Spinach Crepes

These take a bit more work (time) but are very rewarding.

The basic crepe recipe can be used for desserts, stuffed with creativity (chicken, other greens, etc), or with simple jam and syrup.

Basic Crepe Recipe

1 cup brown rice flour
1 1/2 cups nut milk (or water)

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 large eggs

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tablespoons vanilla

1 tbsp pure vegetable glycerine (or other natural sweetener of choice)

The night before you want to make these mix the flour, water/milk, and vinegar together in a bowl and let sit overnight. This helps to break down the phylates found in the grain. Why do you want to do this? Phylates bind to iron and calcium and doesn't let your body absorb them. It's also difficult to digest.

When you are ready to make the crepes, beat the egg and add it to the flour/water. Add salt and vanilla and glycerine. The vanilla and glycerine are only really neccessary if you want a sweeter crepe, not necessary for spinach crepes. Beat well.

In a non-stick skillet melt; coconut oil, tallow, whatever your choice of healthy cooking oil. Drop large spoonfuls of batter in pan, spreading evenly. Turn when lightly brown. I find I need to stir the batter each time I want to take a spoonful, as the batter separated quite rapidly.

Now that you have a nice pile of crepes your ready for the filling.

Spinach Crepes

1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed (or go out to the garden and pick as much as you want, the amount of spinach and stuff really is dependent on taste)

2 tbsp olive oil

2 large garlic cloves

1 large onion, chopped

nutmeg to taste

Preheat oven to 350 F. Squeeze all liquide from spinach. Heat oil in large skillet. Saute onion until almost tender, add garlic. (If you add the garlic closer to the end it doesn't burn as much). Add spinach, and nutmeg. Stir till well coated, or if using fresh spinach, that the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat. Place spinach mixure in a line on the end of each crepe. Roll, place on a large casserole dish. Bake 20-30 min.

Serve with wholesome plain yogurt.

Zucchini, Zucchini Everywhere!

With summer upon us, the first fruits are starting to become ready for the picking. And already we have plenty of zucchini.

One of my favorite ways to eat zucchini are in zucchini pancakes.

I probably got a recipe somewhere once upon a time, but now it's one of those things that I just make and it turns out slightly different each time.

First I grate a whole bunch of zucchini and put it in a colander and salt it. I leave it to drain a few hours (if I've thought well enough ahead). Then I add grated carrots and chopped onions (lots of onions) a few beated eggs, a few tablespoons of spelt flour (or whatever I have on hand), some nutmeg and herbamare. Mix it well. You don't want it to be really liquidy or it will fall apart.

I heat up a big stainless steal skillet and melt some oil. Usually I use coconut oil for frying but here on the community there is an abundance of tallow, and nobody else likes to use it, so I'm using tallow more for frying. I don't know where I would get it back in Canada. It smells not so nice when it's frying but the pancakes tasted great.



Fry on both sides, if it turns out well you should have a nice golden pancake. If it's too liquidy it turns into mush. I've often given up and had the cake stir-fried. These turned out quite nicely though.

They are great served with raw yogurt (homemade!) or at least yogurt make with raw milk (recipe to come).

Kombucha

The great thing about a blog is that you post a couple things and now you sound like an expert, when in reality you've only tried them once or twice. On certain things anyways.

My hope is that this will not be one of those things...

I first tried Kombucha tea at a friends house as I was returning a book that I borrowed just before moving to Australia. I was extremely hesitant, as I was warned that it was made with sugar, but it really was healthy (more on that later). It was good, I really liked it. Joey politely drank it and told me in the car that it really wasn't that good. But I was hooked.

When we arrive here in Tasmania I began a thorough search for the mushroom. (My friend offered me one, and I would have gladly taken it, but I could foresee a problem with customs...

"Can you open your bag please?"
"Sure"
"What is this?"
"Well it's a living organism, more specifically a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts. Can I continue into your country now?"
"Security!"

...well maybe not quite that bad. They would've taken it away for sure though.)


I finally found one (it took a bit of searching) and made one batch quite successfully and now this is my second batch.

There is tons on information on the Internet, plus this tea is in the book "Nourishing Traditions", (which is a very useful book - even if you don't use any of the recipes). But with that vast amount of info, comes contradictions. Some say do this, others say don't do this. So this is the best that I can figure right now.

(Note: the recipe that I use is the recipe that came with my mushroom, which is good to start out with since your mushroom will likely have come from the use of that recipe. Also I use this recipe because I have not been able to get a container that will fit the recipe from "Nourishing Traditions", which is the amount of tea I will be making in the future - when I find a bowl or jar that big, or when the shipping container arrives with my gallon jar for making this tea.)

Ingredients:

1 litre of water (4 cups, I add a bit more water so I still have one litre when the boiling is done)
heaping 1/4 cup white sugar (shock, gasp!)
2 tea bags organic black tea
1 healthy kombucha mushroom plus 1/2 cup kombucha from previous batch

About the ingredience;

Water: Of course you want a good pure water, you will be drinking this stuff after all. However you do not want distilled water, as the kombucha needs the minerals that is found naturally in water. And I've even heard that reverse osmosis water isn't great for the same reason, but reverse osmosis filters out the chlorine, not the minerals, and many people use reverse osmosis or spring water for their tea. Personally, I am fortunete to be able to use rain water as that is the main drinking water of Tassies.

White Sugar: This is the last thing that you would expect to be in a healthy drink. And you will be tempted to find a more natural alternative, like I was. But after alot of looking into it, I would say this is the only thing I will use white sugar for. First, the sugar gets consumed in the fermenting process, so it is the tea that eats it, not you. Secondly, the tea needs this nutritionly void substance to make it stong and healthy (go-figure). You may experiment with other sweeteners such as honey or raw sugar, but make sure you do so with one of the baby SCOPBY's, not your mother, once you have enough mushrooms that you can afford to lose one.

Tea: There are a few different types of tea you can use. Black, Green, Oolong, or white. Whatever you prefer, make sure it is organic. Unorganic tea contains formaldeyde, and you will want to avoid that. I have only used black so for, I tend to start out as a purist, but many have stated that they quite like Green, or a mix of Black and Green. You will also want to stay away from flavoured teas (Earl Grey, ect) as the oils that flavour them will weeken your mushroom. If you desire added flavour (herbs, dried fruit, vanilla), this can be added after the tea is finished it's ferment and is seperated from the mushroom in bottles in your fridge.

The Mushroom: You will want a nice healthy mushroom. Never use a moldy one. Although mold is considerably rare, it can happen. When your mushroom is moldy, it looks like common mold. The bubles and sediment from your mushroom are the good stuff, and not mold. You will want to make sure your mushroom is from a good source. If you want your tea to be organic, your "mother" should be from organic brews. Also you want to be sure that no metal as come into contact with your mushroom. I personally just use my clean hands to handle it. You want to make sure things are kept clean. Smoke and stuff like that will make your mushroom go bad. Most often when you get a mushroom, it should come with enough tea (to keep it well) to use as your starter. You may have to request this.


Now we have our ingredience the rest is quite simple.

Boil the water. If you are unsure of the purity of the water, boil it for 10 min or so.

Add the sugar. Stir to dissolve.



Add the tea bags. I like to let the tags hang out of the pot to avoid the dyes on the lables, most people arn't that picky.



Let it cool down. If you add not tea to the mushroom it will kill the mushroom. You will want to make sure that it is less than 35 C. I just leave it for a few hours.

Take the tea bags out. Pour the tea into your brewing container. This should be a nice clean glass something. A jar or a bowl will work well. Add the mushroom and the starter tea. Or you can have the mushroom and the tea happily waiting in the container and add the tea to it, it doesn't really matter. As you can see I have added the "mother" (the larger one) along with the "baby" from the previous batch. This will allow the "baby" to thicken up abit before being used by itself for additional batches.



Cover the tea with a lint-free cloth to keep bugs and other contaminence out. If you use a bowl, criss-cross with masking tape to keep the towel from falling into the tea. Find a warm, dark place in the house where it wont be distubed too much. I use the bottom of my closet with an electric blanket wrapped around it to keep it cosey.



Let it sit for 4-5 days before testing a bit too see if the taste is desirable. Most brews take 5-8 days. If you want it more vineragy you can let it set for a couple weeks. Stop fermenting when you have your desired taste.

This is my Kombucha. The previous brew in the mason jar (which I afterwards transfers to a wine bottle - if there is too much fizz building up, then exciting things can happen) and this new batch is in the tall jar with the cover. You will notice I also stick a thermometer on the jar (with the help of an elastic band). This just helps me keep tabs on the temperature since I am using a heat source. The ideal temperature is 23-35 C. Anything higher will start to kill your mushroom, and you don't want that. And the warmer it is the faster it will ferment, so I like to make sure it's in the 20s at least.

Raspberries

Who would have thought that in the middle of December we'd be up to our ears in raspberries?

Well if you live in Tasmania....

I was very excited to find out that there are raspberry bushes in our garden when we first moved here and now we are in the depth of raspberry season. Picking everyday for at least 1 or 2 hours we only cover half the patch, and then someone will call out, "OK, close your eyes, we're done!"
(Although some will still mention that there are still "heaps" of ripe berries that were missed in the first go-through). The past couple pickings were the most yet, with 155 punnets, then 170...we appear to be in the peak right now. Good thing too, because we are selling lots to the veggie markets and IGA because people like them for Christmas. We're also selling them off the road here too. This is one thing that is much more expensive here than in Canada. Oh well, I've sure had more of my fill of them, and then some.


Just a quick Google search revealed that raspberries are rich in ellagic acid (antioxidant), quercetin, and have antimicrobial properties to prevent the overgrowth of some bacteria and fungi including the ever popular Candida-albicans. They contain B vitamins, C vitamin, manganese, riboflaven, folate, niacin, magnesium, potassium and copper. It is also suggested that raspberries contain anti-cancer properties. Funny that phrase is becoming more and more common with simple foods. Is it maybe that eating properly (naturally) will not only prevent but also help overcome cancer? (This statement is meant to be read with a slightly sarcastic tone).

Now this is not something that I eat, however, it is something that I put on my body. Why should we be careful about what we put on our bodies? The skin is an organ, and our bodies absorbs a lot of stuff through the skin. Whatever gets absorbs enters our bodies and the bloodstream. That is why poultices work, or a nicotine patch. To give herbs to babies, it is often applied to the bottom of their feet. The baby won't eat the herb, but their body can benefit still from the herbs through the absorption of the skin.

That being said there are many, many things that you will want to avoid, and the more you read your labels, the more that you will find that these substances are everywhere.
This is just a very brief list;
-Propylene Glycol (also known as anti-freeze, yes, for cars, also found in dressings and some ice creams)
-Parabens (anything ending with Paraben, major estrogen effect on the system, cancer causing)
-Petroleum
-Phenols
-Fragrances (artificial - actually desensitizes your nerves and affects the nervous system, often of known cancer causing substances)
-Dyes (read: chemicals)

Then there are things like alcohol that are not necessarily bad, but are drying for your skin. So, in the luxury of Winnipeg (never thought I'd say that), where there are plenty of Health Food stores with various selections of soaps, my soap of choice was Castile soaps. Made with soaponified olive oil, some with added tea tree or honey, I was confident in getting a good soap that would disrupt the hormones or damage the nerves in my body. However, I was not sure of what to do here.

I was overjoyed when I found that the community makes their own good, old fashioned, homemade soap. With good old beef tallow and lye (lye is corrosive on it's own, but in soap it is fine). This is what I have been using to wash my laundry. And the people here have found that it works sooooo much better than the store bought stuff. Apparently a couple of the washing machines where brown inside and they couldn't get them clean. But in a couple of months of using this soap for laundry, the insides of the machines are sparkling white again. Laundry soap is another thing thing to be careful about. The soap often wears out your clothes with all the additives and fillers added to it. And the chemicals from the soap will be left on your clothes when you were them, again absorbing into your skin. (I don't have time right now to get into fabric softeners and dryer sheets, read: poison! Maybe I'll do a post on those things alone some other time.)

So, there is this homemade soap stuff. It doesn't smell the best, it doesn't smell the worst though either. Joey really doesn't like the smell though. However, our clothes don't have any smell left of them whatsoever (the line drying outside may help that too). So, I really don't know what I'm doing. I went and scooped up the small bits of the soap from container in the laundry room (thinking those would melt better), and I did get a couple bigger chunks as well. (In the laundry room, there is an old electric pot with the soap melted in some water ready for regular use, we just scoop it with a ladle and add it to the washing machine.)

I wanted to do something to the smell and it would have been nice if I had some cocoa butter, coconut oil, or Shea butter to make it more moisturizing, but the tallow will probably take care of that. Also if I had some essential oils that would make the soap smell a lot better. But, not having any of these ingredients I had to be creative.

I melted the soap in a little bit of water (I didn't want to make it too soft of a soap) in a pot on the stove. Then I added some honey. However, it doesn't have a really strong honey smell. So in goes some cinnamon. I also ground up some oatmeal and added some to the soap as well.



The soap still has the lingering soap smell, I would probably need some essential oil to cover that up, but it's not as strong as it was plain. The honey and oats are said to be good for the skin.

I poured the soap into a plastic container that I figured would be easy to pop the soap out of once it set. Some of the chuncks of soap never did melt, but I didn't really care, I don't really know what I'm doing anyway. I added some oatmeal on top for fun and placed it in the fridge for the night.



A couple days later I took the soap out of the fridge. It popped out of the container pretty easily. I then cut it into six pieces, it cut pretty easily. I placed it back into the mold, covered it and put it back into the fridge until I needed to use some.



It appears to be a winner. Joey mentioned that he really liked it and I find that it is not drying at all. The honey smell also seemed to get more noticeable when we used the soap.

Spelt Pita

Spelt is one of the flours that I use. Though it is technically not gluten free, many gluten sensitive people can enjoy it. Spelt is especially good for sourdough breads and if I can ever find the berries here I will attempt some sprouted spelt sourdough. But for now the spelt sourdough bread that I have really come to enjoy is the Integrity Bread, found in Manitoban Health food stores.

Like all grains, Spelt (in whole berry form) should really be soaked and sprouted to break down the phytic acid (which is found naturally in grains, but binds to important nutrients that you're body will want) and to make the grain more easy to digest, or fermented. However, I do use store-bought spelt flour in this recipe (and for others).

The Pita

1 cup Spelt flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup water (room temp)
1/2 - 1 tsp olive oil (if necessary)

In a bowl mix flour and salt. Make a little well in the middle of the flour. Add water and oil (I usually just put the oil in). Mix with fork until mixture forms a ball. Divide into (4) balls. Flatten on floured surface. Roll out, keeping well floured.



Place on a hot (stainless steal) skillet (do not add oil or anything to the skillet). Bake about 3 minutes on each side.



If you want a thinner pita you can try to divide the dough into 5 balls, although, the thinner it gets the harder it is to lift and place on the skillet. You may be able to see in the pictures that some of the dough folded on itself in some of the pitas.



These pitas are great covered in butter and crushed garlic, toasted in the oven and served with hummus.

Or also for pizza!...


For pizza, I saute some onion and when the onion is almost soft I add some chopped garlic.
While the onion is cooking, I drizzle olive oil on the pitas. Give them a generous amount. I used to use store-bought rice wraps for this, and they didn't need very much oil because they were so thin, but these are thicker and can use more oil. Sprinkle spices of choice onto the oiled pita. I use oregano, basil and Herbamare. I load the softened onions on top of this, and then add chopped tomatoes and chicken if I have. Feta cheese would also go deliciously on this, and when I feel like a good cheat I add some. Add whatever ingredients you like - peppers, olives, whatever. I usually keep these pretty simple, but they can easily get fancy.

I place them in the oven at about 350 and I hardly time things, I just check every so often to see if they are crispy enough, of if the toppings are cooked to my liking, you probably don't need to bake these at all if you don't want to. Here, in Tasmania, I am still getting used to these different stoves. They have the oven part in the bottom, with only a bottom heat source. And then in a separate enclosure is the grill with the top heat source. For this round I just did them in the grill, I'm not sure if that's that best way to do them or not, but it turned out fine.

I added a simple salad to this meal. (I do not have the same ingredients that I had back in Canada, so the salad dressings are more or less made up every time. This time I believe it consisted of olive oil and a dash of apple cider vinegar and some oregano and garlic.) I make the salad more exiting by adding carrot, tomato and on my portion soaked sunflower seeds (Joey is allergic to sunflower seeds).

Dried Apples

In the previous post I mentioned that I noticed that the apples did not turn brown when I sprinkled them with charcoal. This intrigued me. I was wanting to make dried apple slices and was a bit unsure of the lemon juice that was available here. It had some preservative in it (in Australia they don't seem to want to make it to readily known just what ingredients are in their products, this was “preservative 223”. I did look it up, but I don't remember which not-so-great preservative it was). Normally when drying apples, after cutting them I dip them into a lemon/water solution to prevent them from turning brown while they dry on my dehydrator (which is also in care of my Mom). I did not really want to use this lemon juice and so I decided to do some experimenting.

I cored and peeled the apples and cut them into slices. I then places the sliced apples in a bowl of water to which some charcoal had been added. I let them soak for a few minutes and then placed them on a cooking tray (stainless steel).


They did look quite speckled, but since charcoal doesn't have or affect taste I didn't really care.

I then sprinkled the apples with cinnamon and placed them in the grill part of my oven. I set the grill as low as it would go. On my dehydrator I was able to adjust the temperature and always dehydrated things below 110 F in order to maintain as many nutrients as I could. I did not have a clue what temperature it got to in my gill, but I keep the door open at times so it would not heat up too much.



When they are dried through to your likeness (longer for “chips” less if you want them more spongy), remove from oven. I've put these in the freezer so we don't eat them all right away. I'll use them for a snack or to add to granola. These are only brown from the cinnamon, otherwise, they have not yellowed very much at all.

Applesauce

We were blessed this past week to have a surplus of apples. Usually apples are on my list of “definitely must have organic”, (we usually bought everything organic) but because of the scarcity of fruit in general here, plus the even bigger scarcity of organic food (we would have to order specially from Hobart), I gladly accept the poisoned apple.

Back in Canada, we preferred to have Granny Smith apples (or sour apples as the kids referred to them as) because they do not have as high a sugar content. We would generously (at least I would) load them with cinnamon and eat with our freshly ground (with my Champion Juicer) raw almond butter. However, I have had to leave my wonderful juicer in care of my Mom, who I'm sure will thoroughly enjoy it. Plus we don't have any almonds currently. Apparently they do get them occasionally here though.

The apples that's we've gotten here have been a various varieties. Golden Delicious, and Fuji among others that I can't remember. They have done alright with the natural peanut butter, but just don't have the flavour of the organic apples. It will be truly wonderful when the apple trees bring forth their fruit here. I am not sure how many apple trees they have, but I know they have at least one more established one, and several smaller ones. Those will be good apples.

The apple is a great fruit. It is also a great sweetener. So I set about to make some applesauce to use later for baking when apples are not so plentiful. I choose the Golden Delicious for the sauce, mainly because I know the other people here preferred the red ones for eating.

I do cringe at the thought of eating apples full of poisonous pesticides, or anything with pesticides for that matter. Apples happen to be at the top of the list for pesticides (along with bell peppers, and peaches). Among a host of other nasty things, pesticides are also mimic estrogen. For someone who has a disease caused by too much estrogen, this is definitely something that I want to avoid. So what to do?

Before leaving Canada, I got a very interesting book from Letitia about Charcoal called Charcoal Remedies.com. At the time, my interest was the part of the book that talked about charcoal's ability to absorb poisons from snake and spider bites. (I have never seen so many spiders as I do here, not a fan of spiders in the first place, but here there is the added, “Just assume they are all poisonous to some degree.” Great.) However, reading the book, I am soundly convinced of charcoal's diversity and have been trying it out several different ways – ways not even mentioned in the book (although I'm not totally done reading it yet), but the principle is the same. Charcoal absorbs poison, and I was particularly intrigued by one story of a man who attempted suicide by swallowing a bunch of pesticides. They force fed him a bunch of charcoal water (he was unconscious) and he made it.

And so I took my charcoal to the kitchen. Well actually it stays in there anyway. I've been filtering water using charcoal, but that's another story.

So, when I cut up my apples to make the sauce I simply added a tablespoon of powdered charcoal to the pot. It took eight apples to fill the pot and the one tablespoon sure made them black. I simmered the apples on as low as I could on this stove (it doesn't stay very low). Normally I would just juice the whole apple with the blank screen on my juicer for nice raw applesauce, but alas, I don't have that option anymore.


I let them cook until nice and soft and then mashed them as good as I could, but wasn't terribly picky.
I then packed them into little jar containers, measured by the cup for use in future baking.


I did a second batch and decided that maybe I didn't want such a black applesauce. So instead of adding the charcoal to the pot, I sprinkle the tablespoon of charcoal to the cut apples in a bowl and let them sit for a while.


After sitting for a few hours, I quickly rinsed them.

I still had the scrapings of the first batch of applesauce in the pot, so this second batch is darker than it would've been if I had done them this second method from the start, but that's okay. No one will mistake my applesauce! Can you tell which was the first batch?


During this process I did notice something very interesting. I let the second batch of apples sit for a couple of hours in the charcoal. Normally apples turn yellow/brown after a while. However, these apples remains a nice white (with black specks from the charcoal). That led me to another idea...

Herbamare

In my opinion cinnamon is the spice of life - everything tastes better with cinnamon. However, one thing we've really been missing lately is Herbamare.

Yesterday Joey and I were able to take the van and go do some exploring in Bernie for Health food. It was kind-of a sad trip in terms of Health food stores - nothing like what we're used to in Canada. There are simply not enough people around these parts for larger availability, it seems like the hub on the island is in Hobart (5 hour drive away). There's a bit to sacrifice for being out in the country. (Thankfully we have the internet and will thus have to order a few things - like Agave Nectar, Coconut oil, etc. and it's surprising how hard it is to find a simple thing like Vanilla without sugar in it! I may just end up getting pods and making extract myself.)

Anyways, the one thing we did manage to find was our long missed Herbamare! Supper tasted a little better last night, and lunch today did too, and popcorn will later...

Don't underestimate this little bottle of herb infused salt, we have really gotten used to having it in a vast number of things. I only use plain sea salt now for baking, everything else gets Herbamare. Eggs, salad dressings, popcorn, rice...Herbamare.

What Can't I Eat?

I guess I should explain some of the reasons for the question, "What do I eat?"

First and foremost, why do any of us eat?

Most would say, "Because we need to in order to live."

Others would say, "Because it's fun."



In regards to the first answer, we do need food to survive. But we need good, meaning nutritious, food to live. There are some basics that everyone should follow if you want to live a healthy life. And the excuse that you can eat anything and still be fine will not sit well with you when the effects eventually do catch up with you. If they don't now, they will later.

For me specifically, I have a disease called Endometriosis (stage IV) and part of controlling this disease (i.e. not being in pain with my hot water bottle all day) is in restraining from certain foods.

These foods include;
dairy, sugar (including honey), red meat (although now I can have organic, grass fed occasionally which is apparently 3 times a week - more than I did regularly anyways. I will have more to say on the importance of red meat in the diet hopefully later.), and wheat and glutenous grains.

So, hence the question that has been asked so often, "What does Andrea eat?" or the popular, "So...what can you have?"


As to the second answer, (Because it's fun), I am very glad that I enjoy cooking and creating, because this diet can be very monotonous if all you eat is rice and carrot sticks (often my choice at potlucks). Rice and carrot sticks are quite good at times, but not everyday. So this blog will become my record of what I eat...to live...and for fun, because it's great when food is enjoyable as well as healthy.


A quick warning to those who are not used to eating like this. This food may not be so enjoyable to you at first. That is because your taste buds are currently conditioned to whatever foods you are eating right now, which is probably white wheat flour and sugar. Let me say right now that these are B-A-D for you. Your body will need to get off of these foods, and it will not like you while you are going through withdrawn (not even exaggerating, sugar is addictive). Also you will need to get used not eating every sweet. Everything tastes bland if you are used to sweet all the time. You will need a nice long break from sweet in order to start truly tasting again. Then, after that things will be so much more flavourful!


That's my diet in a nutshell. I will have more in depth posts to come periodically about this stuff and the bad stuff you should avoid. Until then, start by trying to avoid white stuff. It's easy to remember, just eat nothing white (cauliflower is okay though). What I mean is no white sugar, no white flour, no white rice even. (Am I scaring you?) Start with what you can. It doesn't help to try and do something all at once if you can't follow through. Start with the flour and sugar and you will be well on your way.

The Molasses Cookie

MMMM...the molasses cookie...
a completely made up recipe which I use as a source of fiber. My naturopath told me to take 1-2 tablespoons of ground flax daily, plus a tablespoon of black-strap molasses daily. I often forget to do the ground flax in water, and I don't like taking right before bed as then I have to use to bathroom in the middle of the night and that was the time that I would usually remember. The molasses...a cookie sounded good for an intake of molasses. So thus, the molasses cookie was born.

Since it is completely made up I have done a number of variations on it. I've added coconut milk, or used 1 cup oat bran and 3/4 cup brown rice flour in place of all the rice flour (the best variation in my opinion). Many people also don't like the overwhelming molasses taste and have lessened it considerably when making these cookies with these people in mind. I, however, really enjoy a good serving of molasses.

If you don't have an ingredient, that's fine. Substitute whatever you need to. (I currently don't have coconut oil, and I found that it really doesn't make a difference). Also I never measure spices, so these are just a guideline.

In a bowl combine;

1 cup ground flax
1 1/2 cup brown rice flour (blend rice in blender/ coffee grinder)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon

add;

3 tbsp coconut oil
1/4 tsp liquid Stevia
3/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup water

Mix all together. If too watery, or if you like a dryer cookie, add oats, or more flour. Place in spoonfuls on a stainless steal cookie sheet, or a stone or something that's not teflon or aluminium. You do not need to grease the pan.

Cook at 350 F for 15 min or so. (Depending on how I change the recipe the time varies a lot).

The flax nutrition is mainly lost in cooking. If you want flax for it's omega-3 oils, then you'd better have it raw. For this purpose, however, I was more interested in fiber.

Be sure to drink lots of water! Your body needs good old fashioned water to work with the fiber to aid elimination. A very common reason why people are constipated is simply because they do not drink enough water, and especially if you are taking something like flax or psyllium, added water will help things along. A good "calculator" of how much water you need is to take half of your body weight (in pounds) and that is how many ounces of water you should have daily. But don't drink all at once, spread it throughout the day.

Enjoy!

Well there you go, I started a blog. I have been asked many times for recipes and what I eat, instead of writing them out and emailing them individually, I'll just do a blog!

This way, maybe I can post pictures too, which is always much more interesting and helpful. That is - if I get around to it.

Enjoy!