Montana – GrainFreeCamper.com

August 21, 2022

Grain-Free Granola Recipe

A favorite breakfast of mine, growing up, was cereal and milk. Through my stomach healing journey, I gave up all of my favorite cereals and granolas. I tried granola recipes made with nuts and coconut flakes. My body didn’t tolerate them very well.

I decided I can’t tolerate honey or maple syrup. I can tolerate date syrup. I created a granola recipe using date syrup instead of honey and maple syrup.

My favorite date syrup is Date Lady date syrup.

The kitchen smells so good, when the granola is cooling, my family has been known to eat it from the baking sheet. You will want to bag this up as soon as you can.

Grain-Free Granola Recipe

3 cups coconut chips
2 cups nuts (walnuts, macadamias, pine nuts, cashews, pecans)
¼ cup coconut oil
3/8 cup date syrup (Date Lady Date Syrup)
1 ½ t vanilla
1 ½ t cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
In a large mixing bowl add the coconut chips and nuts
Place parchment paper on large baking sheet
Stir together until mixed
In a small saucepan, over low medium heat, melt the coconut oil.
Stir in the date syrup.
Continue stirring until it boils.
Stir in the vanilla and cinnamon.
Pour over the coconut and nuts mixture.
Stir until the nut mixture is coated with caramel mixture.
Pour the mixture on to the baking sheet.
Press it down into one layer on the baking sheet.
Put in a preheated oven for 15 minutes. Stir halfway through.
Take out of the oven and stir again. Let the granola cool.
Use a spatula to break the granola into bite size parts.
Put the granola in a large baggie.
Keep in the refrigerator.

June 25, 2022July 4, 2022

Gravy Recipe

My Mom’s homemade turkey gravy recipe is the best I have ever tasted. She never wrote it down of course. She was always in charge of making the turkey gravy at her house and later, when I took over the cooking, at my house. It was always perfect. No lumps of flour, smooth, and always delicious. She told me her father taught her how to make the gravy. He said you could never have too much salt and pepper in the gravy.

The gravy is an important side for our Thanksgiving Dinner. When I learned I could no longer eat my Mom’s signature gravy, I researched and tested gluten free gravy recipes. After several tries, I settled on a coconut flour recipe. The flavor was similar to Mom’s. The consistency was a little grainy but I liked flavor.

We didn’t keep the leftover gravy. It would get really grainy the next day. We would throw the rest away by the second day.

I made a chicken soup recipe from a whole 30 blog. My family and I loved it. It was so creamy and had a great flavor. It was still creamy the next day. The recipe called for coconut milk and arrowroot. I decided I would tweak this recipe to make our turkey gravy.

It works with chicken, turkey, and beef broth.

My sister-in-law, Katie, told me after our Thanksgiving dinner that she couldn’t tell the difference between my gluten-free dinner and the dinners my Mom used to make. I have been tweaking my Thanksgiving recipes for 6 years now. The new gravy recipe made the difference.

I hope you enjoy this Creamy Turkey Gravy recipe.

Creamy Turkey Gravy

2 Cups of Bone Broth (Turkey, Chicken or Beef)
1 T Nutritional Yeast
¼ t Onion Powder
⅛ Garlic Powder
¾ t Salt
½ t Pepper
1 t Italian Seasoning
1 t Dried Parsley
1 can 13.5 oz Full Fat Coconut Milk( I use Natural Value Organic Coconut Cream)
⅛ c Arrowroot Powder

Pour 2 cups of bone broth in a medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Add the seasonings to the broth. In a separate bowl mix the coconut milk and the arrowroot powder. Mix until the coconut milk is smooth. Pour the milk and arrowroot mixture into the boiling broth and mix until smooth. The gravy is done when it thickens. Season with the salt and pepper to taste.

April 19, 2020May 2, 2020

Grain-Free Garlic Bread

I loved garlic bread. Well actually, all things garlic. I loved the texture and crunch of the french bread. During my quest to heal my stomach, not only did I identify I can’t tolerate grains but I also can’t tolerate garlic. After I went grain-free, I missed garlic french bread.

I found that garlic infused oil has great garlic flavor, but doesn’t contain the part of the garlic that I am sensitive to. My favorite oil is Garlic Gold Oil. I use it as a substitute for garlic. I put it in all recipes that use garlic. I substitute 1 T of Garlic Gold Oil for 1 clove of garlic. I usually put it in the dish right before I serve it or when I stir fry vegetables, I include 1 T of the Garlic Gold Oil.

After we found the garlic infused oil was so tasty, my husband experimented with frying grain-free bread in garlic infused oil and ghee to eat with hamburgers. My family loved them.

Grain-Free Garlic Bread

Grain-free bread slices
Ghee
Garlic infused olive oil (Garlic Golden Oil)

Brush the ghee/oil mixture on the griddle. Place the bread slices on the mixture. Flip and cook until browned.

They are great as a hamburger bun or crunchy sandwich bread.

For crunchy bread sticks, slice the bread slices into strips, fry them and serve them with guacamole, and other dips.

August 29, 2019

Camping Whole 30

The Italian Beef Soup recipe from Whole 30 Fast & Easy cookbook is a great recipe to make camping.

I purchased a yellow zucchini and heirloom tomatoes at the farmers’ market. I can’t tolerate the sweet peppers so I doubled the zucchini for the recipe.

For prep work, I browned the beef burger in my kitchen and froze it in a large baggy prior to leaving on the trip.

The ingredients were easy to store in the camper. I put the beef pouch in the freezer, chicken broth and herbs in the pantry, and I placed the whole fresh vegetables in the refrigerator.

The soup is assembled pretty quickly. Cut up the vegetables, thaw the burger, put in the soup pan with broth and cook. Clean-up is quick because the beef was pre-cooked.

The soup is very flavorful and very satisfying. Leftovers can be warmed up for lunch. A very easy recipe for camping.

Italian Beef Soup
Whole 30 Fast & Easy Cookbook

July 24, 2019

Heal My Gut

The next part of my journey was the most painful and really prompted major change in my thoughts about what I eat. I had a really bad flare up of gastritis. I lost about 20 pounds. I was in a lot of pain. My stomach burned constantly. I had a few things I could eat without pain.

I went back to my gastroenterologist. She prescribed a stomach coating liquid in addition to the proton pump inhibitor and the fiber pills. I didn’t get much relief from the medicines. Next, I went to a naturopath. She gave me a stool test. With this test, I was diagnosed with a fungus in my gut. She prescribed a really powerful probiotic for two weeks and a buteraid supplement. The burning slowly improved over a 3 month period.

I researched diets to treat my gut fungus and leaky gut. I found a web site and diet authored by two guys in Bozeman, MT. SCDLifestyle.com. I’m from Montana, so I decided to check it out. They offered a specific carb diet for mild and hard cases for $99. I purchased it, and printed out the diet and all of the recipes. I created a shopping list for each week. After New Years, I told my family we were going to follow this diet for at least 6 weeks.

I liked the diet because it did not include any foods which caused inflammation in the body. We followed the diet for 6 weeks. I didn’t really notice a change in my burning stomach during the 6 weeks. I continued to make the meals and cut out more foods which affected me when I tried to add them back to my diet. A month later, my pain went away. Two months later, I quit taking the prescribed proton pump inhibitor. That was 3 years ago, and I haven’t had to go back on the proton pump inhibitor since.

I continued to cook much of the scd diet recipes. My energy level, continued to increase. The scd diet used some recipes from Michelle Tam of NomNom Paleo. I purchased her two cookbooks to try more of her recipes. They were wonderful and my family loved the food.

I still felt like my energy was not where it could be. I was now more aware that food was my path to health. I decided to give the Whole 30 diet a try to see where it took me.

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019

The First Step in My Whole Foods Journey

My stomach always burned. I had pretty low energy. Modern medicine prescribed proton pump inhibitors and muscle relaxers. They didn’t work. I decided to take control and heal myself. This would mean changing the food I ate. I told my family that I would need their support in making these changes. They agreed to help whenever they could.

It’s hard to make the change from eating the American diet to eating a whole food diet. My family loved flavorful food, comfort food, and good old American food. It was important for me to slowly make changes to our diet. I didn’t want my family to suffer while I made these changes. I needed my family to be satisfied with the changes I made. I work full-time, I volunteer at my children’s’ school, and my children were involved in after school activities. With this schedule, I needed the food preparation to be easy.

When I finally decided to change the way I eat, I tried using gluten-free flours. I tried different non-wheat flours and recipes to use the flour. I was amazed at how good the food tasted. I cooked with the flours for several months. I didn’t really notice much of a change to my health, but I was encouraged to keep moving forward.

My husband suggested I check out Danielle Walker, Against The Grains. I read Danielle’s blog. I read her story and it reminded me of mine. I was blown away. I was not alone in my battle with unexplained painful stomach. There was someone else experiencing these issues that couldn’t be helped with western medicine.

I purchased her cookbook, Meals Made Simple. Danielle provided an 8 week menu of dinner recipes in her cookbook. She included a shopping list for each week. I told my family we were going to try this 8 week plan. I followed the recipes and my family raved about my cooking. We really enjoyed the healthy flavorful meals and they were so easy to prepare.

I learned a lot about reading labels and looking for hidden gluten in the ingredients. I learned about selecting better quality ingredients that would encourage healing in my body. I noticed an improvement in my energy right away. After the eight weeks, the burning in my stomach was improving.

I purchased Danielle’s other books, Against The Grains, and Celebrations. Her recipes are so easy and taste great. With her recipes and shopping lists for each week, my confidence in my cooking increased and I was ready to try other whole food diet authors.

I stuck my toes in the water. I was exposed to a different way of healing myself. I didn’t feel completely deprived of my favorite foods. I had a long way to go to heal myself. It was time to research stricter diets that would treat my gut fungus.