Eggplant is a funny vegetable. I love the color and the flavor, but I’m a little uncertain about the health factors. They’re nightshades with not too much going for them otherwise. The other nightshades I indulge in sometimes – tomatoes are rich in lycopene, a potent antioxidant. Potatoes I avoid anyway, as too starchy. Peppers are also rich in antioxidants, and I eat them occasionally. But eggplant I don’t generally seek out.
My husband put some in the garden this summer, though, and tonight brought in a couple of the last little purple teardrops still hanging.
No more babaganoush, he’d asked a few weeks ago. No more breaded and fried, I thought. The minted salad I’d made a couple weeks ago with fresh tomato, blanched green beans, walnuts, raw olives and sheep feta was wonderful, but I didn’t want to repeat it.
So, I did what I often do when I’m stuck for ideas. I googled eggplant.
Just a quickie – seems to be what I have time for these days.
I designed the following recipe for a client who needs to eat a grain-free diet to support her in healing from some severe gastrointestinal difficulties. She’s missing her comfort foods, in particular a rice casserole dish. I tested it out on some friends, and there were no leftovers 馃槈
I write this on Labor Day evening, a cap on a quite perfect summer.The pace was well thought out, a balance of activity and rest, work and play.
It’s difficult to strike that balance in this culture of ours. We are inundated with opportunities, work situations that pressure us, and ideas of accomplishments. To resist this is indeed like swimming up stream.
This pell mell pace of life we’ve become accustomed to living has led to chronic adrenal fatigue in our culture. Our nervous systems are not designed to be “on” at all hours of the day and night.
I lived in India some years ago, before family life. I was single and focusing on my spirit, and I went over to sit a meditation retreat in Bodhgaya, the town where the Buddha was enlightened. Read the rest of this entry »
If you buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself, not only are you more connected to your food, you’ll save money! Keep the pieces the butcher might normally discard or turn into pet food, and use it to make broth.
Living with chronic health challenges is a tricky thing.
Just that statement reveals part of how I work with it. It would be so easy to just say, “I’m sick.” But “being sick” conjures up images of taking to bed, withdrawing from life. There’s a mind state that goes along with that picture that I don’t care to live with. I have children who need me, a husband who likes my company, a business that requires my full engagement, a spiritual and social community – all of whom I love.
I don’t have time to be sick. Being sick is an energy and time suck.
Whatever change you’re bringing into or maintaining in your kitchen, whether it’s eliminating gluten, dairy, sugars or carbs in general, the stumbling block often seems to be “what’s for dessert?”
Simply not having dessert is always an option. But, as I’m fond of saying, deprivation is not a great way to approach health. Nutritionally we don’t need sweets, but that doesn’t mean they don’t satisfy an important need in our lives. To go from eating dessert every day to never having dessert is likely to leave some part of you in distress.
Be kind to that part of you. It’s that part of you, me and my family that I’m loving when I create everything-free desserts. (Okay, almost everything-free. Some cross sensitivities are hard to cover in every dish.)
This recipe is GAPS and SCD friendly, low carb, gluten and dairy-free, chemical-free, and free of all sugars. It has nuts in it, but could be made without the nuts, too, if they make you react. You’d just miss the crunch.
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