dessert | Gluten Free Real Food

Coconut Lemon Bars

Does anyone NOT like lemon bars. They might be my favorite treat. I’ve had good and I’ve had bad. The bad ones are made with a jello mix, are sickly sweet and taste of fake lemon. I wanted to make my own using real food. I wanted them to be super lemony and not too sweet. I also did not want the crust to be nut or grain based. I think it is easy to get carried away with nuts so I am trying to switch up my baking and use more coconut than nuts like almonds etc. Yes, I realize that cicinut is classified as a nut but coconut has a better Omega 3:6 ratio and as an added bonus is low oxalate. These are not low carb but they are also not a cheat. A treat, absolutely but not a cheat. The filling recipe came from here. (I would highly recommend checking out this guys blog. He has lots of great looking recipes. And does anyone else think that a man who can cook and bake is totally sexy??) I created my own base. The coconut chips I used are from Wilderness Family Naturals. They are incredible and I did hesitate to use them in a recipe as they are not cheap (when you include shipping into the cost) and I would have been devastated if these didn’t turn out and I wasted all those coconut chips. In the end it turned out to be well worth it. So how good were they? Me, who really does not have a sweet tooth ate probably 80% of the pan over the course of about 36 hours. So, yes, they were a smashing success. The kids hated them as expected due to the lemon in them and this suited me fine. I do believe that I will have to make more of these ASAP, you know for quality control. 🙂 I believe these are GAPS legal and low oxalate as well as soy, corn, dairy, grain, gluten, refined sugar and nut free. In case you are interested in seeing the evolution of this blog, check out my first recipe for Lemon Bars.

Crust

2 eggs

1/4 cup melted coconut oil (expeller pressed is fine if you don’t want to use your expensive virgin coconut oil)

2 T raw unfiltered honey

pinch of sea salt

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/4 cup coconut chips

1/2 cup coconut chips

Preheat oven to 350. In a food processor combine eggs, coconut oil, salt and honey. Mix to combine. Add coconut flour and 1/4 cup of coconut chips. Again, process until well combined. Transfer to a bowl and stir in remaining coconut chips. Grease a glass Pyrex baking dish with coconut oil. My dish is 7×11 or 2.2 QT/2 L. Press cookie batter base evenly into dish. Bake for 18 minutes at 350 until the edges are just starting to brown and center is cooked through.

Filling

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (strained so there is no pulp)

6 whole eggs

1/3 – 1/2 cup raw unfiltered honey

1/2 cup coconut oil (I used expeller pressed.)

pinch of sea salt

Whisk lemon juice, eggs, salt and honey together in a large glass bowl or double boiler. Bring about an inch of water to boil in a medium saucepan or bottom of double boiler. Set the glass bowl on top of the boiling water. The water should not be in contact with the bowl. Slowly whisk in the melted coconut oil. Continue to whisk as the water remains at a rolling boil. DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK on this. Whisk until it starts to thicken. When it starts to thicken it gets thick FAST. Remove from heat. It should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain the filling through a fine mesh to remove any cooked egg bits. Top the crust and smooth it out. Refrigerate. My husband and The Civilized Caveman both thought this would have been great frozen too. It probably would although that would have really slowed me down as I polished these all off. (Hmmm maybe that is a good thing.) Top with extra coconut chips as you see fit. Refrigerate (or freeze) until set then devour!

This post was shared at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/monday-mania-1232012/, http://www.realfoodwholehealth.com/2012/01/fresh-bites-friday-january-27-2012/

Me In Vegas for My 40th Birthday

It’s been a while since I blogged about a dessert. Honestly, I don’t make them much anymore. I’ve been on a low carb version of a paleo diet for the last year. In a nut shell that means: meat, fish, chicken, all non-starchy veggies, some nuts and seeds, berries, some fruit, no dairy, no gluten, no grains, no industrial seed oils (corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, safflower etc), no sugar and nothing processed. Only real food is allowed. If you can’t grow it or kill it you probably shouldn’t eat it. If it comes with a label professing its health benefits you should probably steer clear. If it contains non-food ingredients, run the other way. If you can’t pronounce it, it isn’t food. The focus is on nutrient dense, fresh, high quality foods. Where I get my food is important. Organic is always preferred if economically possible. I know it sounds like a lot. It really isn’t. It’s just like the steep learning curve we were on when we first went gluten free in January of 2007. This way of eating has become second nature. It’s no big deal. Yes, it certainly requires more time than a drive through or opening packages and microwaving them at home but everything tastes better and the benefits of eating this way are life changing. I started eating this way because just over a year ago I was 38 years old and I felt like crap. I had a host of issues that were altering the quality of my life. I had so many tests with my doctor and neurologist and even an MRI. The tests showed that nothing was wrong. But still I felt like crap. The worst of the symptoms was fatigue. It was an overwhelming fatigue that went far beyond just feeling tired. Some days it was hard to remain upright. On those days when the kids asked me for something I wanted to cry. The effort it took to do something so small felt monumental. There were a long list of other complaints but it was the fatigue – both mental and physical, that were the most disturbing to me. I would rather have a migraine than have that fatigue. It occurred to me one day that if that is what my life was going to be like for the rest of my life then I didn’t really want to live it. No if that thought isn’t a wake up call – nothing is. I don’t know if this was chronic fatigue as I never got a diagnosis but I suspect that is what it was. Since changing the only thing I had the power to change, my diet, life has become mine to live again. I am 99% better now a year later. All of the little issues have vanished. The headaches that I have had since I was 13 are infrequent and mild. The bouts of fatigue are thankfully rare. How do I know it was my diet that helped me? Two reasons. 1) I changed nothing else. I still do not excercise and my stress levels are the same. Yes, these are the next two areas I need to focus on. 2) Every time I get flexible with my diet every single symptom comes back in the matter of a few days. When I started this diet – which really isn’t a diet but a lifestyle as it is something I will happily follow for the rest of my life – I didn’t start with the intent of losing weight. I have a very small frame and I don’t think anyone would have looked at me and said I was obese. Yes, I had extra weight on me and I deplored the way I looked but I didn’t think I was obese. The last 8 months is when I fell into a groove with my diet and I had worked out the kinks and found out what works best for me. In that time I have lost 30 lbs. I did this without effort to lose weight. I have never counted calories and I always eat when I am hungry. I eat until I am full. I DO NOT starve myself. I am now at a weight that I haven’t seen since I was in junior high. I weigh less than when I got married 17 years ago and less than I did when I graduated high school. That’s been a pretty nice side effect. Clothes shopping has become fun for the first time. I feel happy, relaxed, calm, clear-headed and energetic most of the time. I don’t fear Type II Diabetes anymore. I know I am super sensitive to carbs probably more than most people and I am careful. One of the best side effects of the way I eat is the freedom it has given me. It may be hard for you to imagine that I feel freedom in a diet with so many restrictions. I used to be a slave to food. I was ALWAYS thinking about the next meal. If I went more than a couple of hours without eating I turned into a volatile, anxious bitch. I was probably hypoglycemic – yet another sign of my sensitivity to carbs. When I was hungry I was ravenous. It was not a sensation that could be ignored. It consumed me. Now that I limit my carb intake and have removed all grains and sugar in my diet, food does not have that power over me anymore. When I feel hungry it is like a quiet reminder from my body that I need to eat. But if it so happens that I am not in a place that I can eat, it isn’t a big deal to wait a few hours. Nothing bad will happen. I won’t implode from hunger. I can still carry on. I’ve discovered that there is NOTHING in the world that tastes as good as feeling this way feels. The longer I eat this way the less and less I crave foods that make me feel badly. I have found that I have a pretty powerful negative feedback system that will help to prevent me from getting too far off track. I’ve learned to listen to my body which I think is something of enormous value that is not valued in our society. I am not 100% of the way there and I am still learning. I have learned so much in the last year. I will not profess to be an expert and I will not try to teach the details of all that I have learned. There are lots of great resources on the web that are more knowledgable than I and can say it and explain it better than I ever could. I can however try to share with you what I am eating and enjoying. This post started out to be a recipe for lemon bars. Yes, Paleo Lemon Bars. Not low carb but not a cheat either. Treat – yes. Cheat – no. I will get to that post soon. Until then here was my story that I did not plan to share. My hope for anyone who has actually gotten to the bottom of this loooong post is that you take your own health into your own hands. Change what you have the power to change. Educate yourself and take control. Ugh! Did that sound preachy? If you have a similar story I would love to hear about it. Leave a comment and tell me about your journey to health.

***I decided to post a picture of myself which I normally would not do but I always wonder what the writers of the blogs I read look like. So here I am. I am soooo not photogenic. This picture was taken on a friends phone when I met my high school girlfriends in Las Vegas this past October to celebrate our 40th birthdays. The picture quality isn’t great but it’s one picture of myself that I don’t hate.