Sautéed Mushrooms

There's a trick to sautéed mushrooms, and that's to cook them slowly.

Conceptually, I understand how to make them - what the ingredients are, and what the desired outcome is.  But what usually happens when I am trying to cook something is that I don't know by heart the cooking times or temperatures.

Therefore, this blog, while simple in nature, is to help me remember how to make yummy sautéed mushrooms without having to google it first.

Mushrooms are in the pan, people!

Perfectly Sauteed Mushrooms From the kitchen of the GrowlyGRRL. Mushrooms Butter Wine - I like to use red - and if you really want a treat, use some sherry or port. MMMMM. Salt  Parsley (or any other herb that sounds good to you) In a large frying pan, melt butter and add a splash of wine.  Dump in mushrooms and toss to coat with the butter and wine.  Cover and turn down heat to low. Cook for 45 mins. Check on mushrooms - if there's still a lot of liquid, return the cover and keep cooking.  If there's little liquid left, take over the cover and continue to cook for another five minutes until the majority of the liquid has evaporated. Season with herbs and salt. Try not to eat all of the mushrooms straight from the pan.

Try not to be jealous of this perfection.

BBQ Sauce!

Today, as part of my prep for the week, I made some SCD friendly Barbecue Sauce. It's actually pretty easy, and probably less expensive than buying ready-made BBQ. I don't know that as a fact, since I don't want to bother with the math - but it's most likely true.

Here are the ingredients you'll need - you probably already have them on hand! Maybe not the liquid smoke, but that isn't required for this to be a successful and yummy meat-treat. (Scroll to the bottom of the post for the full recipe.)

Pull this stuff out of the cupboards.

Add the ingredients to a saucepan and admire the artistic quality of what you've done.

Artsy ingredients shot.

At this point, if you are super lazy, you could just eat it.  But, I personally want the flavors to meld.  And besides, it's too runny for my taste...

Too runny.

Here's one important tip I can share: Get yourself a pan screen.  It's basically just a mesh that sits over the pan.  Especially handy when cooking bacon, or tomato sauces that like to geyser when heated.

Get yourself a screen!

Evidence of why the screen rules.

Slowly cook and reduce the sauce to your desired consistency.

Thick BBQ texture.

And voila.  You have a delicious sauce for all of your dipping needs.

EAT ME!

GrowlyGRRL's SCD BBQ Sauce 2 Cans of Tomato Sauce  3/4 Cup Cider Vinegar 1/2 Cup Honey 1/4 Cup Dijon Mustard 1 Tsp Liquid Smoke 2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper 2 Tsp Paprika 2 Tsp Salt 1 Tsp Pepper Add ingredients to a saucepan and cook on low for 30-60 minutes - until it reaches the consistency that you desire.

Daily Breakfast Jam

Excuse the photo of half eaten food, sine I was too hungry to wait.

Homemade yogurt, honey,  raspberries and my savior, a grain-free granola recipe.

The "granola" is composed of cashews, walnuts and pumpkin seeds.  Dressed up with coconut and raisins and coated with a honey-egg glaze and baked to crunch perfection. 

The process of working with nuts on SCD is tedious!!!!

First you soak raw nuts in water overnight.  Then you have to dry them - it takes more than24 hours.  Then you can cook with them.  If you want nuts, you have to know about it three days before you want them.

But I made a giant recipe of the granola, so hopefully it will last another week or two.  It tastes like granola, and I've shared it with several people who agreed that it is amazing and tastes like regular granola.

Bonus, the yogurt and nuts are very filling.

Here's a link to the recipe for granola:

http://www.theroastedroot.net/paleo-granola/

A Basic Run-Down of the SCD

I figured I should give any readers a brief overview of the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet).

Designed for people with bowel diseases, such as Crohn's (my constant companion) this diet is based on the molecular structure of food - basically, you eat foods that are easy for your system to break down and digest.

Desired result: no more bleeding tummy.

So, what do you eat? Or more like, what can't you eat?

NO:

• Any kind of grain.  I'm talking no oats, no wheat, no rice, no, no, no. 
• Any kind of sugar.  Say goodbye to the good stuff and even the bad.  No cane sugar. No agave nectar. No maple syrup. No artificial sweeteners.
• Fresh dairy. No milk, no fresh cheeses. No sour cream, cottage cheese or cream cheese.  Boo.
• No starches. Potatoes (big-time boo!) and many legumes (pretty much all the good ones).
• No Soy
• Anything fun that you would want to eat.

YES:

• Fruits and vegetables (minus a few like corn)
• Meat (but not anything with added stuff, so it has to be the most expensive damn meat in the universe.)
• Home-made yogurt
• Honey
• Coconut things (milk, cream, flour, pulp)
• Brick cheeses (included my favorite, gruyere, thank god)
• Eggs
• Nuts.  All nuts need to be raw and tediously soaked overnight, dried for 24 hours before use.  You can't buy any store nuts because they are all roasted and the process uses starches.
• Vodka and dry wines

Obviously you can see why I've been avoiding this diet for a long time.  It's like what you would eat if you had Celiac disease and diabetes on a paleo diet.

I have to keep reminding myself of the desired result.  No more hurty tummy.  No more hurty tummy. No more hurty tummy...

Enchilada Bake

For whatever reason, last night I was craving something melted cheesy-gooey and hot.  I started browsing my go-to for recipes, Pinterest, and found this:

NOM NOM NOM.

Unfortunately, I also had to make an enchilada sauce from scratch.  I got confused reading the recipe and basically ended up making something that was a mash-up of two recipes. But it worked really well!!! So, I give you my version... Here goes:

SCD Enchilada Sauce: 1 Large can of crushed tomatoes 4 TBSP of Cumin A good squeeze of Honey Salt and Pepper to taste 1 yellow onion, chopped 2 Aneheim peppers, deseeded/deveined and sliced 6 cloves garlic, minced Olive Oil Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine onion, peppers and garlic in a roasting pan and coat with olive oil.  Bake in oven for 45 minutes. Combine crushed tomatoes, cumin, honey, salt and pepper in saucepan and cook on low to meld flavors. Once onion and pepper mixture is complete, combine with tomato sauce in a food pro and whiz for a minute until combined.

Use this awesomesauce with the enchilada bake recipe for easy, cheesy dinner. I ended up buying a set of 5 mini aluminum tins and made a perfect amount for 5 different meals. Looking forward to eating this again tonight.

I can't live without coffee

Before I even began the SCD diet, I knew I would have to find a way to still enjoy my coffee in the mornings.  Typically, I would by some Coffemate flavors and enjoy the creamy, sweetened coffee that just makes mornings bearable.

However, that was out, since there is no milk or sugar allowed on SCD.  So, I did a bunch of research on pinterest and found some recipes to try.  The one I went with called for coconut cream and a paste made of pureed dates.  You are supposed to mix the coconut with the dates and get this yummy cream.

Here is the recipe:
http://deliciouslyorganic.net/homemade-dairy-free-sugar-free-coffee-creamer-recipe/

I didn't last very long.  I ran out after a few days and had to substitute a quick and dirty solution - some coconut cream and honey stirred into my brew.  And actually, it was way easier, and I thought to myself, "Screw it, I am just going to do this."

It isn't the best solution.  It tastes ok enough.  After some more experimenting, I ended up with my daily jam: Using a smoothie blender, I combine a can of coconut cream, some almond milk, and about a half cup of honey (warmed a little to make it blend easier - 20 seconds in the microwave).

This makes an easy one-scoop addition to the coffee cup.

But then there is the magical secret that I stumbled upon that ended up changing EVERYTHING.

After I had just made a new batch of my creamer, I had a little left in the blender.  So, I made a cup of coffee and dumped it into the blender and gave it a little whirl to mix it all up.

The result was fabulous.

The little difference of blending the coffee made the oil in the coconut cream get all emulsified in the cup and now it is like drinking a freaking latte.  Same ingredients, just a million times better that mixing it in with a spoon.

My little smoothie maker doesn't like to blend hot things - it barfed at me when I did this.  So I've added an immersion blender to my list of things to purchase.

It's still more futzy than just pouring some cream into the cup and brewing the keurig.  But at least I still get my morning buzz.

Step One - Yogurt

The first thing I learned about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) is that making your own yogurt is an essential part of the diet.

I guess there is not any substitute for the probiotic benefits you get from homemade yogurt.

Knowing that a putzy proccess for making yogurt would be my downfall, I invested in the most easy-to-use machine I could find.

The Cuisinart CYM-100 Electronic Yogurt Maker with Automatic Cooling.

http://amzn.com/B00ARSC1MK

I am quite happy with the purchase.  It automatically times how long you cook the yogurt, and then turns into a cooling unit to refrigerate the yogurt until you can put it in the fridge.

Basically, you can dump your yogurt mix into this and walk away for a day and come back to ready to go yogurt.

I have tried a few different batches, each one more successful than the last.  I prefer my yogurt super thick like Greek yogurt, so after a few attempts, I found the best way to achieve this is to cook the yogurt for a super long time.  18 hours.

Even then, the yogurt can be a little runny, so the next thing I did was purchase a strainer.

You could do this with a bit of cheesecloth to save money, but again, I wanted to do things the easiest way possible.  So I purchased this thingy:

http://amzn.com/B0091XNL0I

This is big enough to dump the entire 42oz of yogurt into and drips the extra liquid out.

The first time I tried the strained 18 hour yogurt,  I ate it with honey and some homemade SCD granola.

It was super delish.

I suspect that by straining the yogurt, I lose some of the beneficial probiotics.  But, I really didn't enjoy the first attempts of runnier yogurt that I made.  So, I am going to try the ignorance is best approach to this and tell myself that this is just fine.  The other benefit to this strained yogurt is that it can be used as a substitute for sour cream.  I haven't braved that yet, so I will post about it when I have gotten the courage.