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Because Crohn's Disease is hard enough - New posts every Sunday!

Monday, September 30, 2013

Banana Muffins

SCD Banana Muffins
As you've read before, I just am not a fan of eating eggs plain. But being on the SCD, there aren't a whole lot of options for breakfast. Especially after having lived off of cereal as my "complete breakfast" for 23 years. So recently I've been getting creative with what I eat for the most important meal of the day. It started with pancakes, moved on to oatmeal, and now, onto the easiest meal of all: banana muffins. I say easy because all you need to do is make a batch early in the week and you're set for the next few days. Really nice for when I wake at 6:50 am for my 7 am class. :D



Ingredients:

3 eggs
2 bananas
1/2 cup honey
1 Tbs vanilla
3 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Beat the eggs, bananas, honey, and vanilla together. Add the almond flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring constantly. Grease muffin tins for ~16-20 muffins. Pour batter into tin, filling roughly 2/3 full. bake for 20-25 minutes until tops are golden brown. Allow to cool 10-15 min.

Notes:

*My muffins collapsed a little bit. That's because I opened the oven door before they were completely set. They should end up a little fluffier, but know that without gluten, they will never set quite like normal muffins, and that's ok.
*Depending on the size of the muffin holes, you may have more or less muffins. The key is just making sure that you never fill the tin up past 2/3 full to prevent it from overflowing on top of the tin as it expands.
*Feel free to add nuts or whatever you feel so inclined to do.


Sunday, September 1, 2013

Granny B's Pecan Brittle

Granny B's Pecan Brittle, SCD Style
My grandma Butler used to make the most phenomenal candies. If you were to ask my mom, she'd say without a doubt that her chocolate turtles (with caramel, not with actual turtles - come now) far outdid any chocolate you could buy from the store. Ask me, I'd say it was her fruit filled chocolates. Well, every year, she'd make each of us a box of hand dipped assorted chocolates for Christmas. And throughout the year, she always had a fresh stash of brittle on hand, just for us kids (of course, my mom would sneak a piece or two along the way). Even well into her 90's she continued to serve us by laboring hours on end making candy, not for her, but for her family and friends to enjoy. She was just an astounding example of service and all around a commendable woman. This recipe is written in her memory.

Ingredients:

1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped nuts (pecans are my nut of choice)
4 Tbs butter
1 tsp vanilla
Parchment paper

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Place honey in a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer. Spread the nuts on a cookie sheet and bake for 7-10 minutes until the tops begin to brown. Remove from oven. Once the honey reaches a simmer, increase the heat to medium high and allow it to reach the soft crack stage, around 280ºF. Keep honey on range and add pecans, butter, and vanilla, in that order. Stir until the butter has melted and the nuts are evenly coated. Allow to boil for 1-2 additional min. Remove from heat, pour into a freezer safe container/cookie sheet, lined with parchment paper, and allow to cool. Store brittle in freezer.

Notes:

*Soft crack stage is a candy term I wasn't aware of until I made brittle for the first time a week ago. So... I guess I'm an expert now? Here are some links to help you out. My mom got me a candy thermometer, which works wonders. They're really cheap, so I'd suggest if you're gonna make this more than once, invest in it.  What you'll notice is a change in color of the foam as the temperature increases. It starts out as a light brown, and as you get closer to soft crack, it changes to a dark, thick brown color. Also, the consistency of the actual honey will change from thick, to really runny, back to incredibly thick and dark in color. Lastly, look at the spoon and see how the honey dries. If it dries like honey normally does, then it's still too cold. If it dries firm and cracks when you pull it off, you're in the right temperature range. Here's a YouTube video from someone smarter than me, demonstrating on sugar. Principle still applies for honey. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-lhRu_Xns
*Parchment paper just keeps the brittle from sticking to the pan. You gotta nonstick container? Great! I'm poor so I don't have luxuries like that...
*Original recipe here. http://thenerdyfarmwife.com/honey-nut-brittle-candy/

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Leave them in the comments below! :D (But seriously, if you have anything to say. Like anything at all. Leave it below. I read each one you know. And it's really easy, because no one leaves comments... Just share the love. And leave a comment. Please.)

Monday, August 26, 2013

Story Time: Recipes that Didn't Go So Well

There are some recipes that take some serious talent to screw up. Those pancakes that I always rave about - that's one of them. But there are other recipes.... Well, we all know those recipes. You find the recipe on Pinterest or in a magazine and it just looks so good, but it never seems to turn out that way. It's the kind of recipes they give to culinary students as a final exam before they're allowed to graduate. I'm gonna talk about two of those recipes and how badly I botched them up.

The first recipe came around Christmas time. To preface, I adore eggnog! It was a family tradition of ours to take the richest, fattest eggnog we could find at the store, and mix it with diet Seven Up, because who can afford the calories of mixing it with actual Seven Up?! Now if you've ever seen one of those Mentos and Diet Coke videos on YouTube (if you haven't I HIGHLY recommend you look some up) you'll understand me when I say this concoction  fizzled and bubbled like crazy. You almost had to pour the Seven Up drop by drop just to prevent your drink from ending up on the floor. Well, it was my first Christmas on the SCD, and I was to have dinner with another SCD couple I knew and frequently dined with, the Thornocks. In fact, to side track a little, Chase Thornock is the one who first introduced me to the diet and I have him and his amazing wife to thank for the amazing results and blessings I've received recently.

Back on track... We decided that, seeing it was Christmas time, we were gonna both make Christmasy(?) ... Christmassy(?)... Christmasey(?) (roll with it.) food. Well, I was seriously in the mood for some eggnog that day. So, being the adventurous man that I am, I decided to face this recipe head on and make the most kick butt eggnog!

But, if you read the title of the post, you'll know that it just failed. And by failed I don't mean that it was a bad recipe and just tasted like dirt. No, I mean really failed. The egg curdled into this thick slime monster of a drink that you'd have to use a spoon to eat. Like you'd want to eat it anyway because it tasted like dirt that a chicken laid an egg in. It was just abhorred. And it was a real shame too, because for a while there I thought I was set. It was looking good, it smelt good, and all the pieces were just falling into place. Then I blinked, and everything just crashed. It literally went from heaven-sent to tapioca pudding in a matter of seconds. So, I cried a little on the inside and vowed to leave eggnog to the professionals.

The second story has a little different feel to it, but a completely opposite outcome.

My mom is a phenomenal cook. In fact, she teaches foods at the local high school. You'd think that being her son, I'd naturally inherit her talents and abilities. Normally that'd be the case, but seeing that I'm adopted, I got jack squat from her in that department. This story deals with a recipe of hers that she just makes with ease while the rest of us mortals just suffer trying to make something even remotely close. That recipe is Hollandaise Sauce.

Gasp! The horror! Just those two words instill fear into the hearts of amateur cooks everywhere trying to make a decent sauce for their holiday traditions. Yes, I was one of those amateur cooks who thought they could make THE Hollandaise Sauce.  And as this blog post intails, my first few attempts were just tragic.

I actually wanna recall the story of a few weeks before I went onto the SCD. I remember, a few years earlier, my mom made this heart melting meal I'd never had before: Eggs Benedict. Oh was I addicted to Hollandaise Sauce from that first bite. And of course, my mom being the professional she is, passed off the recipe as though it was just another meal. But it wasn't. It was far more than just another dinner. It was something that would change the way I looked at food, an entire paradigm shift of the sheer brilliance of what a few simple ingredients could produce.

So, fast forwarding a little, I decide to bust out this recipe for my roommate and I, not knowing what exactly went into making this sauce. And also keep in mind, cooking for me at this point was busting open a box of Mac and Cheese and knowing how much milk and butter I needed to mix in to get the cheese sauce to come out right. Like you could screw that up! Let's just say I made a few mistakes on that first attempt.

Mistake #1: I didn't have a double boiler. Heck, I didn't even know what a double boiler was! So what I did was fill up the largest pot I could find with water, and floated a glass Pyrex bowl about 1/3 the size on top. Mistake #2: You want to cook Hollandaise Sauce using water that's just about to or is just barely beginning to simmer, to keep your sauce from cooking too quickly. MY water, was violently boiling. Mistake #3, I didn't fully understand what they meant by stir constantly. I was so casual about this sauce. I would stir, then go talk to my roommate, then add in the next tablespoon of butter, then go watch a YouTube video. Needless to say, it curdled like it was nobody's business. And I panicked! I didn't even know that was an option for the sauce. I just thought that it went from creamy to more creamy. I didn't know it could go from creamy to 5 month old chunky milk. And just like the eggnog, I literally blinked and it curdled. Mistake #4: Saving the sauce for me was adding in all the rest of the butter at once and taking it off the heat immediately. Mistake #5: going along with Mistake #1, I had a floating glass Pyrex bowl as a double boiler. When I tried to grab it with my hand, I about permanently scorched off my fingerprints. So I tried to use an oven mitt. That didn't work out either seeing that in order to grab the bowl, the oven mitt would have to be submerged in boiling hot water, along with my hand. So in trying to finagle my two options, I managed to dip the edge of the Pyrex bowl into the water, leaving me with a heavily watered down sauce of melted butter and egg curdles. And bless my roommate's heart, he and I ate still made Eggs Benedict, and despite all my mistakes, the meal didn't taste half bad (but let's be honest, anything with bacon tastes good, so I can't say much about my cooking.)

Now I share this story second because, as you may or may not be aware, Hollandaise Sauce is one of the recipes on my blog. In fact, it was featured on a very famous SCD blog, scdlifestyle.com, and now sits at over 250 page views, putting it at the most visited recipe on my blog. To think, I completely botched that recipe the first time I made it. In fact, the second time went about the same as the first, but I had an actual double boiler instead of a ghetto Pyrex bowl, and instead of water, I had paint chips mixed in from the boiler. Oops! But that's not the point. The point is that I got up and I did it again, and again, and again, until I had something that was worthy to be called Hollandaise Sauce. In fact, I was at a dinner about 6 months ago, and my asparagus Hollandaise Sauce combo was the biggest hit of all the dishes there. It's because I let go of my inhibition. I threw away my comfort zone and tried something new. And when I failed, I brushed myself off and tried it again. Now, I have something to show for it: a good recipe, a great sauce to add on those disgusting eggs om mine, and a stronger will to never give up.

Questions? Thoughts? Personal fail stories? Leave it in the comments below!

Crepes

SCD Crepes with Blackberries and Honey
I love crepes! But being the poor college student I am, I've never had a good enough frying pan to actually make a good crepe. In fact, I was so poor a few months ago that I found a crepe recipe that specifically didn't call for any almond flour, because I was too broke to buy almond flour. Well, a few weeks ago I was at my parent's house on my way home from dance, and decided to take advantage of my parents and their real jobs and make myself some SCD crepes. Holy cow they were good. So here you go, reaping the benefits of my more-well-to-do-than-I-am family.





Ingredients:

5 eggs
1/2 cup almond flour
2 Tbs water
1 tsp honey
Pinch of salt

Instructions:

Heat up a greased medium sized frying pan to medium/medium high heat. You'll know it's right when you pour the batter and it cooks quickly, but doesn't shrivel and peak. Pour 1/4 cup batter into the center of the frying pan and swirl the frying pan until the entire base of the pan is coated in batter. Flip the crepe once the top begins to look pasty and holes are beginning to form, about 2 minute. Cook for 1 more minute. Makes 8 crepes.

Notes:

*The bottom will brown when it's ready to flip. Just keep your eye on it and don't let it burn. But to be quite frank, this recipe is quite resilient, so burning the crepe will take some talent.
*Fill crepes with whatever you like! I love fruit and yogurt, but get crazy! I've even used this recipe to make an SCD PB&J.
*Crepes freeze really well. In fact, It's always a good idea to make them over a weekend and use them for breakfast burritos, sandwiches, etc. throughout the week. If you freeze them, be sure to put some parchment paper between each crepe so they don't freeze together (no fun to try and pull apart).
*Originally from http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=2001303

Thoughts? Comments? Words of love and devotion? Leave it in the comments below!

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Story Time: My First Day of Self Caused Delirium (Or SCD, for short)

I've survived one year on the SCD! Woot! Let me tell you, it has not been easy. In fact, I just had my one year scoping from hell (colonoscopy, for those of you who've never had one) and good news: 10x better than it was last year!! SUCCESS! It's still not perfect, but the doctors were able to get the scope into my small intestines, a feat they've yet to accomplish in the  4 other colonoscopies I've had in my lifetime (just for the record, I'm 24. I don't wanna hear any excuses from you 50 year olds about how much you don't want to get a colonoscopy. Suck it up.) So to celebrate, I wanna share a story of my entrance onto the SCD.

Let's start with the fun part shall we. I have a good friend, Preston Powell. He makes the most killer cake: better than BETTER THAN sex cake. That's right, folks, two better thans in one title. And it's appropriately named, too. Just think for a second, the recipe calls for an entire stick of butter, just for the sauce that you put on the cake. It's so rich, it comes with a surgeon general's warning saying eating this cake will increase the risk of heart attack and could potentially lead to death by the age of 27. Words cannot describe this chocolaty masterpiece.

So why begin a story of the first day on the SCD with a description of cake? (Mind you, a cake where virtually every ingredient is illegal.) Because if I was gonna deprive myself of all things holy, I was gonna go out with a bang. And that I did.

Two days before embarking on the SCD, I threw myself a party. And not just any ol' get together, but a feast! The entry to my party was one sugary, floury, or starchy food item. And the cake, this better than BETTER THAN sex cake, was to be the crown jewel of the evening. Standing at 8" and 1500 calories, this cake had the potential to kill an elephant. But I didn't care; I ate, I drank, and I played games until I was ready to vomit. You know why? Because in two days, I was gonna die.

Sunday came. Last day of freedom. I felt like I needed to hook myself up to an IV of wheatgrass in hopes of detoxing from all the sugar the night before. Instead, I just heated up some pizza, finished off the remaining few pieces of cake, and tried to ignore my throbbing head.

Monday. July 2nd, 2012. Day 1 of the SCD. I, of course, had done my homework on the SCD. I was an expert! A friend of mine had loaned me some SCD cookbooks; another friend helped me find websites to get me on the right path. There was no way I was gonna fail!

Oh, I failed so hard that first day. I still remember opening my fridge that morning. My mom and I were planning on going shopping that night for food, so up until then, all I had was... well, actually, I didn't have anything. In fact, included in the feast was a gift bag for everyone who came. Inside the gift bag was every single ounce of food I had to my name. I was left with nothing, bone dry of anything that could be considered substance. All I had were eggs. Gross. Nasty. Eggs.

I'm not sure why I hated eggs so much. They just always came off as bland and tasteless. Nothing I added seemed to make them any better. So when I reached into my fridge that first morning and all I had were eggs, I put on my big girl panties and made myself some food. Eggs for breakfast. Eggs for lunch. Eggs for dinner. Now, I was no connoisseur of eggs. I barely even knew how to scramble them, let alone hard boil them. But I did it. I made myself hard boiled eggs. And let me tell you, I was ready to vomit by about the 10th egg I shoved down my throat.

To this day, I still gag over hard boiled eggs. By far, the worst chain of meals I've ever had. But I learned something that day: life is hard, but it's never impossible. I survived that first day, and every passing day teaches me something new about how to take this Self Caused Delirium of mine and turn it into a Successfully Cured Disease.

Coconut Macaroons


SCD Coconut Macaroons
Who doesn't love a good cookie? Macaroons are ridiculously easy to make, and if you're a fan of coconut, you'll sure love these little guys. Especially because they're basically scd anyway, so swap out the honey for sugar (more or less), and get cooking!










Ingredients:

3 egg whites
1/3 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
1 2/3 cup shredded coconut

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 300ºF. Separate the yolks from the egg whites (hollandaise sauce anyone?). Place egg whites in a bowl and beat until they peak. While continually beating, slowly add honey, vanilla, and salt until evenly mixed and creamy. Pour in shredded coconut and fold until uniformly mixed. Drop batter onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 25-30 min. Top should just begin to brown and bottom should be cooked, but not burned. Let cool for 5-10 min before removing.

Notes:

*Shredded coconut is pretty easy to find. THIS IS NOT COCONUT FLOUR. You want finely shredded coconut. Imagine taking a carrot to a small cheese grater. About that size.
*Peaking egg whites is really easy. Beat with an electric mixer until the egg whites turn from clear to white. You'll know it's done when you go to pull out the electric mixer, and peaks form (thus, it's called peaking egg whites. Mind. BLOWN!)
*Folding in coconut, piece of cake! Pour in the coconut, then using a rubber scraper, cut the mixture in half. Scrape around the bottom of the bowl, up the side, and "fold" back on top. Then rotate the bowl slightly (1/8 a turn) and repeat. Cut in half; scrape down, around, and back on top; rotate. This allows you to keep the air in the egg whites as you mix in the coconut.
*There are lots of ways to separate egg whites from the yolks. I crack the egg shell right down the middle. Then pass the yolk back and forth from one egg shell half to the other, allowing the whites to run out of the shell. Keep passing back and forth until all the white is separated.
*Still lost on how to fold or separate egg whites? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4vbktd-PM (Don't use cream of tarter, and they really don't need to be at room temperature. Too much work. And I GUESS you can do it by thirds; I don't. :D)
*Makes about 12 - 14 cookies.
*Originally from http://www.scdrecipe.com/recipes-cookie/lucys-macaroons/

Monday, August 12, 2013

SCD Homemade Yogurt Instructions

SCD Yogurt Instructions. Yogourmet: Yogurt Starter
By popular demand (or simply that my mom keeps nagging me to add this onto my blog, and every other recipe I've tried has failed so I have nothing to report for the week...), I'm including the major instructions, tips, etc. for making your own yogurt! SCD style, of course. Also, if the picture looks like it came out of an 80's magazine, I'm sorry. Our carpet is in need of some TLC. Life of a college student, right there. :D










Ingredients:

1/2 gallon dairy product
10 grams of yogurt starter
1/2 gallon container or two quart size glass jars

Instructions:

Pour the dairy product into a large pot. Heat over a range until the dairy product reaches at least 180°F. Remove from heat and allow to cool back down to 100°F. Add half of the dairy product and all the yogurt starter into a container and mix thoroughly. Slowly add in the second half of the dairy while stirring continuously. Incubate between 100°F and 120°F for 24 hours. Chill and enjoy.

Notes:

*I use half and half for the calorie content and the flavor. The more fat, the thicker the yogurt. But if you're watching your weight, you can get yogurt out of skim and 1% milk.
*The most precise way to measure the temperatures is with a thermometer. How I do it: Once it begins to boil, it's hot enough. You can't ruin this by boiling it, so don't worry about that. Just watch out, once it begins to boil it will quickly boil over because of the surface tension.
*The initial heating process is to denature the proteins, allowing for the thick yogurt consistency we all love. Just FYI.
*Again, the best way to cool milk is with a thermometer. But if it's around room temperature, you'll be fine. I've found if I fill the sink half full with cold water, then place the pot of hot dairy in that sink, it cools relatively quickly. I usually have to switch out the cold water half way through because it heats up with the hot pan, and I stir it occasionally, to help it cool evenly.
*The best way for me to incubate the yogurt is with a yogurt maker. http://www.digestivewellness.com/itempage-1853-24-13-1652.html. Other options I've seen are putting the cultured jars in an oven and leaving the light on, or filling a cooler with hot water and switching the water out every 4-6 hours.  Just make sure it incubates for 24 hours.
*Best yogurt starter is Yogourmet. You can get it at any major culinary store or health store. Or, you can be lazy and order it online :D http://www.digestivewellness.com/subcategoryitems-digestive_wellness_scd_legal_food-yogurt_maker_accessories-24-30.html You can also buy 1/2 gallon jars here, and I strongly suggest you have 2, so as one starts to run low, you can start making yogurt in the other one.

For non SCD people:

*You can use a cup of plain yogurt as a starter instead of the Yogourmet. Also, you only need to incubate it for 4-6 hours rather than for 24 hours.