Turkey Tracks: January 9, 2011
Elaine Gottschall’s Muffins
Since reading about the 1980 USDA food guide that changed the scientifically recommended guidelines for grains from 2 to 3 servings to 9 to 11 servings AND since realizing that my own food allergy problems are related to gut dysfunction, I censor grains in my diet. I wrote about this USDA debacle in some of my Mainly Tipping Points essays which I have posted on this blog. Along the way, other reading showed me a whole new way to get a bread-like product with ground nut “flours.”
In the 1950s, Elaine Gottschall was, at first, a lay person with a seriously ill child when she discovered Dr. Sidney Haas’s work on gut dysfunction in the 1950s. She adopted his Specific Carbohydrate Diet, now called the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), and cured her child. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, among others, has discovered the connection with gut dysfunction and neurological disorders, like autism, ADD, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, depression, and schizophrenia, and is having a lot of success helping those impacted. Dr. Joseph Mercola has a book called the NO GRAIN DIET.
Anyway, this nut-muffin or nut bread recipe is from Gottschall’s book BREAKING THE VICIOUS CYCLE. It’s delicious and very filling. Two of these muffins hold me for hours.
Use organic nuts if you can. AND, you REALLY DO NEED paper muffin cups. (Don’t use foil as it will be aluminum toxic.) The recipe makes about a dozen muffins–more if you add bulky items like banana.
2 1/2 cups ground nuts. (You can buy nuts already ground at co-ops and stores specializing in nutrient-dense whole foods.)
1/4 cup melted butter, or yogurt, or small amount of fruit juice, or pure apple butter (enough to moisten well)
1/2 cup (or less) honey
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
3 eggs
Additions: 1/3 cup dried fruit, and/or grated lemon/orange rind, and/or flavoring (almond, vanilla). Fresh blueberries are nice. For a banana version, add two mashed, ripe bananas and an extra egg. For coconut, add dried/unsweetened coconut for part of the flour.
For nut bread, add one extra egg (4 eggs) and put into well-greased 1-quart baking dish.
Mix all together and bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
Gottschall’s book has many good recipes. But, she wrote it at a time when we did not know how dangerous artificial sweeteners are. Don’t use them. Some of my essays cover artificial sweeteners as well.
Louisa Enright's Blog 