Tigernut Flour Apple Crisp (grain-free, nut-free, paleo, vegan)

I'm excited to be sharing this amazing apple crisp recipe with you today. It's made with prebiotic-rich tigernut flour, which is a grain-free, nut-free, healthy gluten-free flour. Going on an elimination diet can be challenging sometimes, especially during the holidays and family gatherings where food plays such an integral role in the celebration. Having alternatives that are just as tasty as your old favorites can make it much easier to stick to your new diet.

Have you tried an Elimination Diet yet? Usually within 2 to 4 weeks of removing foods like gluten, dairy, and sugar from your diet, skin conditions clear up, back and joint pain goes away, chronic fatigue disappears, and intestinal issues calm down. On top of that, most people lose around 7 to 10 pounds of unwanted weight.

Why? Because food can be the most common source of irritation to your immune system. How will you know if foods are causing your brain fog, fatigue, pain, or skin issues? Do an Elimination Diet and find out. It's really an enlightening process. I wrote about the process last year in my Green Kale Detox Soup post.

This Elimination Diet apple crisp recipe can be enjoyed by your whole family. My children really love it! In fact, one of my 10-year old twin boys made a double batch of this recipe the other night, using part blueberries and part apples in the filling. It was so good! I posted some photos on my Instagram account of the process, as well as of the finished product that you can view here.

Tigernut flour can sometimes be tricky to find in your local health food store. I suggest ordering it online here. You can also learn more about Tiger Nuts here if you are interested!

Garlic-Herb Turkey Burgers

This recipe is great for those of you who are on an Elimination Diet as it is very easy to make, and when paired with plenty of vegetables, it becomes a very nourishing, anti-inflammatory meal. We like to use lettuce leaves or napa cabbage leaves as our "buns" for burgers, though sometimes my children like the extra carbohydrates of a gluten-free bun (they are so active and hungry all the time)!

Look for organic ground turkey at your local food co-op or health food store. Sometimes it is in the freezer section. I make turkey burgers about once a week (especially now with the warmer weather). Sometimes I omit the chopped fresh herbs and add a tablespoon or two of a good quality Thai curry paste. I also replace the parsley with cilantro. My children really love this Thai-flavored version too!

Serve burgers with baked sweet potato fries if you are on the Elimination Diet. If not, try some potato fries. My kids love homemade baked oven fries using russet potatoes that are seasoned with smoked paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, sea salt, and avocado oil. In the summertime I also like to grill summer squash from my garden using my cast iron grill pan on the stove to serve with these burgers. Serve burgers with a garden salad and a homemade dressing for a balanced, nourishing meal!

Healing Turmeric-Ginger Broth

Learn how to make the most delicious, anti-inflammatory turmeric-ginger broth! I love adding chopped fresh turmeric to chicken soup, but this recipe takes the turmeric content and bioavailability to a whole new level. I've created a broth that uses both fresh turmeric and dried, powdered turmeric in combination with other ingredients to get the maximum amount of nutrients into the broth.

Curcuminoids are beneficial polyphenol chemicals found in turmeric. They shut down, or dampen, the primary inflammatory switch in the body, which is a very important step in healing many health issues including inflammatory bowel disease, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and heart disease. They also help in reducing inflammation from food allergies & sensitivities as well.

Disease is caused by getting too many things that you don't need (inflammation, stress, toxins, infections, food hypersensitivities, allergens), and too little of the things that you do need (antioxidants, relaxation, exercise, healthy foods, proper nutrients).

The magic of curcumin is that it is a master-balancer (an adaptogen). Cancer research has shown that curcumin can shut off the master switch of inflammation called nuclear factor kappa beta (NFκB) better than almost anything else, making it one of the most potent natural anti-inflammatory substances. At the same time, research has also demonstrated that curcumin can help to combat various infections (yeast, bacterial, and viral) that can lead to the inflammation in the first place. Curcumin also activates our genes (via a gene transcription factor call Nrf2) to signal our cells to make more antioxidants, which lowers inflammatory damage. But there is more! When this Nrf2 is activated, we also start to make hundreds of beneficial detoxification proteins to remove harmful toxins from our cells.

Turmeric is amazing, isn't it?

The polyphenols (which include the curcuminoids) in turmeric are lipophilic, which means turmeric is best mixed or cooked with fat so you can get the full benefit of this food! This is one of the ways turmeric has been traditionally used in India. Spices are always sautéed first in fat (often ghee) before being used in recipes. This not only allows for the absorption of the beneficial polyphenols, but it also brings out the flavors in the spices.

Green Kale Detox Soup

This flavorful green soup uses simple ingredients to create a nourishing meal that can help support natural detoxification. It is designed for Phase 1 of our Elimination Diet, but of course is a wonderful addition to your weekly meal planning even if you are not on the elimination diet! I chose ingredients for this recipe that are easy to digest and are naturally anti-inflammatory. Perfect if you feel that your body needs a break from some of the heavier foods of winter.

As we turn the corner into a new year, new resolutions, new diets, and new commitments to health inevitably echo around the blogosphere. While I believe it is a wonderful thing to try something new, I think it is only helpful if you enter into your diet or exercise regimen with the goal of learning more about yourself. This is because nobody is more of a guru on your own health than you! I know this might sound hypocritical in a blog post about a Green Kale Detox Soup recipe for the Elimination Diet so let me explain.

The Elimination Diet is not a diet that tells you what is good for you and what is not. It is a process that helps you discover what foods work best for you. We are all unique. There is no one way of eating or one perfect diet that is right for everyone. Even Hippocrates noticed this well over 2000 years ago.

He said: “For cheese does not prove equally injurious to all men, for there are some who can take it to satiety, without being hurt by it in the least, but, on the contrary, it is wonderful what strength it imparts to those it agrees with; but there are some who do not bear it well, their constitutions are different, they differ in this respect, that what in their body is incompatible with cheese, is roused and put in commotion by such a thing; and those in whose bodies such a humor happens to prevail in greater quantity and intensity, are likely to suffer the more from it. But if the thing had been pernicious to the whole nature of man, it would have hurt all.” 

What he meant by this is that some foods can make people strong and healthy while the same foods could make others weak and sick. This is as true today as it was then.

There really are no bad foods. Only foods that work well with your body and those that don't. Finding the foods that satisfy your body, soul, and taste buds is part of deepening the connection with yourself. It is part of listening to your inner wisdom. You can do this through the process of the elimination diet. And you can do this through the process of asking questions. Or both.

What can I do to have more energy? Clearer thinking? A strong digestive system? What can I do to heal my health condition? If you listen—really listen—the answers will come to you. This takes getting into a parasympathetic state. A state where your nervous system is not in flight or fight, but rest and digest. The answers will come to you when you are most relaxed. Maybe on a hike, in the shower, as you are going to bed, or breastfeeding your baby.

Sometimes it can be hard to access that all-knowing part of you. Sometimes your body is out of balance and you might be listening only to what your brain is telling you. "Give me a donut!" "Give me a grilled cheese sandwich" "I'm craving pizza!" "I can't go an evening without a drink [of alcohol]!" If you are on the carb/junk food roller coaster then it can be very difficult to access the voices of your body and gut....your innate gut wisdom that tells you what you can do to supercharge your body. This is where detoxes and elimination diets come in. They remove the clutter so you can have a clear signal to your inner wisdom. You'll know when the path is clear when you start craving a plate of sautéed kale, or the thought of a small steak and a large fennel-cabbage salad sounds grounding and energizing, or perhaps when a simple bowl of brown rice, beans, and avocado sounds comforting and nourishing.

This is deep listening. It is a process of nurturing ourselves that is constantly growing and evolving.

If you feel like the Elimination Diet resonates with you then I'd love for you to join Tom and I online. We host a wonderful and informative online support program so you can let go of the foods that don't serve you, and so you learn more about your health and the foods that make your body sing. The elimination diet is not just about eliminating and reintroducing foods, it is about ramping up detoxification so your body can work more efficiently. It is about getting your digestive system back into tip-top shape. Let's make sure you have enough stomach acid so you are breaking down your food, signaling your body to absorb key nutrients, and triggering your pancreas to release digestive enzymes. Let's make sure you are deeply nourishing yourself with the foods rich in nutrients that calm down inflammation so your immune system is not overreacting. It's a functional medicine 101 training course!

We also have an Elimination Diet book and some online resources for you if you would like to dive deeper. If not, then you always have the all-knowing part of yourself that you can talk with daily. Just ask a question and listen for the answer. Maybe this nourishing green detox soup recipe will resonate with you.

Nightshade-Free Chicken Taco Recipe (corn-free, gluten-free, dairy-free)

I've got an easy, nourishing main dish recipe for you today! These Nightshade-Free Chicken Tacos are super easy to prepare and perfect if you are following our Elimination Diet or another special diet such as an autoimmune diet or a diet specific for arthritis. My children also love this recipe! The chicken taco filling is cooked in a Crockpot making the prep time less than 10 minutes. I like to serve the taco filling with my Plantain Tortillas (pictured here) or my gluten-free brown rice flour tortillas. The filling is also wonderful served inside of a baked half of a kabocha or delicata squash, topped with greens and sprouts of course!

Need a little more assistance in the kitchen creating this meal? Then check out the elimination diet video cooking series I created on how to make plantain tortillas and this chicken taco filling, plus a few more easy and delicious elimination diet recipes. You can sign up here to watch the videos.

Use this recipe for Phase 2 of our Elimination Diet program. Not quite sure what an elimination diet is? An elimination diet is a powerful tool to get to the root of most diseases and disorders. Why? Because most disease begins in the gut. The gut has the highest concentration of immune cells, and the most common thing that the immune cells will react to is food.

When you are constantly in pain, moody, and fatigued, your body is inflamed. In other words, your immune cells are being irritated by something in your environment. What is the most likely suspect that is irritating you? Surprisingly, it’s your food.

Odds are that foods you are eating every day are leaving you sick and tired. How do you find out which ones? The Elimination Diet. This foundational tool of Functional Medicine has been used for centuries to discover which foods are making you ill and which ones can make you feel incredible.

The Elimination Diet is a simple process of removing all potentially problematic foods from your diet until your symptoms subside—usually a few weeks. Then you slowly reintroduce foods back into your diet, one by one, to see which ones bring your symptoms back. By finding the foods that are behind your suffering, you can completely turn your health around and elevate your quality of life. 

If you are curious about trying an elimination diet and not sure where to begin then check out our online Elimination Diet Support Program and Elimination Diet book, both of which provide excellent tools that walk you through each step of the elimination diet.

What if these new tools helped you to become a better you? A lighter, more energetic, happier you! That's what doing an elimination diet is all about.

While on an elimination diet, you'll find that many of the foods you are accustomed to eating every day are off limits. You'll get to experience new flavors and new foods that promote healing at the cellular level. And you can start right now with these nightshade-free chicken tacos.

Autumn Detox Salad with Creamy Ginger-Cilantro Dressing (vegan)

Sometimes when the weather cools it is easy to get into the habit of eating more dense, cooked foods. For some people this is just what they need. But for others, a balance between raw and cooked (or even predominantly raw) is best. We each are unique, and so should be our diets. This colorful and nutrient-dense salad provides some key ingredients to support healthy detoxification. The dressing is delicious and can be used as a dip for raw veggies or used to top your favorite salads! I've even used it to top steamed vegetables! 

What is detoxification? In functional medicine, detoxification is often considered "biotransformation" because our bodies will transform harmful substances into less harmful substance and then excrete them from the body. This process can vary in effectiveness in different people depending on the nutrients we ingest, our genetics, and what types of toxins we are exposed to. For example, if we are exposed to persistent organic pollutants, which are so complex that they recirculate over and over in our body's detoxification process, they can slow everything down, not allowing a person to properly detox the everyday exposures like mercury from dental fillings or alcohol. Persistent organic pollutants include things like dioxins, DDT, and PCBs. DDT is an insecticide that was banned from the US in 1972. My mom has told me many stories of how she and her friends and siblings used to run behind the trucks that were spraying DDT when she was growing up in the 60's because they all liked the smell of it! Unfortunately they just had no idea back then how toxic it was. DDT has a half life of 50 years, which means that she passed down this stuff to me in utero and through breastfeeding. As a result of this (and other factors), I always need to take extra care in supporting my detoxification pathways.

Toxins come in through our air, food, water, and skin. Once they are in our bodies we need to change their shape to make them less toxic and get them safely out of our systems. Toxins go though two phases of detox: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 adds a chemical handle onto the toxin (usually a hydroxyl group). Phase 2 then grabs the handle and pulls the toxin out of the body (commonly this is glutathione that attaches to the hydroxyl group). Now the toxin needs to safely exit out of the body. This happens through the sweat, urine, and feces. However, if you are consuming a diet low in plant foods, while consuming a diet high in salt and acidifying foods like processed foods, meats, and dairy, then you will not be able to excrete the glutathione-bound toxins in the urine and therefore they will get reabsorbed back into the body! Same with the gut. Without enough soluble fiber from plant foods, the toxins will stick around and get reabsorbed back into the system. This is another reason why a plant-rich diet is so important.

Detox Benefits of this Salad

Spiced Tigernut Cookies (gluten-free, grain-free, nut-free)

Today I have a special recipe to share with you. This grain-free tigernut cookie recipe comes from a new book called The Autoimmune Fix, which I actually developed all of the recipes for! Dr. Tom O’Bryan wrote an incredible book on the current epidemic of autoimmune diseases. As a skilled functional medicine practitioner, he discusses the root causes of autoimmune disease, and in essence, all diseases. Dr. O’Bryan has spent the last few decades lecturing around the globe on how gluten contributes to disease, but now expands on that topic in his new book with the culprits and causes of autoimmunity: Genetics, exposure, and intestinal permeability.

You may be thinking, I'm fine and healthy. I don't have an autoimmune disease, though you may know someone with lupus, eczema, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, psoriasis, or celiac disease. But, did you know that you can have autoantibodies, or "messengers from the future" as Dr. Tom likes to call them, slowly degenerating part of your body without you even knowing it? And that this can go on for years and years with no symptoms or with only mild signs of autoimmunity, such as joint pain, weight gain, brain fog, gut imbalances, depression, mood disorders, and fatigue? Tom's book is essential for everyone to read because he explains, in his eloquent story-telling style, how this process happens and what you can do now to test for autoimmunity before the full-blown cascade of decline manifests in your body.  

It is estimated that there are 70 to 80 million people with autoimmunity right now in the United States. That's about 22% to 25% of our population. But only about 24 million of these people have been diagnosed. That's a whole lot of people walking around not feeling well and not knowing why! I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Autoimmune Fix to better understand, prevent, and treat both hidden autoimmunity and full-fledged autoimmune disease. 

Here is my recipe for spiced tigernut cookies, which can also be found in The Autoimmune Fix on page 276. Tigernuts are actually small tubers that are ground into a delicious flour, which is perfect for baking. Tigernut flour is high in prebiotic fibers that feed beneficial microbes in the gut. It's one thing to take a probiotic or eat fermented foods, and another to actually feed them everyday with fibers that we can't digest....but they can! Good bacteria in the gut will grow into healthy colonies with the right foods. These gut bacteria enjoy the fibers and resistant starches from tubers, root vegetables, legumes, plantains, and other plant foods, and then release, through their own digestion, short chain fatty acids (which then nourish the cells lining the gut), B vitamins, the amino acid tryptophan, and digestive enzymes to break down other parts of your meal! Beneficial gut microbes regulate immune cell function to help your immune system stay calm and not overreact (such as in autoimmunity). So each and everyday, remember you are not only nourishing your body with good foods, but also your microbial colonies that live in your gut. What have you eaten today to nourish your microbes? :)

How to Make Nourishing Beef Bone Broth

Bone broth is definitely all the rage these days, however, this food staple has been around for ages. Cooking the bones of animals along with a variety of vegetables creates a nourishing and extremely flavorful base from which you can create rich-tasting and satisfying soups and stews. Yes bone broth has a small amount of minerals and some easily digested amino acids, but it also has something called umami.

Umami is part of the five tastes along with sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. It's a meaty flavor you get from bone broths, some hard cheeses, tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce, fish sauce, and other fermented foods. It's the taste that makes you go "ahhhh" after a good meal, helping to create pleasure in eating and a satisfaction with your meal that leads to satiety.

I like to cook beef bone broth in the wintertime because of the long cooking time. When I make beef bone broth I usually make a large batch in my 12-quart stockpot and cook it all day for about 3 days on a low simmer and then set the pot on my garage floor to cool during the night, then bring it back in the next morning, adding back in water that was lost through evaporation. I don't have a slow cooker large enough to fit this recipe! During this long cooking time, the collagen matrix in the bones begins to break down into free amino acids, making the broth a good source of glycine and proline. Free glycine  is very beneficial because it can to bind to toxic chemicals and pull them out of the body in a Phase 2 liver detoxification reaction called glycination. Glycine also supports the production of glutathione (the body's primary antioxidant) and helps to rebuild collagen within our own bone structure. The acids (vinegar or wine) added to the broth during cooking also break down the meaty parts of the bone, freeing some additional amino acids. These free amino acids in the broth can be very beneficial for those with weak or compromised digestion. Oftentimes people with impaired digestion are deficient in amino acids, so bone broths can provide a quick route back to health.

If you have an autoimmune condition, have adrenal fatigue, have food or environmental allergies, have poor digestion, or have a child or toddler who is pale or malnourished ("failure to thrive" children") then consider adding bone broth into your weekly meal planning.

Look for organic, pastured beef knuckle and marrow bones at your local Farmer's Market or health food store (they can often be found in the freezer section). I like to roast the bones in the oven first before making the broth. This creates both a richer flavor and helps to remove some of the excess fat.

I hope you enjoy this nourishing beef bone broth recipe (also called beef stock)! I like to use it as a base for lentil and vegetable soups, beef stew, and minestrone soup! My Nourishing Meals cookbook has plenty of soup and stew recipes where this bone broth can be used if you need any recipe inspiration!

Nightshade-Free Salsa

The other week I was picking my daughter up from art camp and another mother came up to me to let me know the changes in her health that came about after following our Elimination Diet years ago. She said that she looks and feels so different now and is not the person she used to be....in a good way. She was beautiful and her skin was glowing! One of the things she discovered through the elimination diet process was a severe sensitivity to nightshade vegetables. You know what those are, right? Tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, eggplant, spicy peppers (including cayenne pepper), sweet peppers (including paprika), pimentos, tobacco, as well as goji berries and golden berries.

Symptoms of a nightshade sensitivity include:

• joint pain
• rashes
• GI upset
• fatigue
• headaches
• migraines
• inflammation

All nightshade plants, including those growing in the wild, contain toxic alkaloid compounds. In foods, like tomatoes and peppers, these compounds are only found in small amounts so most people can process and remove them from the body and no harm is done. In wild plants, these compounds are found in a much higher concentration, sometimes causing death if ingested.

In people that cannot process these alkaloids very well, (and since many people consume nightshade vegetables on a daily basis) these compounds can build up in the body, which can contribute to certain health issues. Of course not all people are sensitive to nightshades so don't get too concerned here that you need to eliminate yet another food from your diet! If you suspect that your body might not be tolerating nightshades then do a simple elimination diet and keep them completely out of your diet (yes, that means 100%) for 3 weeks and then add them back in, noting how you feel.