Enjoying Gluten-Free Life

Healing and Eating Well
 

For those who haven’t heard of it yet, Adopt A Gluten-Free Blogger is a monthly event where bloggers (and others) can adopt a blogger, make a recipe or two then share about it. This month, Kate at Eat Recycle Repeat is hosting. It’s fun and I encourage you to join in next month when it will most likely be back with the founder Sea at Book of Yum who’s been working on her disseration in Japan but should be home soon.

My adoptee, Starlene, came to the GAPS diet because of health issues and has been on it three years with amazing changes in her health. She does a blog talk radio show with interviews ranging from others on the diet to the doctor who literally wrote the book on it. (See below the post.)

Many of you may not know of the GAPS diet. It’s grain-free so naturally gluten-free. That means anyone with gluten issues can use Starlene’s recipes. (Also, when you’re searching for recipes, those that say SCD are also naturally gluten-free.)

I enjoyed searching through her recipes, choosing her Coconut Peanut Butter Balls. She uses Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate in them. Since I’d recently bought some that had gone unused, the decision was easy.

The recipe works - but my time with it was a comedy of errors. It calls for “nut butter” with a suggestion of peanut or almond butter. I made it first with almond butter but the kind I had on had was very dense, not creamy, so it didn’t glue together well.

I didn’t have peanut butter so I went with the other nut butter I did have, cashew. I can eat this right out of the jar with a spoon but, to me, it doesn’t translate well to making goodies. It’s fairly bland compared to either peanut or almond butter so the cookies needed something. I added vanilla but then it tasted too much like vanilla. So I added cinnamon. They were OK. Then I put them in the fridge and they got fun. They almost melt when you eat them.

So the end result is that I will make them with a creamy almond butter next time. My husband’s such a coconut fan that I believe there will be a next time. And I saved the mixture from the first batch to mix in with some cookies where it will give them a great taste.

Enjoy. For anyone who is interested in this diet, or has simply found that the gluten-free diet didn’t do everything you’d hoped, Starlene has a lot of good information on her site.

UPDATE: The first batch didn’t last long. I’m making a second batch today. It turned out that the perfect snack included one of these (cashew butter and all) along with one of my Super Simple Cashew Butter Date Balls. I smear some coconut oil on these because I’m trying to gain weight.