One of the first blogs I found when I started SCD was Beth’s blog. She did SCD for her daughter Amy who suffered from Crohn’s disease. Beth always had the best recipes! Every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas I make her stuffing and pumpkin pie. I’ve never felt deprived at the holidays and even people who didn’t eat SCD loved the food.

She wrote a cookbook that is now available in print – The Turtle Soup SCD Cookbook. While it would make a great Christmas present, I would suggest buying it beforehand to enjoy the stuffing and pumpkin pie.

For anyone wondering what I eat for holiday dinners, here’s my go-to list:

• Beth’s stuffing recipe
• Roasted turkey (in a covered pan, stuffed, no extra prep)
• Sweet potato and apple casserole (sub butternut squash if you’re on SCD)
• Steamed carrots smothered in butter
• Steamed green beans smothered in butter
• Homemade cranberry sauce (cranberries, honey)
• Homemade gravy (pan drippings + broth + onions, mushrooms, thyme)
• Beth’s pumpkin pie
• Whipped cream (can be made SCD)

Beth’s recipe book is great for everyday food and meals. It’s not a holiday recipe book, she just happens to have the best stuffing and pumpkin pie!

I have been making raw milk kefir in place of the SCD yogurt mainly because of simplicity and wanting to get the extra benefits of raw milk. I tried making raw milk yogurt a few times and it just wasn’t as good as the usual SCD yogurt (milk warmed up to 180 first). I do make the SCD yogurt every now and then with sheep milk as a treat.

For making kefir, the process is pretty simple once you have your kefir grains and some milk.

Equipment

• wooden spoon
• jar
• cloth or paper towel

Ingredients

• kefir grains
• milk

Process
Pour milk into a jar. Add about 2 tbsp of kefir grains per liter of milk using a wooden spoon. In the photo above, I put two chunks of that size for 1 liter. Stir gently.

Cover the jar with a cloth or paper towel, secured in place by a mason jar ring or elastic band (see pic below). Keep the jar on the counter for 12 hours.

Remove the kefir grains using a wooden spoon.

Leave the jar of half fermented kefir on the counter for another 12 hours (for 24 hours total) covered with cloth. After fermenting, cover the jar with a lid and place in the fridge.

Storing kefir grains
Store the kefir grains in a small jar of milk, in the fridge for up to a week. You can freeze them in milk as well to keep for longer periods. I just keep mine in the fridge and give them fresh milk and a gentle stir once every week or so.

If you want your kefir grains to multiply quickly, keep the grains on the counter either making continuous batches of kefir or just supplying new milk to them every couple days.

Notes
Kefir grains are sensitive to metal so don’t use metal spoons, bowls, or strainers. I use glass jars and wooden spoons when handling them.

I found kefir grains by contacting my local Weston A Price Foundation chapter and asking chapter members if anyone had some to share. You can also check local classified ads or ask around at farmers markets.

Kefir will ferment a bit faster in warmer temperatures, but doesn’t require a source of heat like yogurt does. In the winter, I place my jar on the top of the fridge or close to the stove so it gets a bit of extra heat.

Some people use a plastic strainer and rinse kefir grains under water. I found this step unnecessary as long as I give the milk a gentle stir once the grains are added.

I find kefir is best used within a week. If kept longer, it will very slowly keep fermenting until it’s quite strong.

On SCD this is considered an advanced food but I wish I had tried it sooner. I found it does help with carbohydrate tolerance and Candida symptoms. It’s worth trying after a couple months on SCD just start very slowly with a spoonful at first and increase the dose from there. I flavour mine just like yogurt, with honey and berries.

One of the first foods I’ve added in “after SCD” is sweet potatoes. This Thanksgiving I made a dish with sweet potato and apples which after searching online I see is actually a popular dish. I have since made it with butternut squash and it is a wonderful SCD Thanksgiving dish.

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Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of October and is probably my new favorite holiday. As a kid I never liked traditional fall foods like pumpkin pie, stuffing, and sweet potatoes but now I can’t get enough! I wanted to share here what my 2010 Thanksgiving meal looked like. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato & apple casserole, green beans, carrots, with gravy and cranberry sauce on the side and pumpkin pie for dessert.

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This is a SCD pumpkin pie-like snack I have been enjoying now that pumpkins are in season. I’m not eating nuts in any large amount and I avoid baking with them, so I didn’t feel like making a full pie crust. Also, I’ve been trying to have more raw egg yolks for extra nutrients so I wanted something I could mix them into. This was quite delicious but you can play around with the ingredient amounts to suit your taste.

For SCD pumpkin puree, I bought a whole pumpkin, cut it in half and baked it cut side down in a glass pan for 1 hour at 350F. For the nut milks, just use a small amount of almond flour, cashews or coconut chips and blend with 1/2 cup water.
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I bought a bunch of over-ripe perfect SCD bananas the other day. Rather than just eat them plain I wanted to have more ‘snacky’ things to satisfy cravings. So, I made two of my now favorite banana recipes. The pancakes I had originally seen on Pecanbread‘s site which has many kid-friendly SCD recipes. Honestly I’ve liked every recipe I tried from that site, so it’s worth having a look! Lots of dairy-free ones too. I had heard about banana ice cream a long time ago but had never tried it. Instead I kept making ice cream with SCD yogurt. Since I’m dairy-free right now I wanted to try it out and it was pretty good!

Banana Pancakes
1 banana
2 eggs

Mash the banana in a bowl. Add the eggs and whisk until it’s pretty smooth. Heat butter or lard in a pan over medium-low heat. Drop a spoonful of batter at a time onto the pan. The smaller you make these the easier it is to flip them. Cook on one side until firm enough to flip, then finish on the other side a couple minutes.

Serve with bacon and some berries.

Banana Ice Cream
Bananas

Peel and cut up the bananas into chunks. Place in the freezer for a few hours (maybe while you’re cooking and eating dinner). Put the pieces in a blender of food processor and blend until smooth.

Scoop into a bowl and put in the freezer for a while if you need to harden it up a bit. I left a portion of mine overnight in the freezer and it was perfect ice cream even the next morning.

You can also add things to the banana ice cream. I made it a second time with 1 tbsp vanilla per banana (I love vanilla) and it was delicious! Strawberries mixed in would be nice too.

If you need more step-by-step instructions, How to Cook Like Your Grandmother has a nice post. You don’t need to use milk or any liquid to get the banana to blend perfectly smooth.

Gotta love simple 1 or 2 ingredient recipes!

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This post is part of Two for Tuesdays recipe blog hop, Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop, and Wheatless Wednesday over at Naturally Knocked Up.

The following video is a little sneak peek at the Surf & Turf: How to Cook Meat & Seafood e-course.

I can’t wait to try this. When I went to a restaurant last week for oysters, they also had ceviche on the menu. My friend who joined me for dinner said she had tried it once and loved it. I think I’ll try making it at home for my first time tasting it.

If you think this is just a bit too weird or ‘raw’ for your tastes, don’t worry. Ann Marie will be covering some basics too including how to grill grass-fed meat, make bone broths and what to do with all those organs.

You can still sign up for the Surf & Turf e-course but only this week. Enrollment ends August 14.

Click here to sign up!

If you participated in the giveaway last week, don’t forget to email me for a discount coupon code of $20 off – kat.garson @ gmail.com.

A few weeks ago (ok maybe over a month now?) I started a health pact with fellow primal eater Roger who co-blogs over at Son of Grok’s. I suggested he should eat more soup and he said he had never actually made it before! I can’t imagine never having homemade soup. I was going to point him to a recipe on my blog and realized I have no chicken soup recipe posted. So I wrote it to him in an email, trying very hard to outline each step. I was worried about leaving out details since this is something I make so often I’m usually on autopilot and don’t think about what I’m doing.  Once you make it a couple times, it’s very easy to customize to suit your tastes.

Here’s the email instructions I sent him, with pictures he sent back documenting his first attempt at homemade soup:

Basic Ginger Chicken Soup

2 lb chicken legs pieces
ginger, sliced

1 large onion
1-2 large carrots
2-4 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp each sea salt & pepper

big bunch greens
ginger, grated

Place chicken pieces in a crockpot, skin side up. Slice fresh ginger root with a knife (or if frozen, grate it) and place around chicken pieces. Add enough water to almost cover the chicken pieces. You want to leave the chicken poking out a bit so the skin browns.

Cook on low all day (or at least 6 hours).

When you get home from work (or after 6 hours) remove the ginger pieces using a fork, if you can find them. Chop up the onion and carrot into small bite sized chunks, toss into crockpot (try not to take the lid off too long). Chop up the garlic into little pieces and add to the soup. Add salt & pepper. Turn crockpot to high for 45 minutes. (Note, Roger added some red pepper and celery, really add any vegetables you want!)

After 45 minutes add the greens and mix them in a bit with a spoon (can tear up into smaller pieces first if preferred).

Let it simmer another 15 minutes until greens are wilted.

Ladle the soup into a bowl, grabbing lots of veggies and broth. Pull out the meat from a couple chicken pieces with a knife and fork and add the meat to your bowl. Grate some fresh ginger into your bowl, about 1/2 tsp. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Looks like he did an awesome job with this soup! He said it was great and his daughter loved it too. Only thing I would change is to tell him to add a bit more water at the beginning. My slow-cooker seems to keep all moisture in but his evaporated a bit.

For anyone just starting out on SCD or if you still have digestive symptoms, it is usually recommended to cook vegetables for a longer time and puree them into the soup. I prefer now adding the vegetables towards the end of cooking so that they aren’t completely mushy and have some flavour left. Use your judgement for how long you need to cook them and add/substitute any vegetables that you can tolerate. I like to use ginger in my soups because it can help a lot with digestion and inflammation, and it gives it a nice kick.

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This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

Since I was trying to cut down on fruit and beat my sugar addiction, I decided it was a good idea to go strawberry picking. And of course they had a sale on, pick three 4-liter baskets for 25$. So I had to pick three baskets, since I’d be saving money. I went to the Dekok Family Berry Farm on Friday before work, which meant that I had the strawberries beside me at work all day. I actually think this helped. I had to think about it, consciously NOT eat them and force my mind to accept that. Maybe it’ll actually help me get over the psychological aspect of sugar addiction sooner. I did pretty good not eating too many. I also didn’t put any honey in my yogurt that day, just having fresh berries was tasty enough.

When I was young my mom would always make huge batches of strawberry jam and can them. I wanted to make some jam but decided to make a bunch of different things as well. Turns out three baskets was not enough for what I wanted to do and now I’m going to have to pick more!

• Frozen berries: I froze at least 6 liters of berries, about half of them sliced and the rest whole. We eat a lot of berries here so that won’t last long. I hope to freeze at least 10 more liters next week. I always place the berries on parchment paper on a baking pan and then leave them in the freezer for at least 3 hours. Then, remove them from the freezer and transfer to a bag or container. Freezing them all separated on a sheet first will ensure they don’t stick together. Same thing with slices, just put the slices on a piece of parchment paper.
  



• Dehydrated berries: I dehydrated about 3 cups of berries, sliced onto a couple trays in my Excalibur dehydrator. It worked really well but next time I will try to cut them the same thickness. A few were done after 10 hours (at 105F), but most took another 2 hours. I liked the ones that were cut to at least 1/4″ or thicker. These are a more advanced SCD treat since they are dehydrated.
• Fruit roll-ups: I had never tried this before, it worked so well! I just pureed 1 1/2 cups of strawberries and added a tbsp of honey, then poured that onto a fruit leather lined tray in the dehydrator. 10 hours at 105F it was perfect! These are pretty advanced as well since it’s a dehydrated food, but you can always cook the berries first (make a jam) and then dehydrate into leathers. I wanted them raw to try and preserve nutrients.
• Strawberry jam: Of course I made a bit of jam, just because that’s what we usually do. I didn’t have very much left at this point so I only ended up with about 1/2 cup of jam, but oh my goodness it was the best jam ever! I just cut up the overly ripe soft berries into a pot and put it on low. It simmered while I cooked and ate lunch, trying to stir it every now and then. I kinda forgot about it and when I finally remembered to check on it, the jam was looking really thick and dark, almost as if it was burning, but not quite. I turned it off, let it cool, added just 1 tbsp honey and put it in a jar. Honestly, the texture of it is just like jam from the store it’s so thick. I didn’t bother using gelatin because I didn’t have any and really it didn’t need it. Next time I make jam I’m definitely going to leave it simmering for a long time like this one.
• Strawberry gelato: I made a strawberry gelato with some raw sheep milk. If you’re wondering the difference between gelato and ice cream, gelato is made from whole milk, ice cream from cream, and of course there’s also frozen yogurt from yogurt. I make SCD legal ice cream with yogurt made from whipping cream and have been enjoying that, but wanted to try making some from the delicious milk that I seem to be digesting well. I would have substituted whipping cream yogurt plus more honey if making this SCD legal.

1 1/2 cups sheep milk (or 1 1/2 cups SCD legal cream yogurt + 2 tbsp honey)

1 1/2 cup strawberries (measured whole) + handful of berries chopped coarsley

2 egg yolks

1/4 cup honey

1 1/2 tsp vanilla or almond extract

Puree the 1 1/2 cups of strawberries using an immersion blender, food processor, or potato masher. Add yolks, milk (or yogurt), vanilla and mix well. Fold in the chopped strawberries. Process in an ice cream maker according to its directions. Place in the freezer to harden it. Scoop and serve.

My ice cream maker is a Rival electric maker and it will make soft-serve ice cream if you serve it immediately, or if you freeze it long enough it will be like regular ice cream. This is what it looks like half way, if you aren’t patient enough to let it freeze completely.

And just like that, 12 liters of strawberries are all put away for later. I’ll probably go strawberry picking a few more times, and each time make one thing from them in a larger portion. The fruit roll-ups, jam and dehydrated strawberries are so concentrated you need a lot of berries to make a good amount.

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This post is part of Two for Tuesdays Blog Hop and Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays. Check out all the real food recipes over there!

I had a get together with my closest girl friends over the weekend for a fun Saturday night. We all brought snacks and just chatted and pigged out for hours. It was so fun! I made some chocolate fudge and truffles. We had fresh fruit with chocolate dip. There were a few bags of chips and candy but I didn’t have any. One of my friends made a fabulous artichoke dip that was SCD legal. It was just mayonnaise, Parmesan cheese, garlic and artichoke hearts. Others had it with tortilla chips but I was more than content to just eat it off the spoon. It was sooo good!

I was determined to make it since it was so simple and I love artichokes. First I made up a batch of mayonnaise so that I would be ready to put everything together the next day. I don’t think I have written about mayonnaise before on this blog. I always thought everyone made mayonnaise and it was so easy it didn’t really need explaining. There are tons of naturally SCD-legal recipes out there so I didn’t bother posting any. I don’t make it often, usually only when I really want it for summer BBQs (I love it on burgers) or for a dip. Lately on blogs and Twitter I have seen a lot of people who have had their mayonnaise fail. I had no idea what they meant. I assumed taste but it seemed like they meant the consistency wasn’t right. I wasn’t doing anything fancy and I think everytime I made it I put in different ingredients. Some I made with only yolk, other times with 1 yolk and 1 whole egg, sometimes with vinegar, sometimes with lemon juice, sometimes with dried mustard spice, others with dijon mustard, often I eye-balled the amount of oil I used.

When I started looking into the common technique that was being used to make mayo, I realized what most people were experiencing. Most recipes say to make it in a food processor and pour the oil in slowly, very very slowly. Every now and then the oil doesn’t mix in, separates, and the mayonnaise doesn’t form properly leaving a big oily mess. I can’t imagine if this happened to me, I think I would cry. I always make my mayo with pastured backyard chicken eggs (limited in quantity so cherished and worshipped in this house!) and very expensive high quality oils, spices and mustard. If I ended up wasting these ingredients just once I would probably have given up making mayonnaise!

I never realized my selective lazyness in the kitchen had saved me from the horrors of mayonnaise gone bad. I coudn’t be bothered to ever try making mayonnaise with a food processor and pouring the oil in a very fine dribble. The first time I ever made it I googled for “easy mayonnaise” or something similar. I found a video showing how to make it with a stick (immersion) blender and never looked back. My first attempt was perfect so I never bothered with any other technique. If you don’t own a stick blender, it’s worth it to buy one. You can usually find a cheap one for about $20 new, or check out second hand shops. There are infinite uses for a stick blender, and often they come with a food processor attachment. That’s the only food processor I use in my kitchen, even to make my nut flour goods. You can even make whipping cream and butter with it. Blender, beater, food processor all-in-one cheap little easy-to-clean package.

Stick Blender Mayonnaise
So here’s how you make the mayonnaise with a stick blender. Use a tall wide-mouth jar or the tall cup that comes with a stick blender.

1. Pour the egg in first so it’s on the bottom.
2. Add your spices and lemon juice or vinegar.
3. Pour the oil in on top and let everything re-settle (only takes a few seconds).
4. Put the stick blender in all the way to the bottom and turn it on. Watch it mix.
5. Once it’s mostly mixed, slowly pull the stick blender out while it’s still running to mix the top.

If for some reason the mayo doesn’t fully mix, then run the stick blender up and down until it is.

Voila, easy mayonnaise.

If you want to see it in action, check out this YouTube video (just ignore the ingredients – canola oil bad, sugar bad – and don’t worry about going really slowly) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz0fLT_k3_U

This can probably be used to ‘fix’ ruined mayonnaise that didn’t work in a regular food processor. Just put it in a tall jar/cup and wait for everything to settle. The egg mixture should go to the bottom, the oil on top. Then run the stick blender in it starting from the bottom.

Artichoke Dip
Now for the artichoke dip. Take 1 cup mayonnaise, 1 cup Parmesan cheese (grated), 4 cloves of garlic (mashed/minced), 1 jar of artichoke hearts (about 6-8). Mush everything in a bowl and spread out into a pan or glass pie plate. Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes until bubbly.

No crackers required, just eat it with a spoon. Ok if you really want crackers then check out Comfy Belly’s Parmesan Crackers and Mrs. Ed’s Cheesy Sunflower Crackers. I made a combination of those, using sunflower seeds, cheddar cheese and thyme, and they tasted great.

For the full ingredients for my mayonnaise see my Dips & Condiments recipe page.

**This recipe has been linked for the Slightly Indulgent Tuesday over at Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free and for Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.