Allergen free cooking

It’s day 3 of my elimination diet.

No gluten, dairy, bananas, strawberries, oranges, dried fruits, potatoes, corn, oils, peanuts, alcohol, nightshades, soy, and much much more. For some, this diet would seem like a nightmare but luckily for me I like a challenge. Especially a challenge involving food. I have a lot planned for this diet as I’ve spent days planning and researching different recipes and I think I’ve come up with quite a few dishes that’ll leave me feeling satisfied without my usual dairy, sugar, and gluten. To be honest I thought I’d be having sugar withdrawals since my love of sugar is kinda out of control, but so far I think I’ve been doing pretty well. It’s not like I’ve been dreaming about lemon meringue pie donuts or anything…

So, today I decided to make some brown rice pudding. Like I haven’t eaten enough brown rice in the past few days. Day 1 I had a brown rice hummus bowl for dinner, day 2 I had lentils and brown rice with tahini for lunch as well as lentil and brown rice soup for dinner. Oh yeah, and brown rice cakes for snacks in between. Maybe that’s why it’s also called the brown rice diet…cause that’s the only thing you can eat!

That’s actually not true. As you can see by the recipe I’m about to post, you can eat apples and cinnamon too. Plus a whole bunch of other things…but that list of things is definitely smaller than the list of things you can’t eat.

This recipe for apple cinnamon rice pudding is vegan and gluten free and made with a tiny bit of maple syrup (one of the only sugars I can have in small quantities), but you could sub in stevia in a pinch.

Allergen Free Apple Cinnamon Brown Rice Pudding

Makes about 4 half cup servings

1/3 cup long grain brown rice
1 cup sweet apple, shredded (about 3/4 medium apple)
2 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
a pinch of sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Wash and drain brown rice. Combine rice, shredded apple, almond milk, syrup, salt, and cinnamon in a medium sized non stick pot. Cook on medium heat, stirring every so often, until it comes to a boil. Reduce heat to low and partially cover. Cook for about an hour and a half, stirring frequently until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is soft with a little bit of a bite. Portion into ramekins and garnish with more cinnamon and a few apple slices.

Easy Ways To Ruin Your Diet

I’m trying to be healthy, I really am. Yesterday I had only ONE piece of chocolate, yes just one. One tiny little white chocolate Lindt ball even with my Kinder advent calendar staring at me all day long. I’ve been exercising pretty much daily, eating my fruits and vegetables, and cutting back on dairy and sugar. Yet now I’m blogging about sticky pecan bites…ugh. But how could I not? They’re the cutest, tiniest, most adorable little cinnamon buns ever! Just look at them next to the tea cup. They make me feel like a giant.

The original recipe didn’t call for a glaze of any sort but I decided to make one out of cream cheese because I feel like sweetened cream cheese is one of the best things in the world.

They seem like fiddly little things to make but are really quite simple. Just the basics of flour, sugar, butter, cream, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. They’re topped with 1 pecan each and the dough comes together in a pinch. No yeast means no waiting, so you can have these little bites in no time.

Seeing as these can be made in no time at all I’m thinking that maybe I should ditch my health kick for now or at least until the holiday season is over. Because to me it’s really “the most wonderful time of the year” and I don’t want to spoil it with kale chips, protein cookies, and watching my waste line. I can save those for my new years resolution.

I won’t be posting the recipe since I didn’t really change it much from the original.

You can find the recipe for Alice Medrich’s Sticky Pecan Bites from her book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies here.

Cream Cheese Icing
Makes about 1/2 cup of icing

4 tbsp cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp butter, softened
about 4 tbsp icing sugar (or to taste)
a little bit of milk if you’re planning on piping the icing

Combine cream cheese, butter, and a few tablespoons of icing sugar. Mix until smooth and add more icing sugar if you’d like it sweeter. Mix in a teaspoon of milk if you want it smoother.