Gluten-Free, Corn-Free Garbanzo-Sorghum Flour Tortilla

I am now over 120 days into my food elimination and rotation diet.  See this post to understand food sensitivities.  At 90 days I was able to start to rotate back into my diet most of the 37 foods to which I had IgG food sensitivities.  I am happy to report that I have been able to add almost all the limited foods.  Bread like products have probably been the hardest food to substitute.  One of my favorites is this Garbanzo-Sorghum Tortillas that I invented out of desperation. But, it is a keeper!  I am still rotating foods and plan to continue to do so.  Here is the recipe:
1. Heat a cast iron griddle
2.  In a bowl whisk together 1/2 cup Garbanzo Flour, 1/2 Cup Tapioca Flour, 3/4 Cup Sweet Sorghum Flour. A bit Salt (optional)
3.  In a small bowl place about 3 tablespoons of oil – Actually Ghee, melted Butter or Coconut Oil works better with a cast iron skillet.
4. Stir about 1/2 cup of warm water into flours. Stir until moisten. Batter will be stiff enough to handle with your hands. Like a very soft clay.
Take a walnut size bit of dough, dip into oil and roll out in between parchment paper.

This next part is what makes this work:

Lift off one side of parchment. While still holding the parchment paper, lay the tortilla right onto the cast iron skillet.  After a few seconds the tortilla will separate from the paper, letting you lift the parchment right off.  Cook each side, pressing with a metal spatula.  Place cooked tortilla in between a cotton dishtowel. The tortilla will become softer as it steams.  Enjoy!

Spring is Purple

Early spring welcomes carpets of purple! I love growing plants that hug the soil with their  tiny green leaves, but in the spring they bloom and invite me to walk among them and bend low to see their tiny flowers.






See the tiny little “umbrellas”?

Tiny little umbrellas

No spring is not all purple….but colors of joy
Visit other Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wheat-Free, Egg-Free, Corn-Free, Milk-Free Recipe for Sourdough Quinoa Rice Flour Pancakes

Something “bread-like” was my first need. I thought the answer might be to  pick up one of those new gluten-free breads, but imagine my moment of recognition when I realized that gluten-free breads usually have corn or potato starch, and might have milk or eggs and baking powder. All off-limit foods….
One of my new favorites is this Sourdough Quinoa pancake. This recipe is easy.  Working with non-gluten flours can be difficult. Without the “stretch” of gluten flour products gum up as you try to cook them.  I researched and found Scanpans. Scanpans are made with green technology. They are made of titanium and work wonderful as a non-stick pan.  My very favorite pans!  I had a hard time finding the right pan, so I decided to add an Amazon.com store link to my blog.  Thanks for shopping!

Sourdough Quinoa Starter

In a glass cup add a couple of inches of water. With a plastic or wooded spoon stir in Quinoa Flour.  Cover cup with plastic wrap. A few hours later add a bit more water and a bit more Quinoa Flour. Repeat…you will see bubbles.  After about 3 days it should be ready to use.  After that I keep the starter in the refrigerator and refresh it by using it in pancakes and saving some by adding more water and Quinoa Flour. Yeast produces carbon dioxide that causes bread to rise and yeast produces alcohol. If you wait too long in between refreshing or feeding flour to the starter, you will notice liquid on top. That is alcohol. Just stir it back in and refresh the starter more frequently, before the alcohol forms.

Sourdough Quinoa Pancakes –Ingredients: Flax Seed Meal, Coconut (optional), Rice Flour, sugar, light-tasting olive oil and cinnamon, baking soda

1. Add some (1/2 cup to 1 cup) Quinoa Starter to a large glass bowl. Add Flax Seed Meal (egg substitute)
2. Add 2 1/2 Cups Water.  Add 1/2 cup coconut flour(you can grind unsweetened coconut).
3. Add a bit more quinoa flour and rice flour until you have a consistency of pancake batter.  Add tablespoon or 2 of sugar.   Let batter sit overnight or a few hours.
4.  Add 2 tablespoons of oil. Add heaping teaspoon of cinnamon . 
5. Dissolve heaping teaspoon of baking soda in a tiny bit of water.  Add to batter. It should start bubbling.  Make pancakes -

Sourdough Quinoa Starter combines with baking soda to create this action. Titanium
Scanpan. No Teflon or PFOA.  I bought mine here.


Yum! An allergy-free pancake!

How To Eat With IgG Food Sensitivities

Last week we talked about the 37 foods I am avoiding. So what do I eat? At times I have felt like a traveler to another country, learning new ways of eating. I’ve learned a few lessons to avoid developing new sensitivities.
1.  True food allergies are usually easier to identify. With a true food allergy you react in a short period of time, each time you eat the offending food and usually you know which food is the offender.
2. Food sensitivities are very hard to diagnose. The symptoms can show up hours or even a couple of days later. It is very hard to pinpoint the food. And with several sensitivities to several foods it is almost impossible to pinpoint the foods.  A blood test is the way to go!  Without the blood test, I don’t think I would have discipline myself to avoid the reactive foods.
3. If you quit eating offending foods for 90 days, IgG antibodies to offending foods will hopefully disappear. The problem foods can then be added one every 4 days.  If no reactions occur, another food can be added. Oh happy day!
4. The allergy-prone should not eat from the same food family day after day. Rotating foods, leaving 3 days in between all foods, should prevent the creation of food sensitivities.
5. I used to add as many ingredients to a food as possible. For instance, bread would be multi-grain with added nuts and seeds.  Trail mix would have as many nuts and fruits as I had available. Eating for reducing food sensitivities requires you to limit your daily variety and “save” them for another day.  Guess what! Food tastes better. Each ingredient is savored for itself.
6. You can eat a food within a 24 hour period.  So what you make for an evening meal, can be served for the next days lunch.
7. Sounds like a lot of work?  The results are worth the effort: Reduction of inflammation along with allergy symptoms and I’ve lost over 10 pounds. Today a friend gave me a size 6 skirt. It fits great.  Next posts will be allergy-free recipes. Where there is a will there is a way.
So what do I eat?  Before testing, most of my meals were mostly vegetarian.  Most of my reactive foods are vegetable based, except for cow’s milk, cheese and eggs.  So I can eat on a 4 day rotation:  beef, chicken, turkey, fish, pork and several fruits, vegetables and most nuts and a very few spices.  Go figure, one girls good food is another girls problem food.

Food Allergies, Weight Loss & Garden Harvest

The good news is that I have lost the easiest 10+ pounds ever! More about this at the end of this post. The rest of the news is what it is. Please forgive my mini medical history, but it is part of the story: As a baby I had eczema, as an adult I had hay fever and a regular relationship with my allergist. I had a few years of allergy shots, or immunotherapy which took care of my allergies to sage, ragweed, kochia, house dust and grass.  A great supplement program took care of my 30 year history of migraines (which my allergist said were allergy based)…Odd symptoms, some allergy-like made me finally, a couple of months ago, decide to call the allergy department of the Rapid City Medical Center. I was told about IgG food allergy or food sensitivity testing. The lab drew a couple vials of blood and sent it out to ImmunoLabs where my blood was tested for 154 foods. 20 food sensitivities is considered high.  I reacted to 37 foods! When you have allergies your little body can be oversensitive to ordinary foods or environmental substances like dust and pollens. These harmless, but perceived invaders cause an overactive immune system to launch an attack creating antibodies.  Some antibodies that are created after an exposure to say, West Nile Virus or the measles, are permanent and help keep you from ever getting West Nile or the measles again. But IgG antibodies from food will hopefully only last in your blood from 3 to 6 months.  The trick is to avoid eating any bit of the offending food and eating only from the rest of the 154 foods that were tested as safe.  And, the non-reactive foods that you will be eating are put on a 4 day rotation diet.  Spacing 3 days between foods allows your body time to eliminate traces of that particular food and gives your body time to cool inflammation and prevent the development of new sensitivities. The following are the “healthy” foods that I reacted to in a non-healthy way:
Tomatoes, Potatoes, Red Peppers and Cayenne Pepper. If you are reactive to more than 2 foods from the same food family, in this case, nightshade, you need to be careful with the rest of that food family. I was ok, with caution, to eggplant and green peppers.
 
Winter Squash, Zucchini and Watermelon. Again I reacted to more than 2 members of the cucurbit family. I was ok for Cantaloupe with caution. These are Sunshine Squash. I never did get to taste them. I made a beautiful fall squash table decoration and gave fruit away to friends and family.

Butternut, Delicata and Sunshine Squash.  Now here comes the foods I thought I would most miss.

Wheat and Corn, which includes corn starch, corn syrup and baking powder. Also Buckwheat and Rye. For years my favorite breakfast was homemade bread, peanut butter and blackberry jam.  So add to my forbidden foods: Peanuts, Blackberries and Bakers Yeast. One of my first recipes added to this blog was capturing sourdough yeast from grapes and making of this bread.  I am not gluten sensitive or celiac. But the gluten-free breads, which are wheat free, will have corn starch or potato starch or eggs or milk, all no-no foods.

Cow’s Milk, Cheese (casein) Pineapple, Vanilla, Egg Whites, Egg Yolks, and Lemon. These are some of the ingredients in this Low-Fat Pineapple Cheesecake. Recipe
Other problem foods: Almonds which were my favorite snack, Alfalfa which was in a “green juice” that I would take on days when I missed salads and greens. More foods: Kidney and Navy Beans,  Cherries, Dates, Garlic, Ginger, Malt, Brazil Nuts, Oranges, Parsley, Safflower, Sage Dill Seed, Brewers Yeast (no beer or wine) and no Spinach!

The Good News – Results and Why
Studies show that IgG food sensitivities contribute to the development of obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes.  Check it out!
Research is showing that many overweight people suffer from food allergies.  This link connects to ImmunoLabs and their page detailing some of the relationship between overweight and food sensitivities.
I’ve lost over 10 pounds by finding new favorite foods. I’m weighing what I weighed about 15 years ago. My allergy symptoms are gone and my blood pressure which was about 114/72 is now 105/58 – Wow! what’s with that? It’s good.
So what do I eat? I admit, finding what I could eat on a rotating basis was a learning experience. But, it is becoming second nature. I am planning to tell you more of this story and post for you allergy-free recipes. 

Where did theses Huge Round Rocks Come From?

In Craven Canyon we found huge indentations on the tall canyon walls.

The tall canyon walls are made of sandstone – Here is another scoop in the wall


This one was very deep and closer to the ground.

This was a few feet away from the wall. Round as can be. Here is another one

This one has sat here many, many years. It looks like a "planet" in the skies of pine needles. It reminds me of bringing up "google earth" on the internet. I love it when the earth "expands". These big round stones are sometimes found around the Black Hills. They are known, as a knowledgeable friend tells me, as concretions.  I found this webpage that shows examples of huge (some bigger than a person) and small concretions. For more Wordless Wednesday Post visit this site

A Hike in Craven Canyon to See Ancient Writings

We live in the Black Hills where miles and miles of “nature” stand between the towns.  To give you an idea of the distances, we live 60 miles to the closest Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and such.  A few days ago, on a beautiful November fall day, my Ted arranged access to a site on Forest Service Land where early man wrote on tall protected canyon walls.  We heard a funny story about someone from Europe organizing mountain climbing tours of this area. Look carefully at the picture below.
After our hike to the ancient writings we drove up to an overlook to have lunch and take a look at where we had been. Do you see the vertical crack about the middle of the picture.  The story goes that a guide would take climbers through the crack. It would take some doing. The funny thing is that you can drive right around and over to the base of this wall!  If you would climb through that crack you would find yourself on the other side of the canyon wall. You would find a tall sheltered canyon wall where ancient peoples  found some protection from winter winds. And they recorded their presence by painting or pecking pictures into the walls. 

I am standing on the “writing” side of the crack.

The “writings” have been featured in news articles. Many years ago they were white chalked for photo purposes. This I was told is an animal, probably an antelope being clubbed, or killed.  Antelope are still very plentiful around here.

Can you see the people and another animal?  There are several pictures on these walls.

The day was beautiful! We knew we were somewhere very special.  Can you imagine the moon coming over the crack in the rock.

It is hard to make it out. But the picture on the left seems to represent the crack in the mountain. Then to the right there were “moons”, so this seemed to be a kind of calendar.

I am up by the wall looking down.

The view from “across the way”.

As we walked below.  Ted asked me to look up and he said.  “Do you get the point?”
Gotta love him……

The Scent of a Flower Stays on the Hands of the Sender or Kate Who Came to Dinner

Kate must have the most fragrant hands.  Today, on the very first day that fall is giving way to winter, I received this beautiful bouquet of scent. A few days back Kate visited our garden and wrote about the visit in her blog, High Altitude Gardening.

I tore into this box from White Flower Farms, thrilled to find the most fragrant Lavender

Kate not only picked a beautiful fragrant plant, but she matched it to my kitchen.

See, it is perfect in its new spot.  Years ago, Ted extended the width of this window sill so that I could place plants on it.

Kate wrote about having dinner with us. We ate on this huge beet. Hence, her post: “Big Beet Night at the Bondes"

So today, the snow started. Yesterday was 72 degrees. Wow, the soil is too warm for the snow to stick.  It’s 32 degrees and Ted says “We could put on our long-johns, coats, hats and gloves and go for a walk.”  I said, “nah, I’ll just take a picture from the kitchen window.” 

Can You See The Fall Heart?

A few days ago the garden had a light freeze, but the garden color remains. I cannot remember not having a killing garden frost by this time in October. We are loving it.

As I snapped some of what will be the last pictures of the summer of 2011, this bed reminded me of rumpled, unmade bed. The blankets crumpled up and tossed this way and that.

The Pristine Rose is showing off.

More beds getting ready to be covered with snow.

This little guy is gathering his winter food

This Amur Maple is the heart of the garden.  Here let me show it to you the way I see it.

See the heart. Ted says that sometimes I am a half-a-bubble-out-of-level.

A Beautiful Fall Garden

Here it is the 10th of October and we have not yet had a “killing frost”.  Before the winter sleep strikes, take a little peek of the back garden.

This the view from my back step.

A peek from the middle. 

This little garden is just outside our kitchen window. The following picture shows a close-up of this spot.

I think this is Pink Beauty Ajuga with an unknown succulent – so pretty!


The side arbor is 7 feet high. Big Boy Tomato rises at least a foot higher. The two windows in the picture our over the kitchen sink. All summer Ted watched this tomato.  I officially gave it to him,along with the responsibility to keep it trained. 

These little Alberta Spruces need to be taken out of the pots and sunk into soil. Next spring I should be able to repot them.

Silver lace vine blooms in the fall. This is our view from the side gate.  How many more days will we enjoy a frost free fall.  I hope many. Our usual frost date is mid to late September.  Enjoy fall.