One Green Voice

Chocolate Pudding

I’ve been making this for a couple of weeks now. I could go on about how all the ingredients are raw and how it is great for people who can't do dairy.  That is all true. But mostly I can't believe how simple it is to make and how delicious.  

The recipe is adapted from the Yummy Choco-coco Mousse recipe in Carol Alt’s Raw 50 cookbook.  She adds numerous additional ingredients like wild propolis extract, which are all super healthy, but I didn’t have them so went ahead with the basics.   

It works!

 

1 ripe avacado

3 tablespoons raw agave nectar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons coconut butter

4 teaspoons raw cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon Himilayan salt

 

Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until mixed.  I use 2 tablespoons maple syrup in place of the agave.  You can also substitute 3 teaspoons of carob for the cocoa powder but only if you enjoy carob – they are NOT the same and carob does not have that decadent chocolate taste.  It does have more calcium however and if you are doing a spring cleanse and can’t have chocolate you can still have your puddin’.

The first time I made this I put it in the blender but now use the food processor because clean up is much simpler.   

Enjoy!

 

 

Cheese Please

I love cheese!  Unfortunately cheese does not love me.  Although I am not lactose intolerant, there is definitely something in cheese my system cannot handle.  Even goat cheese, which our son tolerates beautifully, becomes a problem for me in what would probably be considered normal quantities to most.  

What is a cheese lover to do?  Try Daiya cheese.  Daiya is vegan (no animal ingredients) 'cheese' that does not contain soy, gluten, dairy, eggs, tree nuts (although it does contain coconut), cholesterol or transfats among other things.  It also contains pea protein which actually surprises me because peas are not an uncommon allergen. 

Daiya shreds and it melts.  It comes in cheddar and mozarella flavours.  And, while it won't make you forget the real thing, for those of us who can't stomach dairy, Daiya is a digestion-friendly option.  I like to make pizza with it:  Cover a brown rice tortilla with sliced steamed mushrooms, pile on mozarella Daiya and broil till the cheese melts.

Enjoy!   

T'is the Season - Delicious Desserts!

Came home late last week to find two pages from the December 2009 Canadian Living magazine in our mailbox.  The pages, headed "Special Diet cookies & candies" are filled with decadent holiday-worthy dessert recipes that were variously free of gluten, dairy, eggs and nuts.  All of these ingredients are not absent from every recipe but there is probably at least one option for most restricted diets.  I am hearted to see this in the main stream media and hope this feature signals the birth of a trend.  Thanks kindly for thinking of us Beth!

The recipes include Chocolate Goat's Milk Fudge (Egg, Gluten and Nut Free), Pignoli Cookies (Gluten and Diary Free), Gingersnap Cookies (Gluten and Nut Free), Apple Chocolate Chip Cookies (Diary, Egg and Nut Free).  I am especially jazzed to try the Bit-Size Fruit Balls (Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free) as they are raw, sweetened with honey and orange juice and look simple to make. Here is the recipe:

1/2 cup each dried cranberries and chopped dried apricots

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut

2 tbsp liquid honey

2 tbsp orange juice

1/2 cup finely chopped almonds

In food processor, chop together cranberries, apricots, raisins and coconut just until combined.  Add honey and orange juice; pulse just until clumped together.

Roll by heaping 1 tbsp into balls; roll in almonds.

Make-ahead:  Refrigerate in airtight container for up to 1 week.

Makes 16 pieces.

Enjoy!

Gluten and Dairy Free Apple Crisp

We celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday recently.  Ward is celiac, does not do dairy and is allergic to nuts.  Between his, my sons' and my own allergies, we have some very interesting times around the dinner table! Ward's Mom made an everybody friendly  birthday dinner of squash/carrot soup, baked organic salmon, lots of veggies and sweet potato croquettes.  Dessert was my contribution - apple crisp. 

My husband suggested I post this recipe.  I hesitated because I did not invent it.  Rather I rejigged the Plum Crisp recipe by the gifted Toronto culinary expert, Bonnie Stern.  Having given credit where it is due, I am taking my husband's advice and posting the revamped recipe in the name of accessibility.  

2 lbs apples peeled and grated or thinly sliced

1/2 cup gluten free flour (Bob's Redmill Gluten Free mix works well)

1/2 cup sucanat (a very minimally refined form of sugar cane, this brown sweetener works great in recipes involving apples or chocolate)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch nutmeg, optional

1/4 cup lactose free margarine, melted

1/2 cup gluten free rolled oats (Oats are inherently gluten free but are usually contaminated during processing.  I use Only Oats which are super.  I just wish they were organic!) 

Peel, core and grate or thinly slice the apples.  Sprinkle sucanat (additional to the 1/2 cup mentioned above) into the apples and mix, if you like your dessert sweeter.  Spread grated apples evenly inside a greased 9-inch square baking dish.

Combine flour, sucanat, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Mix in melted margarine.   Stir in oats and combine well.

Distribute topping evenly over the grated apples.  Bake at 350F/180C for 45 to 50 minutes or until topping is just starting to brown.

Enjoy!

Yummy Pancakes!

My friend, Lesley, created this recipe for my son and I.  The pancakes are so delicious, they don't even need a topping!  But if you like em piled high with gooey syrup and/or fruit, all the usual suspects will do. 

I'm calling them Lesley's Full of Taste and Nutrition but Free of Gluten, Eggs and Dairy Pancakes. How's that for a mouthful?

This recipe - makes 3 small'ish medium or 2 largish pancakes so multiply ingredients as desired. 

3 tablespoons flax meal

2 tablespoons coconut flour

3 tablespoons quinoa flour

1/4 cup gluten free flour (I use Bob's Red Mill GF Mix) (plus or minus to get correct pancakeconsistency)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 small organic banana, mashed

2 tablespoons maple syrup

9 tablespoons water or milk (cow, goat, rice, almond etc)

Combine dry ingredients except for half the gluten free flour.

Add banana, maple syrup and about 1/2 the water/milk.  Slowly add in the rest of the gluten free flour and water/milk until you have pancake consistency.  Following this recipe to the letter yields a fairy thick batter.  I like this but you may wish to add more water/milk

Fry in a pan or on a griddle.  Pancakes are ready to turn when the batter stops bubbling.

I'm going to try baking them on parchment paper next time.  Can't wait! 

Thanks Lesley!

Enjoy

What Are We So Afraid Of?

I have a friend.  She lives around the corner from me.  We've only known each other three years or so.  But if I had been lucky enough to have a sister, this is the sister I would have chosen. She is wise, funny, self confident, logical, grounded, honest and, the opposite of me, calm.  I admire this woman and would walk a very long way for her.  I cherish her friendship and if, as planned, she moves half way across the country this spring to take accept her dream job, I will smile with tears in my eyes because she deserves this opportunity.    

My friend has two young children, a four year old son and and a five month old  daughter. Her little boy has had struggles of late with immunity issues.  He has missed a good portion of this school year with one cold, strep throat, flu, you name it, after the next.  The medical doctors are treating the symptoms and he recovers from each illness only to greet the next. 

Its not a stretch to think it may be time to check a different avenue.  So, being familiar with my son's story, his allergy testing at age four and the positive results of his diet change, my friend wonders if her son might benefit from the same testing or at least a visit to the Naturopath who helped us.  My friend's challenge, and the inspiration for this post, is her husband's hesitation to consult a Naturopathic Doctor. 

Actually that last sentence should read, consult a Naturopathic Doctor again, because their little boy has already had an appointment with Robin and benefited from her advice. 

Why would a smart, well educated, loving father not want his child to see a Doctor who focuses on what causes illness and finding natural ways to prevent it?  There is nothing frightening in what Robin does and her results speak for themselves.  She has a stellar reputation.  With the exception of a few common supplements like probiotics, her recommendations for my son were strictly dietary. 

I could make a joke about not wanting to do the work if it turns out the little guy does have food allergies.  But I know that is not the case.  Both my friend and her husband would do whatever it took to help their son.

My guess is that the hesitation here is bigger and that it represents the commonly held viewpoint that there is only one 'real' type of doctor and that anyone else is a pretender.  

Fascinating.  No one knows everything.  That is impossible.  So why not listen to what someone with different expertise has to say?  It's about gathering information and then making your best, most well informed decision. We all do it daily. 

Take, for instance, Adam, who wants to build a new house.  Adam does not stop at calling the architect. He also consults a contractor, many sub trades and finally, a decorator.  If Rosanne was going to a launch a business, she would call a long list of professionals starting with a banker and finishing with a marketing specialist. 

Why then do so many of us believe that only doctors trained in traditional schools of western medicine know anything about the body and how to heal it?

I have great respect for medical doctors and would not want to be without them.    But I also value the wisdom and approach of the naturopathic stream of medicine with its positive focus on preventing illness through the use of foods and other lifestyle options.  

I am grateful to have these options and look forward to the time when more of us will start to recognize the value in so called 'alternative' opinions and take advantage of the wealth of expertise that surrounds us.

Don't be Sweet on Sugar

Most of our mother's told us the same thing:  "Sugar puts holes in your teeth".  Unfortunately sugar does more than invite the whirring of the dentist's drill.  It prevents our immune system from doing its job - a big deal, especially during flu season.

The way I understand it, when too much sugar enters the blood stream, it occupies the white blood cells so that they cannot fight bacteria properly. (I am not a chemist so by all means Google 'sugar and the immune system' for further details.)

As a hopeless sweet tooth myself, I did not greet this information warmly.  More distressing is the fact that it is not just the things we think of as 'sweets' that have this effect.  Right up there with candy, ice cream and cake are any processed carbohydrate made from refined ingredients (even organic ingredients if they are not whole grain). That's right, bread, pasta, baked chips (potato, rice or corn) and crackers.  These too break down into sugar and prevent our immune systems from functioning properly. 

(Please don't get me wrong.  I am not advocating a low carb diet.  Just a low processed carb diet.  There is a BIG difference. Veggies are carbs as are fruit, potatoes and healthful grains like brown rice and quinoa.)

Food allergies that go untreated have the same effect.  I've told you many times about our son's gluten free, cow dairy free, egg free diet.  Its a lot of work but the improvement in his immunity has been startling. 

If your child is educated anywhere other than in your home, you have seen the outbreak of H1N1 tear through the student population.  Every time I start wishing I didn't have to do all this preparing I remind myself of this success and march right back into the kitchen.

So yes, he's doing fine.  But then along comes flu season.  I want him to have every natural advantage available to him.  So without explaining this to him, I am trying to cut back on his sweet and processed carb intake by being strict about the one (low glycemic sweet per day).  This makes sense whether or not you choose to vaccinate because vaccines are not 100% effective.  Indeed, I've heard varying statistics about last year's flu shot but the highest efficacy rate I've read was 40%.  Not stellar. 

So you can label me a mean Mommy because I try to minimize my child's sugar intake.  I can handle that. I know that I do it out of love and to protect him. 

Wouldn't it be grand if children and those who care for them could learn to associate carrot sticks and hummus with love instead of a brownie????

Baking with Agave Nectar

And speaking of experiments in the kitchen, I have two delicious results to report - both involving agave nectar. 

As a sweetaholic who cannot tolerate refined sugar, I am always looking for the next best thing. Maple syrup is nice and we get it locally which is great.  Honey works but I find that its distinctive taste often overpowers the recipe's other ingredients. Agave nectar is my favourite. 

Agave is a natural, plant-derived sweetener is that is low on the glycemic scale.  Lower than honey or maple syrup*.  It is delicious and does not have a distinctive taste, other than sweet of course. 

Last week I made my son's favourite chocolate cupcakes (from Lisa Lundy's Super Allergy Girl Cookbook), substituting agave for the sugar.  I followed the prevailing wisdom on the NET as to how to make the switch.  Used 3/4 cup of agave for every cup of sugar, cut the liquids in the recipe by approximately 1/3 and turned the oven down by 25 degrees. 

The cupcake batter was a tad thick and sticky so next time I will probably up the liquid a bit but the end result was pretty good.  I also suggest adding monitored baking time to accommodate the decreased oven temperature.  

I think the cupcakes are delicious. Wish I could tell you that my son agrees.  He doesn't like them although he can't say why.  I can.  He loves sugar and these cupcakes are simply not as  sweet.  

The other recipe that adapted well was a traditional sweet noodle pudding. My Aunt made it this past weekend.  She substituted rice noodles for egg noodles, tapioca flour for wheat flour, agave for the sugar and a mixture of one tablespoon of ground flax and three tablespoons of water for each egg.  Like the cupcakes it doesn't taste exactly the same.  How could it?  But it tastes very good.  

*There are rumours on the web that agave is not low glycemic.  I can't prove that it is not but I can tell you that when I eat agave I have none of the terrible reactions I get with sugar. 

Paging Forrest Gump

Anyone with food allergies understands the added enjoyment we get from foods we can eat. As a parent, helping your child navigate the waters of food restriction, it becomes even more important to find foods that he or she can enjoy safely. 

Seafood was one of those safe foods for us.  Our son loves all forms of seafood and tolerates it well.  He blissfully devoured shrimp during our weekly forays to the sushi buffet.  Until last week.

What happened last week?  We went to the Sharks at Manta Ray exhibit at the Toronto Zoo. While the sharks hovered anti-socially under the makeshift waterfall, the manta rays obligingly swam in circles around the large tank allowing us to pat their backs.  It was a unique and enjoyable if decidedly slimy experience.

Another noteworthy part of the exhibit was a large display providing the low down about which types of fish and seafood are safe and which types are to be avoided.  The source for this impressive informational display was the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation. 

I knew there were issues with fish and mercury.  I had no idea of the extent to which it is necessary to monitor the kind of seafood one eats if one wants to make healthy food choices. 

This web site lays it all out.  Not only are many types of fish and seafood unsafe to eat, but the farming practices used to cultivate them are dangerous to the communities near the farms.   You guessed it. Shrimp, or at least the imported kind that is commonly available in restaurants and supermarkets in our area, is on the "to be avoided" list. 

The good news is, that unlike monkfish which is an absolute no-no, many varieties of shrimp, as well as many other types of fish and seafood, are safe to eat.  My new mission, and I do choose to accept it, is to find wild-caught pink shrimp from Oregon and wild-caught spot prawns from British Columbia.

If you are a seafood lover this easy-to-search website with its exhaustive list of information is well worth your time. And if you are curious about the reference in this entry's title to a not so obscure movie, although I don't recall where Forrest Gump did his shrimping, but with his track record, I'm sure it was in safe and sustainably cared for waters.

 

Our Food Allergy Journey - A New Wrinkle

When it comes to food, my son hears the word “no” far too often.  Hardly surprising given that he cannot eat gluten, cow dairy or eggs.

When he was young the situation was relatively easy to handle.  We simply, or not so simply, duplicated foods using ingredients he could eat.  I learned to bake bread. We substituted goat cheese for cow cheese and gave him delicious pizza on home made crust.  Birthday parties meant bringing along his own pizza, hotdogs, buns, chocolate cake and ice cream. But he enjoyed them and all was well.

At first, the toughest part was the pressure on us that I wrote about early on to let him eat like everyone else. Once it became clear that not eating gluten, cow dairy and eggs was making a profound difference in his health, sticking to the diet became a no-brainer.  No one gave us grief anymore.  Today, those closest to us go above and beyond to make dishes he can eat.

Of late we face a new challenge – from our son himself.  An observant child, descended from serious foodies on both sides of the family, he is becoming increasingly frustrated that, at least in his eyes, EVERYONE can eat the things he cannot.  His best friend loves McDonalds but our son has never been there.  Thank goodness there is nothing on the menu he can eat because I would be loath to feed it to him.  So in this sense the food allergies have been a little bit helpful – a fact about which I admit to feeling the tiniest bit guilty.    

Over the years I’ve met at least two devoted mothers who refused to restrict their children’s diets even though conventional wisdom suggested they should.  I didn’t really understand their position because I never saw it as a choice. 

I still don’t. But now that we are full frontal with the social implications of being ‘different’ when it comes to food, I can at least empathize with them. Our son’s contemporaries don’t seem to notice what he is eating or not eating.  They certainly don’t pressure him in any way. His teachers are fantastic about it.  This past school year his teachers began telling me in advance when the class would be making, baking or even eating something our son couldn’t.  This gave me time to come up with a safe substitute. It is our son, who having reached the ripe old age of six, has begun to feel different and yes, deprived.

The reality is that food allergies are everywhere. In many senses we are luckier than most.  Our son may yet develop a tolerance for some or all of these foods.  And we do not deal with the spectre of an anaphylactic reaction.  There are multitudes of people who go nowhere without an epi-pen lest a peanut or a shrimp somehow finds its way into their mouth.  I had a friend years ago for whom even the smell of fish could cause her throat to close up.

For the moment it falls to my husband and I to make sure our son has access to the kind and variety of foods that enable him to feel included.  We also have to help him understand that he is not alone and that, should the worst happen and he needs to stay away from these food indefinitely, it is not the end of the world.

It is clearly going to take some work but I have faith that we can get him to accept the situation. He already has the “smoking is bad” thing down pat.