The menu is usually pretty standard.  Turkey, dressing, and all the fixings.  However this is our Thanksgiving on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD).  So, the menu calls for more attention to ensure that the foods are legal and follow the diet protocol as well as are delicious and Thanksgiving-worthy.

After much discussion as a family we have finalized our menu for that special day.  It is as follows:

Turkey
Dressing (I am using the recipe from Lucy’s SCD Cookbook.)
Gravy (I am boiling the neck in water and thickening the broth with onion.)
Steamed Carrots with butter
Green Beans with legal bacon
Roasted Squash and Zucchini
Mashed Cauliflower with butter and parsley
Homemade Cranberry Sauce (I am torn between two different recipes.  One uses orange and the other grape juice.)
Biscuits (I am using the drop biscuit recipe from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook substituting honey for agave nectar.)

Pecan Praline Shortbread (Also from the above cookbook.  Are they cookies? Candy?  Who cares?  They are delicious and close to  pecan pie.)
Pumpkin Cupcakes with Incredible Icing (These cupcakes are in Gluten-Free Cupcakes again with the same substitutions as above.)
Apple Pie (I am still working on this recipe.)

We are going to have a wonderful feast in spite of our dietary restrictions.  I cannot wait!  It just goes to show that you are not deprived while on SCD.  You might not get to eat whatever you want, but with a little planning and creativity, you can still eat like a king.

I wanted to make my menu available in case some of you were struggling with what to prepare.  A Thanksgiving dinner that is completely gluten-free, legal on either SCD or GAPS diet, and easy on your tummy.  It is full of fresh vegetables and fruit.  It relies on almond flour for the baked goods.

The best place to order blanched almond flour is Honeyville Grain. Sign up on their email list and they send you coupon codes from 10% to occasionally a 15% discount.  These codes combined with their low shipping equal a good price per pound.

As thankful as I am to have my menu selected, I was even more grateful for the way my older children enthusiastically volunteered to be in charge of several dishes.  My husband is heading up the preparation of the turkey.  That means that mom won’t be in the kitchen by herself for a couple of days.  Yeah!!  I will have to add this to my growing long list of blessings this year.

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend.  My family and I spent the day on horseback.  We went on a five hour trail ride.  A cool front had come through (our first for the year).  The high was in the low 90s with a nice breeze.  The skies were clear.  It was one of the most beautiful days we have had in some time.

Unfortunately the breezes and dry conditions helped fuel numerous wildfires.  We had one to the north of us and a large one to the south of us again.  We finished the day with smoke billowing to our south and huge pieces of ash falling from the north.  As dry as it is, it was unsettling and worrisome.  My husband picked up a few pieces of the ash to investigate.  They were like hunks of fiberglass.  As bad as these fires are, the worst in the state is in Bastrop.  Please pray for the firefighters, volunteers, evacuees, and families who have lost everything.  In addition, please pray for a change in the weather.  No wind, rain, and cooler temperatures are what we need.

Tuesday morning it felt like fall.  It was 53 degrees!  We wanted to drink our coffee on the front porch and enjoy the coolness of the morning, but the smell of smoke in the air prevented us from doing it.  We did get our fall garden planted and spent the entire day outside.  The high was again in the low 90s.

My husband’s birthday is coming up and I have been trying to find an excellent recipe for his birthday cake.  The problem I find with most recipes is that the icings are not that wonderful.  I love butter cream or cream cheese frostings.  I love their consistencies and their levels of sweetness.

I ordered Elana Amsterdam’s new cookbook, Gluten-Free Cupcakes.  Her recipes rely on almond flour and coconut flour, which are both legal flours on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  With just a little substitution here and there, I am able to adapt her recipes to our dietary needs.

My sister-in-law, Lori,  and I worked in the kitchen together trying out a few of the recipes.  Our favorite was the Pecan Pie Cupcakes.  Yummy!  The problem we ran into was with the frosting.  Many of her recipes call for coconut milk.  I had a can in my pantry, but it contained guar gum, which is a starch.  So, Lori and I came up with our own icing, which is simply incredible.  For some unexplainable reason, it tastes like a cream cheese icing.  We adapted it to go with the Pecan Pie Cupcakes by adding coconut and pecans, but you could change the recipe as needed.

Incredible Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup coconut butter*
3/4 cup honey
1 Tbsp vanilla (unsweetened)
pinch of salt
1/4 unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 chopped pecans

Beat the first five ingredients with a hand mixer until smooth.  Then add the coconut and pecans.  Stir by hand until combined well.  Refrigerate until it hardens up to a nice, spreadable consistency.  Then ice your cake or cupcakes.  Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

*Coconut butter is hard to find.  Most health food stores carry it.  It is worth the trouble to find for this recipe.

Whether you have a birthday party coming up or not, try this icing out on your favorite cake recipe.  If you have my Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook, spread it on the Pumpkin Pound Cake recipe made into cupcakes.  That is actually a great Thanksgiving Day idea.

Again, thank you for your prayers.

Out of seven in my immediate family, four have problems with wheat.  Isaac, my four-year old, has the most severe reaction of any of us.  An allergy to wheat has been ruled out leaving, according to the doctor, Celiac disease or a food intolerance as the other options.  Intolerances and/or bad reactions to milk affect five of our seven, which is why we have dairy goats. 

For the last three years, we have been living a gluten-free, wheat-free lifestyle with goat milk.  I remember how overwhelmed I felt when Isaac first broke out in head to toe hives from drinking a small cup of cow milk.  Then it compounded when we found out that wheat was also a big problem for him.  Gluten-free?  No cow milk?  What am I going to do?  How will I cook?

Once you figure out what you can eat and how to cook, your life becomes so much easier.  It becomes normal.  For three years, we have been eating this way.  Knowing how upsetting it can be with the diagnosis is one of the reasons that I wrote and published Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook. 

It is funny how things happen.  My sister-in-law and her family are on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD).  They are seeing tremendous results physically after just three weeks on the diet.  She first told me about the diet and that its entire purpose is to heal the gut.  I am borrowing  Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottshall from her.  It explains the diet in more detail. 

Then I received my Beeyoutiful winter catalog the other day.  In it, Nancy Webster wrote an article, “Addressing the Gaps in Your Health.”  She quotes the Ancient Greek scientist, Hippocrates saying, “All diseases begin in the gut.”  Ms. Webster recommends the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) diet. 

She believes that in one to two years of eating the GAPS diet, your family can be free from hyperactivity, autism, dyslexia, acne, Crohn’s disease, etc.  It sounds great.  It sounds almost too good to be true.  Can all those diseases really stem from an unhealthy gut?

The SCD and GAPS diet are very similar.  Both claim similar things, too.  From my understanding, both diets require killing off all the bad bacteria in your gut and building up the good bacteria.  There are different stages of the diets.  The introduction is much more strict and each stage includes more food.  They are both gluten and lactose free diets.  The only sweetener allowed is honey because it is a monosaccharide, which does not require digestion.

With either diet, you must prepare all of your foods.  It is time-consuming and requires advanced planning.  It is a lot of work on the family cook (me). 

So, here are my questions.  Has anyone done either diet?  If so, did you eliminate your food intolerances and/or any problem listed above?  Did you do it for one or two years?

To everyone else, would you consider following this seemingly radical diet for a year or two in the hopes that your family would be healed?  Why or why not? 

For anyone that suffers from food intolerances, Celiac disease, or intestinal problems, I recommend that you look into these diets.  I don’t know if we are going to follow them, but it is nice to be informed.  There is a lot of information out there.  Simply follow the above links to wherever they might lead.

Regardless of your opinion, I would love to hear from you.  Before I make any decision, I like to weigh all the facts.  I like to look at the issue from different perspectives.  In the past, my readers have been very helpful.  I am counting on you for your advice.

To receive the coupon for the discount, email me at lndehaven@aol.com and I will send you the e-coupon. It is only good if you order through Lulu, the publishing company.

I want to send a special “Thank you” to my past customers.  I really appreciate the business.  And to any future customers, allow me to say, “Thank you,” in advance.

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook is also available on Amazon.  The coupon is not for any purchases at amazon.com; however, you can leave a review of my book, if you are so inclined.

I wanted to let everyone know about the 10% discount.  I hope everything is going well.  I will return to writing soon.  The Grimes County Fair is almost over.  It sure has been a long week!

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook is in print.

Hoping to bring the joy of food into the lives of those who cannot eat wheat, I decided to write the Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook.  I know what it is like to receive the diagnosis of a food allergy.  It is a sad moment.  I have said it before, but you truly do go through a grieving process.  You begin thinking about all the bread, cookies, and cakes that you will no longer be able to eat.  You stress over meals, especially when you are away from home.  The holidays with all the different traditional foods like dressing, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie seem completely off-limits.

Now you can look forward to special occasions and holidays again.  It has been a labor of love.  I have spent so much time converting my family recipes into ones that my family could still eat after being diagnosed with a wheat allergy.  I grew so tired of wasting money at the supermarket buying expensive name-brand mixes and products only to find out that they were inedible.  The last time we purchased a chocolate cake mix and made it, I could not finish it.  When I cannot finish a piece of chocolate cake, then you can rest assured there is something majorly wrong with it.

At that moment, my husband really encouraged me to write my own cookbook.  He said, “People like us (with food allergies) need to know that they are not deprived.”  You can still enjoy waffles, pancakes, and biscuits for breakfast.  You can still have dinner rolls and bread.  You can still enjoy cakes, pies, brownies, and cookies.  With my combination of blanched almond flour and sorghum flour, you can enjoy the foods you thought you would never eat again.

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook not only includes delicious and easy to make recipes, but it includes holiday menu ideas, resources, links, and my favorite gluten-free items.  Months ago when I announced that I was working on a cookbook in “Writing an E-Cookbook,” I explained why I did not call it a gluten-free cookbook.

Most of my recipes are gluten-free.  Just a few include oats, which is a controversial grain for anyone with Celiac disease.  There are gluten-free oats available to purchase.  I do not want to argue either side; however, you know what you can tolerate.  If you cannot eat oats, then there are only a few recipes in the entire book to avoid.  If you can, then enjoy each and every recipe.

As promised, I will be sending my first 10 subscribers their e-cookbook free of charge this coming week.  Thank you for supporting me from the beginning.  For a hard copy or a downloadable e-book, click here or go to my “Fresh from the Farm Store” page.  You can also go directly to my Texas Homesteader’s Storefront on Lulu.

If you do not have a problem with wheat, then please be excited with me.  I would appreciate any support either through a kind word through my e-mail or comments or spreading the word for me.  Word of mouth has tremendous power.

Knowing this we were able to continue enjoying butter, most cheeses, and occasionally cream cheese.  We could no longer have ice cream, yogurt, velveeta, american cheese, ricotta cheese, or cottage cheese.  I rejoiced at being able to eat butter and cheddar cheese.  It sure made our lives easier as far as eating was concerned.  I did not have to ask restaurants if they added butter to their vegetables, etc.

One dish we all loved, but thought we could no longer enjoy was lasagna.  Tinkyada pasta makes lasagna noodles so the wheat was not the problem.  We can eat parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, but what could I substitute for the ricotta or cottage cheese?  I kept going back to the obvious answer: tofu.

However, my family was not thrilled with that ingredient so I had not tried.  But this week I had had enough.  I missed lasagna.  I had to try.  I bought a package of firm organic tofu.  The great thing about tofu is that it is pretty much flavorless.  It takes on any flavor you give it.  So I decided to add minced garlic to my tofu.

Since I have started implementing freezer cooking, my children and I prepare many dishes at one time and freeze them for a later date.  Jake wanted to make the lasagna; so he helped me.  When all was said and done, we chose to eat the lasagna first.  In fact, we ate it that night.

Words cannot describe how thrilled I was!  You could not tell that tofu was in the dish.  It tasted exactly like a regular lasagna.  If you cannot tolerate the whey in cow milk, I highly recommend that you make this recipe.  If you are completely dairy-free, use the veggie cheese shreds in the refrigerated aisle of a good supermarket.

Tofu Lasagna

To eat or not to eat tofu.

1-1/2 boxes (15 ounces) of brown rice lasagna noodles
1 lb ground beef
1 lb pan sausage
26 ounces spaghetti sauce
8 ounce can tomato sauce
14 ounces firm tofu
2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 clove garlic, minced
2 eggs
1/4 cup chopped parsley
sea salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees unless you are going to freeze the lasagna.
Brown the meat and drain it.  Add the sauces and simmer for 10 minutes.  In a bowl, mix the tofu, 1 cup of mozzarella cheese, the parmesan, eggs, parsley, garlic, salt, and pepper.
In a 15 x 10″ dish, pour 1 cup of sauce on the bottom of the dish.  Put a layer of noodles and cover them with sauce.  Then spread 1/2 of your cheese/tofu mixture and top with more noodles.  Continue layering sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce.  On top of the last of your sauce, spread out the remaining mozzarella cheese.
It is very important that your noodles are completely covered with sauce since they are uncooked.
Bake for 45 minutes covered.  Then uncover for an additional 15 minutes.  Let it stand 10 minutes before serving.
If you want to freeze it, do not bake the lasagna.  Cover with freezer wrap and place in your freezer.  To eat, allow it to thaw out completely and then bake as directed.