We just made a batch of these and the wonderful aroma fills our apartment. These are so delicious, you barely realise you are on the Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet. Based on the Zucchini Muffin recipe in Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall.

• 2 c grated zucchini
• 2 c ground almonds
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 c ghee or melted butter
• 1/3 c honey (raw)
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t baking soda
• couple of pinches of salt
• A couple handfuls of frozen or fresh blueberries

Method: Mix almond flour, zucchini, fat and honey. Add the eggs, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Mix very well. Add blueberries (or other fruit), but don’t add too many or the muffins will not hold together.

Bake in muffin tins filled 2/3 full for about 20 minutes in a 350 F (180 C) degree oven.

Read more ...

Most of my life I have been excessively healthy. No cavities, never sick, and with rapid healing powers so that I have no scars despite the multitude of oven burns, chopped fingertips and other disasters that being a chef generally involve (I have chopped off the tip of my left pointer finger several times but you wouldn’t know by looking at it!). I took that amazing health for granted, assumed that it was just who I was and didn’t stop to think for a second that it might not last. Working in the fast-paced and highly demanding culinary industry stresses your body physically, the long hours and high pressure alone are quite enough to wear you down over time, but along with that for years I maintained a diet of coffee and cigarettes, and generally didn’t really put anything else into my body. After a couple years of this I discovered that I was highly neurotic, with blood sugar swings that left me an emotional basket case.

Read more ...

I picked up a bag of shelled hazelnuts and soon found they are very easy to shell using a morter and pestle. After soaking the nut meat overnight I roasted them in a very low oven. The following recipe is what resulted next:

• 1 1/2 c hazelnuts (ground)
• 1/2 c almonds (ground)
• 1 T anise (ground)
• 3 T butter, softened (or coconut, lard, duck fat)
• 6 eggs (separated)
• 1″ slice date paste or 2 handfuls of seeded dates
• 1/2 c boiling water (approximate)

Method: Boil water and soak the dates in boiling water to soften. Mix the nuts, anise and butter. Add egg yolks to the nut mixture. Mash the dates to a pulp and add to mixture. Mix well. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks (add a pinch of salt). Fold the egg whites into the nut mixture in 2 to 3 stages. Do not over mix. The egg whites will bring air into the mixture to lighten the cake.

Place mixture into a round cake tin that has been buttered and floured. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Read more ...

After reading Anna’s positive experiences with the GAPs diet I ordered the book and have just finished reading it, I have tried a lot of diets over the years especially after living in a moldy apartment in Wellington, NZ which has resulted in problems with my digestive tract ever since. November last year was a month of non-stop rain here in Vancouver, BC and with the temperature change, was the perfect breeding ground for mushrooms, mold and yeasts. As a result our health problems reared their ugly heads again and showed us that we still have an overgrowth of harmful yeast in our systems. In some ways this is good because we at least know that we need to deal with it.

Read more ...

My copy of Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride arrived last week and over the weekend I had leftover spaghetti squash. On page 149 I found a recipe for egg-free bread/cake/muffins which called for mashed squash. Spaghetti squash is a little watery so it comes out quite dense, but very healthy and tasty.

Read more ...

Hypoglycemia: A Better Approach

By Dr. Paavo Airola (1977)

I know you might be thinking “Why not choose something more up to date?” Dr. Paavo Airola was addressing a conditions that most other Doctors were ignoring or attacking, at that time. I found this book a very interesting read with that perspective in mind. It is a good place to start if you are interested in hypoglycemia. Over the last 30 years or so, hypoglycemia has become a household word and much of what he says is now common knowledge.

It is also interesting because the AMA etc are still doing the same thing they were doing then-insisting that certain conditions are non-existent and later doing a complete 180 degree turn-around. We all know today that hypoglycemia is not an imaginary state of being. It is rampant in our societies today, often a pre-cursor to diabetes.

If you have a condition that the medical establishment won’t acknowledge, don’t feel like you are the crazy one. This is a well established pattern. In fact the establishment is proving itself insane under this definition of insanity: repeating the same mistakes over and over again, expecting to get a different result.

Dr. Paavo Airola recommends a diet for hypoglycemia which is included in this book. He also recommends avoiding high protein diets, because of the strain they put on your calcium resources and your adrenal glands. He highly recommends brewer’s yeast for hypoglycemics.

Read more ...

Notes from a Seminar conducted by Sally Fallon author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats Auckland, New Zealand, Feb 2003

1. used no refined and denatured foods
2. contained some sort of animal protein and fat from fish or other seafood
3. contained four times the calcium and minerals and ten times the fat-soluble vitamins as the current U.S. diet
4. cooked all or some of their foods, and also ate raw dairy or meat
5. had high food enzyme content
6. soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally levened seeds, grains and nuts before consumption
7. had a fat content that varied between 30-80% of the total calories
8. consisted of nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids
9. all contained some type of salt
10. all cultures made use of bones, usually as a bone broth
11. made provisions for future generations

The information from this seminar is based on the research done by Dr. Weston A. Price and detailed in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Dr. Weston Price was a highly respected dentist from the 1930s who did a ten year study of traditional people around the world. He found that people eating their traditional diets had little to no tooth decay. Sally Fallon’s work in Nourishing Traditions is based on his studies and she has formed the Weston A. Price Foundation to continue the research that he began.

Read more ...