A Detour

It's been a very long time since I've posted here, and for good reason. Food has been a difficult and often boring venture for me the last few months, so I haven't felt motivated. I've decided it's a subject I want to write about anyway, though, because I know I'm not the only one having these experiences and I have benefited from the open sharing of food adventures and non-adventures on other blogs. They've given me advice on what works and doesn't work. I am ever-grateful. So it's my turn to share.

As anyone who's spent time with me knows, I am very careful about my food. I recognized about 12 years ago the strong effect my nutrition has on my body. My body is very sensitive to eating the wrong things (that hasn't always kept me from eating the wrong things, but I digress...). I don't think I quite realized how sensitive I was until recently, though. The short story is that some coaching by a very competent Chinese Medicine doctor and my dad (who shares my genetics, similar complaints, and a drive to fix them naturally), I'm on an elimination diet and down to eating about 12 foods. Literally 12 foods (meat, some fish, cucumber, celery, zucchini, broccoli, spinach, coconut oil, ginger, cilantro, garlic, sea salt). Most people when they go on an elimination diet start out by eliminating gluten, soy, eggs, corn, chocolate, sweets, alcohol, nuts, and dairy. If they're really going crazy they'll eliminate all grains (including rice), potatoes, vinegars, legumes, and even tap water. I've been doing all that for a while now with some, but frustratingly little, progress. Recent trial-and-error and information from the Chinese Medicine doc helped me come to the conclusion I needed to start with a smaller subset of foods in my elimination diet (hence the 12 foods). In an elimination diet, you start with only eating things you're certain you don't react to, and then add in other foods one at a time to see if you have a reaction to them. So far, trying to expanding my food range has outed the following seemingly innocent offenders: salmon, hake (a kind of fish), sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and mint. WTF guys, WTF. I had to replace my toothpaste with $6 mint-free kind that tastes like fennel (okay I know it could be worse) as well as my Bronner's mint soap.

After a couple of weeks on these restrictions, when I got on the plane for a vacation to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, though, my skin was completely clear and I hadn't had any panic attacks for two weeks. Compared to several panic attacks a day and breakouts most days for the last 12 years. Pretty significant. On my birthday, though, I decided it was too depressing not to even have a macaroon dipped in chocolate on my birthday. Or a glass of whiskey at Twin Peaks, the first gay bar in SF. Or some sushi. And sake. Or some french fries at Mel's Drive-in. Or some Campari soda. In other words, all hell broke lose and I ate whatever I wanted (except gluten because that would have made me feel crappy enough to ruin my trip) for the rest of my vacation (a memorable find was a gluten-free pop-tart-like pastry at Mariposa Bakery, btw). It only took about 36 hours for the breakouts to come back, and 3 days for the panic attacks at night to return. I sucked it up in favor of the experiences, but it did confirm food choices as a trigger. So I'm back to the 12 Boring Foods.

ANYWAY...it's not going to be like this forever. I have a BIG PLAN. And while this blog's pictures may be of mostly green and brown things for a while, I think it's still worth documenting this journey. I'm going to embark on the GAPS program (a program that many have found success in with healing food sensitivities amongst other symptoms like mine such as skin problems and panic attacks, as well as much more severe problems like schizophrenia and autism) after a few preliminary steps I'll also write about here. And I'm going to survive it. And you know what, as shocking as the idea of eating this way has been, in actuality, it hasn't been that bad. It's even been expanding my taste-buds. Really.

Raw Pasta w/ Pesto

I've been horrendously horrible about putting up posts on this blog, and in the meantime I've made a lot of amazing meals that don't need a lot of explanation. So I'm going to try to be a little more realistic about my ambitions for this blog and start posting pictures of simple meals I ate that really worked and can be explained briefly. Here's the first.



It's a bad picture from my phone, but somehow it still looks pretty good!

I shredded up some washed zucchini to make "raw pasta." (using this charming little gadget I got at Whole Foods for $8: julienne peeler)
Then I mixed it up with some homemade cilantro pesto (here's an example recipe, or you could buy pesto and freeze what you don't use for later and/or use basil pesto instead).
On top I sprinkled some chopped up red bell pepper, chunked up artichoke hearts, and a tiny bit of sea salt.

This was pretty damn good and satisfying. I have to say, one of my favorite *favorite* culinary discoveries of the last year has been zucchini "pasta." I tried it during my raw food experimentation, amongst a whole lot of failed nut pate and cheese experiments (I know now I probably need to get the right recipe and a $500 blender to make a good nut pate or cheese). Anyway, zucchini pasta. So. fucking. good. It really is. My favorite sauces on it so far are pestos and thai peanut/almond butter type sauces, but I haven't branched out much from there. A tomato marinara sauce would be lovely with this I'm sure. And its easier and faster (and healthier) than boiling noodles and adding spaghetti sauce. Probably cheaper too. And it's actually satisfying enough to be a main course if you add some protien (p.s. not pictured I had 1 leftover turkey meatball -- ground turkey mixed with chopped onion and thyme, rolled into balls and baked at 350 F until done). Amazing.

Yumyum.

Vietnamese Meatball Soup

A re-worked version of the recipe from this amazing cookbook: Quick and Easy Vietnamese: 75 Everyday Recipes, by Nancy McDermott

It looks like a lot of steps, but the most complicated thing about this recipe is measuring the ingredients. Other than that, it's pretty much just combing things and putting things in broth and then fishing them out. Because all the flavors are so delicate (which makes it a nice soup recipe for spring and summer), getting the proportions just right is more important than in most cooking recipes. The success of this soup seems to hinge mostly on getting the salt (soy sauce and salt) just right. It becomes too salty very fast, but not enough salt and it tastes boring. A little zing of vinegar and/or lime seems to improve things as well if you're not finding enough flavor in your finished product.

Ingredients (amounts following):
- Stock - chicken, turkey, vegetable, or beef (dilute with some water if using beef)
- 1 lb of mild-tasting but not too lean ground meat - lean beef or turkey thigh are good options; bison would probably work fine too; turkey breast will be a bit dry and ground chicken will taste a bit too greasy and odd; lamb will be too...lamb-y.
- soy sauce
- fish sauce - preferred brands (in glass if possible, the lightest amber you can find) of those most widely available here are Tiparos , Three Crabs (there are additives to this I'm not fond of, but it seems to be the overwhelming taste favorite), or Squid.
- oil - peanut or sesame are best, but canola or another neutral oil would be fine
- flour - anything finely ground (e.g. cornstarch is best, but rice, sorghum, normal all-purpose etc. will work too)
- salt
- cayenne pepper or black pepper and/or Sriracha Sauce (I highly recommend buying this sauce if you don't have it and you like spicy things. It lasts a long time and is highly versatile; it's the spice-lover's ketchup)
- vinegar - cider, white wine, or rice
- cilantro (optional but recommended; you may need to add a squeeze of lime and/or some basil if you're omitting this)
- greens (optional, for serving over)
- rice (optional, for serving over)

1. Put 4 cups of stock in a pot and bring it to a boil. I used water and then some concentrated homemade stock cubes (I'll show you how to make stock in another recipe -- it's easy!)



2. While the stock is heating, mix up the meatballs...

1 lb of ground meat

2 tbsp fish sauce

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tbsp oil

1.5-2 tsp flour

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, Sriracha Sauce, or black pepper (more or less to taste)

dash of vinegar

Put the meat in a bowl and make a well in the middle of it. Put all the other ingredients in the well and mix it all up well.



3. Bring your bowl and a spoon over to your stove and scoop out a heaping spoonful (about 1.5 tbsp), round into a ball and drop it in the broth. Do this to make about 5 meatballs or half your meat mixture.

4. Now, wait about 5-10 minutes while they cook (usually it's a good sign when they start to float and bob at the top of the water). Fish them out with a slotted spoon or regular spoon and fork, set them aside, and do it again with the rest of the meat.
While you're waiting for the meatballs to cook...

a. slice up 4 green onions, or one giant green onion/leek like the one I found here at the Asian grocer, or about 1/4 or a red or yellow onion as thin as you can while you're waiting for the meatballs to cook.

and
b. put the following ingredients in a small bowl
1 tbsp fish sauce
1.5 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp oil
1 tsp of cayenne pepper or a squirt of Sriracha Sauce (more or less depending on your taste for spice)
2 tbsp vinegar or white wine

and (optionally)
c. if you want to serve this with rice, start your rice cooking.

and (optionally)
d. rinse and, if necessary, chop some greens if you want to serve your soup over greens

4. Once the meatballs are all done cooking and set aside,
Add your small bowl from step 3b of ingredients to your broth as well as half your onions. Return to a boil.



5. (optional) Add your greens, if using. Cook greens until well-wilted, about 3 minutes, and then fish them out with a slotted spoon or two forks. I used a vegetable I found in the Asian market and never did identify. It tasted like a cross between broccoli and bok choy. Other possibilities could be bok choy, napa cabbage, chinese broccoli, arugula. You could try spinach as well, but I suspect it would be an unappetizing texture in this venue (you'd be better off just making it into a salad on the side).

6. Add the rest of the onions to the broth.



7. Assemble your soup in bowls as follows:
a. lay down a small bed of rice
b. layer over your greens
c. lay down 3-5 meatballs per bowl on your nest of rice and greens
d. ladle over your broth
e. give it all a nice flourish of Sriracha Sauce
f. sprinkle some fresh cilantro and/or a squeeze of lime

7. Savour

Green Smoothies

This is something I came upon during my year-long diet detox/rebalance. Over and over again, I would see people on blogs and message boards raving about the benefits of these, and being ever-curious about food, I decided to try one. The benefits are rumored to come from the pulverizing of the greens. All the incredible cleansing and healing nutrients in greens are very difficult for our bodies to access because greens tend to be amongst the most difficult of foods for us to digest fully. By pulverizing the greens, we make it much easier for our bodies to digest and therefore access these nutrients. They're also meant to be wonderful for supporting the liver during detoxification (or after a long night of partying). I've noticed they add a little bit of glow to my skin, my stomach always feels extra happy for hours after I have one, and after a few days of them I start to crave them every day.

It seems weird to add greens to a fruit smoothie, but it's a remarkable improvement on fruit by itself -- it adds a certain lightness and fresh taste that you'll start to crave in all your smoothies.


Ingredients:
You can get really creative with these, but the basic formula is the same:
- fruit (I like frozen best because then it's more thick and fruity since you don't need ice, but you can use fresh fruit and add ice too)
- greens (anything leafy that isn't a cabbage -- kale, arugula, cilantro, parsley, romaine lettuce, spinach to name a few)
- enough filtered water to blend

Directions:
Blend it all up as smooth as possible.

For proportion of fruit to greens, start by making what's pretty much just a fruit smoothie and add child-sized handful of greens. If you make these every day, you'll start to crave more greens in them; just do what naturally tastes best to you.

Some easy beginner's smoothie combinations:
1. Strawberries + 1/3 banana + a leaf or two of romaine lettuce
2. Bluberries + small handful of spinach

More exotic
1. Green apple + parsely
2. My favorite(!): Mango + 1/4 banana + cilantro + (if I have it) a slice of avocado

Miso Dressing

People always want my recipe for this. It's good for you too. Miso is full of probiotics, which make your stomach healthy, and raw apple cider vinegar is supposed to be good for all kinds of things. Considering how good it tastes, though, it doesn't really matter.



Ingredients:
1 part Raw Cider Vinegar
I use the hippies' friend Bragg Raw Apple Cider Vinegar. It's about $4 for a bottle and you can use it for just about everything. A smaller bottle usually lasts me about 2 months and I use it in almost everything I make that calls for vinegar. You could use rice wine vinegar or another mild vinegar as well for this dressing, but you'll need to adjust the amounts, depending on the flavor.

1 part neutral oil
Olive or canola oil are my favorites.

1.5 parts Miso paste
I prefer the Japanese kind from the Asian market because I think the flavor is more interesting, especially if it has dashi stock in it, but any kind should do. It's usually $4-6 and it lasts for months even if you're a miso-addict

A squirt or two of honey (or a little sugar if you have no honey)

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid (I usually use a jar something else came in that I cleaned out, like a jam or salsa jar)



2. Use a fork to mix and break up the chunks of miso paste and honey.

3. Screw on the lid and shake as hard as you can until it's all mixed up. It will be nice and thick and creamy.



4. Next, open up the jar, dip a carrot stick or cucumber slice or piece of lettuce in and taste it.

5. Depending on your miso paste (especially since saltiness between brands varies widely), you may have to adjust the ingredient levels to taste.
If it tastes too intense, add some oil
If it tastes too vinegary, add more miso
If it's too salty AND vinegary, add more honey and make sure it's mixed in well, and then add some oil
And so on... until you get it right!

How to use it:
- On your salad with lots of veggies and fresh greens
- As a dip for crudites
- I sometimes substitute it for mayo and mustard in tuna salad, add a little fresh ground pepper, and then have it with crackers, greens, and/or rice and nori.

Thai Style Curry

Okay, so I'm finally getting around to my first recipe.

This is incredibly easy to make with a high pay-off. I serve it for my favorite friends and even dates so I have more time to shower or clean up my apartment while it's cooking.

It does use more pre-prepared ingredients than I usually use (one ingredient, really), but this particular star ingredient is so good, you'll hardly know it was this easy and cheap to make. My ambition here is to get those of you addicted to take-out, Rice-a-Roni, and SmartOnes weaned off of them, and the rest of you a little more time to do other things than cook but still have something tasty and healthy to eat.

Here's the star ingredient:


Mae Ploy Curry Paste
This stuff is the best. You can use it in tons of things (more recipes later), it lasts forever, and it's less than $2 at the Asian grocery store.

Mae Ploy curry paste comes in all kind of flavors, including red, green, Massman, and yellow. I recommend starting out with the red or green. The red is the easiest to use with the most variety of ingredients. The green has a lighter, more fresh taste to it, but it's a lot spicier than the red. *I should note, though, that if you're strictly vegetarian OR allergic to shellfish, the only flavor that doesn't have shrimp paste in it is the yellow curry.



The other flavors you need are:
* A can of coconut milk (~14 oz. and don't get the wimpy light kind either -- I know we're trying to be healthy here, but it's not like we're going crazzzy having coconut milk. Whole foods, as research seems to show more and more these days, tends to be better for us than adulterated ones anyway. So live a little.)

* Some kind of onion. You want about 1/2 to 2/3 cup. In order of most preferred to least are:
- green onions (p.s. you can save the green tops and sprinkle over your finished dish to serve)
- scallions
- yellow onions
- red onions
(any onion-ey thing will work, though; except no Funyuns -- don't be a jerk)

* Mild vinegar
Apple Cider vinegar, rice vinegar, leftover white wine, or white wine vinegar

* Soy sauce

* Lots of veggies, including, but not limited to:
Chinese eggplant, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, bell peppers... these can be frozen or fresh. When I make this in the winter, I often end up using those frozen vegetable mixes with cauliflower, broccoli and carrots.

*Your preferred protein
With the red or green curry, a mild, light fish like tilapia (or halibut or cod) is my favorite, but tofu or chicken are also good. Just keep in mind the chicken will need to be cut up smaller to make sure it cooks through. Around 8 oz (~2 servings) is about right.
Beef or chicken would go best with the Massman curry
Chicken, beef, lamb, or some kind of bean or lentils would go best with the yellow curry

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350.
Take note: I try to get away with baking dishes whenever possible because I am lazy. Baking is a lazy cook's secret. It's usually is easier than cooking things in a pan on the stove because instead of monitoring a pan on the stove, you can just put your pan of stuff in the oven and check on it every once in a while. It's like we're making a chic casserole in the 1950s, except it's actually not a casserole at all and we don't have to take the rollers out of our hair or shine the silverware while it's baking, we can read Jezebel or Harper's, or revisit our favorite boy-band heartthrobs on YouTube, or have a kitchen Bowie dance party instead.

2. Lay your meat/tofu in the bottom of the pan.
I'm using a cast iron skillet here, but any baking dish or pan will do. I would recommend lining anything that's not non-stick or glass with something, though, because the coconut milk will carmelize a little on the edges and be hard to scrub off later.

If you're using fish, lay it gently in the bottom of your baking dish or pan.

If you're using chicken, cut it into small pieces and lay them at the bottom of the pan. Ditto for tofu.

3. Slice up your onions and sprinkle them over the fish/chicken/tofu.
I used some kind of monster green onion/leek I found at the Asian grocery store here. I'm not using any kind of protein because I'm having leftover Vietnamese meatballs on the side, but you can imagine...

4. Cut your veggies into chunks (or cut open your bag of frozen veggies) and layer them over your fish/chicken/tofu.
Here I used what I had in my fridge and freezer: fresh carrots, Chinese eggplant (the long skinny ones you usually just find at the Asian grocer or farmers market; don't use the big fat European ones -- they will taste weird), and frozen broccoli.



5. Scoop about 2-3 heaping tablespoons of the curry paste into a bowl and add a little of the coconut milk to break up the paste (this will make it easier to mix it into the rest of the milk), mix it together with a fork until it's smooth and well blended. Then, pour in the rest of the coconut milk and blend it well.



6. Pour the coconut milk/curry mixture over your pan of veggies and meat/tofu as evenly as possible (don't go crazy over this, you'll mix it up again later). It's okay that not everything's immersed.



7. Sprinkle a little (about 1-2 tablespoons) of soy sauce and then vinegar over the top of it all.

8. Pop it in the oven 20-35 minutes or until the veggies have softened and the meat is cooked through.

9. Dump some rice and water in your rice cooker and start it (or make it on the stove if you don't have a rice cooker). If you're not familiar with making rice, the basic steps are this: measure one part rice, one-and-a-half parts water into a pan; bring to a boil, reduce to the smallest simmer possible and cover with a lid; cook until all water is absorbed -- about 15 minutes for white rice, 30 minutes for brown.
By the time your rice is done cooking and rested for a bit, your curry will be ready.

10. While all that's cooking, you'll have plenty of time to read the news, call your mom, or watch some cat videos on YouTube, AND still make this miso dressing to put on your salads for lunch tomorrow and for the next month.

11. Take your curry out of the oven and mix it up to distribute the sauce (if you're doing fish, take the fillets of fish out and set them aside first so you don't mash them up). Serve over a bed of rice.



12. Enjoy and gloat over how clever your are for making something so good and healthy for so little effort.

I want to go to there.