocks aside (literally), our friendship quickly developed into something much more. After about a month of chatting with Mike, I knew that one way or another things were going to work out and we would be together. Our long messages back and forth turned into Skype chats, which turned into Skype calls, which turned into video chats, which eventually resulted in Mike’s first trip to Arizona 10 months later to finally meet in person. In retrospect, it’s amazing and probably a bit stupid that he was able to make that journey to Arizona given his health. He certainly paid for it after returning back to England, but what else can you do when you’re young and in love?

Now here I am, four years later living in Sheffield, England married to my best friend. Our story has never been easy, but the end has always been clear: the two of us together, happy and healthy. We have the first two parts of that last statement worked out, but now it’s time to really figure out that last bit: his health. The summer of 2013, one major part of the puzzle that is his health revealed itself. After a stupid amount of years with CFS/ME as his only real diagnosis, Mike was diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. His body was recognizing the gluten he was eating as a threat and began attacking itself causing symptoms like: debilitating fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, malnutrition, rheumatoid arthritis, IBS…sound familiar? At first, we asked ourselves how it was possible that eating the wrong food can cause so much damage to his body. Thinking about it more, we realized, of course eating the wrong food will cause damage to his body. Food gives life, food will take away life. And it has done that for about 10 years of his life.

Unfortunately, simply eliminating gluten from his diet wasn’t enough to overcome the years of damage his body underwent. I should mention, that Mike was frighteningly underweight and his muscles severely deconditioned due to years of inactivity. In order to pack on the pounds, Mike was advised to eat other grain substitutes, carbohydrates (he was a seven potato a day kind of guy for a while there), and basically anything that was calorific and gluten free. Though it helped to eventually put on the weight, the increase of the wrong type of food only made Mike feel worse than he had when he was eating too few calories a day with gluten.

I’ve been living in Sheffield now for about five months since I moved here in August. In the time that I have been here, I’ve been to more doctors’ appointments with Mike than I can ever remember myself going to my entire life (though free health care might also factor into that). We saw more specialists than we went out on dates, more blood tests than nights out with friends. Going out meant going to the doctor only to be referred to another doctor.

Well, I’ve decided that I’m done with waiting rooms. I’m done seeing my husband struggle to go to the store, or play darts, or be a 24 years old man. I know that there is more to life than prescription drugs, and I know that what he eats has just as much power to heal as it does to hurt. For the past year, we have talked about adopting a healthier lifestyle, eating whole foods and grass fed animals while cutting out processed food-like food. The past several months we’ve slowly transitioned into the life, researching web page after web page saying why we should ditch not just gluten, but other grains, refined sugars, dairy (my heart weeps over that one). These past few weeks I’ve been especially careful with what I’ve fed Mike (he’s not well enough to cook for himself very often, and his new PoTS diagnosis is largely to blame) and he’s been more active than he’s been in years. Now that we aren’t in such a mad rush to put on the weight (he finally weighs more than me *happy dance*), we can worry less about the quantity and more about the quality of food that goes in. It wasn’t until one morning last week as I sat at the kitchen table peeling the skin off the almonds I soaked over night for a grain free granola recipe that I realized just how granola I had become.

So I am starting this blog to document our progress – because I know there will be progress. Though I can’t afford to go back to school just yet, I still want to learn about nutrition and the importance of what we put in our body. Also, I really love to cook and I want a place to show off my baked goods because who doesn’t love a good food blog. I also want to share any success we might have with anyone else who finds themselves or a loved one suffering from Coeliac Disease, PoTS, Arthritis, M.E, and possibly Ehler Danlos….And also, I just really love to bake, so…