One holiday tradition that we missed after going gluten-free and then Paleo is having coffee cake for breakfast! My mom used to make a homemade coffee cake for Thanksgiving breakfast but unfortunately it was full of gluten/grains and sugar, which cause high insulin spikes followed by blood sugar crashes, inflammation in the body, and contribute to leaky gut. We didn’t know that before, but with our new knowledge, we want to make food that is nourishing, not detrimental!

So I went hunting for a coffee cake recipe that was made with real food, something that would be a fun holiday treat but would also be extremely low in sugar – even natural sweeteners like honey – and grain/dairy-free! I found a few recipes I liked, so I combined a little of this and a little of that and added some flavors I wanted and I made my first “Pumpkin” spice coffee cake! Why pumpkin in the quotation marks? Because I didn’t use a pumpkin! I used a kabocha squash. Kabochas are similar to pie pumpkins, but they are more delicious! They have more of a natural sweetness than pumpkins, and I much prefer the flavor.  They are the same color though, so feel free to make some pumpkin recipes this fall for friends, and use a kabocha instead! Click here for more info on my favorite squash. I’ve also included the kabocha in the picture below, to help you find one at your grocery store! I buy mine at Sprouts. I can’t stress enough how delicious these things are – I think pumpkin is okay, but I could eat this right off the baking sheet!

One more thing – there is no need to buy your pumpkin in a can! Pumpkin or squash puree is quite easy to make! And you will not regret the extra time spent making it so you can use kabocha, I guarantee it! I’ve included the instructions for the puree below.

So I made this fun fall coffee cake for Thanksgiving breakfast, and we enjoyed it!

Kabocha Squash Spice Coffee Cake (Paleo, SCD)

Ingredients:

The cake:

1 cup kabocha squash puree (read on for recipe for puree)

5 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup organic coconut flour

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup organic coconut oil, melted (plus more for greasing pan)

The topping:

1 cup almond flour

5 TBS nut or seed butter (I used homemade sunflower butter, but you could use something like this or this)

1 tbsp maple syrup or raw honey

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp sea salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a glass 8×8 dish with coconut oil and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, mix together squash puree, eggs, and vanilla extract with a hand mixer until all the wet ingredients are incorporated.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together coconut flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, cardamom, salt, and baking soda.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix with hand mixer until combined.  Stir melted coconut oil into batter until well incorporated.
5. Pour the mixture into the pan and spread with a spatula to make sure the entire pan is evenly filled.
6. Next, make your topping by combining almond flour, nut butter, maple syrup or honey, cinnamon, vanilla, and sea salt until you get a crumbly consistency.
7. Sprinkle topping evenly over cake.
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.
9. Allow to cool for 5 to 10 minutes and then cut into squares and serve.

Notes:

If you don’t have all of those individual spices, you can use a pre-made pumpkin spice mix. I like to buy mine individually and make my own – this is more affordable if you buy the spices from the bulk section! Buying from bulk sections (where you can buy only the amount you want) is a very economical choice, and is also environmentally friendly because it greatly lowers the amount of packaging used. Check out the spice areas at Sprouts or Whole Foods to buy small amounts of each of these fun fall ingredients! Also, this cake has very little sweetener – rather, it is sweetened by the kabocha squash. The less sweets you eat, the less you crave, and the more natural sweetness will taste good to you! However, you could probably add a little honey or maple syrup to the cake ingredients if you wish.

This recipe was inspired by and adapted from Taylor Made it Paleo and Multiply Delicious.

Kabocha squash puree

 Ingredients:

1 kabocha squash

Organic extra virgin coconut oil (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Wash the skin of the kabocha.
3. Place on cutting board and carefully remove the stem with a sharp knife.
4. Cut the squash in half, and remove the seeds. (You can save these for roasting like pumpkin seeds if you’d like!)
5. Cut each half into slices.
6. Place slices on a cookie sheet and brush lightly with coconut oil.
7. Bake for 15 minutes, and then flip each piece over.
8. Bake for an additional 15 minutes or until the flesh is soft and can easily be pierced by a fork.
9. Let squash cool until you can handle it with your hands. Carefully peel off the skin. (You can also cut it off with a small knife if you would prefer) (Also, the skin is soft and tasty to eat if you have any pieces you’re not using to make puree!)
10. Place chunks of squash in a food processor, blend until smooth.

There you go! Kabocha generally doesn’t have a high water content so you should be able to use this puree immediately. (Some squash/pumpkins need time for their liquids to drain)

Disclosure: If you purchase anything through one of my links, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps me keep up with the blog and my health journey. Thank you in advance!

So today I started with a mug of bone broth alongside breakfast, and then had some chicken and root vegetable soup for lunch – that’s right, bone broth two ways in one day! I told you all I’d give you an update on my perpetual broth – well, it didn’t turn out as hoped.  My second batch did not taste good enough to eat.  I read a lot of information on it before I started, so I am not sure why mine didn’t work, but I am not giving up yet! I will be trying again soon.  Especially thanks to a dear friend of mine who surprised me by buying me an extremely wonderful Joy-approved gift – a locally-raised free-range whole chicken! (Apparently this is my love language – I teared up a bit). It’s in my freezer just waiting to become some delicious gut-healing bone broth. Hopefully I will be able to get more than one batch this time.  But regardless, I am so thankful for the kindness and for God showing me a way to naturally strengthen and heal my body.

Well, last week I promised a post on why we should choose grass-fed, pastured, sustainably farmed animal proteins, so here goes!

Grass-fed, why pay more?

Good question! Let’s start with grass-fed beef.  Red meat has gotten a pretty bad rap for being an “unhealthy” source of protein.  Let’s just put this in the same category as butter and egg yolks and say NO! This is false information. Our bodies know how to process these animal fats/proteins and they are full of nutrients and vitamins our bodies need.  Beef is an excellent source of niacin, vitamins B6, B12, K2, phosphorus, selenium, as well as iron, potassium, and riboflavin.  And, when cows are raised naturally, the way God designed, beef is also a good source of conjugated linoleic acid and omega-3 fatty acids.

Here’s the problem – beef raised in a CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, loses a great deal of its nutritional value, and could actually be detrimental to your health.  Cows in CAFOs are fed just about anything the farmer wants: soy-laden feed (over-consumption of soy in America is linked to many issues), genetically modified corn and other grains, animal byproducts (YUCK!!), rotting garbage, cotton trash (the leftovers from harvesting a cotton plant – and since cotton is not a food it can be sprayed with any number of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides and is most likely GMO, not to mention it is not intended to be eaten!), or there’s even one story of a farmer feeding his cows candy he got cheaply from a factory because they were defective.

Now, this is all rather disturbing.  But it’s just THEIR food, right?  Afraid not.  Everything they eat is processed into their bodies, and when we consume their meat, we are taking in whatever they ate.  These are not things I want to be ingesting!!  To make things worse, since cows’ bodies are not designed for this type of feed, they often get various diseases, so they have to be pumped full of antibiotics.  Even before they get sick, cows are usually given large “preventative doses” of these drugs.  In fact, 80% of antibiotics in America are used for animals that we end up eating! Antibiotics can greatly damage your intestinal flora, which throws off your entire digestive system.  (Anyone heard of probiotics? Those things which help your gut function properly? Antibiotics do the opposite!)  Now, there are times when people need an antibiotics for a serious illness, but if we are constantly consuming them through our food, eventually they will become ineffective at healing actual infections and create antibiotic-resistant health problems.  This is a real issue!

So what about this whole omega-3 fatty acid thing? Well, a good omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is 1:1.  Unfortunately, our American diet is much higher in Omega-6, especially due to processed seed oils like canola, sunflower-seed, cottonseed, and soy-bean, as well as other processed foods.  Over-consumption of omega-6 leads to inflammation in our bodies.  As Dr. Alejandro Junger of Clean Gut puts it, “Before chronic disease, there is inflammation; but before inflammation comes gut dysfunction.”  So this is anything but a small problem.  Grain-fed or CAFO cows end up with a 6:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.  Some cows are called grass-fed but are then corn or grain “finished” to fatten them up at the end.  Unfortunately, even this small time frame of eating grains dramatically decreases the omega-3s.  And where do all of these vitamins and minerals come from in beef? From healthy plants and grasses grown on pasture.  Not from cotton trash.

One last point – some people object to eating meat because of the inhumane living conditions.  And indeed, cows raised in CAFOs with little to no room to move and fattened with junk is inhumane.  My solution? Buy meat from ethical sources! Find a farm that raises cows out on pasture, eating they way they were designed to eat, living free from confined spaces and humanely butchered.

So, is it worth the higher price tag to buy grass-fed meat? In my opinion, it is unquestionably yes.  You will be eating protein that is full of good, heart-healthy fats, vitamins, nutrients, unlikely to cause inflammation, not pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, very rarely to be contaminated with E-coli (only caused by poor diet), and supports sustainable farming.

So, are you ready to give grass-fed a try?

My favorite source is Oklahoma Farm to Fork Market, which is a refurbished school bus that travels around the state.  Yep, a traveling farmer’s market! The owners own a farm that is Certified Naturally Grown, which is a step above Certified Organic.  CNG includes animal welfare standards and guarantees non-GMO! I trust everything I get from this family.  Even their pork sausage is “clean” and does not include dextrose or other sugar additives.  Check out offm.me to see when they will be coming your way!

You can also check out Eat Wild to search for local farms that sell pastured meats.  Sprouts and Whole Foods usually sell grass-fed as well, which is great in a pinch, but I highly recommend supporting your local farmers and finding sources that are truly pastured.

Keep checking back for another post where I’ll touch on chicken/pork, as well as the money issue.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think about grass-fed beef now! Any more questions? Where do you like to buy your pastured meats?

Homemade broths contain calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and other minerals.  They are very easily assimilated into your body in this form! Simmering the bones also pulls out glucosamine, chondroitin, and gelatin! No, we’re not talking about Jello here, full of things like high fructose corn syrup. Rather, it is the extremely beneficial pure gelatin out of the bones of healthy pasture-raised animals (hopefully! Keep checking back for a post on why we need to buy our meat from pastured sources).  Gelatin has been found to help treat ulcers, tuberculosis, diabetes, and cancer. Bone broth is helpful for healing issues with muscles, joints, skin, hair, teeth, and can help with that pesky cellulite! It contains amino acids that help regulate the human growth hormone and reverse atherosclerosis, which means less cholesterol buildup in your arteries! One of the main reasons I started making my own is because it is great for healing the gastrointestinal tract! And since the majority of your immune system is in your gut (yep, it’s true! More on this another day ) it can help you heal from infections and kick those colds, as well as protecting you from catching everything that goes around. If you don’t currently make bone broth, now is a great time to start with the cold weather coming on!

So how do we make it?

Homemade Healing Bone Broth Tonic (Or, Chicken Bone Broth):

• 1 whole chicken or chicken frame (bones remaining after roasting/eating the meat)

• 1 crock pot or stock pot (ever wonder where that got its name? From making delicious homemade stocks/broths!)

• 2 TBS apple cider vinegar – I use this kind!

• A little sea salt – try this or this one!

• Any veggies you’d like, but stay away from things like cauliflower, they will get bitter! I use about half an onion and a handful of smashed cloves of garlic.

Bonus tip! I save veggie scraps when I am cooking other meals and toss them in a bag in the freezer. Then, when I make stock, I have veggies ready! This can include carrot ends, celery tops, and the outer layer on onions that I usually remove. Another great way to save money and decrease waste!

Place the bones in the crock pot and just cover with water (don’t put too much or it will be watery and won’t gel). Add the apple cider vinegar and let this sit for around an hour to let the ACV pull minerals from the bones. Add your salt and veggies and turn on the crock pot! If your crock pot will do it, you should start it on high and let it boil, and then skim off any weird particles on the top.  Mine usually won’t come to a full boil, but that’s okay! Just turn it down to low and let it simmer away.  You should let beef and chicken bones cook for many hours to get a great broth, usually all day or overnight.  When it’s done, strain it through a fine mesh strainer and refrigerate.  The next day a layer of fat should have congealed on the top – remove this and feel free to use it as a cooking fat for another meal! The broth itself should have gelled, much like that Jello.  This is great! It will return to a normal liquid state once you warm it up.  If it doesn’t gel, you might have used a little too much water, but don’t worry, it’s still got all the nutrients and benefits – drink away! If you don’t think you’ll use all the broth, you can freeze it in ice cube trays or silicone baking liners and then just add a few cubes to a small pot to heat up for your mug or for cooking. (Avoid microwaving broth, it greatly decreases the nutrients.)

Please note that you can use any meat bones you’d like. Beef bones for beef stock, fish for fish stock (although fish stock cooks much more quickly). Make use of your freezer too! After you eat a meal, save the bones in the freezer until you have enough for a pot of stock, try for at least 1 and a half pounds.

Right now I am trying something I’ve never done before – continuous broth! This is a great way to get more out of your leftover bones and save even MORE money than buying store-bought stock.  I started a pot of broth last night.  Tonight I am going to strain it, remove the veggies, and then start over using the SAME bones. I’ve read that you can use the same bones for many days before they run out of mineral-gelatin-goodness.  In this healing journey, I’d like to have at least a cup of broth a day, so this would be a great way to make enough! Stay posted, I will let you know how it goes!

Disclosure: If you purchase anything through one of my links, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps me keep up with the blog and my health journey. Thank you in advance!

Yum! Doesn’t that title alone sound awesome?

For brunch today I made this awesome recipe from The Rising Spoon. Did you know avocados are so good for you? They are an extremely healthy source of fat in our diets! Their fat is monounsaturated, and helps your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K. They are high in folate, carotenoids, and have anti-inflammatory properties!  I almost always have an avocado in the fridge for a little impromptu guacamole snack with sliced carrots, or sliced alongside eggs, spicy chicken soup, or on a salad!  If the avocados at the store are still green and hard, let them sit out on the counter to ripen. Once they have softened, you can transfer them to the fridge.  The cold will stop them from ripening and will give you a few more days to use them before they go bad. Don’t let them get mushy though! They will be brown inside and no longer good.

This was my version of

Avocado Boats with Scrambled Eggs & Bacon
(serves 2)

(P.S. I’m not at all a food photographer – Instagramming for fun is the extent of my skill – but I will still include photos whenever I can!)

Directions
Fry bacon in a ceramic or cast-iron skillet on medium heat until it is crispy, flipping a few times. While the bacon is cooking, slice the avocado in half lengthwise, remove the pit and scoop the flesh out using a spoon, or carefully peel off the skin. Discard pit and skin. Set aside avocado halves (boats). Crack eggs into a bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Whip with a fork until yolks are thoroughly mixed with the whites.

When bacon is cooked, set it on a plate covered with paper towel to absorb the grease. Remove all but 1 teaspoon of grease from pan. (Hey – save the rest! Bacon fat is a delicious cooking fat for things like green beans with shallots – yum!) Using the same pan on medium heat, pan fry the avocado halves with the sliced side down for 2-3 minutes. Remove from pan and plate them, cut side up.

Add diced bell pepper to skillet and cook until no longer bright green.  Now you can either add the eggs to this pan or cook in another pan. In my experience, adding eggs to an already hot pan gives you burnt eggs, so I added the last of the drippings and the bell pepper to a small skillet and then added the eggs over medium-low heat.  Stir and cook until they no longer look wet.

Sprinkle a dash of sea salt over each avocado boat, then scoop the scrambled egg mixture into each avocado.  Top each boat with 2-4 pieces of bacon.

Optional sides: salsa, sliced onion and tomato

I want to take this post to describe my journey from SAD (the Standard American Diet) to the JOY I have found in following Jesus on this awesome journey to health and wholeness.  It has been an incredibly significant turning point in my life, and mainly why I started this blog! My hope is that it will encourage others to know that there are answers and a Healer.

After years of struggling with horrible digestive problems, the Lord led me to go gluten-free.  My pain decreased significantly, but I felt that there was more healing available in Him.
A new friend of mine, Brittany, told me about her naturopathic doctor, and offered to take me to Colorado with her for a visit!  After seeing the naturopath, I also cut out dairy, corn, and a number of other foods by eating the O blood type diet.  As corn products are in most packaged food in America (high fructose corn syrup and modified corn starch especially) I began to look for whole food alternatives.  In my search, I began to discover a wealth of information on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), pesticides and herbicides, modern farming techniques, farm animal diets – information that left me disgusted.  The food system in America had left so many people across our nation in a cycle of disease and sickness that they cannot seem break out of – disease, doctor, medicine with side effects, further illness, more doctors, more medicine, more pain.  I knew that food was a huge key to unlocking the health that the Lord desired for me to walk in, so I began my “real food” journey.  I ate fewer and fewer packaged food and more and more real whole foods.  I began buying grass-fed beef, organic chicken and cage-free eggs, and organic produce as much as possible.  I read the ingredients list on everything I purchased! For the most part, if I could not pronounce it and didn’t know what it was, I put the item back on the shelf.

I realized that I didn’t have to submit to my poor health if I was willing to embrace traditional methods of farming and cooking.  What I found was that God was ready to poor out more grace on this journey than I had possibly imagined.  I constantly felt the Lord’s encouragement and leadership.  My schedule was very busy at this point, as I was working a day job and was heavily involved in the prayer room where I am now on full-time staff.  In this midst of this crazy season, the Lord would provide for me often through the knowledge, encouragement, and cooking skills of my friends.  More than one night I was thankful to have a bowl of Brittany’s soup when I didn’t know what to cook! But I was constantly learning, my taste buds were changing, I was having fewer and fewer cravings for old (pain-causing) foods, and most of all, I was finding that I enjoyed it all! I discovered that I loved both to cook and to bake.  It didn’t feel like a burden to spend time looking up recipes and going grocery shopping. In fact, I didn’t even mind cleaning up afterwards! I have some very enjoyable times with the Lord while doing dishes.

I wholeheartedly embraced this new lifestyle.  But after about six months of progressively cleaner eating and improvement in my digestion, I found my health start to take a downturn.  I knew that the Lord was my faithful Shepherd, and after some time of prayer and waiting on Him, I found an interview with a prominent naturopath who was discussing the issue of grains and legumes especially for those with digestive issues.  He discussed leaky gut and the Paleo diet.  I knew in my heart from that moment on that the Lord was showing me that I was still damaging my digestive system with gluten-free grain-based foods like rice pasta, crackers, and baked good, as well as beans and peanuts.  I started researching the Paleo lifestyle as well as the Weston A. Price Foundation dietary guidelines.  It all made sense to me, and I prayed about it for many days.  And then I just did it. I started eating a diet based on meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats. The more I read and research, the more I am convinced that this is a healthy long-term lifestyle of eating.

Occasionally when discussing my diet, someone will ask me for my thoughts about the fact that some foods I’m eliminating were clearly eaten in the Bible.  Throughout the gospels we see references to bread.  Jesus broke bread with people, twice He fed the multitudes with loaves of bread (see Mark chapters 6 and 8), at the Last Supper He told the disciples that the bread represented His body broken for them and to eat it in remembrance of Him (Luke 22).  And we can’t forget that the Promise Land was flowing with milk and honey! I certainly do not ascribe to any worldview attached to the Paleo diet, but the truth is, the wheat and milk we’re consuming today is much different than it used to be.  With genetic engineering, processing, pasteurizing, homogenizing, not to mention pesticides and disgusting livestock diets, we can’t discount the real issues being caused by consuming these foods.  Every decision to eliminate or reintroduce a food item into my diet is prayerfully considered .  I believe there is no one diet that is right for every person, but everyone can benefit from eating real, whole foods! And the best part is – these things are made by God rather than a scientist, are full of vitamins and nutrients designed (by the Creator) to heal our bodies, and are delicious!!

Living against the norm isn’t easy.  Some days there are great victories, other days it just feels hard, but I am finding joy in this journey with the Lord. I am reclaiming wholeness in Him, and I am so blessed to walk this out with the Man who created my body to find health in His creation!

I hope you are encouraged to walk out a health journey, and more importantly a spiritual journey with our beautiful Savior. He is a really good leader!

Joy