The Tale of Two Loaves

As much as the Interwebs have been my saving grace both in researching Audrey's medical conditions and in finding recipes, I am convinced that some people randomly throw together some ingredients and then post them along with false photos. Then they sit back, hands behind their heads, staring at the computer screen. And they laugh a maniacal laugh - mwahahahahahah - as they imagine the money spent on their faux recipe, the time wasted, the huge stack of dishes. Of this I am convinced.

One of Audrey's favorite lunchtime meals is sandwiches. I have successfully made a pretty tasty gluten-free loaf; however, it contains sorghum flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and yeast...all ingredients she shouldn't have. So imagine my delight when I found an ebook with a recipe for sandwich bread. And according to the recipe, my resulting sandwich bread would look like this:

Looks like normal bread, right? And not just normal but delicious, right? The ingredients - eggs, butter, salt, coconut flour...well, it occurred to me that for those ingredients to make bread, it would probably take a miracle. Or perhaps some act of science I am yet unaware of since I haven't been baking this way for longer than three days. But I thought maybe the eggs would make it puff up. Or maybe there is some type of natural leavening property to coconut flour. 

I decided to give it a try. 

Now tell me, does this look like the photo above?

I'm no Rachel Ray, but COME ON! I'm not so incompetent in the kitchen that I would screw it up this badly. Honestly, when it came out of the oven, I thought, No biggie. This may not work for a sandwich, but we can enjoy this as a snack this afternoon. Um, no. It is the driest "bread" I've ever had in my life. It went in the trash. Yep, 6 eggs, expensive grass-fed butter, and equally expensive coconut flour...in. the. trash. 

I was still determined to feed my little girl sandwiches for lunch, so I did what I should  have done in the first place: I googled "whole new mom sandwich bread". Whole New Mom is my go-to gal for most things, including homemade skincare products and now Candida-friendly recipes.

Through my search, I found the following recipe: 

Grain-free Sandwich Bread

1 c. cashew butter (or almond butter)

4 large eggs, separated

1/2 - 2 T. honey

2 1/2 t. apple cider vinegar

1/4 c. almond milk

1/4 c. coconut flour

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1. Preheat oven to 300. Place a small dish of water on the bottom rack. Prepare a greased 8.5x4.5 bread pan.

2. In a mixer, beat the nut butter and egg yolks.

3. Add honey, vinegar, and milk to butter and egg mixture and mix.

4. Combine coconut flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl.

5. With a hand mixer, beat egg whites until peaks form.

6. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix thoroughly.

7. Add egg whites to mixture and mix until combined but be careful not to overmix.

8. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes. Do not open oven until 40 minutes have passed. 9. Loaf is done when toothpick inserted in the middle is clean.

10. Allow to cool 20 minutes before removing from pan. Then allow to cool an hour before cutting.

(Original author: Danielle Walker from Against All Grain)

And...drumroll...this bread turned out much more like bread. Different but bread.

The main difference in this bread from "normal" sandwich bread is the texture. The texture is more like a quick bread (think banana bread). However, I think if we had had more time on our side and let it sit like she recommends, it would have been more like sandwich bread. Also, next time I will completely omit the honey because, for one, my baby doesn't need honey, and for another, the sweetness added to the texture to be reminiscent of a quick bread.

A couple of notes:
**Nut Butter - the recipe called for cashew butter. Peanuts are a no-no on a Candida diet. Something about peanuts molding easily. Or something. Anyway, I knew I had some cashews in the pantry that I could make into cashew butter myself. But they had clearly been neglected for awhile, and ew! I think I know what moldy nuts are now. Not like the green mold you see on bread, but they were a little bit furry. Yuck! I already had some almond butter in the fridge and had to make a bit more to equal a cup.

Making your own nut butter is so easy! You just put the nuts in your food processor and let it go until the nuts turn to butter. Almonds take awhile longer than peanuts...usually about 15 or 20 minutes. And you may need to turn your food processor off mid-process because the food processor tends to get really hot, and you don't want it to burn out!

**Coconut Flour - coconut flour and almond flour both are very expensive! So far, I have been spending a small fortune buying Bob's Red Mill brand at the grocery store; however, Honeyville Grains carries both items in bulk and for a much more reasonable price. PLUS they only charge $4.49 for shipping! I have ordered wheat from them many times. I think they are currently out of stock on the coconut flour, but hopefully they will get more soon.

Anyway, Audrey and I both enjoyed our sandwiches on our Second Attempt Bread...

...and we enjoyed the bread - topped with some unsweetened cinnamon butter - again for a snack in the afternoon!

In which making a pizza almost becomes a full time job

For the last few years, I have worked hard researching and experimenting and cooking as I have attempted to get our family to the point where we eat only real food (ie: food that does not come in a box). That's been great training for me. For example, over those years, I have successfully rid the house of high fructose corn syrup. Now I must take it a step further and rid the house of cane sugar. Additionally, there have been various times when I have "gone gluten-free" just to give it a try, so I am already familiar with various ways to cook without the forbidden grains and flours. Now I'm taking it a step further by cooking without many of the acceptable gluten-free starches like tapioca and potato starch and flours like rice and sorghum flour.

This is still a big, giant challenge for me, though.

Thank goodness for Pinterest and Google!

For lunch today, my sous chef and I made pizza...with a cauliflower crust. The original recipe comes from The Detoxinista. Although I don't know how to do one of those fancy-schmancy recipe cards you can print from my blog, the recipe is available at the end of this post sans all the interruptions of my scattered brain.

1. First, you need your ingredients: cauliflower, soft goat cheese, salt, an egg, and oregano. You will need the following equipment: a food processor, a large saucepan, a fine mesh strainer, a finely woven dish towel, a large bowl, parchment paper, and a baking sheet.

2. Go to the store to get goat cheese. (Note to self: read the recipe all the way through at least the day before preparation.) The recipe calls for soft goat cheese. I didn't want to use cream cheese. I didn't have any homemade cream cheese. And I knew that regular cheese would not hold the crust together, which I could only assume was the purpose of the soft goat cheese. I have never purchased goat cheese because I'm not particularly fond of it, so naturally it took way longer at the store to find it than I anticipated.

3. Break off florets of cauliflower and place in food processor. Pulse the food processor until the cauliflower resembles rice. Trust me. It really will resemble rice after a few pulses!

4. Meanwhile, if you were really organized, you would have been boiling about an inch of water in the bottom of the large saucepan I mentioned. Of course, if you are not that organized, it's not too long of a wait. Just don't watch the pot, right?

5. Anyway, after the water starts boiling, scrape all of your cauliflower "rice" into the boiling water and boil for 4-5 minutes.

6. Now strain your "rice" in the mesh strainer. Then put your strained "rice" in your finely woven dish towel.

7. Wring out the water.

8. Totally burn yourself. Don your dishwashing gloves and give the "rice" another wring. Get it as dry as possible.

9. Place dry "rice" in a large bowl.

10. Realize that in your attempt at prudence, you didn't process nearly enough cauliflower for this project.

11. Take the rest of the head of cauliflower and repeat steps #4, 5, 6, 7, and 9.

12. Beat your egg.

13. Place the beaten egg, the goat cheese, the oregano, and the salt in the cauliflower.

14. Mix together very well.

15. Place parchment paper on the baking sheet.

16. Spread the cauliflower mixture out on the baking sheet. If you happened to pop over to the Detoxinista's site, you'll see how nicely she patted hers out. Hers even has a nice lip at the edge of the crust. I was going for the artisan look, plus I have a cuter assistant.

17. Bake at 400. Oh, right...you should have preheated your oven to 400. Bake at 400 for 35-40 minutes.

18. Top your pizza with the desired toppings.

19. Pop back in the oven until the toppings are warmed through.

20. Enjoy!

I make my pizza sauce by first sauteeing a bunch of veggies in a saucepan. Once they are soft, I add diced tomatoes. I take the immersion blender to these because my three older kids won't eat something they suspect might have a vegetable in it, and lumpy vegetables is a dead giveaway. After I blend until smooth, I add tomato sauce. Then in goes oregano, basil, salt, pepper, and a bay leaf or two. Normally, I would then add a swirl of molasses to combat the acidity of the sauce. Since molasses has sugar, today I left it out which resulted in less than perfect but still pretty good pizza sauce. (Once I can procure some Yacon Syrup, I hear it is an acceptable substitute for molasses.)

For Audrey's and my cauliflower pizza, I added the pizza sauce and lots of veggies. Thankfully, she is my one kid who will eat anything, so vegetable lumps don't scare her away at all. I then sprinkled a bit of cheese on top. With a Candida diet, you are supposed to omit milk because lactose is a sugar; however, I am allowing her to have Kerrygold cheese and butter. Kerrygold is from grass-fed cows. As with most cow's milk cheeses (I think), it has no sugar. (Surprisingly, the goat cheese has 1g of sugar.)

My other three kids had their pizzas on whole wheat and flax pita bread (not homemade). One might ask if I don't care about my other three kids. I do. Obviously. I am not forcing them to comply with our new diet 100% for a number of reasons. First and most importantly, they are not currently the ones with the big health crisis. My number one goal right now is to get Audrey better. Secondly, we've already spent at least one of the children's college funds on food this week. It is especially expensive during this learning curve because I am messing up a lot of what I am making or I'm following recipes that weren't good in the first place. Once I've made it around that learning curve and perhaps down the road a bit, I can include the other kids in my experiments more often. And, last, my three older kids, while supportive of Audrey, are not shy about voicing their opinion about food. So, if I were to present them with a cauliflower pizza, this might elicit a less than favorable comment from them before the first bite is even taken. I want Audrey to try the food without bias from her older siblings.

Anyway, I have digressed on quite a tangent as I am wont to do. I suppose you'd like to know the verdict. Was this cauliflower pizza that took me forever and a day to make worth it? And the answer is definitely! Obviously, it will come together a lot quicker next time, so certainly we will make it again. Audrey really liked it, and so did I.

So here's the recipe in short. And, really, I will teach myself how to do a printable recipe card someday. Someday...when making a pizza doesn't take me all day long!

INGREDIENTS
4 c. raw cauliflower rice (I used a whole head of cauliflower)
1 egg, beaten
1/3 c. soft goat cheese
1 t. dried oregano
pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS
1. Place florets of cauliflower in food processor and pulse until cauliflower resembles rice.

2. Place riced cauliflower in about an inch of boiling water. Boil for 4-5 minutes.

3. Drain cauliflower in fine mesh strainer. Then place cauliflower in finely woven dish towel and wring all water out of cauliflower.

4. Place in large bowl and add beaten egg, goat cheese, oregano, and salt. Mix well.

5. Spread on parchment paper on baking tray.

6. Bake at 400 for 35-40 minutes.

7. Remove, add desired toppings, and place back in oven to cook until cheese is melted.

Fighting the Bad Guys

I've decided to pick up my blogging pen once again, only this time I am going to be joined by my eight-year-old. I told her I was going to add a cooking blog to our family blog. I asked her if she would like to be my sous chef, my food critic, and my fellow blogger. She replied, "Ummm...I don't really know what you're talking about, but sure!" I think she'll catch on.

I want her to be involved because we have started a rather challenging diet in an attempt to heal her little belly. The doctors call it Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) - every four weeks or so she spends 4-5 days hanging over a bucket. In my search for answers, I had a lengthy discussion with a friend whose daughter experienced the same symptoms and whose doctor offered the same diagnosis. Like me, she wasn't satisfied when the doctor said, "There's not much you can do but get through each episode." So she sought answers and finally found them through another doctor who told her that her daughter had an overgrowth of yeast (sometimes called Candida) and needed to be on a gluten and sugar-free diet. My friend's daughter has been CVS-free for 8 years now.

I explained it to Audrey this way:

Your tummy has good guys and bad guys in it. The good guys help you fight disease and stay healthy. They are also supposed to stay numerous enough to keep the bad guys from taking over.

The bad guys like to eat sugar. So when you eat lots of sugar, the bad guys start to grow and multiply and TAKE OVER! (And you know that we - you and me - have a sweet tooth, right? So even though I homemake most treats, they're still sugary.)

(The dots are sugar. Duh. We're getting really scientific here.)

Once the bad guys take over, you start to feel bad. Different people feel bad in different ways. For you, your body gets mad about all the bad guys, and you throw up a lot.

So what we have to do is stop feeding the bad guys. In addition, we need to take what are called probiotics because those will help the good guys grow and multiply and then THEY can take over!

And so that is how we came to the conclusion that Audrey needs to be on a gluten and sugar-free diet. And really, I've adopted more of a primal/paleo approach because I think all of the starches and weird flours of the gluten-free diet are as bad or worse than a standard diet.

I hope and pray this is the answer. "Mainstream" doctors will not admit this is a problem. They will tell you not to believe all of the hocus pocus a naturopath will tell you. Well, a week of vomiting every few weeks is no way to live, and all the mainstream doctor is telling me is that we have to "get through each episode", so I have no choice but to listen to a naturopath (or, rather, a friend who did listen to an alternative medicine doctor). I did contact a lady on a CVS forum who sent me a list of specialists in the country. Though there are only a handful, there is one in Boston and one in New York, so it would be feasible to make an appointment with them. However, I was a bit discouraged because the lady told me that, with medication, her grandson went from having episodes every 4-6 weeks to only having them every 4-6 months. She called that a miracle. That's no miracle to me; that's still a week of vomiting two or three times a year.

I am joining my sweet little girl on this journey. It wouldn't be fair for her to go it alone, plus I suspect most of my health problems stem from too many bad guys in my gut. The rest of the family, by default, is adapting as well, though I also don't think it would be fair to enforce it 100% with them. For her part, my baby girl is an absolute champ. She has accepted her new way of eating without a single complaint. I hope blogging her journey will make it more enjoyable for her so she doesn't get discouraged.