hippie muffins and denial

blueberry banana coconut muffins, so much butter and mystery tea

 Even more comfort food (notice a trend....) I've got a lot on my mind these days. Before I get to that I'll tell you about these little wonders. Grain free blueberry coconut muffins! So my eating less grains experiment came about after too many baking binges and feeling like even though Ive been working gluten free, all the rice/oat/assorted gf flours may be contributing to inflammation and irritation in my tender lil guts. This leads to an interest in the paleo diet but given my aversion to strict rules Im sticking with weaning-experiment approach for now. But grain free or not, this bunny neeeeds to bake. Its in my DNA. My ancestors made cookies. And muffins. And so shall I.

I use www.elenaspantry.com   most often for my paleo baking endeavours but check out this banana bread from hungry hungry hippie. I had a tiny bit more almond flour left after measuring it for this recipe so I just added it and thus began the transition from banana bread to blueberry muffins :) I added a bit of coconut flour as well, coconut chips instead of oats, handful of blueberries, coconut sugar instead of stevia, a bit of lemon juice and enough mylk to make it like unto muffin batter (my ancestors would be proud).  Bake in a muffin pan  instead of a loaf pan and cooked it for 10 min less than she calls for. Boom. Muffins.Yum. As you see in the pic I ate two, then three and called it dinner. Maybe nows a good time to introduce denial. 

happy as a peach on a beach

I keep meaning to write posts (and eventually I will...)  about my road trip fun but heres just a snap to take you there. It was a great little burst of silly fun and  sunshine beaches and yummy food and time to relax and reflect :) I brought a bit of that fresh perspective home but with all that time to think I'm starting to feel a little screwed about the crohnularism. I have this doc appt. in less than 2 weeks that Ive just been ignoring for the few months after the last visit terrified the bejeebus out of me with her crazy drugs. I dont know if Im bad at talking to doctors in general or just cant talk to this particular one but I'm sooo not ready for that calibre of medication. Last I saw her I was in total fight-or-flight mode (and flyyyyyying outta there!) barely able to say a word both because Im trying not cry and shes in a rush- shoving me out with a bunch of prescriptions and bloodwork (neither which I have followed through on) and a nice "glad-you-liked-our-talk-lets-hope-you-dont-get-cancer-or-life-threatening-infections-once-we-bomb-and-poison-your-immune-system" smile. Yeah and my follow up is in two weeks. Ok so Ill go get the bloodwork done but it wont matter much since Im not taking the  meds..... I have a few ideas I want to run by her and we're gunna do some looking inside which is always a good reality check but geeze, I just hope I can say what I have to say and dont choke :(  What can I say, I kinda suck at being a sicko. I'd rather make almond butter cookies.

dinners lately (and mooooore juice!)

Ive been doing good lately with my eating less grains experiment but I caved for noodles the other day. There have been lots of tasty trials with kelp and zuchinni noodles but nothing beats these pumpkin ginger brown rice noodles. I made a deal with myself that I would balance the grain load with tons of greens! Including my very fave broccolini and tons of my backyard greens (mostly kale, arugula, spinach and parsley). And shittakes, I dont like alot of mushroomy things but damn I love me some shittake.  The sauce was probably some kind of miso tamari tahini thing but I don't remember exactly. Friggin delicious. 

oh hey its vegan!

The other day I had a hankering for pizza but  wanted to avoid anything grain based including  my usual go-to  gluten free frozen crust  or rice tortilla  for pizza so I came up with this dish. It was maybe like a ratatouille? Bottom layer-  lightly sauteed round summer squash slices, a super thick herb cashew cheese (soaked cashews blended with backyard herbs, lemon, garlic, salt) big fresh beefsteak tomato slices, sundried black olives and lots of fresh chopped basil. It required a fork and knife but was a seriously yummy pizza mess!

not vegan! 

And some total Sunday night comfort food. Roasted organic chicken thigh (because thighs are cheap and tasty!), steamed broccolini with this crazy good bone marrow-shallot butter from work and a roasted yam and baby potatoes (if this were breakfast I'd call those hash browns). I know a lot of people think chicken is boring but it is so easy and safe for my crohnie guts so sometimes boring food means safe food. Also Im still not great at cooking meat but Ive figured out some tasty and easy ways to roast chicken so its my default for meat night.

juice makes me so happy!

So those are dinners lately, and just for kicks Ill sign off with more green juice! Love love love  this vibrant medicine!

juicehead

Going on a long weekend roadtrip! In an effort to clean out the fridge of perishables I made these two super beautiful juices busting with life. You know youre a health foodie when you consider this sort of activity great fun :) Hoping this XL dose of liquid veggie love will get me and guts there and beyond in good shape. See you on the other side!

smoothie love

Just a quick post to declare my love for smoothies, the ultimate fast-health-food! Seriously guys, smoothies are foundational to my diet, preferably with lots of green! So easy to digest and they always make me feel great. This bad boy is 1/2 avocado, 1 banana, bunch of backyard babykale (my garden is doing great!) spinach, 1/2 cucumber, a generous amount of frozen blueberries, coconut water. So yummy, had to share :) 

noodles and trees

Well, Ive been a crappy blogger. Lately Ive been thinking alot about how much crohn I want to talk about here and have no conclusion for this thought. Ive been digging deeper into the world of crohnie bloggers and there is a pretty cool community out there with loads of important info. Ive read alot of stories of different treatments and scary complications ect and have am a little overwhelmed and in awe of the bravery and strength required to take the biological pharmaceuticals. Crohns is pretty wild in its varied degrees of severity and am I just so super grateful that Ive managed as well as I have as long as I have. I have to admit Ive been thinking a lot about these drugs and the (unknown) long term effects. For now Im still honoring my gut feeling (haha) that imuran/remicade/humira are not right for me, as Im still feeling amazing post-surgery and am going to ride out this great feeling as long as I can. That ride includes lots and lots and lots of greens! 

One of my very favorite dinners, miso veggie noodle soup. Ive been experimenting with eating less grains lately (more on that later) but I loooooove my rice noodles so this is challenging. This bowl is a mix of half rice noodles (actually they are pumpkin ginger rice noodles yum!) and half zuchinni noodles    to lighten the grain load. Lots of greens steamed in a broth of homemade chicken stock and chickpea miso, tamari, ginger, green onion and shitake mushrooms. Yumyumyum. And soooooo good on my guts :)

In non food related news, Ive been climbing alot of trees, with Lula standing watch. Good for catching a new perspective ;) We are loving summer :)

Alright, Im going to try to be a better blogger, because I actually kind of enjoy it :)