Pesto Pizza, Glorious Pizza (GF, GAPS friendly) and kitchen adventures

We have been quite busy these past couple of weeks. I finished up the Candida diet and we have all been getting ready to start the 2 year journey of the GAPS diet. We are on a full scale GAPS diet, and are planning on going back and starting the intro diet in September. It is all a little overwhelming! In general we are really excited to see the results...even the results we have seen with Noah removing all grains has been encouraging. He is eating like a champ with no eczema, or other skin issues, and after the intro of lacto-fermented foods and pro-biotics his stools are all back to normal, and frequent! Not that I am excited about changing more diapers, but it is so encouraging to see how fast his little body adapts to a huge dietary change, and with such positive results!

Much of the past couple weeks since returning home from vacation have been about Lacto-fermenting. I have very much enjoyed the book "wild fermentation!' I find the whole process quite exilerating, and the geeky science side of me has been loving the process of "playing" with recipes! I currently have a fridge full of bok choi and I can't wait to start the kim Chi making this week! Overall, Saurkraut, ginger carrots, and pickles have been taking up much counter space and now fridge space! We have been enjoying them at almost every meal, and have found that Saurkraut goes particuarly well with eggs. We have even had adventerous guests who have enjoyed these pleasantly sour and salty creations....alright enough about my science projects..onto the pizza!

Who doesn't like pizza? We are pretty fanatical about it in our house. N and J love it, and I have to say it is one of the things we miss most being grain free! While our pizza was starch free, you could easily used a soaked or a sproated grain dough recipe as well! The nut crust was a nice mild flavor that added to the pesto, pepper and tomato top! We even enjoyed this cold the second day! If you aren't able to have dairy, this recipe works well without the cheese too!

Recipe:

Crust:
2 1/2 cups of Walnuts or Almonds (I used walnuts, almonds are a little pricey for us)
3 pasture eggs
2 Tbsp Ghee, Butter, coconut oil, goose fat, etc.
1-3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp minced onion or 1 Tbsp organic Onion powder
2 Tsp salt

Take the 2 1/2 cups of walnuts and place in a food processor until they are tiny crumbles and starting to stick together. Add the 3 eggs and the butter and process until pastey and well combined. Spread about 1 inch thick on a lined cookie sheet (I use a sil-pat, or you would need to use a well greased pan) and place in a 300 degree oven and bake for 20-30 minutes until firm and lightly browned. While the crust is cooking...

Topping:
Pesto 1 cup basil tightly packed 2-5 cloves garlic 1/2 cup romano cheese (or parm.) salt to taste 1/4-1 cup cold pressed organic olive oil

3-4 large tomatoes thinly sliced (varying colors add a nice touch)
1-2 purple peppers thinly sliced (you could also use green or red, but the purple was a nice color)

When the crust is done baking, remove from the oven and spread the basil all over the top of the crust. Than top the basil with thinly sliced peppers (or any other veggie of your choosing) and thinly sliced tomatoes. Ontop of the veggies place desired about of romano cheese or cheese of choosing, and place back in the oven for 5 minutes to slightly melt the cheese and soften the veggies ever so slightly. The veggies will be mostly raw...

Enjoy! Let me know what you think, and share your adaptations! :) Do you have any foods you just can't live without?

Spoon Fed Deception

Have you ever wondered why Coke, Pepsi, McDonald's etc always have the most wonderfully entertaining ads? I remember growing up and watching the super bowl strictly for the advertisements. That was when the large corporations always rolled out their new ad campaigns. Pepsi always had some wonderful up and coming star selling their product, as did coke. The images of cultural beauty, and “coolness” were strung all over the screen for a visual feast. I was left sitting there thinking...hum...maybe I'll go drink a “coke.”

Truth in Advertising; now that is an interesting thought. How can there truly be truth in advertising, especially when it comes to food? Advertising happens on manufactured products. Products that people, industry, professions, or government are making money. Products that are viewed as more essential to life, rarely contain advertising. Why? The profit margin on vegetables, fruits, real meats, and cheeses are minimal in comparison...when is the last time you saw an ad during the super bowl for “grass-fed beef?” No “real food” company could ever afford multi-billion dollar ad campaigns...they simply aren't making enough money on their products.

When we start to see products become crazily advertised, as a consumer, we should start to think why? Paul Hawken, Author of “The Magic of Findhorn,” simply puts it:
A product like Coca-Cola which contains known poisons and destroys teeth and stomach has one of the most stunning ad campaigns in the history of the Western World.
It is really fantastic: This unreal amount of money creating an illusion-the illusion that “coke is the real thing.” ...Yep, Coke is the real thing and this is drilled into the minds of 97 percent of all young people between the age of six and nineteen until their teeth are rotting (out of their heads) just like their parents' did.
There is nothing truthful about advertising. Imagine a young pimply faced kid in front of a camera telling folks how clear his complexion was before he started drinking Coke; and even though he knows it's bumming his social life, he just can't seem to get off the stuff. That would be truth in advertising. Or how about a young girl holding up a can of orange drink made in New Jersey saying the reason it's is orange is because of the food coloring. The reason it is bad is because we use coal-tar artificial flavoring, and the reason we would like you to try it is because we want to make money. Truth in advertising would be the end of three major networks, 500 magazines, several thousand newspapers, and tens of thousands of businesses. So, there will never be truth in advertising.

How do we cope with the massive bombardment of lies we are spoon fed everyday? We need to become educated consumers. The reason fancy ads campaign sell products is our lack of knowledge and our over abundance of trust of the corporation. If we knew that coke was rotting our bodies from the inside out, and causes mountains of long term damaging effects, chronic illness, disease, etc... we would reconsider our beverage selection at the family picnic...but even if we “know” Coke isn't great (as most of us do) but don't truly understand enough about the body to recognize it as a poison (which is truly what it is) we are liable to just “save” it for special occasions, as a treat of some sort. Let me ask you, when is the last time you considered arsenic for a beverage on special occasions? We don't and no one would ever knowingly “treat” your child to a glass of it...


Poison: Any substance applied to the body, ingested, or developed within the body, which causes or may cause disease, injury, illness, or death.

Think about that definition next time you are shopping. Start to analyze your food. Are you ingesting poison on a daily basis? Learn about what sugar does to the body, learn where your “food colorings” come from, learn about the big food industry and their tactics. The only way to ensure you aren't taken advantage of is to be wise to their deceptive tactics in marketing. In short, if you see advertising for a product...you may want to think twice about buying it...

Book Suggestions: Sugar Blues by William Duffy