The Sweet Side of Christmas

It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
 We knew that, but did you know? ...
It came without gluten. It came without nuts, dairy, or eggs. Really it did!

Food is part of any holiday tradition. In our house, we love Christmas cookies and my husband especially loves all the Christmas candies.  However, I knew this Christmas would be different.  This is our first Christmas without gluten, milk, or eggs. I didn't want to give up our traditions. I wondered how I was going to pull off the sweet side of Christmas this year.

But it happened.  Really it did! I found or adapted several cookie recipes to suit our family.  We had purchased special allergy free chocolates for fall, but they were terribly expensive. I felt  guilty every time I ate one! So for Christmas I decided to try a few homemade recipes.  I discovered one for peppermint patties (oh yum!) which led to inspiration for nut free peanut butter cups. I even used a mish-mash of recipes to recreate Chex mix (can you guess what I replaced the nuts with?). I found & adapted a few cookie recipes to add to my repertoire too.  Before I knew it, there it was...
 The sweet side of Christmas. Tasty, delicious, & allergy free.

You see, it isn't the presents and it isn't the sweets. It's Christmas, and love for one another, and a Love like no other.


Sarah over at  Sarah Bakes Gluten Free inspired me with her Peppermint Patties  . They are delicious! My son doesn't care for peppermint, however, so I attempted to replicate his favorite Reese's Pieces.  Here's my version...

Mock Peanut Butter Cups

• 1 package Enjoy Life chocolate mini chips or chunks
• 1 cup Mock peanut butter ( I make mine out of sunflower seeds, but you can also buy Sunbutter)
• A Mini muffin tin with liners or a silicone ice cube or candy tray 

1. Line muffin tin with liners if using.
2. In a microwave safe bowl, zap chocolate chips for 30 seconds. Stir thoroughly.  Repeat until chocolate drips off a spoon.
3. Drizzle a shallow layer of chocolate into the bottom of each liner. Place in fridge for 10 minutes.
4. Spoon a layer of mock peanut butter on top of each chocolate layer.  Reheat the bowl of chocolate.  Spread the chocolate on top of the butter.  
5. Refrigerate again for 15-20 min or until completely set.  Store candies in the fridge.

Notes:
* The silicone ice cube or candy tray is nice to make fun little shapes, but I found them a pain to get clean. That may just be my experience though.  Don't try the muffin tin without the liners either. Another huge mess!

This makes roughly 24 candies, but I had a different number each time I made them.

I'd like to be able to tell you how long these last, but the truth is we ate them all within 5 days.

Ingredients (Is that even food?)

Ingredients

Now let's take a second look at the food in your house.  This time, we are going to take out anything in a box or a bag.  Turn it around and read the ingredients.  What is in your food? Is that real food in there? Kids are a great help at this.  I tell my kids that if we can't pronounce an ingredient it probably isn't food.  Let's take a look at some of the things that have been added to our food:

High fructose corn syrup - there is a lot of debate over whether corn syrup is safe or not.  Here is what you need to know. It is essentially sugar.  Sugar is a perk. It is NOT a necessary ingredient in every food

Words ending in "crose" - Sucrose, fructose, etc.  These are all sugars. Again, they are not necessary. Are you noticing a lot of sugar in your non sweet foods?

Dyes - The ingredient list may include items such as Red #5 or Yellow #6.  These are dyes that are added to improve the visual appearance of food.  While food dyes have been approved by the FDA, some people, especially children, have adverse reactions to them.

Sodium Nitrate - This and many other chemicals are added to improve the appearance and shelf life of foods.  Manufacturers want their products to be able to sit on the shelf for as long as possible.  Food which spoils means a loss of money to them.  To us, food which can spoil is a sign of fresh foods, of whole foods with as little processing as possible.

Any other strange words in there? Look them up.  Find out their purpose. Is it really something you want to eat?

The food industry spends millions of dollars researching ways to change our food.  Food that spoils cuts into their profit.  They want that loaf of bread to last indefinitely. Let's face it bread was meant to be eaten the day it is baked. Anything left over two or three days should be dry and hard.  French toast, that delicious breakfast concoction, was developed to use up day old bread that was too dry to eat without soaking.
My son recently had the assignment to grow mold on bread.  Since we don't usually keep bread in the house, I grabbed a cheap loaf at the store. Cheap should mold faster, right? After a week, we still had no mold.  We finally went out and bought a preservative-free loaf so he could finish his assignment. Just because we were curious we left the cheap loaf on the counter. It took over three weeks! You read that right. THREE! 3 WEEKS! For a product that, in it's natural state, should be decaying by DAY 3.   So how long does your bread last?
The latest and greatest research in the food industry involves satiety.  Satiety is the feeling of fullness or satisfaction we should get when we eat.  However, it is in the interest of the food industry to suppress that satisfaction.  They want you to still feel thirsty after drinking a bottle of their product.  Remember the slogan "you can't eat just one"? There is a whole slice of the industry dedicated to making sure you eat the whole bag. This lack of satiety leads to overeating because we can't tell when we are full.
Young children are especially easily manipulated because they are still learning what an appropriate serving size is. Their bodies tell them to eat until they are full, but their food is filling them.  This is one aspect of whole foods eating that continues to amaze me. My two kids could polish off a loaf of regular bread at one meal and still be hungry.  On whole foods, their servings are much smaller and they aren't still starving when the food is gone.

This week's challenge: read the ingredients listed on the foods in your pantry.  Choose one item that you can do without or replace with a real food. I'd love to hear which food you choose to chuck.

Whole foods?

You've seen it in magazines and books.  You've heard of people switching to a whole foods diet. What are they talking about?  What in the world is a whole foods diet? And where do you start?

A whole foods diet is based on  the idea that we should be eating foods in the forms they come in.  It rejects the idea that our food needs additives or other interference from man.  It says that what you find in nature should be what you are eating.  Strawberries should actually look like berries.  Vegetables should look like the root or the flower or the leaf of a plant. Meat should be an identifiable part of an animal.  (A chicken with nuggets? Really?) Eating whole foods does two things. It increases the nutrition which your body is able to draw from the food you eat.  At the same time, it decreases the number of manmade chemicals which you put into your body. What you are left with is real food.  Food that is better for your body, food that your body can break down and use. Food the way it was meant to be.

Another popular movement that coincides with the whole foods movement is the "paleo foods" movement.  "Paleo" simply means "the past," so this diet is based on what people ate in the distant past, before the Industrial Age. My kids like to call this "caveman food."  Paleo food is usually high in protein with a heavy emphasis on eggs, nuts, and meats in addition to fruits and vegetables.

There are innumerable reasons people choose a whole foods diet.  Some are trying to improve their health.  Some want to offer their families, especially their children, a more natural diet.  Others are trying to avoid the extra sugars that are added to so many processed foods.  Still others have allergies or intolerances to the manmade chemical additives.

Our family's journey began as an effort to avoid the chemicals which my daughter reacts to - not just in food but in any product.  It later morphed into the allergy side when my son and husband identified various food allergies.  I found it much easier to avoid allergens by buying just an apple instead of a sweetened, processed applesauce which might have been cross contaminated.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find that when my kids were served "real" food they were more quickly satisfied than when they ate processed food.

It can be overwhelming to think of making major changes to you diet.   It is important to realize that there is no perfect diet.  That isn't what eating whole foods is about.  It is simply making better choices.  I like to think of it like a thermometer.  I can make the thermometer go up or down.  And I don't have to do it all at once.  Just one good choice means I am doing things one "degree" better than what I did yesterday.  The other critical thing to remember is that this isn't a diet. You aren't going to deprive yourself or go without foods.  You are simply going to replace one food with a healthier option.  You can do that!

So where do you start?  Let's start with the food you actually have in the house. Grab a piece of paper and list 5 foods, meals, snacks, whatever that you have.  On the other side list 5 ways you can replace processed food with whole food or add whole foods to what you already eat.  Do you accept the challenge?  I'd love to hear about your list.

Thankful For Food

Throughout the month of November I have enjoyed seeing people post what they are thankful for. We are all truly blessed and it is encouraging  to take the time to reflect. This year the thing I am most thankful for is food. That's it. Simply food. Sure I give thanks at meals, but somehow over time I forgot to BE thankful for food. This year that changed.

I frequently find myself reflecting back over the past year during the holidays.  How far have we come this year? How much have we grown? I found myself full of mixed emotions as this holiday approached. The last year has been full of both blessings and trials of our family. We have suffered unbelievable heartache and we have seen life long dreams come true.  It is almost too much to comprehend that our lives have changed so much.

One of those changes has been to switch to an entirely allergy free, gluten free diet.  Now that's a major change! It hasn't been achieved without sweat and tears.  In fact, there have been a lot of both sweat and tears. We thought this would be a huge challenge for our son, but in truth it has been a journey for all of us.  As we worked to clean up his diet, we found that the rest of us benefitted in different ways.  We each identified foods that had been irritating us. The irritation had always been there, but on the SAD (Standard America Diet) it was impossible to identify the culprits.

We all feel better, but I have spent a lot of time focusing on what we can't eat. Reading labels, scraping meals together out of an odd assortment of foods, checking, double checking every dish we eat. Just trying to figure out how to get enough calories in these growing bodies. Learning, making mistakes, relearning everything. I was in survival mode and, as so often happens when we are in survival mode, I lost sight of the big picture.  I lost sight of all the food we can eat.  And I forgot to be thankful.

That's why I needed the ritual of Thanksgiving. Of course, there was no way the meal would look exactly like past years. My family's tradition of having "Grandma's Noodles” with our gravy was out of the question (both gluten and eggs!). In the weeks before the feast, I practiced each dish we could have individually.  I also asked my son to choose a food to add to our menu. He chose sautéed snap peas.  Unusual I'll admit, but it added a bright splash of green to the table.

        We cooked side dishes all day long on Wednesday.  Come Thursday morning, the turkey was still a little icy, so dinner was later than I planned. But what really mattered, the crux of everything I've labored over all summer, was that we ate a beautiful meal, together. We laughed and told stories. We ate food that was healthy and allergy free.  We were blessed by being thankful.

And that is why I am thankful for food.