Kitchen Gadget Giveaway!

Erica of Cooking for Seven is hosting a great giveaway for a $30 coupon to Frigidaire Accessories! If you want a chance to win some nice kitchen gadgets, hop on over there!

*Note: Erica's blog is not a candida recipe blog. I would not advise those with candida to make recipes from her blog until they have checked that all ingredients are safe. :-)

Oriental Tilapia with Creamy Ginger Sauce

RECIPE NOTES: 

Homemade mustard can be made by purchasing mustard powder which is mixed with an equal amount of water. Do not use out-of-the-bottle mustard which contains vinegar and sometimes sugar.

Bragg's Amino Acids take the place of soy sauce. They sound strange, but really, it tastes fine. :-)

Ingredients:
6 tilapia filets
Sea salt
3 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup peeled and coarsely chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons homemade mustard
¼ cup Bragg's Amino Acids
1 tablespoon yacon syrup or liquid stevia (use less stevia)
½ cup lemon or lime juice
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1/3 cup extra-virgin coconut oil
1 bunch green onions, chopped
3 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

Instructions:
Sprinkle filets with salt. Bake at 400ºF for about 15 minutes, until the fish flakes with a fork. Transfer to a heated platter and keep warm until ready to serve. Meanwhile, place garlic, ginger, mustard, and amino acids in food processor or blender; process until blended. Add yacon syrup (or stevia) and lemon (or lime) juice and process again. With motor running, add sesame and coconut oils gradually, blending until sauce thickens and emulsifies. Place tilapia on warmed plates. Spoon sauce over and garnish with green onions and sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Tip: The sauce in this recipe can also be refrigerated and used as a delicious salad dressing.

P.S. I apologize for the not-so-great photo... unfortunately they can only get so good when you are taking pictures at night! (you can take my apologies of the same kind for a lot of the other photos on this blog! :-).

This recipe was modified from a recipe in The Maker's Diet.

Pasta Fagioli

My sister made this amazing soup the other day for lunch. Since Dad is the only candida-afflicted one in our house, for lunch we don't always eat candida foods. After we tried this soup recipe, though, I checked to see if it would work, and lucky for you, it does! Wait! Pasta? Yep! If you use brown rice pasta, this dish is suitable for those with candida (and it would still be good even without it too!).

RECIPE NOTES: Note that tomatoes, cooked carrots and bell peppers are semi-limit foods, therefore you should not eat this soup every day. :-)
Also this contains dried oregano - make sure all your dried spices are less than 6 months old to avoid mold growth.
Check the labels on your chicken broth or make your own.
We recommend Tinkyada brand rice pasta, as we have found it is the most similar to real pasta, though we suggest you cut out a little bit of cooking time if you like firmer pasta. Rice pasta is also a limit food, so if you want to reduce the number of limit foods in the soup, you can omit the pasta entirely.

Ingredients:
2-3 cups cooked beans (a good combination is red kidney, great northern and Garbanzo)
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, grated (optional - cooked carrots are limited for candida)
½ stalk celery, sliced
2 Tbsp. olive oil or ghee
¾ cups tomato puree or crushed tomato
¼ tsp. oregano
½ tsp. salt
Dash of pepper
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
6 cups chicken broth
¼ cup chopped bell pepper
1 cup grated zucchini
Approx. 2 cups uncooked Tinkyada brown rice pasta (shape of your choice)

Instructions:
Sauté onion, garlic, carrot and celery in oil. Add beans, tomato puree, seasonings and liquid. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add pepper and zucchini. Simmer 10 minutes longer. Add pasta and cook for slightly less time than required on package.
(If freezing this for later use, omit the pasta until serving the meal)

Original recipe modified from Cross Country Bakers

New Poll!

Apologies for the lack of posting... occasionally life gets in the way of posting consistently, and if you're like me, you don't post super consistently even when life is NOT in the way... What can I say? I've put up a new poll - please vote and/or comment. :-)

What foods do you miss most (for those with candida)?

All-American Apple Pie

Apple pie is probably one of the icons of America. :-) And it's also my dad's all time favorite dessert (well, that and a good ol' Dairy Queen Blizzard). Since the DQ Blizzard is totally out of the question on the candida diet, that leaves the more probable option of the two. Since tomorrow is Independence Day, you might want to try this one out!

RECIPE NOTES: This is a limit food. Do not eat this all the time. :-) I will admit that when I made this I cheated and used regular butter. However, you can use ghee or coconut oil (ghee has a more savory flavor so since this is a dessert you might want to try the coconut oil).

Xanthan Gum is a candida-safe elasticizer. Because you'll be using a gluten-free flour, it will tend to want to crumble. Xanthan Gum is used to help hold it together. 

Stevia has a strong aftertaste, so use less and then add more if needed.

Ingredients:
Filling
4 cups or more sliced Granny Smith apples
2 Tbsp. to scant ¼ cup powdered stevia
½ tsp. xanthan gum
¼ tsp. salt
Juice of ½ a lemon (or 2-3 Tbsp.)
Cinnamon, to taste

Crust
¼ cup cool water
2 cups buckwheat flour
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1 cup coconut oil or ghee
¼ tsp. salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 450°F. Combine stevia, xanthan gum and salt in a small bowl. Peel and slice apples, tossing as you go with a spoonful of the stevia mixture and a squeeze of lemon juice, until you have used it all. Add cinnamon.

For the crust, remove 1/3 cup flour from the 2 cups and mix the 1/3 cup in a bowl with the ¼ cup cool water, until it forms a paste. In a large bowl, cut the coconut oil (or ghee) into the remaining flour and salt with a pastry blender or fork. Mixture should be crumbly. Mix in xanthan gum. Add the paste to the flour/oil mixture and stir using the back of a fork (or a dough hook on a kitchen mixer) until dough forms a ball.

Divide dough into 2 equal pieces. Heavily flour rolling surface and rolling pin. Roll out bottom crust to 1/8 inch thick; place in a 9-inch pie plate (if you find that your crust is crumbling, you can adjust the amount of xanthan gum and/or add a touch of water until it sticks together). Fill with apple filling. Roll out top crust, place on top and crimp edge with a fork. Pierce the top of the pie a dozen times.

Bake at 450°F for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350° and bake another 40 to 50 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting.

As you see, I made my top crust a lattice crust. Either way works!

Cilantro Lime Jicama Salad

Jicama is a fresh, crunchy vegetable. It's very light and great for summer. You can add it to green salads to add an apple-like crunch, cut into matchsticks for a veggie tray, or eat it as a side dish in itself, like in the recipe below!

This is an easy, basic salad and easy to embellish. I've made it with tahini for a creamier dressing - or try it with hummus for a milder taste (tahini has somewhat bitter flavor).

Ingredients:

1 jicama

Approx. 2 Tbsp. lime juice, or to taste

3 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

sea salt to taste

Instructions:

Cut jicama into cubes or julienne. Toss with the lime juice and add the cilantro and salt. Mix together.

Variation: Add about 1 cup of cooked black beans for another option!

Breakfast Quinoa

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is a delicious, versatile dish - you can use it pretty much a hundred different ways. One of my personal favorite ways to eat quinoa is for breakfast. You serve it similar to how you would serve oatmeal. There isn't a real "recipe" to this because it's really driven by your personal preference. Quinoa is a seed, not a grain, which makes it good for candida. You should still use it in moderation, but it's a better choice than a lot of other gluten free grains out there.

How to cook quinoa:

Use 2 parts water to one part dry quinoa (to serve 2-3 people for breakfast, I would use 2 cups water and 1 cup quinoa). Rinse the quinoa prior to cooking. Combine the water and quinoa in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn to low heat, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until it is tender and you see little squiggly "tendrils" attached to each seed and water is cooked off. Fluff with a fork.

From here, it's up to you what you want to add. Quinoa does have more of a rice consistency rather than being thick like oatmeal, so I like mine a little more creamy. You can use coconut milk to cream it up a bit (make sure you READ the labels - coconut milks often have sugar added), or melt some coconut butter in if you want an even sweeter, thicker coconut flavor. You can top with strawberries, blueberries or raspberries - these are limited, so don't do it all the time, but as a treat, go ahead. :-) You can try adding cinnamon or another spice you like. Sweeten with stevia (warning - don't add to much or you will get an unpleasant aftertaste) or yacon syrup. Play around and see what you like!