I wouldn’t have even bothered to do the test if I didn’t think I had digestive problems. I know I do. But some of the information I got from my labs this week was information I didn’t even know could be found.

It’s been 11 months since I went on the GAPS diet, which has helped immensely with IBS symptoms. But I’ve had to stay on a modified version of the introduction diet: whenever I try to introduce too much raw vegetable, I pay for it. And fruit? I stayed off for a long time until peach season was in full bloom. I indulged some, really imagining that local, in-season produce could really be okay. But it wasn’t.

In August I met with a chiropractor and energy worker who helped me dramatically, and when I saw her later in the fall, she confirmed what I’d suspected: that I just had to eliminate all fruit. Me + any kind of sugar = problem.

To compensate for my lack of sweet indulgence of any kind, I sought out more and more fat. I was eating spoonfuls of nut butter after high-protein, filling meals. It seemed both a physical need to load up at meals in the darkening days of late fall and also an emotional need to indulge. For a while these were all soaked nuts, but that got so expensive to buy and time-consuming to make, I started buying regular nut butters, which I think have way too much phytic acid for me.

But compulsive eating wasn’t the only problem: I was also scratching the skin on my knees and elbows until they bled. This happened after several months after my first child was born and lasted until he was two and sleeping through the night; I don’t know if it was all the healing stuff I did that spring, or just the time elapsed, a decrease in nursing, or or an increase in interrupted sleep that made the difference. With my second child, the psoriasis came just a few months after she was born (at home, not a c-section), and now 17 months in and some decrease in nursing overall and night waking in particular, I see no signs of improvement.

Rather than take steroids or other topicals that are just going to push the problem further into my body as I did through my childhood and young adulthood, I’m determined to address the source of the problem. If only we could figure out what that is.

From the kitchen in the house we are renovating. I feel like MY insides must look just as bad.

The doctor recommended an expanded GI panel from DiagnosTechs. The test cost around $250 and would analyze my stool and saliva for parasites, bacteria, food sensitivities and some other stuff I didn’t even know it you could analyze.

The results just came in last week. I am free of any icky critters, my pH is fine, and Candida (yeast) showed up at only trace levels. Good news.

However, there were some bacteria, which we’re going to treat with Goldenseal and garlic, and the test confirmed dairy (casein) and gluten (gliadin) sensitivity through positive SIgA results.

No surprise there. The doctor I saw is generally not an absolutist on food or a believer in intolerances needing to last a lifetime, but she said it was clear I needed to stay gluten-free and dairy-free. The test panel explains:

“Predisposed individuals often experience intestinal inflammation after consumption of offending foods. Subsequently, the intestinal mucosa releases secretory IgA to neutralize the antigens. SIgA testing, unlike IgG, allows the detection of mild, subclinical and latent intolerance cases. Furthermore, the short SIgA half-life ensures earlier and more effective compliance and follow-up assessments.”

To have a positive gliadin AB, SIgA reading at the numerical level I showed after more than seven years on a gluten-free diet (and very little prepared food in my diet in the past year) means that I am super sensitive, the doc said.

Also of interest was the fact that I had “abnormally low” Chrymotrypsin levels, which is “suggestive of poor pancreatic output of all enzymes.” Perhaps this explains why I’m so darn sensitive to sugar! For this we are supplementing with an enzyme and hoping it will kick-start my body into remembering how to make it itself (and certainly help me until that happens).

But the most important thing, is, apparently, that I have just about no protective gut lining, or Intestinal Secretory IgA (SIgA). When people talk about a damaged gut “leaking” food into the bloodstream, it’s because there is no protective mucus to stop it. This test calls low <400 mg/100 g dry wt.

My number?

<1.

Seriously.

So even after a year of gentle eating, my gut is still this damaged. I think if I hadn’t gone on GAPS, I would probably be in the hospital on an IV!

If I understand it correctly, my epithelium is so compromised, my digestive system is letting food particles into my bloodstream, and then my body is lashing out at them as though they are foreign invaders. One of the results is the psoriasis. If you poke around online, you’ll also see a lot about low SIgA being linked to autism and ADHD. The doctor says my gut, pancreas and thyroid woes are all linked.

So what do we do? For one thing, I’m taking L-Glutamine to help heal my gut lining. I’ve taken this before and am not sure why I didn’t pick it back up months ago. The doctor is also ordering me some casein-free colostrom. Gosh, maybe it would even help to drink my own milk. I’m staying on the Green Pastures fermented cod liver oil and fish oil.

There was another Medi-Herb product the doctor wanted to put me on but isn’t since I’m still breastfeeding little A. I worry that at some point, I might need to switch the priority of gut health to hers over mine and wean. My son nursed until age 3, and I didn’t think I do anything shy of two years this time around. But something’s gotta give.

This doctor and other practitioners are not finding (through muscle-testing) that I need probiotics at this time, and since I didn’t have a huge overgrowth of yeast and since I feel like I have had negative reactions when I’ve taken the GAPS-recommended Bio-Kult, I will stay off. I’m eating some fermented foods (not a lot), but I’ve slacked on using lots of animal fats like lard, as I was some months back. Lately, I’ve stuck mostly to coconut oil for cooking and olive oil for extra (uncooked) flavor.

And I haven’t been eating much in the way of organ meats, as GAPS would recommend. It’s enough work to start the day with green juice, get some veggies cooked in broth, make eggs, veggies and some (non-processed) meat and then do it all over again for lunch and dinner, plus prepare meals for the kids and my husband. And did I mention we are renovating a house? And I’m organizing a school fundraiser for a wetlands learning lab?

So what else is supposed to help with gut lining? Less cortisol. Less stress. More relaxation. Riiiight.

My fear of depression scares me away from a life of quiet (or much meditation, or enough yoga over walks), but taking on too much clearly is doing me no favors. If I just weren’t interested in so many things…

The baby is waking up from the nap she miraculously went down for (just over an hour ago) with relative ease (a rarity!), and my son and husband are headed back from the farmers market. Maybe now that it’s past noon on Sunday, a full 24 hours after I started this post, I should just pull the trigger and get it up.

But I’m pretty sure there is a whole lot more to learn.

When my nutritionist friend suggested I try integrating some animal protein and animal fat back into my diet, I was offended. Didn’t she know how bad it was for the earth to waste all those resources on raising animals instead of vegetables and grain? Didn’t she know that a low-fat diet was healthier?

Since I was grappling with infertility, depression, cystic acne and digestive issues and she had recovered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and infertility to be midway through a healthy pregnancy, I decided to give her way a shot. It turns out that she knew a lot more than I did.

Unlike pale yellow battery eggs, pastured eggs are the color of a richly orange setting sun.

The processed soy I was consuming three or more times a day was terrible for my health, and it wasn’t good for the environment either. Once I added animal products back into my diet — slowly at first — my periods came back, my mood improved, and I felt stronger than ever before.

What followed was a move to gluten-free and dairy-free living and better mental and physical health than I’d ever known.

And, later, a baby.

I’ve now had two easy pregnancies but twice found my system struggling in the postpartum year. Both times I’ve improved dramatically by cutting back or cutting out all grains, starchy vegetables and sugar, even fruit.

Like more and more people I know, I’m following the GAPS diet. Designed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride with a nod to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. It has helped children on the autism spectrum, people with Crohn’s Disease, and so many more. I have become a believer that my body and mind were poisoned by all the gluten-full food my unknowing Celiac Disease self ate for so long and by so much processed food.

Now I keep my tummy happy by eating only Real Food I make myself. A staple is bone broth, or stock made from the bones of pasture-raised chicken and beef from sustainable farms. If animals were all eating the foods they were designed to eat — grass for cows, bugs and such for chickens — there wouldn’t be much of an environmental argument against being an omnivore. Maybe there are too many people in the world to feed them all on small family farms, but I can eat that way.

To get my fresh, vital phytonutrients, I use a juicer most mornings, using as much local and seasonal produce I can. Although I used to eat salad three times a day, until I can handle the fiber of raw foods again, juicing is the best I can do.

All my efforts come from the belief that food is medicine. There is nothing that mainstream medicine could do for me that would fix my problems if I didn’t address them at the source through nutrition. My body had 30+ years of eating the wrong food for it (and often, not good stuff for anyone), and it may take a while to repair itself, especially while breastfeeding and slowly returning to non-pregnancy hormone levels.

In November, I will hear Campbell-McBride speak about GAPS and hear other Real Food renegades bust myths at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference in Dallas, Texas. I hope everyone who cares about food for health and about the health of the planet will join me!

Related posts:

GAPS Diet update

Why I’m not a vegetarian anymore

Gluten-free expo showcases products galore

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Read more posts about food at Blog Action Day 2011!

Going gluten-free in 2004 was part of my holistic effort to bring my body into balance and heal my thyroid from Graves’ Disease, autoimmune hyperthyroidism. My goal was to get off anti-thyroid medication and get healthy enough to get pregnant. Although I also hoped to go off anti-depressant medication, I didn’t really expect that a gluten-free, dairy-free diet and other alternative health measures would also make such a dramatic change in my mental outlook.

That year of diet changes and nutritional supplements ended with me in a healthier, happier place than I’d ever been.

But gluten-free is not enough for me. I reduced carbs dramatically after some rough gastrointestinal episodes shortly my son was born in 2006. It became clear that I could not tolerate corn and that even limiting rice and other starches helped my gut and my psyche, especially since my body was so challenged by recovering from a surgical delivery and from exclusively breastfeeding my son until he became interested in food around one year.

My nutritionist introduced me to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and the Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet (GAPS), protocols that limit sugars to monosaccharides and that eliminate all grain and starchy vegetables. Yesterday, Jenny at Nourished Kitchen blog posted a great intro to GAPS: “Why everyone is talking about the GAPS diet and 5 resources to get started.”

As my son grew,  I started baking to provide him gluten-free substitutes for preschool and parties, but he wasn’t the only one to eat them! The more I ate of these breads and cookies — even if they used only a little maple syrup — the worse I felt. Finally, this past February, I felt I had no choice but to commit to the GAPS diet.

I generally prefer grown foods to processed foods, but caution must be exercised in moving from the introductory phase of the GAPS diet to the full GAPS diet. A sensitive gut can only take so much acid, sugar, and fiber.

There was good progress until peaches showed up at the farmers market and yellow cherry tomatoes that taste like sunshine popped up in every corner of our garden. It’s been hard to resist the fruits of the summer harvest, but my tummy today is telling me that I’ve moved too fast. For people like me whose gut has experienced such damage, patience needs to be had before one can tolerate the sugar and fiber of fresh fruits and vegetables in any substantial quantities.

Many approaches to gluten-free living simply substitute gluten-free grains for gluten grains. So I’m interested to see what the vendors and experts will say at tomorrow’s Gluten-Free Expo sponsored by the Celiac Disease Program at Children’s National Medical Center. The issue of Living Without magazine where I learned about the expo contained an article about SCD/GAPS, so I’m hopeful that people are getting on board the grain-free, low-sugar bandwagon.

The expo is 4-8 p.m. and is followed by a cocktail reception, both at the Embassy Suites downtown. Details and tickets are available at  www.DCGlutenFreeExpo.com. There will be over 50 vendors talking up and/or selling their wares (some at a significant discount), and participants can learn more about the gluten-free community in and around D.C.

Submit a comment below about what diet works best for you and enter to win a free entrance to the expo ($10) and the cocktail party ($75).

Read more about Real Food at Kelly the Kitchen Kop who hosts a great Real Food Wednesdays blog carnival each week!

I’m looking for my inner “healing junkie.” Have you found her? She seems to run and hide the second the baby wakes up, like right now.

(A day later…) But it’s not the baby’s fault. I lost my spiritual way a few years back, when I started doing too much to put out into the world instead of into my body and my home.

And I lost my nutrition way when my son started attended preschools and birthday parties, and I taught myself how to make “healthy” gluten-free options so he could have bread, cake, muffins.

The problem is, my gut was so harmed from years of a grain-based and low-fat diet — and then hit hard during my first pregnancy by the introduction of corn and lots of goat cheese — that I just can’t tolerate even gluten-free substitutes or much in the way of sweet. I really need to be grain-free, starch-free, sugar-free.

After having symptoms of IBS through most of my pregnancy and postpartum, I finally had three episodes in the space of one week and convinced me to do the GAPS diet – the Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet, designed by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride. It takes much from the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and I consulted both back in 2006 but never did them full-out. Now I am.

It’s tough as a mom with an exclusively breastfed baby to get enough calories. The first week was very challenging as I subsisted mostly off of homemade chicken stock made into broth with veggies. And I ate egg yolks and nut butter. I had days of feeling shaky and like I could not possibly get enough calories.

It was sugar withdrawal, and once I was out the other side, I felt like I’d broken an addiction. What a relief to be free of the highs and lows of starch-laden diet.

Granted, I wasn’t eating nearly as many carbs as most people do, but I was doing a lot more than I had in the past, including lots of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rice. And I was eating fruit whenever (even though most of it doesn’t combine well with meat), and too much of it.

Most importantly, I was acting like I was in fight or flight mode all the time instead of believing in the goodness of what I was taking into my body.

But three weeks ago, I put a stop to that. Nothing packaged passes my lips now, with the sole exception of some nut and seed butter because I just can’t make that much. I do have lots of properly soaked nuts to munch on if I need something I can take with me, but I’m trying to eat only sitting down, and only at home if at all possible.

I borrowed the DVD Crazy Sexy Cancer from a friend, who got it because our friend, Liz, is just starting treatment for breast cancer. The film reminded me of the importance of the spiritual component to healing. I, too, used to be a healing junkie, but it’s hard to be that focused on yourself when you are a mom.

Until crisis comes. And then I had to make a change. When I saw the film, I felt so good about having gotten on the GAPS bandwagon and decided to make my health a priority.

So here’s how my fridge and plate look:

• all my meat is cooked fresh (mostly from our farmer) – nothing processed or packaged

• I’ve got stock simmering on the stove most of the time and have broth with each meal (if not as the basis of the meal)

• I’m not eating any fruit except apple cooked in water with the water thrown out to lessen the sugar

• my day begins with fresh juice – celery, parsley, cucumber, dandelion green, carrot, and a little beet and apple

• I wait until after preschool dropoff to have breakfast, which includes broth with veggies well cooked and either egg/nut butter/zucchini and onion pancakes (just those four ingredients) or just an egg
  

  These are a variation on the GAPS intro diet pancakes using banana instead of zucchini. Just banana, almond butter, and eggs!

• other solid foods include almond meal/egg/coconut oil “bread” (just those three ingredients!) and avocado

• sauerkraut accompanies all meals, as does some pickle juice and a digestive enzyme

• my probiotic is now Bio-Kult

I’m also adding in some flower essences and essential oils, and I got acupuncture today (that means last Wednesday!) and will try to get some craniosacral therapy or an osteopathic treatment.

I also plan to try to implement the following evening ritual when there is nothing else going on:

• Put baby to bed 7-7:30

• Computer time until 8:15 or 8:30

• Bounce on the trampoline and/or do yoga

• Snack 9:00 (I just can’t make it nursing all night without one!)

• Straightening up, prepping for the next day, and trying to do some meditation 9:50 to get to bed at 10

One week later…
Plenty of ups and downs.  I haven’t hit the above timeline at ALL (though I did go to bed at 6 p.m. on my birthday!) There is no time to write when you spend about 2-3 hrs/day on food prep and eating mindfully and also spend about 2-3 hrs a day nursing a baby and trying to get her to go to sleep!

GAPS is clearly the way I need to go, but it’s causing me to have to let some other things fall to the side. That is probably a good thing!

So before another week goes by, I’ll go ahead and document this phase of the journey and share just a few resources for the GAPS-inclined, especially in the DC area:
Simply Being Well and Monica Corrado’s new GAPS blog
Harris Whole Health

When I wrote this essay, “Attemptus Interruptus,” about having to postpone conception to deal with Graves’ Disease, autoimmune hyperthyroidism, I had no idea that the woman I referenced in the second-to-last paragraph would face the same disease. I was best friends with S in eighth grade and spent most of the summer of 1987 on her boat, watching her waterski.

Today, S was scheduled to have surgery to remove her thyroid, which was 2-3 times the normal size due to Graves’ Disease.

We hadn’t seen each other since 1994, but we were friends on Facebook, where she saw my birth story, read a reference to thyroid problems, and reached out to ask me about my experience. She had just been diagnosed with Graves’, she said, and she was exploring her options since she wanted to have more children.

I told her I had the same disease. In 2004, I was on anti-thyroid medication for almost 11 months. I’d rejected the standard treatment of radioactive iodine (RAI) to ablate my thyroid. For one thing, my uptake was only 45%, so I’d have to have had double the dose of someone whose thyroid would soak up 90%. But regardless of the rates, I didn’t want to kill such an important gland.

I wanted to get better.

So I spent a ton of money and time on complementary treatments including acupuncture, energy work, lots of supplements, detox protocols, eventually a major diet change (going gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free), and some spiritual inquiry as well. I saw an endocrinologist and a naturopath regularly and got blood drawn every month, sometimes more frequently.

When S told me she felt pushed around by her doctor and didn’t want to pursue RAI for a variety of reasons (you can’t try to conceive for 6 months, and you have to stay away from young children for a week and flush the toilet at least two times every time you use it for that week, if I remember correctly), I found an alternative care center near her home for her to check out.

But that much enlarged is a whole other story. I can’t imagine how she’s coping with the symptoms of the disease and with a toddler. I am hoping that things go well today and that she can find the right balance of medication or iodine or whatever to keep her from falling into depression, which can happen when thyroid hormones are too low.

I have to wonder about all the time we spent together engaging in various typical teen and some not-so-healthy behaviors or if anything about the neighborhood we lived in had any role to play in this coincidence. Her cousin, who also lived nearby, wrote me on Facebook asking for natural fertility advice.

It’s bizarre to be reunited with someone by symptoms. This is one of two people who came to my brother’s funeral in 1987 and with whom I spent untold hours at a very formative time in my life. We were never destined to pursue the same academic or career paths, but it did bring a smile to my face when she said that she watched a post-Homecoming Dance video of us when visiting her parents this past Thanksgiving, and boy, did we have big hair!

Having not actually seen anyone from high school in real life since running into her in 1994, and facing a possible 20th high school reunion this year (if anyone organizes it), I’m feeling both very old and, at the same time,  like someone must have just pushed a fast-forward button.

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How has Facebook surprised you?

I’m so excited for tonight’s Holistic Moms meeting on Special Diets! Going GF (and also dairy-free, soy-free, and corn-free) has made such a difference in my physical and mental health!

Cheryl Harris of Harris Whole Health will be speaking on the reasoning behind gluten-free diets, dairy-free diets, the GAPS diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and other special diets.

Not everyone needs to go gluten-free, but I continue to believe that a whole lot of people would be served well by it, or at least by limiting their intake of gluten, especially since the grains are rarely properly prepared for optimum digestion.

We have some great giveaways for member attendees of tonight’s meeting from the following folks, in addition to Cheryl, who is giving away a gluten-free class that addresses the hows in addition to the whys:

Melissa Diane Smith, author of Going Against the Grain and the new Gluten Free Throughout the Year, which she will send to one lucky winner.

Nancy Tringali Piho, author of My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus, which she will send to one lucky winner.

Mary Rand Hess, author of The Day I Met the Nuts children’s book (about discovering and living with food allergies), which she will inscribe and send to one lucky winner.

Choices by Shawn, a restaurant in Fairfax that has gluten-free items.

Essential oil misters/sprays and a bean and grain chart from Monica Corrado of Simply Being Well.

And I’m giving away a copy of Dr. Stephen Wangen’s Healthier Without Wheat.

More details are on the Arlington/Alexandria HMN Chapter blog, but come join the fun 7-9 p.m. at AUMC, 716 S. Glebe Rd., Arlington, VA 22204.

“Gluten-free food at Waldorf school” is something of an oxymoron; those places love their wheat! My son brings his own bread and muffins for snack to replace the homemade, whole wheat organic snacks the students and teachers make in the classroom.

Our GF bread ready to freeze for the next few weeks of school

Last night my husband said to some friends of the boy’s school and his diet, “E has his own bread,” which I revised as “We make bread for him and bring it.” This is no small feat as I am not a big baker, but I’m happy to say that only once this year did I have to resort to sending a piece of packaged millet bread.

Since E and I have both tested as sensitive to yeast and should probably also avoid it to quell Candida, I prefer to make simple quick breads. They are, also, quicker!

After much trial and error with various ingredients and attempts to remove sugar, here is the recipe I have adapted from Monica Corrado of Simply Being Well, who, in her GF cooking classes has referenced Analise Roberts’ Gluten-Free Baking Classics. The big change I’ve made (in addition to not caring how the loaf looks) is taking out most of the sugar and using maple syrup and coconut milk instead.

GF pumpkin quick bread

This bread isn’t going to hold together for sandwiches and it’s not going to rise to great heights, but it’s delicious.

At this time of year, I’ve been making this bread with pumpkin, but you could substitute more applesauce, or butternut squash, or just some well blended/mushy zucchini and carrot. It’s no secret that I am pretty much a trial-and-error kind of gal; you’ll never catch me telling you my measurements are exact and must be followed strictly. Let’s hope you’re willing to eat something that might not look award-winning but tastes great.

GFCF Pumpkin Quick Bread

2 1/4 cups GF flour mix

I used 1 3/4 cup almond flour for extra flavor, moisture and protein with 1/4 cup sorghum flour and 1/4 cup millet flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon maple or date sugar (or Rapadura or Sucanat)

Optional flavoring: 1/2 tsp cinnamon or small amounts of nutmeg, cloves and ginger if you’re looking for more of a sweet treat that reminds you of pumpkin pie. Those spices also work for a “morning glory” bread concept with zucchini and carrot. If you are using butternut squash and looking for more of a savory bread, you could try a little more salt or Herbamare with some basil, oregano, rosemary and/or thyme.

1 cup liquid mix – coconut milk, maple syrup or molasses, applesauce and/or pumpkin

The ratios depend on how sweet you want the bread vs. how full of a veggie/fruit. I used almost 3/4 cup pumpkin (baked and blended until smooth) and the rest (full fat) coconut milk and applesauce with maybe a Tablespoon of maple syrup and a smidge of molasses. Pumpkin is creamier/thicker, and applesauce and some other veggies might be more watery.

2 (pastured) eggs, beaten

1/4 cup melted coconut oil

Optional: 1 teaspoon vanilla and/or almond flavor or another flavor

Mix all the dry ingredients and set aside.

Mix all the wet ingredients. Be sure that the eggs and the other ingredients are warmed to room temperature first so that they mix with the warmed coconut oil instead of turning it solid. But also make sure the coconut oil is just melted and not so hot that it will start to cook the eggs when they come together!

Mix wet and dry together and spoon into a bread pan (lined with parchment paper if you want to avoid Teflon) and smooth out on top (more than I did in the photo above!)

Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 25-40 minutes. Check at 20 minutes to see how clean your fork comes out.

GF mini-muffins with added nuts and raisins

Last time I used most of the batter for bread and then added to the rest of batch: raisins, chopped crispy pecans (soaked and dehydrated at 105 degrees), vanilla and a little extra maple syrup and made into mini-muffins that took just about 8-10 minutes to bake.

For the photos here, I’d upped the xanthan gum to 1 tsp as listed above, and my husband noted how spongy the dough was. Although the bread did crumble, it was a soft, moist crumble rather than a gritty, dry crumble. The muffins held together well.

Everything was delicious!

At my son’s Waldorf school, birthdays are celebrated with applesauce cake. We always pack my son a wheat-free, gluten-free alternative for the baked goods. I also make them dairy-free so that I can eat them and because we try to keep my son’s dairy intake down.

I was very pleased with the cake we made yesterday after I’d cobbled together several different gluten-free recipes. I substituted almond flour for most of the flour and drastically reduced the sugar (though did not omit for fear of a too-soggy cake).

Next time I will make a double batch so that we can have plenty to munch on at home! This time we had to reserve three servings for two birthdays this week (and one we’ll freeze for next week). I will also increase the spices from the numbers used here, but I’ll leave them for those who prefer a milder taste.

GFCF Applesauce Cake Recipe

Dry ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups almond flour
• 1/2 cup potato starch flour
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour (Could use other GF flours per your preference, but the almond makes it moist and sweet and gives the cake more protein)
• 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp (real with minerals) sea salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• shake of ground ginger

(increase all spices if you want more flavor)

Mix the above in one bowl and set aside.

Then mix the following in another bowl:

• 2 (pastured or at least organic!) eggs, beaten (and warmed so the coconut oil will not harden)
• 1/3 cup warmed (to liquid) coconut oil
• 1/4 cup Sucanat, Rapadura, date sugar, or maple sugar

Add to that mixture

• 1 cup applesauce (organic or local from an orchard you trust)
• 1/4 cup coconut milk mixed with water (so not too thick)
• 1/2 cup grade B maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp black strap molasses (could add more)
• 1 tsp vanilla (try for GF/alcohol-free. Could increase quantity if desired)

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry bowl. Mix well, with electric mixture for a short time if necessary.

Optional to add in nuts or raisins. If adding raisins, cut down on the sugar and/or maple syrup.

Grease pan(s) with coconut oil prior to filling them or use parchment paper to line if you don’t want your food touching non-stick/Teflon surfaces.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. This should fill one 13×9″ pan.

(I used a square pan and put the additional batter in a pumpkin-shaped pan, per my son’s request. That one cooked in 25-30 minutes as it was not as thick.)

Enjoy!

I finally took a photo of a gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie this year! Two different times!

The crust was largely hazelnut and rice flour with all the spices of pumpkin pie. I used coconut oil and put a little vanilla in with the cold water, using this crust recipe (with mostly nut flour/meal). I baked the shell for 15-20 minutes before filling it with the pumpkin mix.

I used essentially the spices in the proportions on the can of pumpkin (there were no pie pumpkins available this week) with just a little extra of each spice. For one pie, Libby’s calls for

The liquid filling for my one pie omitted the “3/4 cup granulated sugar” and instead included:

• 2 pastured eggs from the farm
• about 1 1/2-2 cups of coconut milk (full fat, unsweetened, organic – see brand discussion below)
• a half cup of maple syrup
• a dollop of molasses
• less than a teaspoon of Sucanat (actually this was probably in with the dry spices)
• about a teaspoon of vanilla.

I put just a little arrrowroot in a tiny bit of water and mixed that with the coconut milk (and syrup) just to add a little stiffness. I think that was about right.

Another time I used pumpkin, which we roasted and then scooped out, but I added too much starch. That time, I included arrowroot and a few Tablespoons of rice flour in the mix, and the result was too solid, as you can see — more like a quiche instead of velvety.

The rest of the mainstream directions I followed, after baking my mostly-nut meal crusts for 15 min first:

Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a larger bowl. Add in pumpkin and spices and mix well. Slowly mix in in coconut milk/maple syrup/vanilla mixture.

Bake in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F; bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean.

In all cases, the pies were delicious. People who need more sweet can add ice cream. We used So Delicious Coconut Milk Ice Cream though I am not a fan of that brand’s coconut milk in a carton and always use the canned organic coconut milk that has no weird additives besides a little guar gum and water. And it tastes a lot better than the So Delicious cartons. As for coconut milk brands, Thai Kitchen is a little more expensive where I live than Native Forest, so I usually go with NF. The Whole Foods Brand is cheapest but is often more watery and less flavorful. I found I couldn’t really tolerate the Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate very well, and I didn’t like having to warm up and add water.

I wanted to share a photo of the GFCF rolls I made for Thanksgiving this year and an update on the recipe. The bulk of the flour this time was Hazelnut flour from Bob’s Red Mill with some sorghum, rice, and tapioca. Also, I got away with using hardly any sugar and a little more molasses (along with a little more flour) than in my original recipe, which, I believe should be in the new Holistic Moms Network cookbook (I haven’t seen a copy yet).

Ideally I would soak and dry my own organic nuts (or use nuts from Wilderness Family Naturals) and then grind those for my flour since Bob’s nut flour is not organic. But at least the rolls don’t send anyone’s blood sugar through the roof!