Spring is Sprung!

It's been a glorious day in the Upper Highway and what better way to start Spring than a sunrise run (with the full moon slowly setting), followed by a trip to the Shongweni Farmers' Market. Seriously, if you live anywhere within 50km (or more if you're adventurous) of Hillcrest, just west of Durban, you really need to head out to The Market on Saturday mornings. Fresh organic produce, decadent desserts, happy dogs, adorable children, friends, and super finds. Not to mention a range of options for your steaming hot morning cup o' Joe. We love it!

Today's goodies included organic raw honey for use in chocolate cookies, biltong for snacks (oh I love biltong!), organic free range meat from Hope Meats, and a delicious selection of veggies. The gem squashes in particular were absolutely delicious! Even the kids enjoyed them.

To celebrate, when I got home I made Chocolate Covered Katie's 3 Ingredient Chocolate Bars. We used honey instead of stevia, and shape moulds instead of a simple plastic dish. I think the honey needs to be melted a little first, but the end result was certainly not unpleasant. Happy Days :)

Next up: crustless quiches for Tea Sunday at Church tomorrow. Excited!

Chocolate Cookies!!

Yes, I know. Not one but two exclamation marks. It's a crime against grammar and a grievous assault against the English language. All I need to do now is reformat this entire post in Comic Sans and we'll know that The End is upon us.

However, the hyperpunctuation is not without merit. Because today I discovered .. wait for it ... SCD cookies! Delicious, easy, quick and perfectly legal if you overlook SCD's aversion to chocolate. In my not-at-all-humble opinion, modern research says a lot about the anti-oxidant properties of cocoa and how good it is for your heart.

But frankly, a single, poorly researched, dubiously funded sentence in a throw-away trash-mag would be more than enough to convince me to make one small SCD concession because, let's face it, I'm never giving up chocolate.

Today I stumbled across this recipe. I adapted it as detailed below and I must admit that the results have been consumed utterly. Not even a crumb to mark the passage. So much of yummmm ...

Sugar-free, dairy-free, flourless CHOCOLATE cookies

• 3/4 cup of organic raw honey (or more to taste), slightly softened
• 3 egg whites
• 15 drops of pure vanilla extract
• a pinch of teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder (or less - this is a very strong taste. Heaven).

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Beat all the ingredients together until the result is a smooth, frosting-like heavy cream that is virtually impossible not to devour. Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased or parchment lined baking sheet (grease the parchment) (I didn't grease the paper and the cookies did stick a little bit. I was forced to chew the remnants off throw away the excess).  Bake for about 12-15 minutes, depending on how crunchy you want them - longer =  crunchier. Place on a wire rack to cool (if you can help yourself).

Coconut Flour Brownies

These brownies are cakey and delicious - hard to stop eating! I'm sure they'd be great with the marshmallow frosting, too.

Coconut Flour Brownies

Ingredients

• 1 cup of dessicated coconut
• 4 eggs
• 2 bananas
• 1tsp vanilla extract (NOT essence)
• 3 tbsp honey (or more, to taste)
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
• 3 tbsp cocoa (or more, to taste)

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C.
2. Lightly toast the coconut until just golden.
3. Blend the toasted coconut until very fine.
4. Grease and line a square baking tin (the baking paper is important, otherwise it sticks).
5. Blend all the ingredients except the lemon juice/vinegar in the blender until smooth.
6. Add the vinegar/lemon juice and blend some more.
7. Pour the mixture into the baking tray and bake for about 25 - 30 minutes, just until a skewer comes out clean. These should be a little moist.
8. Cool slightly then chop into squares and serve.

Butternut & Carrot Soup

This delicious soup was created by the eponymous Aunty Em herself and is delicious! We'd post pics but it's been eaten already. Maybe next time.

SCD Butternut & Carrot Soup

Ingredients

·         1 butternut

·         6-7 carrots

·         1 onion

·         1 chicken stock cube

·         ginger, cumin, paprika, cinnamon

·         salt to taste

·         peel of one orange

Method

·         Peel & chop veg.

·         Sauté the onions with the spices.

·         Add veg and stock dissolved in 1 cup of boiling water.

·         Add 1.5 litres of water.

·         Add peel.

·         Allow to simmer until veg is mushy.

·         Remove orange peel and blend or push through a sieve. (Try to remove onion for Intro and phase 1 of the diet).

SCD, Here we Come!

Alright, we’re ready. On Saturday we went shopping and bought everything we need for the SCD Intro Diet. This is supposed to last for three days (give or take a day), and it cost us R164. That’s really, really good for three days for our family, so I think perhaps it won’t last as long as I’m hoping. But some of that stuff will last longer than three days, like the eggs, so we’ll see.

I spent most of Sunday (the bits where we weren’t at Church), preparing for the diet. I have given my family their “last meals.” (Pies and crisps. I know. Don’t judge me). I have cooked up a gigantic pot of chicken-and-carrot soup, 36 meatballs, 8 bowls of grape jelly and a dish of purèed carrots. I also have 40-odd eggs in the fridge, just waiting to be breakfast!

Now, I don’t know how long this lot is supposed to last, but it feels like about two days’ worth. Except the jelly – that’ll get us through today only. Again, we’ll see. The intro diet is supposed to take between two and five days, so we’ll re-evaluate on Tuesday night and decide what to do next. I foresee another full day of cooking in my future, though.

Here’s what I hope to achieve from all of this preparation:

• Fewer headaches;


• Fewer stomach cramps;


• Better concentration;


• Fewer mood swings;


• Better skin;


• Fewer allergic reactions;


• Fewer nightmares;


• Better sleep;


• More energy; and


• Better focus.

When I list these like this they really don’t seem that serious. One might even wonder why we’re bothering with such a strict diet and lifestyle change. But the thing is that the headaches are really debilitating at times, leaving the girls in tears and me wishing I could get away with tears! The girls spend a lot of time doubled over in agony at their stomach cramps (and their relief is our demise as they expel the offending bubbles. Sorry to share but this journey is important to me and I need to remember as much of where we started as possible so that when I look back I can see real change).

My skin breaks out all the time. It’s painful and decidedly embarrassing, given that I really am too old for this kind of thing. I’ve even had to cancel client meetings because of my skin (or headaches, or tummy troubles). Papa Bear and Goldilocks battle to concentrate and often Papa Bear’s not even here, despite being physically present. He also battles terribly with hay fever, and his hay fever, tiredness and tummy troubles have kept him out of meetings and appointments, too. Not being able to concentrate affects us all and I imagine things can only improve if we have better moods and better focus.

My vision for the outcome of this new eating plan is that we will have energy, joy, focus, time (because of better sleep and better planning), success (because of more confidence and fewer canceled appointments), and all-round awesomeness. I know the beginning is very tough indeed, and I don’t expect it to be easy, but I am looking forward to the long term results. I’ll keep you posted.

Every one a coconut.

After the coconut milk had been made,  I still had no inclination to get to “work”, and besides, I was technically in the middle of home school. So while I listened to the girls reading, I made ice cream and macaroons.

The ice cream was a big hit and super easy:

• 1 banana


• 1 cup of coconut milk


• as much vanilla essence as you like (or none at all – I used just shy of a teaspoon)


• honey (I used aboout 1.5 tablespoons, and found it rather sweet)

Blend everything well in a food processor, then freeze. This amount of mixture made six ice lollies, and froze reasonably fast. It was delicious but I think next time I will take it out of the freezer and beat it a couple of times to get the crystals out. If chocolate was allowed on the SCD I would definitely dunk the ice lollies in melted chocolate. So much of nice.

The macaroons were less successful. I’ve made macaroons many times and while I’m no Daniela, they’ve always been edible and in most cases people ask for more.

Not today.

I think I hadn’t squeezed enough coconut milk out of the coconut, and I also substituted honey for sugar, so almost immediately my light and fluffy egg whites swirled into slightly separated strangeness. I thought a tablespoon of macadamia nut butter would help to reconstitute the mass into something that would sort-of hold together, but that was a mistake and I knew that before I even opened the jar.

It wasn’t all bad, because after 20 minutes of baking, the macaroons began to resemble the correct consistency. I let them cool, scraped them into a bowl, and formed the lot into 9 little balls. Baking these yielded something … well … something. But it’s edible. And you don’t need a spoon.

I won’t post the recipe until I have one that works.

So, why the coconut?

Have I mentioned SCD? I’m sure I have and you’re probably like everyone else who knows me by now: over it! But whether or not you’re over it or you’ve never heard of it, it is fascinating and I can’t wait to get started. All I need to do is read the book, understand the book, and get started.

I have started reading the book, so I know that coconuts make up a big part of the diet. They are a good source of a lot of the things our bodies need, and easily digestible. Coconut milk can be used as a regular milk substitute. It can be turned into yoghurt, and used for smoothies and ice cream. The liquid inside the coconut is a valuable source of electrolytes and the flesh is delicious and multi-functional.

Empowered by all of this information and ready to act, I headed off to the green grocer and bought the first coconut I have ever personally owned. Nestled among the bananas (to make it feel at home), we admired it for a few days, then finally decided to depilate it on Monday morning. I had expected the process to take long, and I supposed it did, but not as long as anticipated. Removing the hairy husk was followed by driving a nail into the eyes to see if any liquid came out. It did not.

Next up was the extremely satisfactory process of hammering it open. I wrapped the coconut in a dish towel, took it outside, and holding it down firmly by the dish towel I hammered away with semi-gay abandon. It was fun. Highly recommended.

Once it was broken open, I faced the tedious task of scraping off the softish brown outside of the flesh with a sharp knife which, despite the element of danger, was rather dull. The blender served well to break the flesh into the recognisable consistency of dessicated coconut, though without so much of the dessicated. I really enjoyed discovering the thick, waxy white by product smeared on everything (not sarcastic, I promise), and used that to great effect in lieu of cooking oil for frying the onions I used for dinner.

Using the method I found here, on the wonderful Nourishing Gourmet blog, I made coconut milk. I thought it was delicious, and really enjoyed it in my coffee. It was a little thin, but I think that’s because of the ancientness of the coconut I’d bought, which had not even a drop of liquid inside.

Given the cost of the coconut, the labour involved, the sheer delight of hammering the thing open (which in my mind is worth the cost all by itself), the by products (“oil”, coconut pulp), and the health benefits of it all, I think this is a potentially worthwhile pursuit. I could have made more coconut milk by using more water. (I used two cups, then one cup, while the recipe suggests two cups, then two cups. That made 2.5 cups of coconut milk). I could also have squeezed the pulp harder to get more out, I later found, and I now know that I need cheesecloth. Is that stuff reusable? I should probably have let it stand in the water for longer too. Some people even simmer it gently, which I may try next time.