More Recipes

At this point, I am getting the hang of cooking this way. I have posted new recipes I've modified or made up at the other blog, Sharing Recipes, with the tag "Elimination Diet." You may look for them there. Links to them appear here:

Main Dishes
Crock Pot Mexican Burrito Bowls
Mustard Chicken with Nut Cream
Orange Pork Chops

Side Dishes
Spicy Beans

Miscellaneous
Nut Cream

Meals for the Week of 7/12-7/18

Sunday's Meals (7/12/15)
Breakfast on your own (I skipped breakfast today!)
Lunch:
* Leftover rice from last night, reheated and spiced Mexican (APB, paprika, chili powder, cayenne)
* Black beans, garbanzo beans, and cooked hamburger spiced Mexican and made saucy (olive oil)
* Leftover brussel sprout salad
Dinner:
* Goat-Cheese Burgers w/caramelized onions
* Grilled asparagus
* Salad of leftover brussel sprout salad, baby kale, baby arugula, lime juice, olive oil, macadamias

Meal Highlights this Week
At this point, things are falling into a pattern...we're making a few things that work, cyclically...I'm getting more comfortable "winging it' within the ingredient list we can have, to make leftovers taste a little different the second time around...

Lunch: One day EV was with us and we made some more of that Mexican meat/bean mixture from 7/12, but this time the "spiced Mexican" involved some tomato paste, since the three of us eating it can have it. I served it over baked crispy fries, and it was delicious... tasted almost like "chili cheese fries"--without the cheese, of course!

"Entertaining": We hosted some of our dearest friends and their five children for the day. They are visiting from Africa, where he is serving as a doctor to the destitute. Unfortunately, our friend has a severe allergy to nuts and seeds, which pulled out two major ingredients we've been able to make work while on the elimination diet. We pulled off the first meal by serving pasta (two boxes of rice penne (do not cook the pasta ahead and let it sit there during prep of other stuff!!) with two different sauces--the walnut sauce for us, and a jar of Classico tomato and basil for him and whoever else wanted it--with sautéed onions in both. We cooked up a bunch of other veggie toppings (broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers) and served them in individual bowls so people could take what they could have. I also served sliced apricots on the side--lots of them, as I had bought a bunch at Costco and they were getting ready to be too soft to keep around--as dessert.

For dinner, we ordered a couple of pizzas from Sam's for their kids, and we had Farm Fresh steam some shrimp (plain--we added APB and lime at home) and we cooked some burger patties. I ate my burger on a rice cake, topped with a makeshift ketchup blend (tomato paste, rice vinegar, paprika, dry mustard, salt, sugar). It wasn't half bad.

Dinner: In order to use the leftover burgers, I served the patties with waffle hash browns and cooked cabbage. (I'm not sure why I haven't been doing more of that. It was delicious, and we need the roughage! I cooked it with a good bit of onion and seasoned it with olive oil, salt, APB, and the potato dregs from my first attempt to cook the hash browns regularly, in the skillet, which stuck badly. Once the hash browns were safely in the waffle iron, I added a bit of hot water to the pan and cooked off the seasony, stuck potato mash and added it to the cabbage. Yum!)

Meals for Saturday, 7/11/15

Breakfast
Everything-Free Waffles again! (and, again, YUM!)

Lunch
Pecan-Sesame-Encrusted Chicken Strips
Oven-Baked Crispy Fries

Dinner
Smoked salmon
Brussel Sprout Salad, modified for our elimination diet
Some sort of rice dish

Meals on Friday, 7/10/15

Breakfast
Everything-Free Waffles (YUM!)

Lunch
Leftovers from last night

Dinner
Leftovers/clean out the fridge

Meals on Thursday, 7/9/15

Breakfast
On your own. (I had half a grapefruit and a "stacker" rice cake with almond butter and jelly.)

Lunch
EL and I are alone today at lunch, so I think I'll try some sort of tomato pasta sauce, since we can both have tomatoes and the others can't.

Dinner
Marinated Tuna, cooked according to instructions at Pan-Seared Steak in the Oven
Black Beans with Cilantro-Lime Rice
Cucumber slices, chilled with APB and dill
Sliced avocado, drizzled with lime juice and topped with pine nuts

Meals on Wednesday, 7/8/15

Breakfast
EL is still at her sister's house, so I'm not sure what she ate.
OG fried herself some egg whites with cooked hamburger in them.
I made a pot of oatmeal for me and iivo.

NOTE on "psychological shift": Iivo bought some "duck eggs boiled in salt water" at the Asian market last night when he went for mung bean sprouts for the Asian Salad. Interestingly, I notice he didn't "dive in" to those this morning. It is definitely a psychological shift to go to duck or turkey eggs (permissible) from chicken eggs. We're finding that it is relatively easy to switch gears into non-traditional alternatives in all areas except animal products. Trying new vegetables, fruits, nut milks and such is no problem, but thinking of trying to prepare and eat buffalo or bison or goat or rabbit (though all are permissible on our elimination diet) is daunting at best and disgusting at worst. Interesting! Hopefully we'll come along in those. I guess the duck eggs in my fridge right now are a first step. (Gag. I don't even like chicken eggs!)

Lunch
EL and I had leftover Asian Pasta from last night and an ear each of fresh sweet corn, since we're the only ones who can have it right now. We also had a half grapefruits and a cup of "Freshca" each.

Desperation Snack

I have been starving for something sweet, and my sister-in-law had posted a "cupcake in a mug" thing on her Facebook wall. I was desperate enough to try to make it work gluten-free. If you're desperate, it wasn't half bad! I present Desperation Cake.

Dinner
EV and RE are coming over for dinner before our prayer meeting tonight. OG has requested:
Pan-Seared Steak in the Oven
Mashed Pocaulies
Arugula and Baby Kale Salad with Apricots

Meals on Tuesday, 7/7/15

Breakfast
On your own. (I had a "stacker" thin rice cake with almond butter.)

Lunch
Everyone is out today with leftovers. I had leftover stir-fry from the other night.

Dinner
Asian Pasta (just me and iivo, so I used toasted almonds and added carrots)

Meals on Monday, 7/6/15

Breakfast on your own (I had a handful of berries and a quinoa-rice thin with almond butter.)

Lunch
Vegan Veggie Wraps

Dinner
Pan-Seared Steak in the Oven
Cripsy Potato Waffles
Roasted broccoli

Meals on Sunday, 7/5/15

Breakfast 
Before church, on your own, according to allowances. (I had oatmeal.)

Lunch
Scrounge-Around (This is our word for "find whatever you can find that sounds good to you." I had a rice cake with almond butter, jelly, and almond meal, and some potato chips.)

Dinner
Vegan Veggie Wraps
Sliced apricots

Meals on Saturday, 7/4/15

Today we are going to my parents' house for a 4th of July cookout. They are making hamburgers that are made of nothing but ground beef, seasoned with salt and grilled.

Mom will provide the usual toppings, most of which most of us can't have: lettuce (we'll use arugula), tomato (only a couple of us can have it), onion, pickles (nope-not for any of us), ketchup/mayo/mustard (which none of us can have).

I mashed up some avocado (for those of us who can have it) to take the place of mayonnaise. I also chilled some cucumber slices, which I "marinated" in celery salt and dill. These are a very lame substitute for a pickle, I tell you! And no amount of anything can make up for a lack of ketchup/mayo/mustard on a burger! (And don't even get me started about cheese!)

I will make Sizzling Napa Salad and some sort of something to try to serve as a gluten-free, wheat-free, egg-free, yeast-free hamburger bun. (Yeah, right!) Here's the recipe I came up with: Everything-Free Bread.

My daughter EV is making Oven-Baked Crispy Fries.

Reflection:
Well, there really is no substitute for condiments on a burger! The buns were actually quite good--kind of a biscuit-like texture, but they held up to a burger without crumbling--but the burgers themselves were very dull and boring. Mashed avocado, meat, arugula, dilly cucumbers, sweet onion, and tomato tastes pretty bland when you're used to something more. I think the goat cheese mixed into the meat is important to help with the flavor. And maybe add some fresh jalapeño as a topping just so there's something exciting going on!

The fries were amazing, and the saltiness was a welcome complement to the relatively dull burgers.

Meals for Friday, 7/3/15

We are all headed to Busch Gardens today, so I have to make food that we can take with us, and eat cold, for two separate meals. Ack!

Breakfast (on your own)
Oatmeal
Poached Eggs

Lunch
Pecan-Sesame-Encrusted Chicken Strips
Quionoa Salad with Red Beans and Beets
Crudites (carrot sticks, celery sticks, and sliced peppers, according to eliminations)

Dinner
Cilantro-Lime Chicken Strips
Plain chicken strips, pan-fried in ghee with APB
Apple slices and blackberries (according to who can have what)

Meals on Thursday, 7/2/15

Breakfast

Again, for breakfast, everyone has gotten pretty adept at grabbing something from among the choices of what they know they can have if they don't see a big meal I've made for all of us. This morning will not be one of those mornings, so they'll fend for themselves. As for me, I grabbed a handful of berries and a fingerful of pistachios before I taught a piano lesson.

Lunch

Leftovers again. I'm getting kind of tired of Creamy Walnut Pasta with broccoli, even though it's yummy. Plus, they say you shouldn't eat the same things over and over, so we need to let that lie for a little while.

Dinner

Tonight I will use the leftover pork chops to make some sort of stir-fry using very limited ingredients. I'll post what I come up with.

I chopped the leftover pork chops into small, bite-size pieces. For the sauce I put half a can of pineapple (left from the pineapple marinade I used to cook the port in the first place) into the VitaMix and pulverized it, adding a bit of sesame oil, APB, fresh ginger, onion, water, and tofu.

I served the meat with stir-fried veggies (cabbage, celery, onion, and broccoli in the community pot; carrots and peppers each in their own separate bowls for those who could have them). I served it with Soy/Dairy-Free Fried Rice.

Meals on Wednesday, 7/1/15

Breakfast

The girls are getting the hang of their restrictions, so each of them made herself an egg/omelette thing for breakfast according to allowances. (OG can only have whites. EL will take one extra yolk but not both!) Iivo grabbed something, but I'm not sure what. I ate leftover oatmeal from the fridge.

Lunch

Again, Iivo and OG packed leftovers.
I ate two corn tortillas with avocado and bacon again. They are yummy and easy.
EL made herself a corn tortilla roll with almond butter and ate it with some leftover meatballs.

Dinner

Tonight was the first Wednesday of the month, so our weekly prayer meeting—which meets at our house—was scheduled to have a potluck! Oh, the torture! EV made some Creamy Walnut Pasta and I stir-fried some broccoli and onions to go in it. I put out some grapes (which only two of us can have) and sliced up a cucumber, and that was it. We watched in (semi-)agony (I am being dramatic!) as our friends ate things like fried chicken, baked salmon, grilled chicken, key lime pie, and fresh fruit tart. We survived, but it wasn't easy! It is easier to resist foods that aren't right under your nose! I've made my mouth water again just typing about it here. Man, how I wanted some of that fruit tart!

Meals on Tuesday, 6/30/15

Today, everyone will be gone from home all day long except me. That means leftovers, leftovers, leftovers! (I'm finally figuring out that I should make larger batches of these things when I make them so that we can have some left for another meal!)

Iivo packed leftovers for lunch.

OG packed leftovers for lunch and had the snack bar prepare her dinner according to her eliminations.

EL ate lunch and dinner at her sister EV's house, where she was helping clean and organize all day. EV prepared both meals according to her eliminations. (Yay for these kinds of friends in your life!)

Iivo and I ate leftovers for dinner. I'm getting more experimental with things, so I modified the leftover Creamy Walnut Pasta with an additional sauce. I threw a single serving of leftover Pumpkin Quinoa Porridge and the leftover pumpkin from the can into the Vitamix with some Homemade Almond Milk and spices to make a different-tasting sauce.

Hooray for leftovers!