Recipe of the Week: Homemade Refried Beans

Certain beans are SCD legal, but be careful you don't eat too many of them at once. Elaine recommends that you hold off on beans (if you're doing the SCD) until you're symptom free, three months or more into the diet. I've found that I could only do some beans (black beans) but not others (white beans) even after a year on the diet. With that said, we've tried lots of different combinations for refried beans. This one is the best.

Refried Beans
4 cups SCD friendly black/red beans (NO CANNED BEANS--Real beans, soaked and drained, see below)
2 chopped, washed, and seeded jalapeños
2 large cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1/2-3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil

Soak beans in water for 24 hours. Discard water. Pour beans into a medium or large pot and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer, covered, until beans are soft. Wash with cold water, drain and set aside. Seed, wash (throughly), and chop (finely) the jalapeños. Too much spicy food can exacerbate your symptoms. Sauté garlic and jalapeños in a skillet with the olive oil. Blend beans, jalapeño, salt, and garlic in a food processor, gradually adding water until you reach your desired consistency. Enjoy!

These are great in SCD-friendly 'burritos'. Shred some cheddar, add tomatoes and other fixings, and wrap it all in a large leaf of lettuce.

Onward to Health.

Recipe of the Week, Persimmon Pudding

This is an SCD friendly recipe that is like a drug for me. So, SCDers be careful! If you eat too much at once, it could trigger symptoms. If you've never had a persimmon, or don't know what they are, you're missing out! Look them up here and here. They're a fall fruit so look for them after summer is done.

This recipe was given to me by one of my favorite professors in grad school. He and his wife called it “Never Fail Persimmon Pudding”. We’ve modified it here to make it SCD friendly. This version is a bit more firm, like a moist cake rather than pudding. Be careful, the first time we made this I ate half the pan by myself!

Persimmon Pudding

3 eggs
¾ cup honey
2 cups persimmon pulp (5-6 ripe persimmons)
1 cup SCD yogurt
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
½ tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp baking soda
1 stick real butter
2 cups almond flour


Beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Add honey, persimmon pulp, yogurt, salt and spices. Beat until smooth. Add the melted butter and baking soda. Beat again until smooth. Fold in the almond flour with a spatula. Pour the mixture into a 9”x13” glass pan. Bake at 350 40-70 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Take caution not to over bake! Check them often as oven temperatures and cooking times vary.

Short-Shorts: Probiotics, Recipes, Traveling

These short-shorts are my way of pacifying blogging ADD.

• I recently started taking B. Infantis. After 8 months on the SCD, I still didn't have well formed stools, though everything else seemed normal. I added this probiotic, and WHAMO!, formed stools literally overnight. Read about the benefits of B. Infantis here and here. One note: There's a lot out there about probiotics and IBD (read: Crohn's/Colitis). It's important to understand that no one really knows for sure which strains or strain combinations help and which hurt in IBD writ large (and more importantly why). For example, Bifidobacterium have been shown to cause bacterial overgrowth in the large intestine, and may cause harm in IBD patients. But--note that B. Infantis is a bifidobacterium. So are some of the other strains shown to help (see below). Hmm?
• More on Probiotics. Benefits of B. Longum. Note the apparent conflict between the two articles on B. Infantis, B Longum and Elaine's research on Bifidus causing overgrowth in the large intestine. Who's right? (Both may be correct!) Which helps, which hurts? Things that make you go, Hmmmm?
• Recipies online. Also here.
• SCD cookbooks from Lucy's Kitchen Shop.
• Check out the FAQ on SCDdiet.org. There's lots to learn there when you're first starting. Lots of the topics I cover are mentioned there too. The reason I write on them is that I think their coverage of some of these topics is pat and short. When I first read their posts, walked away still hungry for more details. This Q&A on traveling on the SCD is good.

Onward to Health.

Addendum: How I handle cravings, Peanut Butter Brownies (recipe)

In my last post, I gave a pretty sharp call for exercise. There's no substitute for it. And those of us with Crohn's or Colitis, if we are able, will benefit all the more from it. Researchers are finding links between exercise and 'disease' activity; exercise and mental health; exercise and decreased disease abundance of all sorts. Indeed, physical exercise has been shown to increase brain activity, mood, and can help you stay sharp as you age. Doctors are even waking up to the benefits of Yoga. My doctor recently discussed with me a study he saw at a conference 'conclusively' demonstrating direct benefits of Yoga to people with chronic conditions.

That's why I dubbed the URL for this blog SCD for Athletes. We are all athletes in some fashion. Our bodies are meant to move, and we feel better when we do. The SCD is a lifestyle choice. Sure for us with Crohn's or Colitis, it might not feel like much of a choice, but it is a choice. It's a choice to heal naturally, to live vibrantly, and exercise is an essential part of our healthy life choice.

On that note, I'm going to ride my bike home from work today. 14 miles in the rain--because after a year on the SCD, I can.

Onward to health.

Making SCD Friendly Yogurt

Here are directions for making great SCD friendly yogurt, in the kind of detail I wish I would have had when I started the diet.

Note of caution: My family likes this yogurt so much, they won't eat store bought yogurt anymore.

Equipment you'll need:
-1 Gallon Soup Pot (I make it a gallon at a time, makes the measurements easy. You can use an expensive yogurt maker, but I didn't see the point, when I could get the necessary equipment at Wal Mart, Target, or some other chain store for ~$15)
-Electric Heating Pad (think, drug store, my back's sore, $12 no more, heating pad)
-Candy Thermometer (~$3 at Wal Mart, Target, pick your store)

Ingredients:
-1 Gallon (organic) Milk. Why mess around, organic is the way to go.
-1 Cup PLAIN Yogurt.

Now, Elaine and others say you can use any starter yogurt you want so long as you avoid Bifidus bacteria. Sure that's fine, if you'll eat just any yogurt--runny, thin, yogurt. But if you want thick, rich, yummy yogurt, you should use Plain Greek Yogurt as your starter. It's strained and makes thick, wonderful yogurt. Be sure to stick to the bacteria constraints Elaine outlines in her book.

Directions:

-Slowly bring the milk to ~200 degrees. Stir often to keep milk from burning. If the milk burns, and you accidentally stir in that burnt stuff, your yogurt will suck. Promise.

-Cover, put on a rack in the fridge for about 1:45 until it's 100-110 degrees, optimal growing temp.

-Whisk in 1 cup yogurt.

-Cover and place the pot on the hot pad (I use medium setting), to maintain temp of about 100 degrees. -Yogurt bacteria will grow between 80 and 110, but 90-100 is ideal. You'll need to check this periodically (every 3-4 hours) for your first few batches to figure out what setting on your hot pad keeps the milk/yogurt mixture at ~100 degrees.

-Let the mixture ferment for 24-36 hours. 24hrs is the MINIMUM. I do 32-36 hours. Makes great, thick yogurt.

-Remove from hot pad, place directly in fridge for 4-6 hours or until it comes to equilibrium temperature with the fridge.

Pull out the pot, and divide into clean containers. I've kept it for 12 days. but 7-10 is probably the safe range. If you want to ensure the integrity of your yogurt you can sterilize your containers with boiling water or 10% bleach solution (be sure to rinse with LOTS of water after, if you choose to use DILUTED bleach).

Total Time commitment:
25 min to heat the milk
~1:45-2 hrs to cool the milk
3 min to whisk in the yogurt

Improved SCD-Friendly Energy Gel

I post this correction, thanks to Paul Stocker from eatingscd.com.  Mucilagenous plants typically contain polysaccharides which are not legal on the SCD. I do wonder, however, about seed mucilages. Tomatoes contain a mucilagenous seed, but tomatoes are SCD-legal. Chia seeds are not on Elaine's SCD legal/illegal list, but pecanbread.com has added them to their legal/illegal list. I'd be curious to know if anyone has characterized the Chia mucilage and could tell me why the tomato mucilage is legal, and the Chia mucilage is illegal. 


So for now, until I can answer those questions above, consider this recipe NOT SCD-legal.

Here's a recipe for an SCD-friendly energy gel that I use on long runs or for recovery after exercise:

I've mentioned this before, but not in such detail. I left the proportions generic, because you can mix the honey, lime juice, water and salt in large quantities and keep it in the fridge. It will keep for a long time. Just pour some in a small gel bottle when you need it and add the Chia Seeds.
I suggest mixing small batches first, until you get the taste the way you like it.

2-3 parts lime juice (depending on taste)
5-6 parts water (Substitute Coconut water for filtered water for more electrolytes, calories and a new flavor)
1-2 parts honey (again, depending on taste)
2-3 parts Chia Seeds
Salt to taste

Chia seeds have approximately 140 calories/oz--For the detail people.
The seeds need to be added to the liquid mix about 10 min before consuming to allow for the mucilage matrix to form. Enjoy!

All natural SCD friendly energy gel and sports drink.

As I said in my last post, part of what I want to do with this blog is to help athletes with Chron's and Colitis by suggesting SCD friendly recipes for long workouts and events. As far as I can tell, no one is talking about this. If you have Chron's or Colitis, the SCD diet can give you your life back! It did for me. Conventional, allopathic doctors don't know the etiology of our conditions (I don't call it a disease--seen and read about too many people going for decades w/o symptoms to accept that this in an incurable disease), and take a prescribed path that often leads to interventions that leave us feeling worse than we did without them (this isn't true for 100% of the cases--there are some who suffer terribly, and are helped by traditional medicine, but for many that's not the case).
So without further adieu, athletes, active folks like me with Chron's or Colitis, here's an energy gel recipe you will love.


SCD friendly energy gel: mix together,
1 tbs chia seeds
6 tbs water
2 tbs lime juice


Haven't discovered Chia? Check out these links:
http://www.living-foods.com/articles/chia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_hispanica


Chia seeds contain lots of Omega 3, soluble fiber, and electrolytes, for starters. It is said that a small amount of chia, water and bread could keep an Aztec warrior all day in battle. I read about it in "Born to Run". http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307266303


To drink:
Try coconut water! It contains more electrolytes than most sports drinks out there (it's balanced with all 5 major electrolytes), it has more potassium than a banana, and is all natural. Be sure there are no additives when you buy it.