My Mediterranean (Dairy-Free, Gluten-Free) Pizza

Holy moley, Mabel!  This is the best thing in the world, I swear.  We have not been thrilled with all of our pizza attempts as of late, so we decided to alter our course.  This is what we came up with:

This is such a tasty dish, and it was pretty easy to make.  We used a Bob's Red Mill GF Pizza Crust mix for the crust (substituting 3 T water and 1 T ground flax seed per egg), pre-baked it per the package directions, coated it lightly with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkled some Italian seasonings and garlic powder on the crust, placed a layer of baby spinach on top of the seasonings, and covered that with chopped up organic Roma tomatoes, diced feta, and almond mozzarella.  We followed the package directions for baking the topped pizza, let it rest for five minutes, and dug in heartily.

The flavors in this recipe are so amazing, and every single person in our house loved it.  That includes all four little ladies.  All of them!  We are so pleased!!

The 18-Hour Energy Diet

I think this would be a fitting name for an all-natural, organic, mostly (if not completely) vegan diet. If a diet rich in vegetables and fruits and a modest amount of complex carbohydrates were marketed in this fashion, it would be all the rage.

Never, in my wildest dreams, could I have imagined that I would have so much energy that I could barely sit still nearly every day, just because of my diet. My sleep is peaceful, I wake up happy and ready to roll, and I am not "just making it through" the day now. I take my kids on walks, run errands, cook, clean, and work out. This is fantastic!

My next goal is to tailor my vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements to my diet and health needs and wants. What a blessing it is for the Lord to have opened my eyes. I thank Him every day for showing me the path to health and happiness. May I show Him all the praise through my dedication to treating my body as a temple and encouraging others to do the same.

My Favorite Peanut Butter

We have tried so many different kinds of natural and organic peanut butters in the past year, and we finally found the one to call our favorite: creamy Maranatha Organic Peanut Butter with a hint of sea salt. Love this stuff!

My Favorite Gluten-Free Bread Recipe

I have been searching and searching for a great-tasting gluten-free bread recipe for years.  Through a little combining of recipes from here and there, plus a good deal of experimenting, I have finally hit upon a family favorite:

Ingredients
2 c. warm water
1/4 c. expeller-pressed canola oil
1 t. apple cider vinegar
3 T. agave nectar
3 T. ground flax seed*
1-1/2 c. brown rice flour*
1/2 c. coconut flour
1 c. quinoa flour*
1/3 c. cornstarch
4 T. Dari-Free non-dairy dry milk
1 t. salt
1 T. xanthan or guar gum
2-1/4 t. yeast

*These ingredients can be made at home with a spice grinder.

Directions

For a bread machine:
Place water, canola oil, vinegar, agave nectar, and ground flax seed in the pan with the paddle already attached.

In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients, except yeast, and mix well.

Pour dry mixture into the pan, make a small trough in the dry ingredients for the yeast, place in bread machine, and use the 2-lb, gluten-free setting.  If your machine does not have a gluten-free cycle, the white bread setting should work just fine.

For a conventional oven:
Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Grease and flour pan.

Place water, canola oil, vinegar, agave nectar, and ground flax seed in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.

Mix the remaining ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl.

With the mixer on low, slowly combine the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.  Mix only until combined, as gluten-free foods are easy to over-mix.

Transfer dough to greased pan, lightly greased with shortening and dusted with gluten-free flour or cornstarch. Place pan into the oven with foil in place, and bake for 50-55 minutes.

Allow bread to cool thoroughly on a wire rack before slicing.  Store in tightly-sealed bags or freeze.

Vegan Potatoes Au Gratin

Today was a day for experimentation, and both recipe experiments were a huge success.  I will share my gluten-free bread recipe in another post, because this one is all about my first real attempt at making a vegan dish without a recipe.  Boy, is my family happy I did.  These potatoes were gobbled up in record time this evening, and they were a breeze to make.

Ingredients

4-5 medium russet potatoes, preferably organic, peeled and sliced

2 cups vegetable stock

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

3 T cornstarch

olive oil

salt, pepper, garlic, onion, etc. to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 350º.

Lightly coat the casserole dish with olive oil to coat the side and bottom.

Place sliced potatoes into casserole dish and set aside.

In a small saucepan, bring the vegetable broth to a boil, saving a little in a separate bowl.  Whisk into the boiling stock the nutritional yeast until well mixed.  After combining the cornstarch with the small amount of stock in a separate bowl, whisk this mixture into the stock and yeast sauce until well-mixed.  

Add salt and pepper to taste, and try using your favorite spices to flavor your cheese mixture.

Remove the sauce pan from heat, pour the cheese over the potatoes in the casserole dish, and cover with aluminum foil.

Cook the casserole dish in the oven for 60 minutes, or until potatoes are thoroughly cooked.

Remove the casserole dish from the oven, uncover, and let stand for five minutes.  Serve and enjoy.

The Challenges of Mixing a New Eating Style With Those Who Don't Understand Why We Do It

I cannot say how many times I have been asked why we changed our diet so much recently.  I have fielded the usual, "But what is left to eat?" and, "How do you get calcium without milk?" and my favorite, "Why don't you like meat and milk now?"  Ah, how simple life must seem from the other side of this conversation.

The reasons why I, personally, have chosen to change my own diet are:

1. I felt called to make major changes through prayer.  I just feel like God is encouraging me to treat my body more like the temple it was when he blessed me with it.
2. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time.
3. I want to be alive and capable of participating in the lives of my four daughters and each and every grandchild they give to me and my husband some day.  This reason makes me cry every time at the thought of my daughters not having me at their weddings or when their babies are born or when they just need a hug only a mom can give.  I have friends who have lost moms, and it scares me that it could happen to my girls if I do not get healthier.
4. Over the past ten years or so, I have felt like I was living in a fat suit; I was the same person on the inside, for the most part, and the outside looked completely foreign to me.
5. I met a truly wonderful woman and friend that taught me how to exercise my body to benefit my health, and I knew that I was not following through completely by also exercising my will power and choice to eat better.
6. Research.  Start reading and watching for yourself, and you will want to make changes, too.  Start with Food, Inc., The Engine 2 Diet, and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  Netflix is teeming with food documentaries that will make you want to stand up for food regulations that make sense and supporting organic farms.
7. I have always done my best to support my local economy by choosing to shop in stores that are locally owned and operated.  While I do still shop at Trader Joes and Whole Foods, I also shop at farmers markets and actual farms.  The meat we do buy is all locally-raised, grass-fed, and free of antibiotics and hormones.  Thanks, Whole Foods, for educating us about our choices in this department.
8. When I was in college, I paid a lot more attention to my food, and it showed.  I made loads of food from scratch, used whole wheat flower, and drank tons of water.  I felt better then, and I am feeling that well and even better now.
9. Dairy makes me physically ill.  Why would I continue to ingest something that gives me terrible stomach cramps and severe constipation?  That sounds like torture to me.
10. I have not given up meat completely, but I have cut way back on it.  We have meat in our meals, on average, twice per week now.

As for getting enough nutrients, fruits and vegetables are filled with them.  Just a quick perusal through The Engine 2 Diet will show one the lengthy list of vitamins and minerals found in vegetables and fruits.  One of the best things any person can eat is kale.  We love it!!  Kale is packed with protein, fiber, potassium, calcium, vitamins galore, and even more.

While my mom may still call a lot of what we eat "Rabbit food," it does not change our attitude.  We, as a family, are committed to eating healthier, remaining active, and choosing Earth-conscious products and services in our home.  While I realize that not everyone will understand, at first, why we eat the way we do, I hope that they will take the time to ask me why and really listen to the answer before calling us crazy or "Tree-hugging hippies," or something else.  We are just doing what we think is best for our family and its food difficulties.

100% Organic Whole Wheat, Dairy-Free Bread

My husband bought me a beautiful Cuisanart bread machine early this year for making gluten-free bread.  While I am still on the hunt for a perfect GF bread recipe, I did come across one that is pretty easy.  It still leaves a lot to be desired in the actual mixing and heaviness departments, but it's working for now.  That process made me consider baking bread for the entire family, and so I began looking for great 100% whole wheat bread machine recipes.

Thanks to a dear friend, I had a starting point.  The recipe she gave me was wonderful, but I have been tweaking it a bit to fit into my non-dairy life.  So, here is my take on the perfect 100% whole wheat, dairy-free bread:

1½ c. + 2 T warm water

2 T extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)

4½ c. 100% organic, unbromated whole wheat flour

2 t sea salt

⅓ c. packed organic brown cane sugar

1½ T dry non-dairy milk alternative

2 t organic vital wheat gluten

2¼ t organic active dry yeast

Place the warm water and EVOO in the bread pan with the paddle attached.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, sea salt, brown cane sugar, non-dairy milk alternative, and the vital wheat gluten.  Use a wire whisk to break up the brown sugar and ensure proper mixing of all ingredients.

Carefully pour the dry ingredients into the bread pan, and make a well in the center.  Place the yeast in the well, and set your bread machine to the 2-lb. Whole Wheat setting.  Choose your crust lightness level, and decide if you would like to add mix-ins into your bread.  I like to add 1 t roasted, ground flax seed and a few squirts of organic clover honey.  Experiment and see what you like in yours.

Note: for those not sensitive to milk, cut the flour to 4¼ cups and use 3 T of dry milk.  The rest remains the same.  

A Beginning of Sorts

My food journey began years ago, after giving birth to my third daughter.  I had watched the scale steadily increase as I moved to another state far from home, dipped my feet into graduate school in my secondary field, got married, and started having children.  What a journey it has been, and, boy, what I have learned along the way.

In the beginning, I read a lot about whole grains and how much better they were for us than our processed, white-flour-and-chemicals starches.  So, I switched our family of four over to whole grain everything.  That was when it became abundantly clear that my husband was having some sort of a reaction to something in our diet.  After some painful skin outbreaks and severe gastric issues, a simple blood test revealed that he had Celiac Disease.

My reaction was, "What the heck is that?"  When the doctor explained that it was an intolerance to wheat gluten that included wheat, oats, barely, and rye (mostly due to wheat contamination in the case of the three latter grains), I thought she was kidding.  One can actually be allergic to wheat?  How on earth would we be able to function without gluten?  After investing in a few well-reviewed books and a generous gift of several different kinds of flour from one of my students (I'm a private music lesson teacher), we began to understand just how different things were going to be in our house.

Over the course of the next five years or so, we began to implement healthier eating habits: more fresh vegetables, more fresh fruit, cooking from scratch even more so than before, sticking to only whole grains, limiting sweets and other junk foods.  While shopping for gluten-free (GF) foods and flours at our local co-op, I decided to grab some organic fruits for my girls' lunches one day, and that was one of the best decisions I have made, to date.  Our ride toward an organic, earth-friendly family was gaining steam!

After the birth of my fourth daughter, three years ago, I was determined to get my body and lifestyle healthier.  That's when I met one of the most amazing and influential women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  Her name is Val, and she was my personal trainer for 1.5 years at my gym in Minnesota.  Thanks to her tutelage, I gained some muscle tone and lost a lot of inches.  Something was still missing, though, as I was only able to lose twenty pounds in that 1.5-year period.  I was frustrated, but I was not going to let it stop me.  In fact, I worked out that much more; yet, my weight stayed the same.

"What gives?" I thought.

That was when Val began really asking about my diet.  She told me that weight loss is more like 75% diet and 25% activity/exercise.  I began paying more attention to my diet, counted calories, cut out diet soda and candy, and tried to limit eating out.  That seemed to help a bit, but it just was not enough to kick-start my weight loss again.  Enter the ever-present Murphy: my husband lost his job, got a new one, and we were going to move back to the East Coast.  While I was excited, I was also steeling myself for the coming months of living as a single parent to four young girls without much of a support network, far away from my family.

The stress of our situation and the reality of doing absolutely everything for myself, the girls, the cat, and the house we had on the market hit me in unexpected ways on a weekly basis.  I was not able to go to the gym the entire summer last year, because I just could not manage to get enough sleep, dress and feed all the girls, eat a healthy breakfast, clean the whole house until it was showing-ready, and get to the gym before the kids room closed.  Once our showings slowed and school was back in session, I was back in the gym as often as possible.  I am still quite proud of the fact that I managed to lose another ten pounds while under a tremendous amount of pressure.

After I coordinated with parents of students, friends, and my husband's family, I was able to schedule a moving date for just before Christmas in 2010.  Once the girls, the cat, and I arrived and settled into our new home in Mayland, I think the full brunt of my year alone finally sank into my body and mind.  I was exhausted and had nearly-constant migraines for the first three months of living here.  The only other time I can remember feeling so awful was just after giving birth to my youngest daughter, thanks to the sciatica I suffered with both of my last pregnancies combined with migraines with the last pregnancy.  I knew my emotions and pain were driving me to eat more, but I did not have the fortitude to fight it at that time.

Desperate to be rid of my head pain, I scheduled an appointment with a family practitioner.  I could barely function when I met my new doctor, and she quickly jumped to the task of getting me pain-free.  While I was frustrated that she was not looking for the source of my pain, at that time, I was so very grateful to be pain-free again.  At this point, I had gone back up fifteen pounds in the three months since we moved.  To say that I was down would be a massive understatement; I was devastated.  All that work down the drain in three short months.  Sigh.

Once the devastation passed, I got angry at myself for allowing the weight gain to happen again, and I began to research a diet (in the eat-it-every-day-of-your-life way and not the I-just-want-a-quick-fix-for-now way) rich in earth-friendly, easy-to-recognize, available ingredients.  I was done with being fat and sick, and I wanted to make some changes for the health and well-being of my entire family.  That was when I just stopped shopping at local grocery stores completely.  My stores of choice had become Trader Joe's and Moms Organic Market.  After my dear friend Kelly turned me onto Whole Foods, being an organic mom herself, we had even more options.  Without her help and guidance, I would have been a bit lost.  Thanks, Kelly!

In the beginning, I blew our weekly budget for groceries every week, but as I replaced the old, processed food with new, organic, all-natural food, our budget returned to normal.  We have been eating all-natural and organic for several months now, and I am finally getting the hang of keeping our grocery spending in line with our targeted budget amount.  I still blow it on occasion but not by much.

My family and I have seen such wonderful changes from changing our diet that we continue to seek out new opportunities to improve our health even more.  The more research I do, the more I am convinced that becoming a vegetarian or vegan is the healthiest choice.  I just do not know if I can ever completely give up meat. Dairy was easy, because I have been getting increasingly lactose-intolerant over the past five years.  One of the most delightful surprises in my new diet came from organic soy milk and almond milk.  For years, I thought the taste of  Silk was the norm.  Then, I met the Whole Foods organic soy milk.  Wow, what a difference!  Oh, the love I have gained for organic vanilla almond milk, too.  I have to ration myself to one glass per day, or I would gladly down the entire half-gallon carton in one day.

As of today, I have lost twenty pounds since late June.  Not too shabby, I would say.  In addition, my doctor was able to cut out my migraine medicine and prescribe an asthma preventative.  Now that I am breathing well, eating well, and exercising three to five days per week, I am feeling fantastic!  I am entirely too excited for the months to come and the additional changes we will see in our whole family.  I may even have a go at a vegan diet for a few weeks to see how it makes me feel. We have already committed to becoming more flexitarian, so I am hoping it will not be too difficult to finish the transition to completely meat-free.