Easy Bourbon Sauce with Honey (SCD)

Happy New Year!! 

This is a scrumptious dessert sauce.  For good results, use a good quality bourbon, such as Makers Mark or Knob Creek. As Ina would say, no "gut rot, porch climbing hooch". I'm going to try this batch with some sauteed bananas and pound cake. This was adapted from Joy of Cooking.

Easy Bourbon Sauce with Honey (SCD)

8 TBSP (one stick) Butter
1 cup Honey
1/4 cup Bourbon
A few dashes of Sea Salt
1 large Egg

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add honey, bourbon and salt. Cook while stirring until ingredients are well combined. Whisk egg in a small bowl until light and frothy. Remove saucepan from heat and whisk in egg. Return to stove and cook over medium heat, gently stirring, until mixture boils up. Cook another one to two minutes. Cool until thickened. This will keep refrigerated for up to three days, if it lasts that long.

Broccoli Cheese Casserole (SCD)

Here's my can-free version of this classic casserole. It's just as easy too. Yogurt made with half and half takes the place of sour cream.

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

1 heaping cup of fresh Mushroom cut into pieces/bits
1 TBSP Butter
1 cup Mayonnaise
1 cup Yogurt Cream (Yogurt made with Half and Half)
2 cups (8 oz) Shredded Cheddar Cheese
1 (16 oz) bag frozen Broccoli
about 1/2 cup SCD Seasoned Bread Crumbs (easy from Heal-Balance-Live)

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

In a small skillet, saute mushroom bits in melted butter until lightly browned.

In a large mixing bowl combine mayo, yogurt, and shredded cheese. Stir in cooked mushrooms. Stir in frozen broccoli. Scoop into a casserole dish, I used a 9" x 9" Pyrex dish. Sprinkle with seasoned SCD breadcrumbs. Bake 30- 40 minutes until bubbly.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Last night we went to the annual "Carol" party hosted by my cousin Julie every year. She always tries to include a couple of dishes my son and I can eat. This year she made chicken salad and this colorful vegetable dish with cucumbers, carrots and cherry tomatoes. I thought it was great.

This is one of the Carol cards. Julie made these cards 15 years ago (I've heard you can now buy them already made, but homemade is more charming). It's like Bingo, but with Christmas pictures. Gordon was old enough this year to play and he loved it. It's been something the five year olds and the eighty year olds can play. We always look forward to Carol. Do you have any fun family traditions?

Avgolemono Soup - For What Ails You (SCD, GFCF)

It was bound to happen. An occupational hazard of my new career change has just caught up with me. I think I might have the flu. Since October I have been a rural convenience store clerk. I really enjoy my job.  I also get the local scoop on what's going on in our little town. This scoop always includes what bugs are going around as well.  I see lots of stuffed-up folks and parents who have been up all night with a sick kid (some of them in my son's class) come in for Gatorade, seven-up, over the medicines, and of course, cans of chicken noodle soup. It was only a matter of time for it to arrive in our household. We've done well so far, which I suspect the extra vitamin C, elderberry and junk free diet has helped. Now that it's here, I want to find the best ways to get rid of it. There's much to be said for age old remedies, especially the one about chicken soup. It's even been dubbed "Jewish Penicillin". As usual, science eventually catches up with what grandmothers have known all along (here, here, here, and here).

However, Greek folks will tell you that it's not just any chicken soup that can do this. They will say it is their mother's avgolemono soup that can cure anything. I have had the honor of watching a greek friend's mother prepare this soup. Traditionally it contains orzo, a small gluten pasta. For those of you who consume gluten, you can cook the orzo in the broth before adding the egg mixture. For those of you who eat rice (non SCD legal), you can add a cup of cooked rice to the soup.

Avgolemono Soup

4 cups Chicken Broth
3 Large Eggs
Juice of one Lemon

In a tall stock pot, heat both to a boil. In a small bowl, using a hand mixer, mix eggs until frothy, about 30 seconds. Add lemon juice and blend another 30 seconds. Then, with and oven mitt, slightly rock stock pot back and forth, without sloshing to broth out of the pot. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the pot while rocking it. The goal is to combine the egg and the broth without separating the egg. Heat for about one minute. Enjoy.

Can a Grain-Free Diet Reverse Tooth Decay?

Here's an interesting post from Stephen Guyenet of Whole Health Source called Dr. Mellanby's Tooth Decay Reversal Diet. He discusses a study published in 1924 called "Remarks on the Influence of a Cereal-free Diet Rich in Vitamin D and Calcium on Dental Caries in Children". Three different diets were studied for their effect on dental caries. The grain-free diet supplemented with vitamin D not only slowed the rate of dental caries, but actually reversed some decay.

Book Review - How to Peel a Peach by Perla Meyers

For many of us with food allergies, special diets, and those of us just wanting to get healthier, gone are the recipes which call for a 'can of this and a box of that mix'.  We get better acquainted with our vegetables from the produce section, our meats from the butcher and try to figure out how to do it from scratch. Or at least we try...and without Great Great Grandmother around to give us tips, we learn from scratch as well.  That's where this book becomes so valuable.  Perla Meyers is an author of eight cookbooks, a graduate of the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the countries leading cooking instructors.  With the exception of using canned tomatoes, everything she does is from scratch.  She is the master. And she's written a book full of those wonderful tips that help you pick the right produce and meats, the right cooking methods and the right tools to do the job. The book also includes 150 recipes. It is not gluten-free or SCD, but many of the recipes are naturally gluten-free, SCD or easy to tweak. She uses lots of vegetables which are very beneficial to those of us who are grain-free. I have found that the tips alone are worth reading the book.
Some of the tips covered:
What cut of beef do you use for making fajitas?
How long can I store vanilla beans?
Which salad greens keep best?
Is there a difference between butternut and buttercup squash?
What kind of pasta sauce goes well with spaghetti squash?
How important is it to peel and seed the tomatoes when making homemade tomato sauce?
How many shrimp are there in a pound?
I have trouble finding juicy lemons in the summer. Why?
How can you tell a really fresh blueberry?

For those of you who enjoy reading cookbooks this is a gem. Well worth a trip to the library. It's been around awhile (2004) so used copies on amazon are reasonable.