READERS TAKE NOTE: Although I am a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach, not every recipe on this blog fits the THM plan This is an earlier post, BEFORE my THM days. I’m currently working on adapting some of these recipes to fit the plan.
Some Christmas traditions date back generations and for some, we have completely lost touch with their origins. We celebrate them “just because”.
Each one, however, had to have started somewhere, somehow and by somebody and on that day it was brand new. Everyone gathered around and some perhaps rejected it or gave it a try just to be agreeable and somehow it caught on.
Christmas morning will soon be here and I wanted to share our breakfast tradition with you.
Several years ago, I searched allrecipes.com for a recipe using cardamom because I’d bought the spice for another recipe and it was a little pricey and I wasn’t about to throw it away. I just didn’t know what else to do with it. Well, now I do!
This is a bread machine recipe that originally called for making one long braided bread rope. The aroma and the flavor of the cardamom in the bread was unlike anything we’d ever had before and I found myself looking for excuses to make it again. Later, as my cogs turned (they often do that), it occurred to me that if I divided the dough in half, I could braid each into two smaller “wreaths” and if topped with colored sugar sprinkles rather than just plain, I’d have a masterpiece. Now, I not only make them for us, but for others as gifts each Christmas and they are a hit. Several people tell me that they also have them as their breakfast on Christmas morning. One friend told me that she ate the entire thing on her way home in the car!
I’m telling you – these bread wreaths are fabulous! Now we can’t imagine Christmas without them. Those of you who follow my recipes know that I pretty much stay away from sugar. This recipe, when divided in half as I do to make the wreaths, has only 1/6 cup of sugar in the entire bread wreath and, Hey! It’s Christmas! I lost count this year, but I think I made around sixteen of these.
This recipe would make a great addition to your New Year’s celebration as well and when made as the original recipe directs, a wonderful tradition to begin for your family’s Resurrection Day festivities.
It can’t be done without the cardamom, but this bread makes that pricey little spice worth every penny!
Merry Christmas and may you and yours find time over the holidays to make at least one batch of this recipe: Bread Machine Swedish Coffee Bread. Note: When dividing the dough in half to make two wreaths, you will only need to bake them for 15 minutes in a convection oven, or 20 minutes in a regular oven.
I’d love to hear some of your tradition foods or activities for the holiday season, so please leave a comment!
Today I want to
take a moment to make a confession. I
have fallen in love.
After decades of self-study in the area of health in order to understand my own issues and do the best I can for my family, I have, at last, found a resource that seems to be custom designed for me.
I’ve never struggled with obesity. In fact, aside from a couple of photos of me as a chubby toddler, I spent most of my life in the string bean category. Well, maybe a string bean with hips. That is, until I went through something that is just about the biggest hormone screwer-upper ever – chemotherapy. You can find more about that part of my story here.
As I sat in the
chemo room listening to the others chat, I heard women saying that they’d
gained as much as forty-five pounds during treatments. Forty-five
pounds! The patients and their
care-givers blamed it on the steroid anti-nausea drugs. At that point, I didn’t care as much about
the cause as I did the result. The idea
of that type of weight gain stayed in the forefront of my mind and at the top
of my prayer list for the next four months.
Well, I didn’t
gain forty-five pounds, but I did gain fifteen and in the following years, that
fifteen has tried it’s best to turn into twenty. As is my body’s tendency, it wanted to pack
itself disproportionately below the waist, which may have paid off if I’d lived
during the Renaissance and cared little for my modesty. In those days, there was a demand for those
who would, at artists’ requests, recline on couches with a bunch of grapes in
one hand and a dove perched upon the other.
I tried various diets and joined the well-known support group that counts points. Since points were much simpler to count than calories, this worked for me. In fact, it worked for me two or three times. There seemed to be two issues. They declared that “points are points” and we could consume them in any combination. After a while, I learned that some foods’ points stuck to me like glue while others slipped off effortlessly after a period of over-indulgence. The other issue – and this one bothered me most – was that while this farm girl had been taken off the farm, the farm appetite hadn’t been taken out of the girl. I wanted more food, dagnabbit!
After a prolonged period of stress, Stage 3 Adrenal Fatigue showed up, stayed much longer than I preferred, juggled my hormones even further and, if I may cling to that comparison, dropped all the balls. My holistic M.D., along with treatment, advised a diet that would go easier on the glands and I gave up sugar and most grains.
A couple of years later, a long-time friend of mine lost around thirty pounds. I had to admit that she maintained more joy than anyone I’d ever known on any type of “diet”. She absolutely glowed and was enjoying herself. I asked about it and she told me about Trim Healthy Mama.
Further inquiries
led me to understand that the food on the THM plan was nearly identical to the
recommendations of my doctor. The only thing
– and it seemed such a logical thing – that they recommended to people who wanted
to trim away the pounds would be to separate carbohydrate fuels from fat fuels
at mealtimes.
After toying with
the idea and reading bits and pieces of their plan for a while as I was coming
out of the adrenal struggle, I took their plan and began stepping into it at
the beginning of this year, studying it and putting it into practice one day at
a time. Finally, I have enough food to
eat! I promised to grant myself grace to
go off plan from time to time and to feel no guilt should I decide to go ahead
and use up some off-plan ingredients along the way instead of throwing them
out. I think they’re all gone now (if
you don’t count Smuffy’s cheat stash).
I needed to make friends with a few new special ingredients to help me in separating fuels, being kind to blood sugars and getting the extra protein I needed in my diet. I’ve embraced a lot of new ingredients over the years, so it didn’t rock my world much.
I now have their plan books and cookbooks and since I have a big yard with lots of weeds to pull, have listened to over 130 Trim Healthy Podcasts (or, as we call it in THM Land, “The Poddy”) as of this date. I feel like I’ve completed a crash course in getting to know the authors, Serene and Pearl.
I have lost several
pounds and as my hormones steady themselves further, I’m sure the number on the scale will continue to drop as I
feast on real food and avoid even some of the healthy ones that are known to
spike blood sugars and set off hormonal chain reactions.
In case you haven’t had the realization yet – hormones are everything! Messin’ with those will make you ugly inside and out, if you get my drift.
The best part, or
what is referred to as a “non scale victory”, is that I feel good and do not
feel the slightest hint of deprivation.
In fact, “junk” tastes like junk and I know that’s hard to believe if you’re
still addicted to the SAD. What a
perfect name for the “standard American diet”!
I’ll post more about my journey with Trim Healthy Mama in the future, but today I wanted to share with you some of the great meals and treats I’ve discovered on this plan and give an honest review.
Today, for lunch, I made “Mama’s Famous Meatloaf” (page 157 of the Trim Healthy Cookbook) and topped it with a sauce made from “Trim Healthy Ketchup” (page 482). It had great texture and was moist with good flavor, just as you’d expect from an old-fashioned meatloaf like Grandma used to make. However, we tend to like things with a bit more “zip”, so next time, I’ll probably make it my own by adding a bit more spice. I’m not sure why the topping is more orange than red as I did follow directions, but it was tasty!
The ketchup recipe
can be called a tomatoey sauce, but it is not ketchup to me. However, I had already developed my own
recipe without any refined sugars and it tastes just like Heinz. As soon as
I take the THM one and marry it to mine by having one of my kitchen lab
brainstorms, I’ll post it here on the blog.
What is meat loaf
without mashed potatoes? Well, it’s
fabulous if you serve up “Mashed Fotatoes” (page 264 of the Trim Healthy Table
Cookbook). Who needs all those starches
and carbs? Not me! I’ll never be sorry I left white potatoes
behind after seeing how easy it was to whip of this cauliflower version in the
food processor in a matter of seconds.
I found them
heavenly. Smuffy requests that they have
a little less garlic next time.
Smuffy’s been
growing okra in his garden, so I served it up alongside just the way we like
it. I stir together my own “baking
blend” with equal parts almond flour, golden flax meal and coconut flour. After slicing the okra into half-inch pieces,
I tossed it in about three tablespoons of this mixture and stir fried it in a
skillet I had pre-heated on medium-high heat with a tablespoon of refined
coconut oil and a tablespoon of real butter.
It’s browned and beautiful in no time at all.
All this made a
delicious Satisfying meal. (The THM plan defines “S” meals.)
I struggled with whether to assign this post to my “Thrive!” page because of the health benefits of Trim Healthy Mama, to my “Feed Me” page because it is good food or to my “Reviews” page because I can’t say enough good things about Trim Healthy Mama.
I have tried many recipes from their books and have only found a couple that I considered “duds”. Pearl and Serene, I don’t know what you were thinking. Perhaps they are a hit in Aussie culture, but “Slender Slaw” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) and “Tzatziki Cucumber Salad” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) are both odd. Not horrible – just odd – and not a hit at our house.
To give a completely honest review, I must make one negative comment on the cookbooks. Pearl and Serene, I love you, but whomever is compiling your indexes needs to be assigned to a new job. You’ll notice how many flags are protruding from the books in the first photo. That’s because, once you find a recipe, you’re going to have a dickens of a time finding it again, and I know how to use an index. Recipes need to be listed by under categories, by actual name and by featured ingredients. Just sayin’.
I’m loving “Wonder Wraps” (page 251, Trim Healthy Table) and the first recipe I made from this cookbook, “Creamy Garlic Spinach Spaghetti Squash Bake (page 135). That one got me off to a good start and I couldn’t wait to share it with friends. However, the day I attempted to do so tried my soul and you might want to brace yourself before reading about it here.
I have only two
words to say as I prepare to go downstairs and sneak a couple out of the
refrigerator – “Superfood Mounds”, people!
Forget about those candy bars we grew up with. Stir up a batch of these (page 424, Trim
Healthy Table) in a saucepan and get ready for awesomeness! Another super-easy treat is “Two Minute
Truffles” (page 422, Trim Healthy Table).
I’d make extra if I were you and skip dusting them. They are better when smooth.
In case you
haven’t met them, Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett are sisters from “down
under” who have ended up in the hills of Tennessee along with their husbands,
children and extended family. After
writing a book to share with friends and acquaintances who asked them for the
science and “how-to” on how they stay so trim and healthy, they found
themselves on the best-seller list! Now
their sensible, scientific and doable approach is available to us all.
Thanks, Serene and Pearl!
Are you aTrim Healthy Mama? Are you toying with the idea? Never even heard of it? I’d love to chat about it so leave a comment!
What’s all the fuss about eating healthy? We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive! Check out my Thrive! page. My Feed Me! page offers recipes with free printables. Not every recipe there is THM compatible, but most can be altered to work and I’ll try to make edits in the future to help you with that.
Be sure to
SUBSCRIBE, so you’ll receive an email reminder each time Midwest Storyteller
has something new.
I’m offering you two today with FREE printables! (I always aim to please.)
The journey toward
a good gluten-free pancake has been a frustrating one. When I started my clean eating journey, I
couldn’t help but think that all those poor dears out there in cyber-land who
posted their recipes on the internet for the rest of us were living in a state
of such desperate deprivation they no longer knew what a pancake was! If it held to a disc shape and supported a
pat of butter and a drizzle of syrup, they thought they had something.
In the beginning,
I ate no grains at all for three months to give my system a total rest.
I started with coconut flour pancakes. The best coconut flour version I found after much trial and error were made from a recipe by Dr. Bruce Fife in a wonderful book called, “The Coconut-Ketogenic Diet”. I’ve poured over that book and made many of the recipes and contacted Dr. Fife and received permission to share short quotes and recipes here on the blog. We’ll save that for another day as we are on the subject of sourdough. I mean no disrespect to Dr. Fife when I say (while I linger upon this tangent for a few more seconds) that this is a really bad title for a really great book! It should be called something like, “A Manual for the Human Body and a Bunch of Stuff About Coconuts I Betcha Didn’t Know”. You’ll learn a lot about yourself even if you never follow his weight loss plan . (I didn’t.) You’ll find it right here on Amazon.
Now, let’s take that sourdough starter and make some real pancakes. As always, I tinker with recipes until I feel like they are worthy of passing on to you. This one began with a recipe I found at www.artofgluten-freebaking.com I’ll be going back to that site for more ideas now that these pancakes are such a hit with Smuffy. He says they’re the best pancakes I’ve ever made for him. The original recipe made lots more pancakes, so feel free to double my recipe if you have a large family. I changed a few other things as well as using the Gluten-Free Flour Blend I shared here on the blog.
Another
aggravating situation one finds oneself in when walking away from most grains
is the agony of the unfulfilled pizza craving.
Yes, I know all those people out there are mushing cauliflower together
and calling it pizza crust, but sometimes you just want real pizza – pizza you
can pick up in your hands and bite into its crispy crust instead of forking it.
Again, I found a recipe and started tweaking. This great version of Gluten-free Sourdough Pizza Dough, originally given by Emily at www.fermentingforfoodies.com got me off to a great start. With a few changes to align it with my commitment to clean eating, I’m really pleased to be enjoying pizza again.
Pizza and Pancakes – isn’t life grand? Let’s get that sourdough out of the refrigerator and let it poof up on the counter for a couple of hours and get started!
1 tablespoon refined coconut oil, melted and cooled
1 extra-large egg,
beaten
Instructions:
The night before (or at least 2 hours before)
make a “sponge” by mixing the sourdough starter, ¾ cup milk and half the flour
in a large bowl, stirring until combined.
The mixture may have lumps and that’s fine.
When
you are ready to make pancakes or waffles, preheat the griddle to medium-high
or heat the iron.
Mix
the remaining flour, salt, soda, and baking powder together in a bowl and
stir. Add to the sponge, along with the
remaining ingredients and stir until well blended, adding more milk if needed.
For
pancakes, oil the surface of the griddle with coconut oil and pour 1/3 cup
portions of batter onto the surface, cooking until edges appear dry and bubbles
form over the surface. Flip and cook for
an additional minute.
For
waffles: Grease the iron with oil before
making each waffle. Follow your iron’s
directions, which likely require a cup of batter and five minutes cooking time
for deep pocket waffles.
YIELD: 8 or 9 pancakes.
I’ve actually not made these up into waffles yet, so I can’t testify
as to how they turn out.
Now that we’ve had a fabulous breakfast, let’s move on to pizza!
Mix all ingredients together in a large
bowl. You want a fairly firm dough, so
you may have to add a bit more flour depending on the feel.
Allow
to rest, covered, in a warm place for 2-4 hours.
Divide
into two balls and roll out onto parchment paper. Crusts will be very thin. If you prefer a thicker crust, you may not
want to divide the dough. If you like
thin crust, but don’t want to bake them both at once, wrap one of the dough balls
in parchment paper and then in plastic wrap to freeze until needed. Thaw overnight or for several hours prior to
rolling out for baking.
Pre-bake
the crusts in pre-heated 425° Fahrenheit (or 200° Celsius) oven for ten minutes
by placing the parchment directly on the oven racks or on a preheated pizza
stone, whichever way gives you the crispness you desire.
Remove
crusts from the oven and top with your favorite ingredients. Return the pizza to the oven and take an
additional ten minutes or until the cheese is melted and crust is beginning to
brown.
When it comes to pizza, Smuffy is in love with the pizza sauce I make it with my homemade tomato paste from the tomatoes in our garden. Did I mention that Smuffy is the local Tomato King? At least he was last year! Take at look at his tomato patch. It actually got quite a bit bigger than this!
You must know,
however, that while tomato paste is as easy as putting the little darlings in
the food processor, making a puree and then simmering them on the stove until
they are as thick as the paste you buy in the store, there is a down side. It takes a good long while. San Marzano paste tomatoes are ideal, as they
have little juice and speed things up a bit, but still, you’ll need to do it
when you are going to be around the house for a while. Also, I’ve found that two pounds of tomatoes
yields 1 cup of paste – so there’s that to consider.
Once I’ve
slathered my pre-baked crust with ½ to ¾ cup of pizza sauce, I love to go crazy
with the veggies. I mound the pizza high
with fresh spinach (but only my half as Smuffy doesn’t care for it) and then
follow with thin-sliced onions, green pepper, sliced mushrooms, turkey pepperoni
and six ounces of shredded mozzarella.
We prefer turkey pepperoni as it tastes the same to us, yet doesn’t leave a giant grease puddle under each slice. Use anything you like. Here’s one I made with chicken.
If you’ve been
looking for gluten-free options for pancakes and pizza, I think your family
will really like these recipes. Please
comment and let me know! Happy cooking!
Soon I’ll be
sharing a faux-carb pizza dough along with my recipe for home-made pizza sauce
with no sugar or artificial sweeteners. (Try to find that in the stores!)
What’s all the fuss about eating healthy? We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive! Check out my Thrive! page.
There’s still that
Smuffy story brewing and I think Phoebe June has some thoughts on spring she’d
like to share, so stay with us!
Be sure to
SUBSCRIBE, so you’ll receive an email reminder each time Midwest Storyteller
has something new.
READERS TAKE NOTE: Although I am a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach, not every recipe on this blog reflects this or fits the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan. This is an earlier post prior to my THM days. I am currently working on adapting some of these recipes to fit the plan.
Is there a bowl of sourdough starter sitting on your counter waiting to be turned into baked yummy-ness?
If you missed my recent post, Authentic Sourdough Just Like Great-Grandma Used to Make, or if you just haven’t had time to start your starter, you’ll want to save this recipe and give this wonderful bread a try. If your starter is ready to go, you can make this bread today.
There’s no
kneading involved and only a short rising time.
It’s all done in the mixer so you can overcome your fears of making
homemade bread.
A friend of mine, after tasting my bread a few times, really wanted to try this herself so I recently walked her through the process via phone and text. The result is this beautiful loaf!
Her husband loved it and now they are enjoying bread while pursuing one of their health goals – getting inflammatory foods out of their diet and enjoying better gut health.
When I touch on the topic of health, I always like to remind you of this: I am not your doctor! While there is no gluten in this bread flour, there is rye flour in the starter offered at the link above. It is my understanding that the sourdough process breaks down the gluten in the rye flour, making it null and void, so to speak. However, if you have celiac disease, you will want to consult your doctor before using the rye starter.
If you’ve tried to
go the gluten-free route at all, I’m sure you identify with the title of this
post. You’d think that restaurants and
the folks who bake things to be sold in stores would be the experts, wouldn’t
you? Yet, every single time, the menu
item or the store-bought loaf always seem to have the same common problem –
utter and complete nasty-ness! Dry as a bone, its tasteless particles, if
they can be broken, shatter into dust upon contact with the teeth or
knife. The result: Repulsion and fear.
Why do I mention
fear? It’s only human nature to think
that if the experts can’t do any better than this, anything we try at home on
our own is bound to end in disaster.
Surely they know all the
secrets to a moist, chewy, tasty slice of bread! We’re afraid of failure.
Fear no more! Let’s bake bread that is so tasty that your
biggest problem will be waiting to slice it till it’s completely cool.
First, let’s mix
up some gluten-free flour blend. I
suppose you can use a premixed type found in most stores, but this is cheaper
and so simple, so why would you do that?
Also, using this mix will ensure that there are no added weird
ingredients and that the recipe turns out just the way I’ve been making it. If you want to veer from the path, do it
later on after you’ve mastered the recipe.
I’ll give tips and tricks as I go, and at the bottom of this post you’ll be directed to FREE printables for the flour blend and the bread.
I like to give credit where credit is due, so I offer a huge thanks to Jill Nystul over at “One Good Thing by Jillie” for getting me started on making my own flour blend. Mine differs from hers in a couple of ways, because I’ve removed white potatoes and corn products from most of my recipes, but I have to admit to trying another blend offered by “experts” who have a highly rated cooking show and Jillie’s beat theirs hands down, even with my changes!
There are three
ingredients, used in equal parts. I make
bread, pancakes, buns, flatbread and pizza dough with this all the time now, so
I stir up a big batch in a large canister.
To have just enough for experimenting with this bread, you’ll need the
following:
Gluten Free Flour Blend
1 cup brown rice
flour
1 cup tapioca
flour (the package may say “tapioca starch”)
1 cup arrowroot
powder
Quinoa is a
complete protein and quinoa flour can be used to substitute for part or all of
the arrowroot powder. I’ve used this
before when I was low on arrowroot and it is really tasty. However, it is
also super expensive, so I usually skip it.
Now let’s make bread! I started with this recipe by Nicole Hunn over at glutenfreeonashoestring.com. I found it to have issues (such as falling in the middle as it cooled) so I experimented for months with rising times, baking times and substituting and adding ingredients until I got past all those bumps in the road. I knew this basic recipe was one I wanted to work with because of one stellar quality – it did not taste like cardboard rolled in sand. Thanks, Nicole, for getting me started. Without you, I might still be toastless!
Here’s my tested
and perfected version:
Gluten-free Sourdough Bread
Ingredients:
3 cups gluten-free
flour blend
2 teaspoons
xanthan gum
¼ teaspoon cream
of tartar
1 ½ teaspoons
kosher salt
2 teaspoons bread-machine
yeast
2 tablespoons raw
honey
3 tablespoons refined coconut oil, melted and cooled
1 cup “fed” rye
sourdough starter
1 ½ cups warm milk (or milk substitute of your choice) at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Instructions:
Generously grease a 9X5” loaf pan. Set aside.
(I use a Pampered Chef stoneware pan)
In
the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the flour,
xanthan gum, cream of tartar and kosher salt.
Stir. Add the bread-machine
yeast. Stir again. Add the honey, coconut oil and sourdough
starter; mix on a low setting to combine.
Reduce
the mixer speed to the lowest setting and add milk, pouring in a slow, steady
stream. Once all the flour mixture has
incorporated into the liquids, beat the ingredients on at least medium speed
for 4-6 minutes (I have a KitchenAid and I set the speed on six for five
minutes). The dough will be sticky and
thicker than cake batter, but not as thick as cookie dough.
Scrape
the dough into the greased loaf pan and smooth the top with a spatula or damp
fingers.
Allow
the dough to rise, covered, in a warm humid place for 30 minutes. It will do most of its rising in the oven, so
don’t expect it to expand as much as wheat breads you might be used to working
with.
While
the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bake
the loaf in a preheated oven for one hour.
Use the convection setting if you have that. It should develop a light golden brown crust
on top.
Remove
the bread from the pan immediately and allow it to cool on a wire cooling rack
until completely cool.
The dough
consistency may seem weird to you if you are used to baking wheat bread. The shorter rising time and longer baking
time, along with a lower baking temperature may seem a little different, too,
but humor me and do it exactly like this the first few times and then you can
play with all these aspects if it is not turning out exactly the way you want. Remember, when it comes to baking, altitude,
humidity and finicky ovens all play a part in the perfect loaf of bread.
Here’s a photo of the dough once my friend got it into the pan and ready to rise. I kept getting nervous little texts and photos asking if everything was coming along all right. She did everything to perfection!
A bit of advice about cooling the bread. This bread is so fabulous when it is fresh that all I want to do is eat it warm and buttered. However, its softness and loftiness is so easily squashed by even a good bread knife that I force myself to leave it alone for a few hours before nipping off a slice. Then, I refrigerate the loaf to firm it up before putting it into the slicer (as shown in the first photo) and slice the whole loaf at once into perfect slices. I put a few in a container in the refrigerator (after I’ve had my little bread feast) and the rest of the loaf goes into a freezer container with pieces of waxed paper between each slice so that I can pull some out for toast or whatever as needed.
I hope you enjoy
this fabulous bread and get into the habit of making it every week or so for
your family.
If you’d like to
switch things up a bit and turn your sourdough into something more akin to buns
for hamburgers or English muffin style rounds, you might try this idea that
popped into my head. It works great and gives
me a change from ordinary sliced bread.
Purchase ten large
stainless steel baking rings. You want
them to be the desired diameter of your finished “bun”. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and
then with the rings that have been sprayed with coconut oil baking spray. Fill the rings with equal amounts of your
sourdough bread dough, let rise 30 minutes and before baking 30-40 minutes at
350 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough is
thick enough not to creep out from under the rings while baking. If the buns give a hollow sound when you tap
them in the middle with your finger, they are ready to come out of the oven.
Here are my buns and the rings I use, which are about 4 inches in diameter.
Happy baking and
don’t forget the butter!
Still have questions
about bread or sourdough starter? Leave
a comment and I’ll try to help you out!
Share the bread
and this post with your friends! They’ll
love it, too! Let’s all get healthier
together!
Pancakes made with this sourdough starter are AWESOME! Smuffy says they’re the best I’ve ever made him! Another recipe for another day.
For more about my health journey and my thoughts on how not to just survive, but thrive, check out my Thrive! page.
READERS TAKE NOTE: Although I am a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach, not every recipe on this blog reflects this or fits the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan. This is an earlier post prior to my THM days. I am currently working on adapting some of these recipes to fit the plan.
A couple of months ago, I shared these photos of my homemade gluten-free sourdough bread on social media and immediately people began asking for a tutorial.
I am well aware of
the reasons for that. We all love the
authentic taste of real artisan breads.
I do have one close friend who is not a bread lover. It hasn’t broken up the friendship or
anything, but I do confess to wondering at times what on earth is the matter
with her!
The other reason,
I believe, is that, at the sight of that fresh slice of bread curled up in my
hand, people gasped and exclaimed, “You mean it’s possible – it’s really possible to have soft, wonderful,
gluten-free bread that doesn’t shatter to dust when you bend it?”
Yes, it is! I will confess, however, that it didn’t come quickly
for me and it didn’t come easy. Now that
I’ve blazed the trail, so to speak, you can skip all the trial and error and
have much more fun on a reasonably quick road to enjoying your bread.
I put a penny next to a fresh slice to give you an idea of the size of the loaf.
When I say
“authentic”, I mean authentic and
when I say from scratch, I mean really
from scratch.
I’m sure you can use this same sourdough in any conventional bread recipe. You’ll be able to find lots of recipes online for that. I use it in my tried and tested, yummy, gluten-free version and I don’t feel cheated – not one bit!
IMPORTANT: Rye flour itself DOES have a certain amount of gluten, but the sourdough process breaks down that gluten, making it much more gut-friendly. However, if you have been diagnosed with celiac disease, please consult your doctor before using rye flour.
I know some people run from the notion of gluten-free eating because they either think it’s going to taste “yucky”, or it isn’t “real food” or just because they think it’s the latest weird fad and they prefer not to jump on that bandwagon. I’ll put my two-cents in on the topic of gluten-free in a nutshell and you can take it or leave it.
I promised myself I’d keep this post shorter and simpler than all the ones I read about sourdough when I started, but sourdough takes some explaining. Also, I am the storyteller, so here goes –
I want to live the longest, healthiest life I can live and I’ve had my share of ups and downs with health. You can catch a glimpse into some of that here.
After decades of
self-study (because it didn’t take me long to figure out that what the
“orthodox” medical care folks knew about nutrition would fit in a thimble), I
had it boiled down to this: I needed
veggies – lots of ‘em – and they
didn’t need to be potatoes, corn and other starchy ones. They needed to be yellow, green and
leafy. I needed to get away from white
flour because, inside my body, it turned into something similar to that paste
we used to see a few classmates eating in first grade – not a good thing for
the intestines. I needed to keep
desserts to a minimum but, I actually thought that my great love of fudge
brownies and glazed donuts could be indulged as long as I ate the veggies and
whole-wheat, non-GMO stuff first. I thought fat made you fat – silly me – having
falling for that advertising myth. I
fed my family lots of homemade goodies made with the best ingredients our
budget would allow.
I had some health
issues that seemed minor. You know what
I mean – it comes under the category of “a million little things”, but it
wasn’t cancer, heart problems or some auto-immune disease, so I tolerated
those.
Help came with the
addition of a balanced, whole-food supplement that helped resolve a lot of the
issues because – let’s face it – we can’t eat balanced meals every single day
and donuts do happen.
Then came about a
three-year period of high stress for me.
Some overly demanding stress can be the good kind (months of wedding
planning for my daughter), but some is the bad stuff (I lost my mother) and the
list goes on. The result? Stage 3 adrenal fatigue arrived and refused
to go away.
Now I will
fast-forward to a point where, after I chose a new family practice M.D. who
specializes in functional medicine (or that holistic stuff you hear people
talking about), the doc informed me that adrenal fatigue such as I had could be
beat – and then she handed me a big binder, saying, in essence, “Welcome to
your next one to three years.”
I decided to show her I was hot stuff. I’d knock her socks off in six months! I’d be the best patient she ever had (and I think I actually might be) ‘cause I’ve got grit. We started a treatment plan. She advised me not to tax those pooped little adrenal glands any more than they already were. Certain foods do that. After three solid months of no sugar (even the “hidden” stuff in packaged foods) and no grains, we could talk again about whether I could add brown rice, quinoa and a couple of other things back into my diet. If I behaved nicely and received her seal of approval, she might let me have sourdough bread.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that by the time I reached the end of that first three months my yearning for glazed donuts and fudge brownies would have reached a fever pitch? Nope. I’d been so diligent at removing all the inflammatory, gland-stressing baddies from my diet that sugar cravings left me around the second week! Only one thing kept calling my name – ONE THING saddened me about this clean eating plan. I. Must. Have. TOAST!
When I asked the
doctor if she remembered telling me I could someday have sourdough bread, she
nodded and informed me that, lest I be thinking of a trip to the bakery, I’d
best be prepared to put on my big girl panties once again and start from
scratch.
All store-bought
sourdough is fake sourdough. I was to
start with rye flour and water only, growing my own little bowl of funk on the
kitchen counter as the “natural process” (which is a nice term for something
that causes you to shrink back when you lift the lid) drew yeast from the air
and eventually became, just as the name implies, sourdough.
Once I’d achieved
this, I could bake bread with the gluten-free flour blend of my choice.
I headed for Natural Grocers to purchase rye flour and then frustrated myself for countless hours on the internet trying to find the perfect instructions for not only the sourdough starter, but the bread to follow. There are a lot of bad recipes on the internet, especially in the gluten-free or “clean eating” categories, put there by poor souls who are trying to help others before they’ve found their own way.
The instructions
for starting your own sourdough ranged from long and complicated to short and
vague. I treated the whole thing like
rocket science and had great success. One
day, however, a half dozen or so loaves later, common sense arrived and said,
“Do you really think your great-grandma over-thought the whole deal like
this?” That’s when I relaxed and started
doing the whole process by eye and by feel.
Since it will take
a week or ten days, depending on the amount of “good stuff” (we can laugh about
this later) in the air in your kitchen, I’ll give you the instructions today
for the sourdough starter only. In a
week or so, we’ll talk about bread.
The photo below shows what I use to mix and store my sourdough.
You’ll need to
gather these four items before you start:
Rye Flour (I use the non-GMO Natural Grocers brand pictured. I can get a two-pound bag at my local Natural Grocers for around $2.00.
Water – tap water is FORBIDDEN
here. Use distilled, reverse osmosis or
some other form of water that does not have chemicals that will kill the
natural yeast that is trying to form.
Non-reactive container with a
resting lid for mixing and storing.
Aluminum will not work and I find ceramic or glass to be best. The lid must keep moisture in while letting
gasses escape. A round bottom, such as
pictured in the photo, allows for ease in mixing. A snap-on lid will not work. I found a lid from a small dish at a flea
market that fit my bowl just right without sliding off. Be sure your container is large enough to
allow for comfortable stirring.
Spatula and a ½ cup measuring cup.
Now for my
super-simplified instructions and more than honest observations to keep you
from over-thinking the process or throwing out your sourdough before you’re
even finished. You might want to read
all my observations before you even start!
Choose a starting time. You need to decide on a time of day when you are usually always home and preferably, when you’re usually home twelve hours later – you’ll have a few days when you’ll feed the dough twice a day later on. (Example: 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. if you are working and your schedule allows you to give things a quick mix before and after work.)
Using the ½ cup measure, add two scoops of rye flour to the bowl.
Fill the ½ cup measure with distilled or reverse osmosis water to the bowl.
With the spatula, work the mixture together into a paste-like consistency, leaving no dry spots – every bit of flour must be moist. If it seems too dry to incorporate the flour, add an additional tablespoon or two of water until you achieve a thick but totally moist paste.
Scrape the mixture from the sides, pressing it into the bottom of the bowl and leveling the top with the spatula. This will help to keep the whole mixture moist and help you to see exactly how much rising has occurred.
Cover with the resting lid and leave on the counter for twenty-four hours.
The following day, at around the same time, take your spatula and “slice” through the middle of the paste mixture, scooping out half the mixture to discard. (I place a square of waxed paper on the counter and deposit it onto the center of the paper, then fold all sides in before plopping it into the trash to avoid icky smells in the kitchen. I don’t know if other people run this down the disposal, but it might be a bad idea and you’ll see why as we go.) Add two measures of flour and one measure of water. Mix as before and leave on the counter.
Now you’ve arrived at Day 3. Repeat the process, discarding half the mixture and adding more rye flour and water. Repeat this again on Day 4. You’re probably starting to notice some changes occurring in that bowl.
Now it is Day 5. It’s time to repeat the process twice a day now. Happy mixing and tossing! Continue the twice-a-day process for Days 6, 7 and 8, or until your sourdough starter is doubling in size in between each time you toss out half and mix in more.
Now your sourdough starter has been properly fed, is poofy and bubbly and is ready to use in breads, pancakes, pizza dough and all kinds of other yummy recipes!
Now it’s time for tough love, folks. The awful truth that most of us, as modern day germaphobes who wrinkle our noses and pull the bleach wipes out of our holsters faster than Marshall Matt Dillon drawing on yet another Bad Bart, must face is that sourdough is good for you and isn’t going to kill you or your kids. It is, however, going to be disgusting.
Embrace a little logic with me and admit that back before those tidy, little yeast packets appeared in stores, your ancestors grew their own. These pioneers of sturdy stock survived making sourdough and so will you!
Having read what seemed like the entire internet to learn all the technicalities of how sourdough works and what’s really happening in that bowl, lest I mess the whole thing up and end up without toast or, even worse, kill us all, I’ll share my gleanings and eye-witness testimony.
After the first day or two, depending on the warmth of your kitchen and the amount of natural yeast in the air, you’ll see changes occur in your bowl of starter and they won’t be pretty. It’ll get gray, then grayer, then disgusting to the point where you’ll be holding your breath when you remove the lid to go through your toss and mix routine.
Now, which of our ancestors looked into this pot of stench and thought it would come to a good end had more faith and optimism than I’ve ever possessed. We can add sourdough to the list of things, along with octopus and artichokes, that will go down in history as head-scratchers, making us wonder what poor, starving soul decided to give that a try.
There are two kinds of bacteria growing in there. One is the yeasty, fruity-smelling kind we associate with fresh baked goods. The other is an unspeakable horror. What you are doing as you daily toss and mix is removing some of the horror and giving the yummy-yeasties a chance to take over. It’s a jungle in there and we want the right critters to be king! Around Day 5, you should notice a change in the look and smell. It will be doubling in size each day as the horrible smell fades and the yeasty smell grows stronger and stronger, causing you to say to yourself, “Mmmm…when can I make bread?” rather than, “Please, can I just scrape this all off into the garbage?”
Speaking of
scraping, another thing I’ve observed is that the word “paste” couldn’t be more
applicable. However, upon drying, a more
appropriate term is “concrete”. Immediately after using your spatula (or
if you should transfer the starter from one bowl to another), submerge your utensils
and dishes in water because, if it dries – Honey, it is on there!
Once your sourdough has turned into the real deal, you can keep it forever as long as you “feed” it at least once a week, which means scooping out a cup or so to use it in a recipe, share with a friend or toss so that you can add more rye flour and water. If you neglect this, it will go funky on you and you’ll be starting over and who wants to go through the icky part again? Once fed, leave it on the counter for a couple of hours to get it going before refrigerating it and when you pull it out again to use or feed, give it another couple of hours on the counter first to “poof”.
I’ve not tried to
freeze or dry my starter in order to take a break for vacation or other
reasons, but I’ve heard it’s possible to do that and “wake it up” when you need
it again.
Get your starter started and in a week or so, we’ll make bread!
If you’d like to be ready for this yummy gluten-free bread, here’s your shopping list: Brown rice flour, tapioca flour and arrowroot powder (you’ll need at least a cup of each), cream of tartar, a small amount of honey, kosher salt, yeast, refined coconut oil, milk or milk substitute.
And don’t forget the butter!
Please feel free
to ask any questions in the comments during your process and I’ll try my best
to answer. I know I had lots of them
when I started!
Share this post with your friends who’ve been frustrated with bread making or who are searching for gluten-free, dairy free or just plain healthier food options.
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I’ll be honest. If the super bowl failed to take place, I probably wouldn’t know it until I got out and about and some grief-stricken fan informed me and even at that, I’d give it a shrug, try my best to register sympathy and concern and force myself to say, “Really? Oh, my!”
But they had better not cancel National Hot Chocolate Day! I’m into this one – big time! I can hear your shouts of “Amen!” to that. It gives us all permission to stop, smell the cocoa and just be still for a bit while we enjoy that mug (or, in my case, tankard, says Smuffy) of smooth chocolate wonderfulness.
But what about those of us who are watching the waistline or those who have come to the realization that, if we care about our health, sugar has got to go?
Speaking of love, within that post is a great recipe for Eat ‘Em All Chocolate Covered Strawberries – another way to indulge without the sugar and without sacrificing yummy flavor. This recipe will carry you through Valentine’s Day without the guilt.
Click on the FREE PRINTABLE banner at the bottom of the original post and you’ll be able to easily print those out to add to your recipe collection.
I’m off now to find my tankard and indulge. In case you’re a little foggy on where to begin, let me show you the ingredients that will help you get the most out of National Hot Chocolate Day –
That’s right! All you need to make your day complete:
Cozy Chair
Furry Throw
One Tankard (or maybe two) Not Apologizin’ Hot Chocolate
One Sleepy Kitten
Gather your supplies and enjoy!
SUBSCRIBE NOW – First Friday Freebie Day is on the way for subscribers only!
READERS TAKE NOTE: This soup recipe was posted prior to my eating according to the Trim Healthy Mama plan or becoming a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach. It would qualify as an “S Helper” or a “Crossover” depending on the amount of sweet potatoes you add or the amount of soup you consume. Keep that in mind when planning your meal. This one is WORTH IT, so at least have it for special occasions!
For those of you who read my earlier post about this fabulous soup but never took the time to stir up a batch – this is for you!
Each year for the last six years, I enter a soup in a contest that our church sponsors for the benefit of the area food bank. Soups – LOTS of soups – are judged (rather scientifically, I must say) on taste/flavor/texture, appearance, Originality/Creativity, Appeal (Would a wide variety of the general population want to try this soup?) and Aroma. “Golden” (but most certainly not food safe) ladles are awarded to the top five soups. Then, the soups are served to the throng of two hundred or so salivating soup lovers at $5 per cup for the winners and $1 per cup for all the others. I’ve taken home five golden ladles so far.
So, what can I say? I am some sort of Soup Queen, I suppose. Just don’t ask me to make gravy. I mean that – never let me make the gravy!
This year, I decided to re-enter my soup that won five years ago. I invented this soup just after I made changes to my eating plan that included getting all sugars and grains out of my diet, so if you are looking for gluten-free recipes that won’t make you feel that you are missing out on a thing – this one’s for you! It’s a winner twice over for a very good reason. It is fabulous!
The original post gives detailed instructions on how to make Creamy Leek Soup with Chicken and Sweet Potato here, and it also offers a free printable recipe so check it out and, by all means, make a batch!
I did have a friend tell me that she used a substitute for the cream to accommodate her dairy-free diet and still her husband said it was the best soup he’d ever eaten in his life!
Here I am, honored to stand with the other winners (minus Larry, who somehow wandered off just before the announcement).
All the great recipes on my Food Freedom page come with free printables, so you can put them all in a notebook and try them out soon. I do my best to offer you healthy recipes that won’t make you feel deprived or overworked.
We are due to have a high temperature here tomorrow of 4 degrees. Sounds like soup weather to me!
NOTE TO READERS: These recipes are old family favorites that appeared here on my blog prior to myeating according to the Trim Healthy Mama plan or becoming a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach. While they taste fabulous, I cannot recommend them for healthy lifestyle or blood sugar control. However, I am working on adapting them to the plan so watch for future posts!
I promised to share this “award winning” recipe. I believe it was back when the trees were shedding their leaves of red and gold. Lately they’ve been laden with heavy snow – perfect weather to cozy up with some real comfort food and a bean story!
This recipe is an old favorite for my family. I found the original in one of those tiny booklets that came with the old-style Crock-pots. You know the kind I mean – the tall, skinny crock that did not lift away from the heating base, making it very difficult to clean. Their thermostats seemed to come with unexplained variances. My mom’s didn’t seem to have a LOW setting. It just boiled away no matter how you adjusted the knob while mine, on the same setting, would make you wait a couple of days for your dinner.
That little book
contained an entry that did little to tempt the imagination or the palate. It offered up, simply, the “One Pot
Dinner”. I’d never tried the recipe
because, frankly, it just didn’t strike a chord within my romantic nature. I’m the “Anne of Green Gables” type and am
inclined to agree with her theories on naming things. (Example: Why call it Barry’s Pond when you can call it
The Lake of Shining Waters?)
I have always been
this way.
Anyhow, a dear
friend of mine, upon hearing me say that I’d been in one of those moods that
leaves me only two options – escape for a change of pace or give in to a crying
jag – took pity on me and offered the use of her cabin in the woods. It may not have been a villa perched on the
Italian coastline, but it had three gleaming attractions. It was free.
It had indoor plumbing. It wasn’t
my house. I jumped at the offer.
I got excited. I wanted to crawl into Timber Hill and forget about the rest of the world. Our daughter would take a friend. There would be no TV and one emergency cell phone. We’d play a few board games. Smuffy would fish, explore and read books. I would read and take naps.
Ahh! Thanks, DeDe, for the memories (and the sanity check).
The last thing I wanted was to make endless trips to town for restaurant meals or supplies. I started charting meals like a paid planner. I wanted everything we ate to fit in with that log cabin feel. We would make homemade pancakes. I’d take homemade cinnamon rolls along to warm. Cornbread sounded good. For a main dish that would leave us lots of great-tasting leftovers, I wanted something special – something new. Research led me back to the lack-luster little Crock-pot book.
If these beans,
which sounded like they had possibilities, were going along on my grand
adventure, they simply couldn’t go as the “One Pot Dinner”. I re-named them “Timber Hill Beans” and they
were a huge hit, especially with Smuffy.
In all the years we were graciously invited to spend our fall retreat at
Timber Hill, we never left home without the namesake beans.
When our church
began to sponsor an annual “Souper Bowl of Caring” as a benefit for the area
food bank, they asked for soup – a lot
of soup. People brought in slow-cookers full
of deliciousness in hopes of taking home a golden ladle in a contest for top
soups.
Smuffy gave me a
meaningful look and prophesied, “If you take Timber Hill Beans, you’ll win!”
“You think
so?” I hadn’t given much thought to
entering the contest and I’d never really thought of those thick, hearty Timber
Hill Beans as “soup”.
“I know so!” He seemed certain of it.
I did come home with a golden ladle,
thanks to Timber Hill Beans and Smuffy’s encouragement!
I can’t help but wonder,
though, if “One Pot Dinner” would have ranked a little lower with the judges.
You may remember our educational and slightly embarrassing discussion on the subject of beans. You can refresh your memory here. Along with tips on cooking beans and avoiding their after-effects, I shared my own recipe for “Hearty, Healthy, Homemade Pork and Beans”. You’ll find a free printable recipe in the post. I now use these in my Timber Hill Beans to avoid the mushiness that usually results from overcooking canned beans, not to mention all the sugar and other nonsense that the canned versions contain. You can prepare these and the bacon a day or two before assembling this recipe. If you choose not to follow this simple, from-scratch step, you’ll need to substitute 4 (14 ounce) cans of pork ‘n beans and use care to avoid over-cooking them.
The other beans in this recipe are also not of the canned variety. If you absolutely do not want to rinse and soak your beans, you can use one can of kidney beans and one can of butter beans (drained and rinsed), but – I promise – you’ll be happier with the end results if you avoid the cans.
If you’re planning meals and feeding supper to hungry people, the best way is to brown the meat, prep the bacon and pork and beans a day or two before. Then, soak the beans overnight, get up in the morning dump everything into theCrock-pot, set it on LOW and don’t give it another thought until supper other than checking it when you get home to see if you need to adjust it to the WARM setting.
Let’s get cooking!
Timber Hill Beans
Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef or venison
1/2 pound uncured bacon, baked on a broiler pan in a 200-250
degree oven for about an hour. (Should
not be crispy, but have the better portion of the fat cooked out.)
3/4 cup red kidney beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
3/4 cup butter beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
1 cup catsup
1/4 cup palm sugar or raw honey
1 Tablespoon liquid smoke (or to taste)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 Tablespoon Celtic sea salt
Instructions:
Drain beans and rinse well. Brown ground meat and onion in skillet. Drain off fat. Cut bacon into one inch pieces. Place all ingredients in slow cooker. Stir well.
Cover and cook on LOW for 5-9 hours or on HIGH for 3 hours.
LOW is best in order to avoid sticking.
Makes 14 cups.
Over the years, I’ve
tweaked this recipe to take out refined sugars, avoid mushy canned beans and bring
it to “golden ladle standards”, so please comment and let me know how you like
it.
Normally, I steer away from adding corn to our diets anymore, mostly for the reasons given in this article by Dr. Axe and at the advice of my holistic M.D. Once in a while, however, Smuffy says the occasion calls for cornbread, I give in and we cheat. I’m giving you my Gluten-free cornbread recipe which includes a dry mix that you can whip up in a “jiffy”, if you get my drift. (Perhaps you don’t if that little item is available only here in the Midwest.) I hate having my cupboards full of endless little boxes and packets and feeling like I have to run to the store for something as simple as cornbread mix. Years ago, I figured out the secret to that little box mix everyone uses and I’m sharing it with you today.
A word about buttermilk: Smuffy and I often have differences of opinion on foods, but on buttermilk, we agree. We hate the stuff! It does make a fabulous batch of pancakes or cornbread, but we always had to throw out the leftovers. Keeping a dry buttermilk mix on hand solves the problem beautifully. Grocery stores will most likely have Saco“ Buttermilk Blend” in their baking section and if you can find a way to order in bulk, you can get a great price on a one-pound bag of buttermilk powder from Frontier Co-op Wholesale Store, where they have member and non/member pricing. They both keep well on the back bottom shelf of the refrigerator for what seems like forever.
Gluten-Free Cornbread or
Corn Muffins
(You may use all-purpose wheat flour rather than corn flour in
these recipes. If so, omit the xanthan gum and one of the eggs.
This option will, of course, not be gluten-free.)
Ingredients:
1 cup yellow organic, non-GMO cornmeal
1 cup organic, non-GMO corn flour
1/4 cup dry buttermilk powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup water
1/4 cup raw honey
2 tablespoons melted butter
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in the
beaten eggs, water, honey and melted butter, mixing just until there are no dry
areas.
Pour into greased
muffin tins or a 9″X9″ baking pan. Bake at 375 degrees for
about 25 minutes. Remove from pan immediately.
Now for that mix to
keep help you whip up things in a “jiffy”.
Cornbread Mix for Recipes in a “Jiffy”
Mix the following ingredients together and in a “jiffy”,you’ll have the equivalent of the commonly used boxed mix.
1/2 cup yellow organic, non-GMO cornmeal
1/2 cup organic, non-GMO corn flour
2 Tablespoons dry buttermilk powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
Add 2 Tablespoons raw
honey to the recipe’s wet ingredients.
Thanks to the great folks at Crock-Pot.com for the original “One Pot Dinner” recipe and for all the improvements to the Crock-pot over the years. The newer versions, with their removable crockery, warming features, digital settings and – best of all – those clamp-on lids that put an end to nasty spills in the car have made life so much easier. Check out their latest products here. Hey there, sports fans! They even have NFL logo pots!
I confess to having four slow-cookers. My new favorite is this in-between size I found one day out flea-marketing. I like to think of it as a casserole. I find myself using it all the time.
Click below for your
free printable for Timber Hill Beans and Gluten-free Cornbread!
If you prefer biscuits over cornbread, check out my Zesty Pumpkin Soupwhich comes with a bonus recipe for Billy’s Biscuits. This savory soup is not what you’re expecting!
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I have a great recipe to share today. It’s revised. Yes, I am confessing here and now that I have a past. It’s my “Middle-of-the-road Past”. That makes it not quite so bad as my “Deep Dark Past”, but nowhere near as sparkling as my “Practically Pristine Present”.
You, see, I didn’t always eat healthy. The Trim Healthy Mama eating plan wasn’t always a part of my life and I certainly wasn’t always a certified lifestyle coach who helped people get their health on the right track.
In the really olden days, it was donuts (lots of donuts), coffee (by the pot full, day and night), big block candy bars, bags of chips, soda, giant chocolate malts. And I should perhaps mention that I could have been crowned the Bread and Pasta Queen – hands down. Mysteriously, and for a long time, I never gained an ounce. Little did I know, however, that there were wheels within wheels and not all bad eating habits turn into fat. I was not making the gut happy. The hormones were cruel, nasty things and as far as pain and energy levels, I was too tired to cry. No, wait! The hideous allergies were taking up all my tears.
After I’d switched it all up and moved on to natural sweeteners (honey, agave, palm sugar) and whole grains and become a walking herbal concoction, I felt like I’d taken a giant step, only to find out later that it was a baby step with good intentions.
Then came my whole episode with a cancer diagnosis, which you can learn a little about here.
A high-quality whole food supplement helped immensely, but I really can’t think of a greater hormone disrupter than chemotherapy. Then came the poundage.
Now, with Trim Healthy Mama, I eat lots of yummy food and keep my goal weight without starving myself all the time or just being plain cranky.
This recipe came about in a search for healthier, better tasting version of a canned “old stand-by”. If ever a side dish needed to be re-thought, “pork ‘n beans” is at the top of the list. The canned version focuses on the sauce, leaving us all short on beans and almost devoid of all pork as we try to keep everything else on our plates out of the path of the runny mess and avoid the two little squiggly, fatty pieces of pork that seem to have been dropped in just for show. Finding pork and beans lacking, we often give them a miss, considering them a mere ingredient in other recipes which they also succeed in making way too runny.
Beans play an important role in our diets, but to be honest, most of us have a love-hate relationship with them.
What summer barbecue is complete without a huge casserole dish brimming with baked beans? What fall camp-out or retreat has ever been planned that excluded a pot of beans?
As members of the legume family, beans are cousins to lentils, peas and the like. Loaded with nutrients, we can count on them as a valuable source of protein, fiber, magnesium, iron and zinc. That means they can help us with fatigue, weakness, heart palpitations, loss of appetite and irritability. Beans are a healthy carb and those make our hormones happy – oh, yes, they do! The sugar in canned pork ‘n beans, however, makes our hormones very, very unhappy.
Beans have been found to contain anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory properties and in certain studies have clearly been shown to have a positive effect on those with coronary heart disease and to lower cholesterol.
Now, if we must, we’ll discuss the down-side of beans. Must we, really? Their reputation has been wrecked by the endless jokes directed at the poor, humiliated souls who succumb to digestive discomfort because of them.
Why, we all ask! Why? It’s like this: Beans contain their own natural sugars – stachyose, raffinose and verbascose – and we cannot digest those due to the fact that we are missing an enzyme that is required to break them down. Therefore, when beans reach the colon, the bacteria there ferments those sugars and need I tell you what fermenting substances do? They give off gas. That, dear readers, is the awful truth in a nutshell.
Beans have never really bothered me much. This mystifies Smuffy, who fluctuates between begging me to make beany recipes and then begging me to never do it again. I’ve always figured there must be some way to make it easier for him to eat his favorite foods.
The answer always eluded his mother. I remember sitting in her living room once after a meal. Smuffy, after offering to help his dad with a project in the yard, exited through the back door as though carried along by sheer self-propulsion. She turned to me, sighing. “I tell you what,” she muttered with a shake of her head, “I’ve raised five of the beaniest boys there ever was!”
I challenged myself to eliminate (if you’ll pardon my expression) the bean predicament or at least get to the bottom (goodness – there I go again!) of the problem.
I tried to convince Smuffy that one of the main issues lay in the fact that I’m a fabulous cook. I suggested that he limit his portions rather than eating four bowls at a sitting. This remedy brought about no results other than an eye-roll directed at me.
Then, of course, succumbing to advertising, we tried the tiny bottles of drops that you were supposed to add to beans upon consumption. No measurable results there – not that we were measuring! Is this blog post over yet?
Then, I had a revelation. My mother had seven children. She spent decades feeding us beans – lots of beans. I couldn’t remember any real issues with beans, but then she had always used dry beans, soaking them overnight. Another flash of the obvious came to mind. Each time I opened a can of beans for a recipe that called for draining and rinsing them, there were bubbles galore! Perhaps we’d been ingesting all those bubbles! Then, another realization hit me. The beans with the worst effects seemed to be “pork ‘n beans” – that meant they were not only canned, but never rinsed!
Here are my conclusions after much research and experimentation.
Never use canned beans! What could be more simple that measuring dry beans into a bowl and adding filtered water? Soak 8 hours or overnight, then POUR THE SOAKING WATER OFF, add fresh water and salt and simmer the beans until desired tenderness. The added advantage to this is that you’ll have control over the doneness. Canned beans are always extremely overcooked and by the time we get them into our soups or casseroles and cook them even longer, we tend to end up with mush.
Need “pork ‘n beans”? No problem! I’m giving you the super easy recipe today. The canned version is loaded with syrupy goo that your doctor and your body would rather you didn’t have anyway, so just stir up a batch of your own!
Watch what you eat with beans. Do eat lots of greens, making your insides a happy place. Don’t eat sugars or things that turn to sugar such as bread or white potatoes. Use high-quality stevia (at least 95% pure) and other natural sweeteners in bean recipes. If you want a great bean recipe that needs no sweeteners at all, you can make a big skillet full of my fabulous chili con carne (recipe coming soon.)
Since digestion starts in the mouth, savor your beans by chewing them well. This is also a little easier to do when you start from scratch as we are today because your beans won’t be overcooked and mushy like canned beans are.
Rinse. Rinse. Rinse! Never cook beans in the water you soaked them in. Wash them, rinse them, soak them, rinse them again, add fresh water and salt, then cook your beans according to package directions and your personal preference as to doneness.
Forgot to soak your beans the night before or before you left in the morning? There is usually a quick-soak method on the package, that will work if your schedule permits.
Use fresh beans. Their effects increase along with their shelf life, so buy them when you need them from a store that keeps its inventory moving. I know it’s tempting to keep dried foods around forever, but it’s not a great idea if you’re trying to lower the risk of after-effects.
Let’s get started with easy homemade Pork ‘n Beans:
After doing lots of research, I began with a “clone” recipe fromwww.palatablepastime.com for Campbell’s Pork and Beans, but it changed drastically as I went along! Theirs was designed to remove high-fructose corn syrup. Mine is designed to be less “beany” and healthier all around. Thanks to Sue Lau for getting me off to a great start!
This recipe is equivalent to a little over four cans (11-15 ounces each) of beans. You can cut the recipe in half if you like, but they are super easy to divide into containers and freeze. Since they are way yummier than the canned version, your family will probably eat more than you expect.
You can use chunks of pork, but I prefer bacon. Who doesn’t? I always bake my bacon – no mess in the kitchen and it turns out perfect every time. I fix the whole package and layer it between paper towels to freeze. I recommend baking it slightly less crispy than you normally enjoy it. Then, when you use it in this recipe or heat it in the microwave to enjoy with breakfast, it will come out perfect! Keep in mind that adding lots of bacon straight into the recipe will make it a crossover (XO), but adding one slice of chopped bacon to your own serving will keep this an “E” for you to enjoy.
Everybody’s busy! The bacon and the beans can be prepared a day or two ahead of time, making this a “throw-together” recipe!
Hearty, Healthy Homemade Pork ‘n Beans
Ingredients:
8 slices uncured bacon, baked on a broiler pan in a 200-250 degree oven for about an hour.
1 pound navy beans, rinsed, soaked 8 hours or overnight, rinsed again and cooked in salted water until tender. Drain and rinse again in warm water.
1 – 2 cups water
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup molasses
¼ cup raw honey
1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder
1 ½ teaspoons onion powder
1 ½ teaspoons sweet or smoked paprika
1 ½ teaspoons Celtic sea salt
3 Tablespoons arrowroot powder shaken in ¼ cup cold water
Prepare the bacon and beans as directed.
Mix all ingredients in a large saucepan and simmer until flavors are blended (5-10 minutes). Add arrowroot and water mixture and return to a soft boil, stirring constantly until sauce reaches desired thickness (1-2 minutes).
Makes 8-12 servings or the equivalent of about 4 (11-15 ounce cans).
Enjoy! But if you eat them all, you’ll need to be prepared to make another batch, because we’re about to take those Pork ‘n Beans and create a slow-cooker masterpiece!
Click below for your free printable of the recipe and bean tips!
Searching for luscious fall soups? I have two ultra-simple recipes you’ll love! Try Creamy Leek Soup with Chicken and Sweet Potatoes, a “Golden Ladle Winner” and if you’re like me and can’t get enough pumpkin right now, check out my Zesty Pumpkin Soupwhich comes with a bonus recipe forBilly’s Biscuitsthat is guaranteed to please.
Questions? Comments? If you make the soup and/or the biscuits, let me know how you liked it! Scroll back up to the title of this post and “Leave a Comment”. And why not SUBSCRIBE, so you’ll receive an email reminder each time Midwest Storyteller has something new.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, I can’t think of a better thing to discuss than chocolate. I love chocolate! It dominates the candy aisles in stores on a regular basis, but at this time of year, people purchase more of the stuff than ever. I’d venture to say that it puts the fall pumpkin rush to shame.
The other thing lurking on the candy aisle, however – that troll hiding under the bridge waiting to ambush you – is sugar. If you haven’t figured out yet that sugar takes a toll on your body in more ways than just the addition of unwanted pounds, you’ve got your sweet head in the sand.
This spring, I’ll begin my fourth (Really? Wow!) year of feeding my body all kinds of wonderful things except for sugar and grains. If you’re not humming “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with your fingers in your ears, you might want to learn a little more about your body and my journey here.)
Yes, I still eat my chocolate (of course) birthday cake. Yes, I still have a big slab of pie at Thanksgiving and cookies at Christmas. Once a week, if that often, I might eat something on a bun. However, my former lifestyle as the Bread & Pasta Queen is over and SURPRISE! – I don’t miss it.
One of the first things I had to figure out was how on earth I was going to get my chocolate – and plenty of it! Chemical sweeteners, such as aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda) or saccharine (Sweet ‘n Low) were not an option. I’d learned enough to realize that would be akin to exchanging strychnine for cyanide. Stevia seemed the only option and, though sweet, sometimes it just didn’t taste “right”.
Dedicated and determined because I had a health issue to conquer, I plunged in, reminding myself that Thomas Edison had far more failures than he had successes and yet, he kept going until he finally got a bright idea!
Today, I’m sharing two recipes that you can enjoy not only in the current chocolate season, but all year round. And, with the FREE printable at the end of this post, you can get started right now!
I have stated in previous blog posts that when it comes to stevia, you get what you pay for. My favorite brand has always been Sweet Leaf and, of the store brands, I still prefer it.
Last week, however, my friend, Sarah, introduced me to the Pure Stevia Extract Powderby Trim Healthy Mama. Again, you get what you pay for, but I found that instead of using a tablespoon of Sweet Leaf in a recipe, I could use ¼ teaspoon of THM stevia! It has no bitter aftertaste and I think I’m in love! It’s available in one ounce and four ounce bags.
It’s February! What are we waiting for? Let’s have some chocolate!
Not Apologizin’ Hot Chocolate
12 ounces milk
2 Tablespoons Dutch Process Cocoa Powder
¼ teaspoon Trim Healthy Mamma Pyure Stevia or 1 Tablespoon Sweet Leaf Stevia
1/8 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon heavy cream
In a Pyrex measuring cup, heat the milk in the microwave until hot but not boiling. While it is heating, mix the cocoa powder, stevia and salt in a small custard cup with a mini whisk.
Pour an inch or two of the hot milk into the bottom of a large mug. Add the cocoa mixture and whisk until fairly smooth. Add vanilla. I call this my “sludge” – a rather unsavory name for something so wonderful.
Continue to whisk while adding the remainder of the hot milk. Add the heavy cream, stir and enjoy! To make my experience complete, I scoop up Phoebe June and settle into my favorite chair. Since you don’t have Phoebe June, you’ll have to make do with your own kitty, borrow one or just pretend.
Traveling Version:
When I’m away from home, I don’t like to miss out on my hot chocolate, but toting milk around becomes a problem. I’ve tried using powdered milk in the dry mix so that I could “just add water”, but it failed to give me the texture and flavor I wanted. I’m being nice – it was nasty. I’ve discovered that adding 1 ½ scoops of Reliv Delight makes a wonderful dry mix.
Reliv Delight, a whey-based milk substitute and nutritional supplement, provides the benefits of milk — plus additional nutrients — in a delicious low-fat formula. It supplies your body with a good source of proteinand an essential nutritional balance of vitamins and minerals. And at only 90 calories per serving it is also a great way to help maintain a healthy weight. Mix Reliv Delight with water and use it as an alternative to milk — while cooking, in milkshakes, with cereal or simply as a refreshing, creamy beverage. It’s a healthy choice for adults and kids alike.
As promised in the disclaimer on this blog, I’m disclosing the fact that this product must be purchased through a Reliv distributor and that I am a Reliv distributor who may receive monetary compensation should you decide to purchase the product through me. You may do so by contacting me at barb@midweststoryteller.com
This is a great way for me to take a travel mug while on the road and stop for some hot water so that I can have my chocolate fix. All I have to remember is to never leave home without my pre-mixed little baggie of dry ingredients, my little bottle of vanilla and my mini whisk!
Are you ready for no-guilt Valentine treats?
Almost everyone seems to love those beautiful chocolate-covered strawberries that cost an arm and a leg. We all indulge without too much guilt because, after all, strawberries are fruit and fruit is good for you and therefore, legal – right? Those sold in stores or special ordered are most likely made with shortening. (Repeat after me: “Shortening. Is. Evil.”) Not only that, but the chocolate coating is loaded with that ever-present, ever-enticing culprit – sugar!
I came up with this recipe to remove the culprits. The results were fabulous and I’ve served them up several times to people who tell me how yummy they are. I usually make them to share, so this recipe makes quite a few! The ones in the photo were gigantic berries and I had enough coating to do twenty-five berries. If they had been “regular” sized strawberries, I think I could have done about forty! What could be easier than dipping whole berries into chocolate sauce and letting them dry? This, combined with the fact that you get to lick your fingers and that your recipients will think you’re oh, so special ought to get you going on this recipe.
Oh, you weren’t going to give any of them away? Well, just be sure and wipe the chocolate off your chin before anybody sees you.
Wash berries and pat them dry with paper towels or allow them to dry completely on a drying mat.
In a double boiler, small ceramic coated saucepan (or a Pyrex bowl over a small saucepan), melt the coconut oil and butter over low heat. Add cocoa powder, heavy cream, stevia, vanilla and salt, whisking until smooth.
Grasp each berry by its stem and dip into the chocolate mixture. Be sure not to cover all the lovely red part! Allow the excess chocolate to drip back into the bowl before placing the berries onto waxed paper-covered cookie sheet. Place the berries far enough apart so they do not touch.
Leftover chocolate? Consider re-dipping!
If desired, sprinkle some or all of the berries with shredded, unsweetened coconut while the chocolate coating is still soft.
Do not attempt to rearrange the berries on the waxed paper until the chocolate coating is completely hardened.
Refrigerate until ready to serve or give as a gift. Remember, the chocolate coating will begin to soften at about 76 degrees, so be sure to store your beautiful berries properly. I did, with good intentions to take most of them to some cherished friends. But then, we had this icy weather and didn’t get out and, well, you know how it goes…now you know why they’re called “Eat ’em All Chocolate-covered Strawberries!”
You can share more than chocolate with a friend. How about sharing this post? You can do that through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest!
Enjoy your chocolate and don’t forget your FREE printable recipes. Just click on the banner below.
I invite you to join me for true confessions! Tell me about your favorite chocolate obsession and how often do you indulge. Scroll back up to the top of this post and “Leave a Comment”.
