nuts | Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

What has the power to make me expend energy writing a blog post? You guessed it: ice cream!

I’m having a very hard time quitting my sweet habit. I don’t eat a lot of desserts and I can live without processed sugar, but I seem to need that little bite of sweetness after meals to seal the deal. Small bites of ice cream and chocolate have always been my go-to desserts.

All store-bought, non-dairy ice creams have carageenan, guar gum, erythritol, and “natural flavors” or soy lecithin or a lot of sugar. Although I don’t eat these a lot, I’ve felt frustrated at my inability to eliminate this habit when I have so easily and strictly stopped eating all the other food groups my doctor has specified. Bring in this $34 (when I bought it) ice cream maker on Amazon Prime. It was too daunting for me to tackle, but my husband made it look easy and I’ve had fresh, creamy, healthier ice cream for the last few weeks.

Here’s the basic info: coconut milk + sweetener + flavour = YUM

The coconut milk should be the full-fat canned kind. This is the only brand I found with no guar gum in it. The sweetener can be dates (make amazing “caramel”) or bananas or honey or coconut sugar (resembles brown sugar and my doctor has okayed it!). The flavour can be anything you can dream up ~ nuts, fruit, extracts etc.

So far I have made Caramel Pecan, using this recipe from My Whole Food Life (it was far too sweet for me with 2 tbs of honey in addition to the dates, so be careful) and Pistachio-Almond, using Food Babe’s recipe, but, beware: I used 1/2 cup of pistachios and there were too many nuts and not enough creaminess. Also, don’t use salted pistachios ~ duh! I have the ingredients for the mint chocolate chip (even though the Enjoy Life chips are made from cane juice and I’m not allowed to have it on my current diet) and I have some huckleberries with which I want to experiment. The Spunky Coconut has a lot of recipes, too. She uses hemp and chia seeds which help take the place of the “gums”. There are some other creative flavour ideas here.

Before you get started, make sure you have all the ingredients needed, plus ice and salt for the ice cream making process (there is a product called “ice cream salt“, but I think you can use regular salt, too). Don’t believe the recipe if it says you need to freeze the ice cream maker bowl first or refrigerate the tin of coconut milk overnight- you don’t.

Ok, my half hour is up and I have to go to an ENT doctor appointment for my sinus issues, which are stopping me from wearing my cpap, and what might be an ear infection from trying to be “healthy” and use nasal irrigation. Another purchase wasted. Down with neti pots!

I was going to go back and spend more time making this a fancy two-scoop photo, but I couldn’t be arsed. You get the gist. 😉

I have been on my current “automimmune diet” for over 11 months (essentially, no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no eggs, no tomatoes). I actually don’t feel like it made any difference to my life except taking away the joy of food and eliciting many meltdowns when meal times came around and I had nothing to eat. I know I would have had some fun with this diet if I had the energy/ability to research recipes, shop for ingredients and cook my own dishes ~ it would have been a fun challenge to come up with tasty, healthy meals and given me a bit of a hobby ~ but, when you are incapacitated by exhaustion, dysautonomia symptoms and muscle wasting… it’s too much. It’s also too much to think about changing things up after such a long time, which is why I’m not more excited about the switch to a DIFFERENT type of elimination diet. It was a difficult learning curve for my husband to figure out what I could and couldn’t have while shopping for us. Now, he’ll have to relearn, reread all labels.

The good news is, I get to have gluten-free grains again (which means rice) and legumes except for peanuts (which means hummus and fun soups!). The bad news is, I have to eliminate pork (oh god, no bacon), beef (no steak!), cold cuts (no salami, ham, turkey slices!), soy (no fake milk for my tea, no fake mayo), caffeine (oh, I don’t need fake milk because I can’t have my black tea. I’m starting to panic), salad dressings (are you kidding? This makes me want to cry), maple syrup, honey (what do I make my granola with?), chocolate (kill me now), and any type of sugar. There are other things I have to omit like oranges and shellfish and soft drinks, but I don’t really care. Oh, and I have to continue to avoid corn, dairy, eggs, and tomatoes.

I have a few things in the house I want to use up before embarking on this change, so, after the Rice Chex, Almond Bites, bacon, chocolate and leftover filet are gone, I will commit to the new diet. 😀

I’m out of granola, so I am going to try a new recipe. For a long time I used olive oil and a mix of maple syrup and agave nectar. Then I changed to coconut oil and local honey. Now, since I can’t have honey, but I can have brown rice syrup and stevia, I’m experimenting with a new mixture… Stay tuned.

1 hour later: I actually might prefer this recipe to my previous versions. Score! Now I just have to win the lotto so I can afford the gluten-free oats and organic stevia and brown rice syrup. 🙂

Here’s what I did:

E.M.’s New Granola (dairy-free, refined sugar-free)

4 cups gluten-free rolled oats
1/2-1 cup raw pumpkin seeds ((or mix in half sunflower seeds, but pumpkin seeds have a lot more magnesium and tryptophan)
1 cup chopped nuts (any kind: I like ones that are low in omega 6s: pecans, cashews, hazelnuts and walnuts)
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup flaxmeal
1 tbs cinnamon
5 tbs coconut oil
3 tbs brown rice syrup
2 droppers-full of liquid stevia (which is really only about 1/2-3/4 of the dropper)
2 tsps pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
dried fruit (raisins)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. Heat oil, honey and vanilla over low heat until it is runny but not boiling (or microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute). Pour over dry ingredients, mix thoroughly and spread over 2 baking trays lined with foil or parchment. Bake for about 25 minutes until golden. Let cool. Be cool. 🙂

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Tag Archives: nuts

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