Carrot Cake Balls -- GF, CF, sugar-free, faux-cream cheese

IT's NATIONAL DIET MONTH!!!     Today I'm looking for something that will be delicious and yet not bust apart my 21 day diet. (because I'm not up to starting over.)  

This might work!  







Cream cheese cake balls that are dairy-free, sugarless, gluten-free, grain-free, healthy, raw and delicious?

And about which the 14 year old says,  "Okay Mom, they are not terrible."  Woot!  High praise indeed.

The impossible dream?  
Well, maybe. 
It's all true, except for the cream cheese.  

There is none of that in the recipe, but I made these and asked the guys what they  reminded them of and they came up with the name.  

Actually they said they tasted pumpkin too, but I thought that was really stretching it.  

Who knew dates are the secret ingredient? 

None of the guys and they will not!  

3/4 cup carrots, peeled, diced (2 or 3 full sized)
4 dates (pitted and diced)
1 teaspoon minced ginger root (I use the stuff from the jar in the fridge)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon orange extract
1/2 cup pecans

I have a good food processor, so I did it all together using my processor blade, but try chopping the carrots first then remove and do the rest and add the carrots to thoroughly combine into a dough.  I used my handy-dandy melon baller and then rolled them in coconut.  

This is the birthday cake ball recipe that my dear friend Pam researched and fed to me for my September birthday.  It's taken a month to get it replicated.  I hope you love it as much as I do.    

Reality Bite:  And for the record, I still do not like dates... alone. (hee,hee.)

Last posted 10-29-13

Twelve Reasons to JUST TRY a Gluten-free Diet for ONE month

Could you be celiac or gluten intolerant and not know it? Check the following list of tell-tale signs and take the challenge of an entirely, 100% gluten-free diet--for just one month to find out for sure.

Gluten-free? Isn't that just for my weird vegan crunchy-granola friends? Not if you identify with any of the following indications. If you or a close family member has experienced one of these symptoms or diseases, a gluten-free diet can be ameliorating or even curative. 

As I said recently to a college friend diagnosed with an IBD that would cost him $20,000 a year for the rest of his life (hopefully 50+ more years) in medications, 

"Hey, isn't it worth A MILLION DOLLARS to try it for ONE MONTH?" 

(This logic also somehow resolved his worry that "it's so expensive to go GF"! Go figure.) If it doesn't fix it, you're a month gluten-less. If it does, you're an entire lifetime richer. 

Why haven't I heard about this before? Unfortunately, there is no prescription drug company lobbying for more studies about how people can stop taking their drug and save millions by changing their diet. Surprise. 

So who says that it will help? The links that follow are a combination of Mayo Clinic publications, University studies, MDs and PhDs who have published on the topic as well as a sheer mass of anecdotal evidence. Please feel free to do more research and post anything you want to share as a comment. 

Don't I have to wait for a diagnosis? Terina was once faced with a friend who had tried the GF diet and had immediate relief from her lifetime chronic pain. This result prompted her to get a test to find out "once and for all" if she was gluten-intolerant. She called Terina in tears the day of the test and asked, "What am I going to do if it's NEGATIVE?! Go back to being miserable?!" Terina replied, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! USE YOUR BRAIN!" Just kidding. But seriously: false negatives, along with yet un-test-for-able gluten sensitivity and gluten intolerance, are a huge problem in the medical world. This girl right here had a falsely negative skin biopsy, blood test and stomach scope before a fecal test (through EnteroLab) and cheek swab finally came back blatantly positive... 15 years of suffering later. Thanks, medicine. It's up to you, of course. 

The twelve tell-tale signs: 

12. "Addiction" to carbs. Higher gluten in wheat because of recent food processing changes (a la Wheat Belly's author, Dr. William Davis) makes modern wheat a completely different, highly addictive grain than what human digestion systems have been processing for thousands of years. 
11. High blood sugar (pre-diabetic or diabetic) or hypertension or low blood sugar. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, which we'll read more about further down. 
10. Asthma, arthritis, hypertension, fibromyalgia, tension headaches and migraines or temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders: more autoimmune disorders, along with a few "garbage" diagnoses when doctors just give a name to a pain.
9. Chronic fatigue and/or anemia. So tired you fall asleep at stop lights and have to call a babysitter to watch your kids while you're home because you keep falling asleep in the middle of board games? Terina was before her diet change. Celiac disease affects your ability to absorb iron--so no matter how many supplements you take (or how many cans of spinach you gulp, Popeye-style, before you give blood) you can't increase your hematocrit levels.
8. Any other autoimmune disorders (Lupus, alopecia, rheumatoid arthritis, vitiligo, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune hepatitis, and about 30 others I can't pronounce). "I would suggest that if you have an autoimmune disease you get tested for gluten sensitivity, and if you're gluten intolerant, you should get screened for autoimmunity" says this article by MD Amy Myers (read the whole thing if you have time, it's really comprehensive).
7. ANY Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms (diarrhea, constipation, bloating, heartburn), and any Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) including Crohn's and Colitis (detractor here disproved by 100+ posts of UC non-celiacs here). This is an obvious one, people, it's even on wikipedia.
6. Thyroid/ Graves' disease/ Hashimoto's (more autoimmune disorders that aren't usually lumped with the others). Thyroid disease is another that many doctors still refuse to connect to gluten. Give 'em a couple years.
5. Odd or uncontrollable weight loss OR gain, or inability to lose or gain weight despite diet and exercise changes. Your body is calculated to keep you alive, but it starts wigging out when you're poisoning your own digestive tract ("wigging out" being a technical term for losing or holding onto fat stores or muscle tone in response to nutritional deficiencies--ie, your body won't lose fat when it's essentially starving.)
4. Skin rashes, including eczema and psoriasis: ever had the itch to, you know, tear your skin off your body? When it seems like a Niagara Falls of lotion won't fix it? Been there. Think about how you could take the family to Disneyland just from the lotion savings if going off gluten fixes THIS problem! 
3. Mental disease/disorders: schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, anorexia/bulimia. This connection is becoming better researched, but it's amazing how your own family tree and a little medical history can enlighten the subject. Is it just our family's curse that every adolescent girl gets anorexia? Might be connected to gluten.
2. Infertility (or here, including multiple miscarriage, especially before you try IVF) (try searching "go gluten free and get pregnant), missed/irregular or painful periods: "Clinical studies have shown that women with untreated celiac disease have a very high rate of infertility with difficulties in conceiving," "gluten can make your period absolutely miserable" and "adults may also have aforementioned symptoms but could also have unexplained pain, anemia, depression or anxiety, seizures, osteoporosis, infertility, canker sores, rash, migraines, irregular menstrual periods, poor teeth enamel or numbness in the hands or feet."
1. Understanding your friends/family: if you don't have gluten intolerance, yay. Chances (and statistics) are that your mom, friend, spouse, child, coworker or student will. Nothing shows support like co-suffering, and the amount of empathy you gain may change your experience a little bit next time you have to alter a birthday party or work gathering menu for the weird-GF-one-out.  

So how do I do it? Please save yourself the pain and money and don't just go buy every alternative gf bread and pasta on the shelves. This doctor explains why, but the basic reason is that when your intestinal tract is already full of holes, other grains will fall "out" of it just as easily as gluten. To heal, you need to start over with an entirely natural (only food God made--veggies, un-messed-with meats, fruits, water) diet. Too much, you cry? It's only a month. Remember that time your buddies dared you to stay off facebook or walk a mile everyday for a month (no? maybe I have weird friends...)? Remember that time you kept a crazy weird New Years Resolution for a month? You can do it. Let us help! Post if you're thinking about taking the challenge.

Click on the "a newbie?" link on the side of the main page for easy starter foods, including 100 GF foods you can eat now. 

GF Black Rice Pudding

Naturally g-f, this  flaky, chewy nutritional powerhouse, black rice pudding is a delicious natural choice.  

I love that Asian experience found in markets like NamHi in Tulsa.  The smells there take me back eight months ago to Hong Kong.  What a delightful experience we enjoyed there.  The son walks through the store with his t-shirt pulled up over his nose, but not Me!  I revel in the sights, the smells and the memories.

Making this dish reminds me again of the beauty and delight found in food from diverse cultures.  This is a warm/cold, sweet/sour, crusty/creamy taste ephiphany.  This naturally dark food will bleed onto your hands, onto whatever food you cook with it, and  it carries all of the potential nutritional power of nature's most brightly colored foods.  

Polished white rice - contains 6.8 protein, 1.2 iron, 0.5 zinc and 0.6 fiber.
Brown rice - contains 7.9 protein, 2.2 iron, 0.5 zinc and 2.8 fiber
Purple rice - 8.3 protein, 3.9 iron, 2.2 zinc and 1.4 fiber.
Red rice - 7.0 protein, 5.5 iron, 3.3 zinc and 2.0 fiber.
Black rice - 8.5 protein, 3.5 iron, zero zinc and 4.9 fiber.

Rinse 1 cup of rice until the water has removed the floaties in the rice. 
For best best results, SOAK THE RICE for at least three hours in cold water. Best is overnight.
 Then cook the rice exactly how you cook other rice.  I use a rice cooker so I add one cup rice to one cup water in a cooker and steam until tender and water has disappeared.  

Serve with heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, rice milk, or as I did, homemade vanilla yogurt.
I accent the sweet rice with a sour, colorfully contrasting fruit like mango, orange, peach, or apricot.

It's one of the best desserts my mom-in-law loved in Hong Kong and it was her diligence in finding this grain, that inspired me to seek it our here too.  Thanks Pat!  

Reality Bite:  Yum

False Negative Blood Tests

MEDICAL – What blood tests help diagnose celiac disease?

Both the Gastroenterological Association and the North American Pediatric Society state that tissue transglutaminase (tTg) and endomysial (EMA) antibodies are the most useful serologic tests.

Antigliadin antibody tests are considered inferior in terms of diagnostic accuracy. In addition, the most reliable testing option is also the most cost-effective!

You can read the entire article online in The Journal of Family Practice by going here: http://www.jfponline.com/Pages.asp?AID=4626&UID=This website has the entire article, in depth, and fairly easy to understand terms. If you have every wondered about the blood tests, it is a good one to read.

Diabetes:
A notable limitation of using serologic markers to diagnose CD is patients with mild disease and patients with diabetes are more likely to have false-negative serologic tests.

Celiac Disease and Diabetes

As if it's not enough to help your children become gluten-free and casien free, you might find that now you are facing a whole new challege with juvenile diabetes. As of yesterday, this has become my sister's new dilemna, so here we go with the research about celiac and diabetes.

In a nutshell:

An Introduction
Celiac and diabetes
http://www.diabetes.ca/about-diabetes/living/complications/celiac-disease/
http://www.gluten.net/downloads/print/diabetes-celiac.pdf
http://www.diabetes.org/type-1-diabetes.jsp
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/clinic/celiac.htm


articles: http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=9649DD27-1321-C844-13758238CE2122A1

Join a list of celiacs with diabetes:
http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html#cel-dia

http://www.isletsofhope.com/diabetes/disorders/celiac_sprue_1.html




If you have insight or information, or just consolation, please respond in the comments section!