I’ve been playing around with the whole “fry” thing. The butternut squash fries recipe was a hit for many, and for some, well, let’s just say that it didn’t quite satisfy their desire for a “potato-like” fry. I too was looking for a more authentic fry fix, and as I suspected, parsley and parsnip roots fit the bill.

Parsley root and parsnip look very much alike, however they do have a subtly different taste. To me, parsley root tastes a bit more herbal and has a sweeter aroma when baking. Both have slightly more flavor, sweetness, and aroma than potatoes, in a welcoming sort of way. But what’s really nice is that both have the texture of potatoes when baked.

So seasoning is important here. A good amount of sea salt, and possibly black pepper, garlic powder or fresh crushed garlic, and maybe some Parmesan cheese if you want to have garlic/cheese fries. The garlic cheese fries were quite delicious and had an extra crunch to them. Quite a satisfying texture indeed.

Note for SCDers: It’s not entirely clear if either of these roots are SCD legal, but I suspect it will depend more on you and how your body handles either of these. Parsnip is related to the carrot, so I would think if you can handle carrots, then you can handle these.

For the roasted chutney, I roasted cherry tomatoes, red pepper, and onions according to my recipe for panzanella salad and then gave it a whirl in my food processor. Of course, the fries will also taste great with ketchup.

I hope you’ll enjoy these as much as I do! And, if you want the chutney to last longer, try canning it using a sterilized jar. I just came across this great recipe for tomato chutney that includes directions on how to do so.

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• Coconut Flour Waffles
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The only reason I call these brownie bites is because they’re intoxicating, and therefore I suggest you savor these slowly and in small amounts to prevent any sudden overdose of enjoyment.

This recipe is different from the gluten-free baked brownie recipes I’ve made in the past using nut butter, not only because there’s no baking involved, but also because they’re sweetened entirely with Medjool dates.

While the only source of sweetness in this recipe comes from the Medjool dates, you’re getting quite a bit more than sweetness when you eat dates, including valuable fiber, vitamins, and minerals, including copper, magnesium, and potassium. I’m constantly looking for sources of magnesium and other minerals to reduce my tendency to cramp after a hard bike ride, tennis match, or yoga session.

I was inspired by several raw truffle and brownie recipes, including this recipe from My New Roots. I’m think’in this would make a healthy Valentine’s Day treat. So happy heart day! Literally.

You might also like:

• Cut-out Cookies (using almond flour)
• Very Vanilla Cupcakes (using coconut flour)
• Roasted Stuffed Acorn Squash

I rarely eat meat, and beef is a definite no for me. And I’m not a fan of buying hot dogs, let alone eating them, but I thought I would get this posted while I’m in the spirit and also making a batch of pigs in a blanket for the guys in the house. When my kids were young (BC= Before Crohn’s) this recipe was the highlight of any holiday dinner. It wasn’t the turkey, mashed potatoes, or the sweet potatoes. It was the pigs in a blanket.

I used to bake about 40 of these little piggies and they were devoured in a matter of minutes. The ingredients were quite simple: Hebrew National hot dogs and Crescent Roll dough from the refrigerated section of the market. After Crohn’s (AC), I was under pressure to recreate a gluten-free, SCD-legal pigs in a blanket, and about 4 years ago I did just that. They occasionally accompanied us to dinner parties, with the understanding that the recipe was purely experimental. They still disappeared in record time.

I personally think this is popular because of the hot dogs, but my older son says he likes the texture of the pastry. I would be happy dipping almost anything in a good mustard. My current lunch treat is taking a slice of gluten-free bread, dropping a bit of cheese on it, toasting it, and then spreading mustard and sauerkraut all over it and eating it in about 4 big bites. Next time I’ll make a few blankets with cheese melted in them (instead of hot dogs), and dip them in mustard and sauerkraut.

Some recommendations here: pigs in a blanket are best served with a side of stone ground, Dijon, or other fine mustard, and for one of us, ketchup is ideal.

If you don’t eat nuts or almonds, and are in search of a  gluten-free crescent roll recipe, you might want to check out this post from Heidi over at Adventures of a Gluten-free Mom.

Pigs in a Blanket (using almond flour)

Ingredients (makes about 55 bites)

• 3 cups of blanched almond flour
• 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter, cold and diced into chunks
• 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
• 1 teaspoon of honey
• 2 eggs
• About 14 hot dogs (I use Applegate Farms hot dogs)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Prepare the dough by adding all the ingredients in a food processor and pulsing it until it is blended and ready to form a ball of dough. You can also do this by hand with a fork or spoon – it just takes longer.
3. Separate the dough into two balls, cover and place in the refrigerator or freezer for 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Slice each hot dog into 4 pieces (or choose a size that you like).
5. Roll the dough out between two pieces of parchment paper (or other non-stick surface) until you have a flat, round circle about an 1/8 of an inch thick (or so).
6. Using a pizza cutter or knife, slice the flattened dough into pie slices, triangular, until you have triangle slices that are not wider than the width of the hot dog pieces.
7. Place each hot dog piece at the base of the triangle slice of dough (the widest part) and then roll the dough over the hot dog until it is completely rolled around the hot dog piece. It should resemble a crescent roll-type rolling shape.
8. Place each piggy on parchment paper on top of a cookie sheet.
9. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown.
10. Cool for a few minutes and dip in mustard or ketchup.

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• Dog Foodie: Food Elimination
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Here’s a little treat I’ve recently added to my day, since it has been highly compressed lately (the day, not the treat). I pop one or more of these (ok, at least three of the mini muffins) in my mouth as a quick sweet snack and wash it down with an Odwalla Tropical Energy smoothie, or a tall glass of water and some Valencia orange slices.

Nothing too elaborate or extra-ordinary here. These just happen to be gluten-free and sugar-free (except for the chocolate chips). They fill me up, give me a quick hit of chocolate, and send me on my merry way.

If you’re concerned about all that butter, I inadvertently made a batch of these without the butter (or any oil for that matter), and they tasted good. So you could actually reduce the amount and still have a tasty muffin.

A word about the mini muffins: They looked cuter than they actually were. They tasted fine, but the big ones are way more satifying, and grabbing 6 mini muffins to get my fill made me feel continuously unsatisfied. But I did finally use up about half of that flower muffin liner stack you see in the picture, which I’ve had for too long. Just 30 or so more mini muffin liners to go before they’re finally used up. Whew.

You might also like:

• Sesame Dijon Crackers
• Stuffed Cabbage
• Homemade Ketchup

The Man Who Couldn’t Eat is a memoir based on a story of the same title Jon wrote for Esquire which won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing, was nominated for a National Magazine Award, and was translated into multiple languages for international publication.

Jon has had Crohn’s since he was 20 years old, and in The Man Who Couldn’t Eat he writes about his life-threatening experiences in a humorous, non-enteric coated storyline, filled with flashbacks of Katz’s deli pastrami sandwiches, and the irony of being deprived of one of the great pleasures in life.

Jon was kind enough to answer some questions for Comfy Belly readers.

I found it quite cathartic to read your point of view, having been in the caretaker’s seat for so long. My son was sick at the age of 6 (he’s 17 now), but it wasn’t until he was 12 that he was diagnosed with Crohn’s. Some of the events he remembers, but he has blocked out many of them, especially the more “catastrophic” ones. How have you managed the stress of illness, NPO, diets, and dealing with a myriad of doctors? Are you ever fed up?

During the episode of acute illness that sparked me to write The Man Who Couldn’t Eat, one of my very wise doctors said to me, “Living with chronic illness means living with uncertainty. That’s your lot. You can either accept it and move forward or let it imprison you.” He was right, and I do find that the hardest part of living with illness has been accepting the inevitability of uncertainty. Nothing is more frustrating than doing everything right for your health, yet still winding up sick. So, I confess, my level of acceptance has not evolved to its fullest. I seem to inhabit two worlds psychologically: When the illness is active, there’s no escaping the presence and constant managing of symptoms. When the illness is quiet, I put as much distance between it and my mind as I can. That’s a form of functional denial that I don’t think is terribly wrong. No one wants his life to be consumed or dictated by illness and the limitations that it imposes. I have ambitions and goals that I haven’t stopped pursuing despite the health issues I have to manage. And I know many people whose determination trumps challenges far more severe than my own.

There are many experiences in which you are deprived of pleasures and let’s face it, food is up there as one of the ultimate pleasures. I used to tell my son that, hey, in the end you’ll be healthier by not living on HFCS and processed stuff. But that’s not full-proof with Crohn’s.  It can be a deceptively sneaky little condition. Has changing your diet helped you?

Food Eating is the body’s second-greatest pleasure, and I am a pleasure seeker. In the months that I was in a Nothing-By-Mouth situation, I missed the pleasure of food — flavor, taste, satisfying cravings, the joy of sharing — as much as the sustenance. For various reasons — diet, health, cost, geography — most people make food choices that weigh pleasure against other considerations; my situation just happened to be more extreme, one which crystalized the existential conflict that is embodied in our relationship with food. During my recovery and return to eating, I attempted to adopt a strict macrobiotic diet, having been advised by a nutritional coach and friend about its health benefits. Like all diets, it required complete adherence and discipline, and I managed it for a while until I chose to keep what I was enjoying and what was practical about this particular macrobiotic approach and add to it the many other foods I missed and loved. As my supermarket cheesemonger said to me, “You have to live.”

“You are what you crave” – I thought a lot about this since I crave sugar and veggies, and occasionally eggs and cheese. So it seems to balance itself out, but with Crohn’s the balance seems to be elusive, or at least a very long hall when you try diets. What keeps you going? Besides your great sense of humor? Does it seem elusive to you?

I’m glad that “You are what you crave” stuck with you. The phrase, my variation on “You are what you eat,” didn’t occur to me until later in the writing, but it then opened-up the narrative for me. I should have it printed on T-shirts. If anyone is interested in co-marketing, just give me a call. While it’s true that the balance between craving and sacrifice can be trickier for someone with an autoimmune condition, I believe that all people live lives that pivot between the two. Fortunately, most of the time, the ramifications of the balancing act don’t present themselves as life-or-death mandates. However, it was interesting to hear what Christopher Hitchens had to say about his cravings, before he passed away last year. When asked if he would still have chosen to smoke and drink if he’d known to what degree his habits would shorten his life, he said, “yes.” Not only did his habits bring him great pleasure, but he believed they also fueled the life and work he loved, without which, his life would have been unhappy. I’m not a smoker or much of a drinker, but I can understand his point of view.

I found it amusing that you were told there will be a cure one day. We recently heard the same thing from a doctor at Children’s Hospital. Today the drug menu is a bit longer than when you were first diagnosed, but the same categories exist and the side effects too. Are there any drugs that have been effective for you and were you on drugs when you experienced your emergency?

Yes, I was 20 when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and was told by the world’s leading physician that there would be a cure discovered in the next 20 years. Without confessing my age, let me just say that we’ve gone into overtime on the doctor’s timeclock. Unfortunately, the only drugs that have been effective in my case have been limited to the few that I’ve taken during periods of severe illness and hospitalization, that have helped nurse me back to better health, but they are short-term solutions. None of the so-called “maintenance medications” have ever benefitted me; I have tried them all and was taking a maintenance medication when my emergency occurred. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from continuing down this road. If a cure is to be discovered, I believe it will come from understanding the specific DNA markers and how they are affected positively and negatively by diet and environment.

How are you now, and how’s the macrobiotic diet going? Have you made any other changes in your lifestyle?

I’ve been in relatively good health since the life-or-death situation of The Man Who Couldn’t Eat. Some of the internal damage was so severe that its effects appear to be lasting, but, overall, I’m well and am in a period of the positive healthy denial I mentioned earlier. Aside from the integration of some macrobiotics into my diet, the change in my lifestyle has been psychological. The challenges I faced before my emergency are still present in my life, but my view of their priority is much different now.

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• Dancing with the Devil
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• Easter Recipe Ideas 2011 (and naturally dyed eggs)

I’m so ready to say hello to 2012. Whatever your aspirations, wishes, and goals are for the coming year, I wish you a very happy and healthy New Year. Here’s a recap of the most popular recipes on Comfy Belly this past year.

This chocolate pudding recipe surprised me, not because it was so popular, but because it makes amazing frozen pops, which I would not have discovered except that one of the many fabulous readers pointed this out to me. Thanks for playing around with my recipes. I learn something new every time I post a recipe.

Who would have thought that so many folks crave those gooey, sugary cinnamon buns from the mall? Silly me. I’ve held on to this recipe for cinnamon bun muffins with almond flour for 2 years not thinking that it would be so appealing to so many. There must be a lot of folks baking with coconut flour, because when I formulated the same recipe using coconut flour, the recipe was an an even bigger hit. Cheers to a healthier version of our favorite craves.

Ah, my personal favorite: the chocolate honey-dipped donuts made with coconut flour. Enough said.

This pumpkin bread (almost cake) and a few other recipes showed you just how obsessed I can become with ingredients and recipes (I’m working on toning that down a bit for 2012 – the obsession part that is). What started as a question from a reader turned into three recipes using pumpkin for baked breads and muffins. I’m done for now, but the recipes keep on giving. Thanks for all your requests! I may not post them all, but I think about all of them, and tuck them in my back pocket for safe keeping.

And finally, this oldy but goody which is not from 2011, is my first coconut flour pancake recipe. Many love it, some complain a bit about it, but this page gets an enormous amount of traffic. I haven’t made these in quite a while, but I have plans to play around with this and the second fluffy pancake recipe, for additional recipes like crepes and an even more reliable fluffy pancake recipe.

Blessings to everyone and may all living things be happy and free. Namaste.

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• Cheese Bread Pizza Crust
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I’m always on the lookout for great salads. I’m forever trying to discover new salad combos and dressings. Here’s my latest salad/slaw obsession.

This colorful salad was inspired by a recipe from Sarah of My New Roots blog. If you’re a fan of innovative raw food, greens, and vegetarian recipes, I think you’ll like the recipes on this blog. I haven’t made any of the other recipes yet, but I visit every so often to dream about the food.

Well I stopped dreaming this week and made the Roasted Sesame Winter Slaw along with the tahini-based dressing. The dressing was flavorful and tangy, but I was craving a different style of dressing for this salad, so I created this creamy, Asian-style dressing to go with it. This dressing also makes a great dip, as well as a marinade for grilling.

What makes this dressing so tasty is the aroma and flavor of toasted sesame oil and seeds. You can toast the sesame seeds in an oven, or in a frying pan, as I did. Either way works, I just prefer the pan because I can toss them around as they’re toasting to get them a bit more evenly toasted.

This could really be a salad or a slaw. If you’re finding this mix of greens on the rough side, let the salad soak in dressing as if you are making a slaw, and store it the refrigerator for about 20 minutes or more. I prefer to add the dressing and toasted sesame seeds right before I have the salad, and I’ll keep any leftover salad and dressing covered in the refrigerator for another day.

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• Vegetable Pot Pie
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Fries are… kid food (for the kid in all of us), finger food, salty, sweet, crunchy, munchy, and just plain fun. Especially years ago when I didn’t want to touch much else at fast food restaurants. I’d just order a plate of fries and some ketchup. And they’re great for sharing with friends. It was never hard to find someone willing to share a big basket of fries with me.

While there’s nothing like a deep-fried potato strip, this recipe for butternut squash fries comes pretty darn close to fry heaven, with much less fat and starch. And an added benefit it is the vitamin A and C, and some iron and calcium thrown in for good measure. I might even go so far as to say it’s darn good and can hold a candle to almost any fry. Well, I might be stretching it a bit here, but these are worth the effort, and they taste great with homemade ketchup.

The first time I brought a butternut squash home I stared at it for quite a while, deciding how to make the first cut. I’ve now discovered that you can go either way – across the center or lengthwise. Either way, you’ll need to scoop out the seeds in the bottom rounder part, and peel or slice away the skin so that you just have the orange meat of the squash left.

You might also like:

• Mango pops
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When we began to change our diet a few years ago, most commercial ketchup brands had corn syrup in it. Some still do, but even so, if you’re avoiding processed sugars, making your own ketchup ensures that you won’t be eating anything but wholesome sweeteners and ingredients. And why not make a good thing more wholesome?

I originally posted this recipe a few years ago, when it was really hard to find ketchup that didn’t have corn syrup or cane sugar in it. I’m finding it’s still not that easy to buy ketchup made without cane sugar.

This is one of my favorite brands of ketchup that is made without cane sugar, although they no longer make the fruit-sweetened version of their ketchup which is what I coveted most. I guess I could buy the unsweetened and then add sweetener if necessary.

And this is on my list of ketchup recipes to try.

Here’s my original recipe posted way back in 2009:

Here’s a recipe I like when I have the time to make it. It was inspired by Epicurious’s recipe.

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‘Tis the season of ginger, butter, and molasses. With all the ginger snap cookie recipes cropping up, I couldn’t resist posting my own version. No brown sugar or molasses here, but lots of ginger and other fine sea salt and spices.

This recipe is based on my cinnamon cookie recipe, with some additional spices added and a bit more sea salt. Like the cinnamon cookies, these snaps do require a bit of extra oven time to make them snappy. In fact, they’re more chewy than snappy, but if you leave them in the oven for a bit longer and/or add them to a dehydrator you will obtain some snap. If you can’t wait, you’re looking at a baking time of about 15 minutes. Or try both, and decide for yourself.

If you want to make cut-out style gingerbread cookies, try this recipe I posted last year. These definitely have snap, in part because they’re thinner. If you want the ginger snap cookie to be crunchier, try making them flatter or thinner. You can even roll them out once they’re in a ball.

Instead of sprinkling with sugar or candied ginger, I added a very slight amount of Himalayan salt to the top of each cookie to give it an extra zing. If you don’t have Himalayan salt, any kind of coarse salt will work as well, such as kosher or coarse sea salt.

You might also like:

• Cranberry Sauce & Cranberry Applesauce
• Watermelon Strawberry Pops
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