I closed my medical practice in December 2017 to take a sabbatical. As a result, my sabbatical coincided with the entire calendar year of 2018, making 2018 a really special year. I spent a lot of time outside, climbed mountains, did a lot of handstands, and went through major de-cluttering of my home. Now that we’ve gotten rid of three thousand dollars worth of stuff, the next step is clearing out my paper mess. My papers have piled up for many years, and it’s in embarrassingly bad shape. This is my first post in 2018, and my primary motivation, was so that I could throw out the paper notes for this recipe. #progress

This is a recipe I’ve had for a while. In fact, the original version was posted on archerfriendly in 2011! A few years ago I re-made the recipe to exclude eggs and walnuts, since I no longer tolerate those foods. Taking out the eggs made it vegan. I make this bread every year around Christmas time, and ever since I’ve updated the recipe, I’ve had to rustle through the paper pile(s) to find it. I will not have to do that any more!

What’s extra special about this orange cranberry bread? I put an orange peel in it. Not orange zest, but an entire peel! The white part of the peel, otherwise known as the pith, is full of bioflavonoids. How could I not puree it up and stick it in my bread? Now, I did hold back. I only put the peel of one orange in the bread, otherwise it’d be too bitter to be enjoyable.

Speaking of oranges, in lieu of orange juice, I use orange puree. You need a Vitamix or a really good blender to puree an entire orange with it’s peel. Using a pureed orange rather than orange juice is more of a whole foods way about things. More nutrients, more fiber. I’m not really into straight-up orange juice (too hard on the blood sugar).

This delicious gluten-free cranberry bread is sweetened with fresh oranges and stevia. That’s it. There’s no sugar!

Vegan Gluten-Free & Sugar-Free Cranberry Orange Bread

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

• 3/4 cup millet flour
• 3/4 cup chickpea flour
• 1/2 cup unhulled buckwheat flour (hulled buckwheat flour will work too)
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon saigon cinnamon
• ~ 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• pinch salt
• 1/8 teaspoon (powdered) stevia

Wet Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh orange puree (made with 2-3 organic oranges)
• 1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
• 1/3 cup virgin unrefined coconut oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix-Ins

• 2 cups cranberries, at room temperature

Makes 1 loaf in a 5″ x 9″ 1.5-quart glass baking dish

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Liberally grease a glass loaf pan with virgin unrefined coconut oil.
3. Mix dry ingredients together.
4. Prepare orange puree: Puree 1 of the oranges with the peel in a Vitamix (cut off ends before pureeing). Pour out the puree into a liquid measuring cup large enough to hold 2 cups of liquid. Next, peel the remaining orange(s) and discard the peels, pureeing only the fruit this time. Pour the orange puree into the liquid measuring cup until it reaches 2 cups. Only the peel from one of the oranges should be used in the puree.
5. Pour the orange puree into a Vitamix with the rest of the wet ingredients. Blend well.
6. In a large mixing bowl, combine wet and dry ingredients together.  Briefly stir in the cranberries.
7. Pour into greased, glass loaf pan and bake for about 60-65 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.

Whenever I make up a recipe, I write it on a loose piece of card stock with a Pilot G-2 0.38 fine point gel pen. I can’t do it any other way. No other pens or writing utensils or any other kind of paper. I’m weird like that. The problem with this recipe recording system is that I lose the papers. Paper processing is one of my biggest adulting struggles. So much paper! From everywhere. I can’t even deal.

I intentionally use card stock instead of regular paper. The thickness does make it easier to find, harder to lose. But still, I fail.

First, the handwritten recipe goes on the kitchen island where all the other papers are, in not so neat piles, along with our nanny binder and kid trinkets. I usually put the recipe on the top of the main paper pile with the plan that I’m going to put it on the blog… later. I think later means, like, oh, tomorrow.

But tomorrow never comes. The recipe gets buried in the pile underneath outdated PTA fliers, spelling word lists, an Emerson article I wanted to read (the WEH told me I’d never read it and to “just throw it out”), and Costco receipts. Because I like for people to think that I live with very clear counter tops, before someone comes over, I hide the paper pile(s) in the top drawer of the white Ikea dresser in our living room. This is where all the other un-dealt with paper piles have gone. Along with plastic Easter eggs that never made their way to a holiday storage bin in the garage.

I also have a lot of paper piles on the door-turned-desk in my home office. If you can imagine the length of a door, that is how big the desk is. There’s barely enough space on it for my laptop. Some of my handwritten recipes have also gotten into the mix of papers on this large desk.

I did buy a binder to stick all my recipes in, after I scrawl them down on the card stock. But then I will still put it on the kitchen counter, thinking I will “get it on the blog”, and then never do.

When I look for one of my recipes, there are a lot of places to look. Is it in the recipe binder I tried to organize? The kitchen counter? The top drawer of the Ikea dresser? Buried in the piles on the door-turned-desk in my office? Or is it somewhere in a paper pile at work because I brought it with me to my clinic, in hopes of actually getting it on the blog in between patients?

Fortunately, I never lost this muffin recipe! It’s a new one I created this fall and I felt determined to keep my eyeballs on it. I’ve kept it on the top of the pile on my kitchen counter or carried it with me in my lunch bag to work. I know, the lunch bag is a weird thing, but it worked. If it goes in my lunch bag, it’s the only paper in there. You know what that means? IT DOESN’T GET LOST. Genius. And guess what. It worked. I never lost it!

So here we are.

I’m totally patting myself on the back for getting a grain-free muffin to work without eggs, dairy, tapioca, or almond flour. IT’S THE YELLOW PEA FLOUR. It’s really changed my baking life. I’m kind of obsessed with it, although it does need to be soaked or my belly doesn’t like it. I haven’t seen yellow pea flour available for purchase anywhere, so I make my own in the dry container of my Vitamix.

My eight year old daughter is not as impressed — she thinks they are a little dry. Nothing a little microwave nuke and a pat of butter can’t fix. To be honest, I’m nervous to tweak the recipe. They work perfectly as is, and perhaps they could use a tiny bit more moisture, but we are working with so many restrictions… gluten-free, grain-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, tapioca-free, tree-nut free, soy-free. This is like the ultimate everything-free muffin. I may try to add an extra one Tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil next time.

Interestingly, the same eight year old daughter was fighting my six year old over the last pumpkin chocolate chip muffin the other morning. It ended up flying across the kitchen when the Wendy’s Eating Husband tried to pry it out of six year old fingers, landing in a box of recently delivered supplements. That says something, right?

These muffins are stevia-sweetened, except for the sugar in the Sunspire dark chocolate chips. Stevia is a natural sweetener that brings zero carbs to a recipe, so it is the best natural sweetener to use. Generally, the lower the carb content, the healthier it is (as long as it is not artificially sweetened — no splenda, no aspartame). Sunspire’s 65% dark chocolate chips are one of the lowest sugar containing chocolate chips on the market… before you get to the erythritol sweetened ones (I’m not a fan of sugar alcohols). If you want to keep the muffins purely sugar-free, you can make them without the chocolate chips.

I hope you enjoy these higher protein, grain-free, vegan muffins! I wish I could roll into Starbucks and ask for a blood sugar friendly muffin such as this. Or anywhere for that matter.

Yellow Pea Flour Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups yellow pea flour
• 1 cup filtered water
• 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup ground flax seeds
• 2 Tablespoons coconut flour
• 1 Tablespoon Frontier organic pumpkin pie spice seasoning blend
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon powdered stevia
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1.5 cups pureed butternut squash or pumpkin
• 2 teaspoons bourbon vanilla
• 1 cup Sunspire Organic 65% Cacao bittersweet chocolate chips

makes 12 muffins

TO-DO AHEAD OF TIME:

• Make sure you have parchment paper muffin liners.
• In a bowl, thoroughly mix the 2 cups yellow pea flour with 1 cup water and 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar. Let it soak for 24 hours. You can stick it in the fridge during this time or leave it on the counter. I have done both. I usually leave it sit out uncovered for about 12 hours and then the rest of the time I place it in the fridge, covered.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Line 12 muffin tins with parchment paper muffin liners. (paper liners do not work well with the yellow pea flour batter)
2. Preheat oven to 375° F.
3. Thoroughly mix the ground flax seeds, coconut flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, salt, and stevia.
4. In a Vitamix, place the wet yellow pea mixture (that was soaked for at least 24 hours), the olive oil, butternut squash (or pumpkin), and vanilla. Blend well.
5. Carefully pour the wet ingredients from the Vitamix in the dry flour mixture. Stir together.
6. Add chocolate chips, evenly distribute.
7. Divide batter evenly among 12 muffins.
8. Bake at 375° for 30 to 32 minutes or until done. A toothpick inserted should come out clean.
9. Serve hot or cold.

NOTES:

• I make my own yellow pea flour from dried yellow split peas. I grind them in the dry container of my Vitamix and then sift the freshly ground flour through my stainless steel fine mesh strainer to remove any remaining bits.
• I prefer using butternut squash in all of my pumpkin recipes. I have tried this recipe with both butternut squash and pumpkin. Butternut squash wins!

One of my goals when I started therapy was to “stop junking”. I tend to get stuck on my phone around 9pm, after my girls have gone to bed for the night. I really only want to check on things, but it almost always turns into what I call “junking”. Junking is when I spend too much time on my phone when I should be doing something else.

My therapist wanted to know what I do when I “junk”. I told her that I usually have a question about something and then I research it to death. After I’m done checking Facebook, Instagram, and then back to Facebook for the trending news. The junking part is when I start Googling topics and reading Wikipedia articles instead of saying, “the internet is not that interesting tonight”, and putting my phone down for the evening.

I was a little annoyed when my therapist called my junking “research”. Research!?

I was looking for someone to beat me up with the cold, hard truth — that I was squandering my life away in the footnotes of Wikipedia articles. I did not expect it to have any kind of positive spin. That’s how disillusioned I can get towards myself when I think should be burning through my to-do list 24-7. My therapist pointed out that my “junking” was indeed productive, it just wasn’t what I had considered as productive.

My therapist did give me the truth, it just wasn’t the truth I expected.

Here’s a little peak into how this “research” happens…

One Friday night, I came across a news article about one of Charles Manson’s followers. That’s when I realized I knew nothing about Charles Manson. I couldn’t have even told you what he did. I just knew he was a bad guy from a long time ago. I dove deep into the internet, educating myself. I read a gazillion news articles and his entire Wikipedia entry. Then I saw that there were several movies about him. The night ended at two in the morning, after finishing the drama-documentary on Amazon called, “Manson: 40 Years Later”. I rarely stay up until 2am, and on this night, the Wendy’s Eating Husband had joined me for the film.

Of course, I spent another “research” session on scones (but not until 2am). I’m not the only one researching the internet to solve world problems. Someone asked on Quora, “What is the correct shape for a scone?“, and it wasn’t me! Here it is people. In the UK, scones are round. In the US, scones are triangular. Mine are round though and I live in the US. Does that make me incorrect? I felt extra cool when I saw that a local food based cooperative in the Seattle area (PCC) sells ROUND scones. Every time I go there, I stop and stare at them with googly eyes.

I use this stainless steel scoop to shape my scones. The scoop has a spring in it that slides a stainless steel band across the inside of the scoop to release the food. It makes the whole process super easy and it also keeps the scones consistent in size.

I call these pumpkin chai scones, but I use butternut squash, not pumpkin. I’ve talked about this discrepancy on the blog before. I grew up in the Pennyslvania Dutch area, where everyone uses butternut squash in place of pumpkin. I think it tastes wayyy better that way. I haven’t ever tried making these with pumpkin, as I do not use real pumpkin when I make pumpkin-y food. It’s just like the scone shape dilemma.

Pleeaase, remember that these scones are sugar-free! The only sweetener I used was stevia. I used to make them with only 1/4 teaspoon powdered stevia, but now I make them with 1/2 teaspoon because I’m a total stevia addict. They aren’t super sweet, but that’s how I roll. I like them that way.

While they are egg-free and dairy-free, they are not vegan because of the gelatin. I use 2.5 Tablespoons of Great Lakes unflavored beef gelatin. This adds 27.5 grams of protein to the whole recipe, which is significant! I try to put as much protein in my baked goods as possible.

My girls, who are getting pickier with age, still enjoy these scones. We eat them for breakfast!

White Bean Pumpkin Chai Scones

Ingredients

Wet Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cup cooked white beans, slightly packed
• 2 cups pureed butternut squash
• 1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
• 1/4 cup virgin coconut oil
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Dry Ingredients

• 1/2 cup ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup short grain brown rice flour*
• 1/2 cup coconut flour**
• 2.5 Tablespoons Great Lakes beef gelatin***
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon powdered stevia*****
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• contents of 1 organic black tea bag
• pinch salt

^{* I grind my own brown rice flour with organic short grain brown rice from Costco.
** I used Nutiva coconut flour.
*** Sometimes I substitute Knox gelatin.
**** Use 1/4 teaspoon if you are not a stevia addict like I am. I use Trader Joe’s powdered stevia.}

makes 23-24 scones

Special Equipment

• Norpro Stainless Steel Scoop, 56MM (4 Tablespoon)
• two 3 quart glass oblong Pyrex baking dishes

Directions

1. Line glass baking dishes with parchment paper.
2. Preheat oven to 375° F.
3. Thoroughly combine dry ingredients together.
4. In a Vitamix or food processor (I prefer the Vitamix for pureeing the white beans), blend the white beans, butternut squash, coconut milk, coconut oil, vanilla, and apple cider vinegar.
5. Combine the wet ingredients and dry ingredients together.
6. With a spring scoop, scoop out the batter and place on the baking dish. The colder the batter, the more they will hold shape. If the batter is really warm, you will need more space between the scones.
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 375° F or until done. The longer you leave them in, the harder the outside will be.
8. The scones will be fragile and soft when you pull them out of the oven, but a toothpick inserted into them should come out clean. They will firm up as they cool. They should stay on the glass baking dish until they are mostly cooled.
9. It’s OK to leave the scones out overnight, but after that they should be stored in the fridge. Serve cold or room temperature.

OTHER NOTES:

1. I usually make a big batch of white beans, and then freeze them in 2 1/4 cup portions so that I don’t have to cook white beans the next time I make scones. I make other versions of these scones!
2. I prefer these scones cold.

About a month ago, I met a seventy-three year old Traditional Vietnamese Medicine Healer in the sauna, after he told me to wipe off my sweat. “You don’t want to absorb it back in,” he said. I’m usually looking out for myself in the sauna — telling people to stop splashing me when they wipe off their sweat (yes, that has happened multiple times). But this guy was looking out for me. Through a thick accent, he told me about toxins, meditation, and how “doctors in the United States don’t work”. (He did not know I was a naturopathic doctor until the end of our conversation.)

Then we started talking about chronic infections, my clinical passion. In the quote below, we were talking specifically about lyme disease.

“You know how you get infection? When a tick bites you, and you get the bacteria from the tick, if you get the infection, it means that the bacteria was stronger than you. There was weakness in you that made you get sick. If you were stronger than the bacteria, you wouldn’t have gotten it. So to fight the bacteria, you have to be strong. You need to be stronger than the bacteria. And once you are stronger than it, your body can fight it.”

To ensure my understanding, and also because there was a little bit of a language barrier, I summarized his words by asking, “So you think sickness is from not being strong?”. I wanted to know if he thought this for all forms of sickness, not just lyme disease and chronic infections.

He replied, “Yes. Because the body is not in balance. You need to think about how you can be strong. That is how you overcome sickness. You get strong.”

Fast forward to a week later. I was reading The Book of JOY by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams. On page 84, in the chapter called “You Are a Masterpiece in the Making”, the Dalai Lama talks about this concept of “mental immunity”. To explain it, he said, “Think about it this way. If your health is strong, when viruses come they will not make you sick. If your overall health is weak, even small viruses will be very dangerous for you.”

Wait, did he just say something about your health being strong so you don’t get a viral infection? Yes he did.

When something comes TWICE, that means it is VERY IMPORTANT. You need to pay attention. First it came to me in the sauna and then I read it in a book, about a week apart.

This concept struck me deep in my heart, but as a question. What makes me strong?

Making people strong is a lot of what I do as a naturopathic doctor. I treat chronic infections in my practice by doing two things simultaneously: making the body strong and killing the bugs. They go hand in hand. But they aren’t really separate things because killing the bugs MAKES YOU STRONG. Yes, going through chronic infection treatment sucks because it can temporarily weaken you, but the end result is STRONG. I make people strong again by killing the bugs. I personally think that you will never become as strong as you can be as long as there are chronic infections smoldering. The chronic infections make you weak.

This is what makes naturopathic medicine work so well. We focus on making the body strong while treating whatever it is that needs healed. When your body is weak, you are prey to all kinds of illness.

Being strong is an all encompassing state of well-being. It includes the mental, emotional, and physical. Toxic relationships can weaken your body physically. Crappy food can make your brain crazy. Physical exercise can boost your mental well-being. Things that bring you joy will bring your body vigor. Whatever strengthens you in one area, will spill over and strengthen all of you.

If we want to be well, we need to do the very things that will make us strong. Hard things included. Doing things that have a quick strength reward can be easy. Hiking? Easy. Lifting weights? Easy. Having fun with friends? Easy. Doing all of these things can make you strong but they are not that painful to do. This is where things can get tricky. When you’re willing to do the easy things but not the hard things. Quitting a stressful, life-sucking job? Hard. Breaking up with a toxic friend? Hard. Radically changing your diet? Hard. Working through your childhood trauma with a therapist? Hard. Going through chronic infection treatment? Hard.

Doing the things that can make us strong can be heartbreaking,  painful, and exhausting. But it is all temporary so that we can get to a long lasting state of being “able to withstand great force or pressure” (this is the dictionary’s definition of strong).

Sometimes the decisions that are the hardest to make are the very ones that can make or break your strength. Sometimes the things closest to us, so ingrained in our nature, are the very things making us weak because they are so entangled in who we have been. Untangling ourselves from the things that make us weak can temporarily make us weaker. Because grief. Because hard things. Because change. We have to be willing to be temporarily weakened so that we can eventually become strong. This requires trust and patience. The strength comes to us in a process, not through the Wendy’s Drive thru. But step by step, you will eventually get stronger and stronger.

We can’t shy away from the hard things if we want to be well. Some people only want wellness up until a certain point. They don’t want it enough to do the hard things. What are you really willing to do to be well?

I hope to be one who does all the hard things that need to be done in order to be well. Because this is what I ask of my patients.

I have long neglected a lot of the things that make me strong — rest, regular sleep, nurturing relationships, writing, hiking. I feel weak and tired. I do not feel strong. I also have chronic, unresolved health issues. And this is exactly why I am closing my practice and taking a sabbatical. I need to become strong again. Primarily through extended rest.

I want my friends, my family, my people, and my patients to do the hard things in order to be well, and I hope to be an example of that. I can’t tell you to do the hard thing that will help your health, if I’m not willing to do it myself.

What makes you strong?

I made this ice cream for the sole purpose of making ice cream sandwiches with purple sweet potato oatmeal fig cookies (sorry, the cookie recipe is not on the blog yet!). I created the recipe quickly and didn’t expect it to turn out as well as it did! I couldn’t believe the texture of the ice cream that came out of my ice cream maker! Making a homemade, coconut milk based, sugar-free ice cream is not always easy. Leaving out the sugar can sometimes create a harder, less desirable texture. But those purple sweet potatoes! I really think they did something to the consistency, because I was blown away by how “normal” it looked coming out of the ice cream maker.

I’m a little obsessed with stokes purple sweet potatoes, although I like calling them purple yams for short. Purple yam is so much less of a mouthful, especially in food titles. But they aren’t the same thing. All the “purple yams” I’ve been using are actually stokes purple sweet potatoes. I find them at Whole Foods or PCC, which is a grocer local to the Seattle area. I even named my purple yam buckwheat cinnamon rolls all wrong because I used stokes purple sweet potatoes, not purple yams. I’m surprised at myself for being so comfortable with this discrepancy, being that I waste a lot of my good energy on trying to be precisely accurate in all things.

One of the things that really drew me into making purple sweet potato ice cream was the color. Well, let’s be honest, the color is why I want to make all things with purple sweet potatoes! I LOVE the purple-y grey color of this ice cream, but it’s not what I was going for. I was hoping for a stronger purple hue. I think the balsamic vinegar may be at fault for taming the purple color, but it adds a depth of flavor that is absolutely delicious. If I make this again, I’ll try white wine vinegar and see how that rolls.

Stokes Purple Sweet Potato Coconut Milk Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1 cup pureed stokes purple sweet potato (see notes for preparation)
• 2 (13.5 oz) cans of organic coconut cream (I used Trader Joe’s brand)
• 6 medjool dates with the seed removed
• 1/2 teaspoon bourbon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cherrywood aged balsamic vinegar
• 25 drops liquid stevia
• pinch salt

Makes about 2 pints (4 cups) of ice cream

Before making this ice cream, ensure that your 2-quart ice cream freezer bowl has been in the freezer for 48 hours.

1. Place all ingredients in a Vitamix or blender. Blend well.
2. Pull the 2-quart ice cream freezer bowl out of the freezer and assemble your ice cream maker.
3. Follow the manufacturer’s directions for your particular ice cream maker and carefully pour the ice cream mixture into the ice cream maker. (I use a Cuisinart 2-Quart Ice Cream Maker, which requires that I turn it on before pouring in the liquid ice cream mixture.)
4. Run the ice cream maker for about 25 to 30 minutes or until done.
5. Serve immediately or store in the freezer for 2-3 hours prior to serving. The ice cream texture is best served immediately or frozen for a few hours. Once the ice cream is frozen overnight, it hardens and will need a few minutes to soften before serving.

Notes

• • To prepare the purple sweet potato puree, roast the potato(s) in the oven at 400° F until soft (usually about 50 minutes to 1 hour depending on size). Once the purple sweet potato has cooled, peel the skin off the potato (I usually give the skins to my dog!). Chop the peeled purple sweet potato and place in a food processor. Blend until the the puree has the consistency of play dough. Depending on the potato, sometimes I have to add 1-3 Tablespoons of water and sometimes I don’t need any water. Check out how the purple sweet potato puree should look look in this post (the picture of it in the food processor). For the ice cream recipe, be very mindful of adding water to the puree, as you want as little water as possible for the ice cream.
  • I eyeballed the amount of how much this recipe makes.

These Strawberry Rhubarb Scones are my first venture into the world of rhubarb baking. Strange to say on my own blog, but I found these scones okay. I definitely prefer rhubarb raw (in fresh vegetable juice and smoothies). You should only eat the stalks since the leaves are poisonous. I love that rhubarb is anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer. Food as medicine, right? Gimme all that.

The texture of the rhubarb in the scones reminded me of crunchy celery bits. Even though it didn’t really taste like celery. My girls did not like the rhubarb in the scones… at all. I double checked the recipe by making a batch of strawberry only scones, with extra strawberries in place of the rhubarb. My girls enjoyed them a lot more that way, but then they weren’t the biggest fans of the white chocolate glaze. Sigh.

Since archerfriendly is basically my online diary of all the food I make, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put them up on here, but I will admit that they are not my favorite. I debated not even posting them, but the pictures are so beautiful, I couldn’t resist. While I always preferred white chocolate over any kind of brown chocolate, I didn’t necessarily love the white chocolate combo with the scones. My nanny liked them, does that count?

Sunspire Chocolate was super generous and sent me a box of their chocolates. I actually requested their white chocolate chips because I thought I’d be a good wifey and make some healthified white chocolate chip cookies for my cookie deprived Wendy’s Eating Husband. I’ve been wanting to start creating recipes for the Wendy’s Eating Husband ever since that birthday cookie fail. But you know, the cookies would have to be mostly allergyfriendly and, of course, healthier than other versions. The Wendy’s Eating Husband doesn’t like the unsweetened food I make, so for him to like something, it needs to be much sweeter than I prefer.

I thought it would be fun to add those kinds of recipes on here… and hence why I wanted those white chocolate chips. Anything I make at home would be significantly better for him than those Pepperidge Farm cookies he likes to buy. What do you think about this? Would you like to see healthified allergyfriendly treats for the Wendy’s Eating Husband on the blog?

I haven’t eaten a lot of white chocolate ever since I’ve gone mostly sugar-free, and I’ve struggled to make a decent homemade version from cocoa butter. I also grew up eating white chocolate Easter bunnies instead of milk or dark chocolate ones (anyone else!?). Oh, and Zero bars. Loved those! While most white chocolate candy is too sweet for me these days, I thought that the pairing of the sweet white chocolate glaze on the sugar-free scones would be a great match (the scones are sweetened with stevia and pureed pears only).

I was so excited when I got the white chocolate chips in the mail, that I wanted to use them RIGHT AWAY and the Strawberry Rhubarb Scones were next on my baking list. You know how that story ends. But like I said already, I’m not sure how much I like the white chocolate flavor with these scones. Because of that, I’m already day dreaming up other recipes where I can use white chocolate chips (beyond a cookie for the Wendy’s Eating Husband). I’m envisioning white chocolate turmeric cups (you know, like peanut butter cups, except with white chocolate and a turmeric based filling).

Technically, these are paleo and grain-free. They contain hulled buckwheat flour. Some grain-free purists consider buckwheat a “grain” but botanically it is not a grain. Get this though! Buckwheat and rhubarb are botanical relatives, so I think it’s extra cool that they get to hang out together in these scones.

Wondering why on Earth I put gelatin in my scones? I know it’s kind of weird, but it is for extra protein. I am all about trying to get as much protein as possible in all the baked goods I make. I’m allergic to eggs, so there goes that protein source.

I can’t end this post without mentioning the fact that I USED BUTTER in the scones. REAL COW BUTTER, PEOPLE. After being strictly dairy-free for many years, I lost my taste for cow butter. Although I’m no longer strictly dairy-free, I’ve never quite got the taste back for cow butter. It tastes too farm-y for me. So why did I even use butter?? Coconut oil has been my main butter substitute over the years and I’m getting a little tired of the coconut oil taste. I’m pushing myself in hopes of a different non-coconut-oil flavor. Maybe the cow butter is why I find these scones okay?  If I make them again, I will try using coconut oil in place of the butter! That might do the trick.

I enjoy these best generously dusted with Saigon cinnamon (not pictured).

Strawberry Rhubarb Scones with White Chocolate Glaze

Ingredients

Scones

• 1/2 cup white bean flour
• 1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
• 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup hulled buckwheat flour (sometimes called light buckwheat flour)
• 1/2 cup ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 2.5 Tablespoons Great Lakes unflavored beef gelatin
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon powdered stevia
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, optional
• 1/4 cup Kerrygold butter (or coconut oil to keep it dairy-free)
• 3/4 cup pureed pear with the skin, previously frozen (see how I prepare my pureed pears in this post)
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup diced rhubarb (stalk only)
• 1 cup diced strawberries

White Chocolate Glaze

• 1/2 cup Sunspire white chocolate chips (fyi – white chocolate chips are not dairy-free)
• 2 Tablespoons full fat coconut milk or heavy whipping cream

Makes about 16 scones

Equipment Needed: Vitamix if grinding your own flour, a food processor, and two 3 quart glass oblong Pyrex baking dishes

The Scones

1. Mix the white bean flour, coconut milk, and lemon juice together in a bowl. Let it sit at least one hour. (The purpose is to soak the white bean flour to help with digestion.) It will turn into a paste like consistency. That’s OK! It’s also OK if it sits a little longer than an hour.
2. If you are using pre-frozen pear puree, make sure to pull it out of the freezer, remove it from the ziploc bag, and let it begin the thawing process in a bowl.
3. Line two 3 quart oblong glass baking dishes with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 375° F.
4. In another mixing bowl, thoroughly mix the rest of the dry ingredients together — the buckwheat flour, ground flax seeds, coconut flour, gelatin, baking soda, salt, stevia, and optional cinnamon.
5. Place the white bean flour/coconut milk/lemon juice mixture, the butter, the pear puree (whether it’s frozen or thawed), and the vanilla in a food processor. Blend into smooth.
6. Chop the rhubarb + strawberries if you haven’t done so yet. Chopping them now gives the white bean flour more time to soak.
7. Take the wet mixture from the food processor and mix it with the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.
8. Once the dough is thoroughly mixed, add the diced rhubarb and strawberries. Carefully, evenly distribute throughout the dough.
9. Use a trigger ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough in rounded balls. Place scoops on the parchment paper lined glass baking dish.
10. Bake @ 375° F for 25 to 28 minutes or until done.

The Glaze

1. In a double boiler, melt 1/2 cup Sunspire white chocolate chips with 2 Tablespoons of coconut milk or heavy whipping cream. Stir well. Drizzle on scones. Scones should not be hot when applying the drizzle, but it is OK if they are warm.

Notes:

1. Please read this post on how I prepare my pureed pears. I have had some people use unripe pears for their pear puree and the recipe doesn’t quite work as well. For this recipe, I simply pulled out one of my previously frozen 3/4 cup pear puree packets. I let it sit on the counter for a little bit but it was mostly frozen when I worked it into the recipe.
2. I make my own buckwheat flour in a Vitamix with raw, hulled buckwheat. Make sure you do not use unhulled buckwheat flour, which is darker in color and would provide a different flavor.
3. I made these both with and without the 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon. I couldn’t decide which version I liked better! You decide.
4. Pulsing the diced rhubarb in your food processor may help minimize any crunchy texture issues.
5. Note that the rhubarb and strawberry mix-ins are MAXIMIZED. It will feel like there are too many! It’s OK, it will still work. Make sure not to pack down the measuring cups or you will have too much.
6. Baking time is for baking the scones on a glass Pyrex dish. If you are using a different type of pan, the baking time may be different.
7. I like them best generously dusted with Saigon cinnamon on top of the white chocolate glaze.

This incredibly easy recipe for Golden Milk Syrup will get you jonesin’ for golden milk everything. Golden Milk Coffee, Golden Milk Tea, Golden Milk Cocktails, and the hype goes on and on. You can even put this Golden Milk Syrup on your face (I’m not even joking).

For those who have been living in La La Land and DON’T know what Golden Milk is, like the guy I talked to in the sauna last week, golden milk is the charming term for turmeric infused milk. You could call it turmeric milk, but that is so much more of a mouthful. Some call it Golden Mylk to indicate that it is made with cow-free, plant-based milk. So, turmeric + milk/mylk = golden milk.

There is a reason for all this golden milk c-r-a-z-e. Turmeric isn’t just a trendy superfood. I prescribe turmeric for patients in my practice, and I take it myself on a daily basis. Turmeric is a substantial source of antioxidants, which why it serves up a strong anti-inflammatory effect in the body. It can also help to protect the mitochondria (a lot of things in this world damage mitochondria; fluoroquinolones being one of them… and if that long word doesn’t ring a bell think Cipro). Why wouldn’t you want to eat this stuff!? I want turmeric in every single thing I eat!

To use this DIY syrup for golden milk, all you gotta do is stick the golden milk syrup in your choice of milk, and voilà! There it is. But the golden milk opportunities don’t end there! You can put this golden milk syrup in anything. Goes way beyond mylk, folks.

I like to stick it in iced coffee. That turmeric and coffee flavor, it just goes! I can’t get enough of it. In fact, you need to make this Golden Milk Syrup, solely for the purpose of making Golden Milk Iced Coffee. If I had a cafe…

Using this golden milk syrup is so much less of a fuss than dried turmeric powder. No yellow powdery hot mess! I’d much rather have something that will easily blend into my drink without yellow powder floating to the top. But, even then, that would never stop me because I don’t have texture issues like the Wendy’s Eating Husband does.  The powdery situation with ground turmeric powder in most golden milk recipes would be a no-go for him.

That’s why a syrup version totally wins. No whisking, shaking, or blending. The downside of the syrup version is the sweetener. Gotta be careful with not over-doing any kind of sweetener in our everyday life. I normally don’t eat sweetener on a daily basis, so getting to put some Golden Milk Syrup in my iced coffee feels like a luxurious dessert. Besides, this syrup is MEDICINAL. So, no hard feelings there.

The black pepper in the syrup increases the bioavailability of the turmeric. You know what that means right? The black pepper helps the turmeric to stick around on clean-up duty. The longer the turmeric hangs out inside your body, the more you get to milk it’s benefits. In other words, the black pepper is a bio-enhancer, enhancing what turmeric does in the body.

I put 10 peppercorns in my syrup. You don’t need a lot. You can use less. This might be too peppery for some.

The syrup is made via a fresh turmeric root extraction, with manuka honey acting as a solvent. This is the same herbal medicine making process I use for my DIY Onion Cough Syrup. Once your syrup is done macerating, it will have more of a liquid-y texture. That’s how it is supposed to be. The final syrup consistency is due to diffusion.

I prefer to use manuka honey but regular honey will do. Manuka honey has way more therapeutic properties than regular honey, so it makes the final product more medicinal.

The convenient thing about this recipe is that it is not exact. All you need to know is how to make it, and then you’re all set. Fresh turmeric root is peeled and thinly sliced, then smothered in honey. Sprinkle in some black pepper, cover with more honey, and you can call it good.

This golden milk syrup can be used for literally anything. Use it for your golden milk latte, golden milk coffee, golden milk tea, golden milk salad dressing. Oh, the list goes on and on! But, promise me you’ll make some golden milk iced coffee with this syrup, and then invite me over, ok?

DIY Golden Milk Syrup

Ingredients

• honey or manuka honey (enough to cover all your turmeric root slices)
• several fresh organic turmeric roots (as many as you’d like to make)
• 10 black peppercorns, freshly crushed
• glass canning jar (large enough to contain as much as you’d like to make)

Not for children under 1 year of age

1. Peel and thinly slice the turmeric roots.
2. Place a spoonful of honey in the bottom of the glass jar.
3. Sprinkle the crushed black peppercorns on top of the honey.
4. Place a layer of thinly sliced turmeric on top of the honey, pressing down on the turmeric slices.
5. Add a spoonful of honey on top of the turmeric slices.
6. Continue to layer: turmeric, honey, turmeric, honey, until the jar is full and the turmeric slices are fully covered in honey.
7. Seal the canning jar with a lid. Let the jar sit at room temperature or in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours. While it’s macerating, turn the jar upside down a few times to ensure that the turmeric slices stay covered with honey.
8. You can strain out the turmeric slices once the syrup is done, but it is not necessary.
9. Refrigerate syrup after opening the canning jar.

If you are looking for a gluten-free and grain-free way to make s’mores, look no further! All you need are yams! How easy is that? Not to mention how cool yam toast is these days… I know you want to be cool.

Swap out the graham cracker with a slice of campfire roasted sweet potato toast!

I prefer using Stokes Purple sweet potatoes for my toasted sweet potato s’mores, but they can be hard to find. You can use any yam or sweet potato you want! It’s just that I enjoy the taste of the purple sweet potato combined with dark chocolate and marshmallow. I have also done s’mores on yam toast using garnet yams, but the flavor wasn’t as ahh-mazing. It was just amazing. But not ahh-mazing, if you know what I mean.

You know what sweet potato toast s’mores means!? Vegetables. That’s what it means. You are eating a marshmallow ON A VEGETABLE. Can’t get better than that. To make your sweet potato toast s’more as healthy as possible, I recommend using organic fair trade dark chocolate (with a percent in the 80s). I recommend Equal Exchange’s 88% dark chocolate bar. If you can eat your s’mores on a vegetable and use 80% or higher dark chocolate, who cares where the marshmallow comes from. Joking. Kind of.

Here goes my marshmallow spiel. I am always tempted to make marshmallows from scratch, especially for my sweet potato toast s’mores. This would be the ultimate perfection for the healthiest s’more. Yes, I know they sell “healthier” marshmallows at Trader Joe’s, but those ones have tapioca in them, and the last time I had tapioca I was making plans to go to the emergency room. I will not eat tapioca. Ever. I am also unsure of how a homemade, honey-based marshmallow would fare roasted over a fire. Would it fall off the stick into a goopy mess? It would break my heart if I saw all my homemade marshmallows drip into the fire.

Most of our backyard campfires tend to be impromptu, which means that I can not whip up homemade marshmallows that fast. So, true story, I just use the regular ones. Gasp. And get this: I am totally OK with that. We do try to find ones that don’t have blue food coloring in them though. Yes, they add blue food coloring to marshmallows. Isn’t that crazy!?

If I eat super clean 95% of the time, a regular marshmallow or two from the non-Whole foods grocery store should not be a problem. Now, if you’re eating marshmallows everyday, that is probably not a good idea. But, my goal for your health, and my own, is to have that resilience where a marshmallow won’t put you in a tizzy.

There’s also something to be said about eating in good company. I love a backyard fire with friends. There’s something about it that is super nourishing to me, and I enjoy the social aspect of participating in the s’mores festivities. Loneliness can be just as toxic for your body as junk food. So, perhaps my toxic marshmallow, if eaten in the company of lovely friends, won’t be so toxic.

There’s no recipe or how-to. This is mindless and easy.

Roast your sweet potato over the fire. I like to melt the dark chocolate pieces right on the sweet potato toast, when its almost done roasting over the fire. Roast your marshmallows, and voilà! I love purple sweet potato toast s’mores way more than I ever liked a graham cracker based s’more. You have got to try this!

In all my 10 years of marriage to the Wendy’s Eating Husband, I have never made him a batch of homemade cookies. I only feel a little bit bad about that. The kind of cookies that the Wendy’s Eating Husband wants and the kind of cookies I’m willing to make are two very different things.

This past Christmas, I got the itch to make him homemade chocolate chip cookies. I can still hear his words in my head:

“It would be a Christmas miracle if you made me some chocolate chip cookies.”

Of course, he was thinking of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I was thinking of a healthified gluten free and egg free version with ground flax seeds.

I had good intentions to get these bad boys made for Christmas. I was going to let myself be very generous with the [coconut] sugar. I stocked up on Kerrygold butter from Costco and several bags of chocolate chips. But in December, I wasn’t feeling very well and had been struggling with some fatigue, so the Kerrygold butter got pushed to the back of the fridge and half of our chocolate chip stash got eaten by the morning rodents. And by morning rodents, I mean my children who get into things before I wake up in the morning.

My next chance to bring forth a cookie miracle was for the Wendy’s Eating Husband’s birthday, which happens to fall two days after mine.

I was willing to put as much butter and sugar in these cookies as needed. That says a lot, doesn’t it?! AS MUCH SUGAR AS YOU WANT. DUMP IT IN! But I was not willing to fatally poison my kitchen with gluten. I also wasn’t willing to use eggs. The girls and I are very allergic to eggs, and I wanted them to be able to enjoy the “normal person” cookies too, so eggs were just not going in these cookies.

Yesterday morning, I texted my sister for her favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, telling her that I was making chocolate chip cookies for the Wendy’s Eating Husband’s birthday. “They are going to be egg free and gluten free tho,” I informed her. Sister piped back, “Make him real ones!” That was her way of telling me to follow the Nestle Toll House Milk Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe she texted to me, gluten and all.

I compared the Toll House recipe to the Betty Crocker’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. They are ALMOST identical, except for the difference of an egg and a half teaspoon of salt. And then I made my… substitutions.

Let’s just say that I’m very inexperienced in the field of baking with cow butter and sugar. I used coconut sugar, which to many is more acceptable than white granulated sugar, but I consider it all the same. Sugar is sugar, booger. You can get yo’ minerals in a trace mineral supplement anyways (if that’s your justification for why one should be eating coconut sugar instead of white granulated sugar).

So, how did they turn out? Let’s find out from the Wendy’s Eating Husband:

“I don’t like them. At all.”

“I wish you would have followed a recipe.”

“Please don’t ever make these again. Save your troubles.”

“Here’s my tip for making them better: Use a recipe and make the gluten ones. With eggs.”

Before you think the Wendy’s Eating Husband is a jerk, let me share a little background with you. In college, I made these quinoa brownies that were sweetened with stevia and baby food sweet potatoes (eating archerfriendly goes way back!). I had brought a pan of them over to the Wendy’s Eating Boyfriend’s house (he was the boyfriend then). His roommates said that the brownies looked like the cracked, desolate soil of hell. One of them dared to try one, and after eating it, he got down on the floor, licked the carpet, and said that the carpet tasted better than my brownies (hii Zach).

I’m not emotionally attached to my food. But at the same time, if the Wendy’s Eating Husband wants some chocolate chip cookies, I’m unwilling to make ones with gluten and eggs. We are at a stage now where the kids want to eat what he is eating, and the kids especially do not do well with eggs. Maybe I am too controlling (use of the word “maybe” probably isn’t necessary). Gluten and eggs are where I draw the line. Besides, the ND of all NDs told the Wendy’s Eating Husband that he’s not really supposed to be eating gluten. And I kind of need to feel okay about making cookies for the Wendy’s Eating Husband, especially if we’re going to be putting normal person amounts of sugar in them. The Wendy’s Eating Husband doesn’t need to be egg free, but the rest of us do.

What made these cookies so horrific? Too much molasses. See, both Toll Hilly and Betty called for 3/4 cup of white sugar and 3/4 cup of brown sugar. Since I was only using coconut sugar, I decided to use molasses to help with that brown sugar taste. But I used wayyy too much molasses. A whole 1/4 cup of it, which made the dough runnier in the oven, hence the cookies turning out flat and crispy. Whoops.

Speaking of flat cookies, when I had previously asked what kind of chocolate chip cookies the Wendy’s Eating Husband liked, he said “not the flat ones”, so these cookies have done a very good job at meeting none of his favorite cookie criteria.

If I had to rename these cookies, I’d call them Dark Brown Molasses Buckwheat Cookies with Chocolate Chips. They are certainly not chocolate chip cookies.

I never really feel spiritually invited into the New Year when it turns from one year to the next. For some reason, life transformation and reflection that revolves around the New Year feels artificial and forced. I feel this obligation to fix my broken ways, stop junking online so much, finally get in bed at a decent hour, and to create a “plan” for how I’m going to become perfect in the New Year.

These are all good things, and I really do need to get in bed at a decent hour, but I never feel into it on December 31st. By into it, I mean that internal yearning where it feels right. Where I feel a pull to do it.

It is the turning of my own years that gets me. Not so much the turning of the earth. But how I am aging on that earth. And what I am doing with my years. Where I feel that spiritual pulling, combined with a deep connection to my life, is around my birthday. That is when I think about the past year the most. I think about my age, where I am at in life, and all that has transpired over the past year and years. All that’s been lost and all that has been gained.

This may sound weird, but I am usually very in touch with my grief around my birthday. I actually like that I do this. I like being in touch with my pain because it makes me feel alive. There is something about it that feels refreshing to me, like a full glass of water after a 5 mile run. I feel everything so much more brightly, and as each birthday passes, there’s always new perspective on all the grief that has been up until that point.

This birthday, this turning thirty four, marks the end of a very long season of grief. This is an end that I seriously believed would never ever come. It is terrifying to write that, as if I have no clue of all the grief that may be coming for me yet. Because that is how grief happens, right? Part of what makes grief so grievous is that it takes us by surprise. It’s not a part of the plan. It’s not what we wanted. It’s not what we expected. And so there’s grief solely for the grief showing up in our lives at the very moment we wanted it the least. And when we think the grief can’t possibly get any worse, it gets worse.

There were so many times over the past few years, where I thought the darkness had ended, only to find it getting worse. Where I thought I was coming out of it, only to watch myself moving deeper into it. So that cautiousness is there, wondering if I am wrong about this season of deep grief ending. Because I was wrong, a lot. Every time I thought it was getting better, something else happened, that left me more deeply hurt than before.

I have known some of the deepest heartache of my life these past few years, with the past year being the worst of it. The pain had been held closely, like an unwanted secret I wish I never knew, like a friend I hated that would never leave.

Which is why this past year was the worst of it. I went lower than I thought I could go. The darkness was darker than I ever thought I’d see. With this grief being so long term, I started believing that this is what my new life was going to be. Which was depressing, because it is not what I wanted. At all.

But while this past year was one of the darkest years of my life, it was also one of the best years of my life. Because thirty three is when that darkness lifted. When the pain stopped swallowing me whole. When that dark friend stopped bothering me every single day. Thirty-three is when things got really clear for me. What was working in my life and what wasn’t working. Thirty-three is when I came out of several years worth of grief. Thirty-three is when life finally showed up, after years of waiting. Life that felt like it was never going to come.

It was my mom, who called me on New Years Day, and told me, “Archer, this year is going to be different. This year you are gonna see a turnaround.” I rarely talk to my mom on the phone, but it was her, of all people, who spoke the words of what was coming for me. That the darkness was done. It was over. Things were going to change.

She was right.

Growing up, my (ex-step) Grandma Ruth made sugar cookie roll outs for almost every holiday. Most of the time, they were plain and frosting-less. I always thought that was the boring way to go, but now that I’m grown, I give her mad props for that, because less sugar is a huge win. Although there was certainly a decent amount of sugar in the cookie.

I already have a sugarless sugar cookie recipe up on the blog, but I found them to be a little too fragile. Sorry if you made them. I developed a new recipe using buckwheat, which I find holds together much better than the oat flour I originally used.

I have been using this updated recipe here for the past two Christmases, and I decided to whip up some Easter cookies to use up the leftover frosting from my daughter’s birthday cake I made over the weekend. I have to say — Easter cookies especially remind me of Grandma Ruth. Because she always gave us a whole bunch of frosting-less bunny cookies for Easter (with a metallic silver edible “eyeball”). It is a sweet thing to think of her. She’s still living, although not doing well. I have two different pictures of her up on my Instagram feed if you want to see what she looks like. Here’s a link to one of them.

I love this recipe because there is zero sugar in it. ZERO. It is sweetened with 20 dried apricots. THAT IS IT. I didn’t even put stevia in this. Aren’t you proud? I feel like I deserve 100 extra points for not putting stevia in something, being that I put it in everything.

The cookies do kind of become bubbly on top during the baking process, which certainly bothers my OCD problems, but the texture and taste is perfect. Maybe I need to back off on the cream of tarter? I don’t know. What matters most is that the Wendy’s Eating Husband thinks they’re good! (but he is not a fan of the coconut oil based frosting you see in the pics)

Like I said, I frosted these with leftover frosting from my daughter’s birthday cake. The frosting is mainly made of coconut oil, white beans, and powdered sugar. I’m not a fan of sugar, obviously, but for birthday cakes where we are serving normal eating guests, I am A-OK with using it. I don’t think second graders will go for a coconut oil frosted cake that is sweetened with stevia only (ha, my kids wouldn’t go for that either).

You can use any frosting you’d like for these. I do have to say that I am getting a tiny bit tired of coconut oil based frosting, since I’ve been eating it for 8 years now. I’m ready to start making a butter based frosting yesterday. So, you may see some butter around here. Need a break from that coconut oil taste.

Sugar Free Buckwheat Cutouts

Ingredients

• 20 organic dried Turkish apricots
• 1/2 cup boiling water

• 3 cups hulled raw buckwheat flour (use buckwheat without the hull) + extra for rolling
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tarter
• pinch salt

• 1 cup virgin coconut oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon organic almond extract

Makes about 70 small cookies

1. Pour 1/2 cup boiling water on dried apricots. Let soak.
2. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350° F.
3. In a mixing bowl, thoroughly mix the buckwheat flour, ground flax seeds, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.
4. Place the coconut oil in a food processor. Whip for 2-3 minutes. Next add the apricots with all of the soaking water, the vanilla, and the almond extract. Blend well.
5. Pour the wet ingredients from the food processor into the mixing bowl with the flour mixture. Stir well.
6. Refrigerate for about 1 hour to firm up the dough. While dough is chilling, prepare rolling surface with parchment paper. Have extra buckwheat flour available for rolling. Split dough in quarters, working dough with your hands to soften. The temperature of your hands will help to make the dough pliable. Roll dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Use flour on rolling pin to help prevent sticking.
7. Cut out shapes and carefully place on baking pan.
8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, depending on size. Smaller cookies will need closer to 12 minutes. Larger cookies may need closer to 15 minutes.

I can’t buy archerfriendly cinnamon rolls. That leaves me with two choices: never eat them or make them myself. I choose the latter!

Making homemade cinnamon rolls that are gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, tapioca-free, nut-free, blood sugar friendly, minimally sweetened, and whole foods based, ALL FROM SCRATCH, is no easy task. Do you know what that means? BEING IN THE KITCHEN ALL DAY. The Wendy’s Eating Husband says it’s not worth it. Maybe because he “can” go anywhere and buy a cinnamon roll to enjoy (I say “can” because he doesn’t necessarily follow his prescribed gluten-free diet).

One of the huge reasons I wish I had my own cafe is to save you from all this work! Then you could buy these healthy cinnamon rolls without having to make them. You wouldn’t have to spend your whole Sunday grinding flour and pureeing purple yams for cinnamon rolls your Wendy’s eating husband won’t like.

This recipe is labor intensive and time consuming — it’s probably the most intense recipe on the blog! Scroll down and look how long the directions are…

The work is 100% worth it to me because I LOVE these cinnamon rolls and they do not bother my blood sugar.

I CAN EAT THEM FOR BREAKFAST. PLAIN. BY THEMSELVES.

What’s the big deal about that?

My body does NOT tolerate carbohydrates for breakfast. At all. I have reactive hypoglycemia in conjunction with insulin resistance. If I eat carbohydrates for breakfast, I get a blood sugar spike about an hour later, which is then followed by a severe blood sugar dip (hypoglycemia). When I got this tested, my blood sugar dropped to 40! Yes, you read that right. FOUR-ZERO. At that blood sugar level, I can not operate a vehicle, let alone walk around due to light-headedness and stars in my vision field. I try to avoid carbohydrates at breakfast AT ALL COSTS specifically because of this problem.

I focus on low carb, high protein breakfasts to keep my blood sugar stable, which is why it’s a MIRACLE that these cinnamon rolls don’t give me any blood sugar issues. Maybe it’s not so miraculous, since a cup of buckwheat flour has about 16 grams of protein and 12 grams of fiber! I also minimized the sweetener as much as possible. There’s only one tablespoon of maple syrup in both the dough and the frosting, and then there are 3 tablespoons of coconut sugar in the cinnamon filling. There is some stevia in the recipe and the purple yam brings it’s own natural sweetness to the game.

As you know, I’m a huge advocate for the unsweetened lifestyle, which means sweetening food as minimally as possible. However, many people are not used to this! If you are dying to make these cinnamon rolls, and you’re not as hardcore as I am, there’s an option for the frosting to be sweeter for you — you can use maple syrup in place of the coconut milk. You can also generously sprinkle the cinnamon rolls with coconut sugar before putting them in the oven. I haven’t tried this, but you could potentially use maple syrup in place of some of the full fat coconut milk in the dough.

Both my kids and friends enjoy these cinnamon rolls warmed, with maple syrup poured right on top of them. I of course, enjoy them just as they are! I even enjoy them cold, although they are firmer when cold due to all of the coconut oil in them. They have more like a biscuit-y texture when cold. When warm, they are PERFECT.

Purple Yam & Buckwheat Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients

Purple Yam Puree

• 2 large purple yams
• 1 to 3 Tablespoons of water

Purple Yam Frosting

• 1/2 cup unrefined virgin coconut oil
• 1 Tablespoon maple syrup
• 20 to 30 drops liquid stevia
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• 1/2 cup pureed purple yam (from above)
• 1/4 cup full fat coconut milk OR maple syrup to thin frosting

Buckwheat Cinnamon Roll Dough, Dry

• 3 1/4 cups unhulled buckwheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon stevia powder (pure; not cut with anything else)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Buckwheat Cinnamon Roll Dough, Wet

• 1 cup pureed purple yam (from above)
• 1/3 cup virgin coconut oil
• 1 1/2 cups full fat coconut milk
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla
• 1 Tablespoon maple syrup

Yeast Mixture

• 2 Tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water

Buckwheat Cinnamon Roll Filling

• a heaping 3/4 cup coconut butter
• 2 Tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 Tablespoon saigon cinnamon
• 1 Tablespoon regular cinnamon
• 3 Tablespoons coconut sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon stevia
• pinch salt

Makes approximately 11 rolls

Equipment

• at least two mixing bowls
• Vitamix
• Food Processor
• baking dish (I use a glass Pyrex)
• parchment paper
• rolling pin

Purple Yam Puree
Highly recommend getting this ready the day before you make the cinnamon rolls.

1. Roast 2 large purple yams in the oven on 400° F for about an hour or until very soft.
2. Once cooled, peel off skin, chop, and place in food processor.
3. Puree yams with 1 to 3 Tablespoons of water, depending on how dry the yam is, and only adding 1 Tablespoon at a time. The goal is a “playdough” like consistency as you see pictured in this post.

Purple Yam Frosting
Highly recommend making this immediately after you puree the purple yams to save time on clean-up (then you won’t have to clean the food processor twice).

1. In a food processor, whip 1/2 cup coconut oil on high for 2-3 minutes. Add maple syrup, stevia, vanilla, salt. Whip again on high.
2. Add the 1/2 cup pureed yam. Whip until thoroughly mixed.
3. Add 1/4 cup full fat coconut milk OR 1/4 cup maple syrup to thin frosting. Add more to desired consistency. Note that the more coconut milk you add, the more dilute the sweetness may be. If you’re used to things tasting sweeter, I recommend using the maple syrup.
4. Spread frosting on the cinnamon rolls while they are warm.

Note:

• This frosting makes just enough. There’s usually not a lot of extra leftover. If there is, I like to save it and pull it out for homemade donuts or cookies.
• Frosting can be made the day before you make the cinnamon rolls. Store in the fridge. You will need to pull it out of the fridge to let it warm to room temperature prior to spreading on the cinnamon rolls.

Buckwheat Cinnamon Roll Dough
If you are grinding your own buckwheat flour like I do in my Dry Vitamix container, I recommend doing all the grinding the day before you make the cinnamon rolls.

1. Prep the baking dish by lining a 9″ x 11″ glass baking dish with parchment paper. Also grease the parchment paper with coconut oil.
2. Get two mixing bowls ready. One for the dry ingredients and one for the wet ingredients.
3. Make the “flour mixture” by placing the buckwheat, stevia, and salt in a bowl. Mix well.
4. Place the pureed purple yam, coconut oil, coconut milk, vanilla, and maple syrup in a Vitamix. Blend well. Let this sit while you prep the yeast mixture.
5. Mix the 2 Tablespoons yeast in a 1/4 cup warm water. Let it sit for 5 minutes (it may get clumpy, that’s OK).
6. In your designated wet ingredient mixing bowl, mix the wet ingredients from the Vitamix together with the yeast mixture.
7. Slowly add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet mixture, stirring continuously. Blend well.
8. Shape the dough into a ball, using coconut oil on your hands if needed.
9. Line the empty dry ingredients bowl with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper with coconut oil. Transfer the ball of dough to the coconut oil greased parchment paper lined bowl. Believe me, you will need this! The dough gets very sticky and even sticks to parchment paper.
10. Let the dough sit in a warm location for 30 minutes while you prep the filling and the work surface to roll the dough.

Buckwheat Cinnamon Roll Filling

1. Place coconut butter + coconut oil in a small pot on low heat until melted.
2. Make the cinnamon mixture by combining both cinnamons, the coconut sugar, stevia, and salt.

Making the Cinnamon Rolls

1. Prepare a place to roll out the dough into a rectangle by placing a large piece of parchment paper down on your work surface. The dough is incredibly sticky and hard to work with — I use duck tape to secure my parchment paper in place. Generously grease the entire surface of the parchment paper — the dough is so sticky it will stick to the parchment paper and make the rolling process difficult. Generously grease the rolling pin with coconut oil.
2. Transfer the ball of dough to your greased work surface. Roll out into a rectangle (whatever looks good!).
3. Once the dough is rolled out into a rectangle, carefully spread the softened coconut butter filling onto the dough as evenly as possible, ensuring to also cover the edges. This is a delicate process!
4. Evenly spread the dry cinnamon mixture on top.
5. Carefully roll the dough. This part is finicky! Untape the parchment paper (if you had it taped), and use the parchment paper as means to press the cinnamon roll as you roll it. See the (cell phone) video below on how I do this.
6. Grease a sharp knife to use to cut the cinnamon rolls. Cut into 1.5 – 2 inch slices. Carefully place on prepared baking pan. During the cutting process, I lather my hands up with coconut oil and try to spread a little bit of coconut oil around each cinnamon roll as I place it in the pan. This helps them not to “stick” too much to each other during the baking process.
7. Preheat oven to 350° F.
8. Let the prepped cinnamon rolls rise in a warm location for about 45 minutes.
9. Bake at 350° F for about 30 minutes or until done.
10. Spread frosting on the cinnamon rolls while they are warm.

Notes on Rolling the Dough

• I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING EXTRA FLOUR TO ROLL THE DOUGH MORE EASILY AND PREVENT STICKING. Extra buckwheat flour ends up making the dough dry and crumbly to where it breaks when rolling. Instead of adding extra flour to the dough to help it to roll more easily, use coconut oil. Coconut oil the parchment paper, coconut oil the bowl, coconut oil the rolling pin. If you use extra flour to help make the dough roll, it absorbs too much flour and then becomes way too dry and hard. I recommend using coconut oil for everything when it comes to rolling the dough and helping it not to stick. You may even need to keep your hands greased!
• If the dough does crack or break when rolling, use softened coconut oil to patch it back up.
• The cinnamon rolls are not necessarily neat looking. If you refrigerated the dough, you can get a neater looking cinnamon roll. However, I tried this, and it made the coconut butter filling hard to where it was impossible to roll the dough. If you cover the cinnamon rolls with frosting, you end up not even noticing the lack of “neatness”.

This is my best version of an archerfriendly pound cake, without using any of the ingredients that make a pound cake a pound cake. Traditional pound cake contains a pound of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. There is none of that in this cake. It is gluten free, egg free, dairy free, and white sugar free. It would be vegan if it weren’t for the honey. Can I even call this thing a pound cake!?

The pound cake itself is sugar free. Although I do sprinkle coconut sugar on the top of the orange slices, right before the cake goes into the oven. This helps to brown and sweeten the oranges, but it is not necessary if you’d like it to stay strictly sugar free. As you may know already, I try to make things as minimally sweetened as possible. The cake itself is sweetened with 2 whole Tablespoons of honey, a pureed blood orange (with the peel), and stevia. That is it! If you are not quite accustomed to the unsweetened life, you may want to use a tad more sweetener. Although be careful with using more of a liquid sweetener, as that could throw off the liquid ratios.

I love this recipe because it’s a tasty way to get some orange peels in your belly. The orange peel is where it’s at! There are so many antioxidant compounds in the peel, and most people are throwing them away! Orange peels are a super food, and I’m not even exaggerating that.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with yellow pea flour, which I grind from dried yellow peas in my dry Vitamix container. In this recipe, the yellow pea flour is soaked overnight. It turns into a blob in the morning, which is why it gets pureed in a food processor with the rest of the wet ingredients. I have found that soaking the yellow pea flour overnight results in less GI discomfort if you know what I mean.

The cake bakes at 350° F for an hour and 15-20 minutes. This baking time can vary depending on how you layer the blood oranges on top. If they are sliced too thickly or double layered, the baking time may need adjusted. If you choose to do a super thin, single layer of orange slices, you may need less baking time. Make sure the top bounces a little bit and a knife comes out clean.

This blood orange pound cake is best eaten warm, fresh out of the oven, on the day that it is made. I’m stating the obvious though, aren’t I? When the cake is warm, it is more delicate and requires skill to cut it neatly. It cuts like a champ when it is cold, but it does not taste best when cold. Due to the high fat content provided by the coconut oil, it firms up quite a bit at colder temperatures. This can make it seem dry and dense, but it’s not! It’s so tender and soft when warm. If you eat leftovers after the fact, warm them up!

Now, onto the baking pan! We have a slight issue. The downside of collecting kitchen ware from random places is that you end up using unique bakeware that no one else has in their kitchen. That’s what happened with this teal loaf pan you see in the picture. The color and shape of it caught my eye, and I had to buy it. It’s from Grocery Outlet! Can you believe it? I bought it there a while ago, and they are no longer in store.

Did I save the packaging? No! Is there anything written on the pan? No! Do you have one in your kitchen? Probably not! I have no idea who makes it, so I can’t even tell you how to get one. But I can tell you how to find a similar one… maybe. It only took me about 2 hours of searching on the internet to find some kind of solution.

The problem is that you’ll need to find a similar sized pan if you want to try to bake this Blood Orange Ginger Yellow Pea Pound cake! The closest pan I have found to the size of the one I used for this recipe is a 1.5 pound loaf pan with the dimensions around 10″ x 5″ x 3″ high. Check out this one from Williams Sonoma. The pan I used was about 10″ x 5″ x 2.5 ” high, measured from the inside bottom-ish.

Or instead of finding a similar sized pan, you can try to accommodate the situation by using your regular sized loaf pan and put the extra batter in another baking container. If you use your regularly sized loaf pan, leave at least an inch of space at the top.

I hope you love this as much as I do. I can’t buy something like this anywhere! If I had an archerfriendly cafe, this would certainly be in it over the winter months.

Blood Orange Ginger Yellow Pea Pound Cake

Ingredients

• 2 cups yellow pea flour, sifted
• 1/2 cup filtered water
• 3 blood oranges
• 1 cup brown rice flour
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds
• 2 Tablespoons coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon stevia (powdered)
• 1 cup unrefined virgin coconut oil
• 1 cup full fat coconut milk
• 2 Tablespoons honey
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• piece of ginger root (only need about 1/2 inch of it)
• pinch of coconut sugar

You will need a 1.5 pound loaf pan with dimensions around 10″ x 5″ x 3″ high
(this size is larger than the typical loaf pan in the US; more info below)

The Night Before Making the Cake:

1. In a Vitamix, puree 1 blood orange, with the peel. Pour the puree in a liquid measuring cup until you have 3/4 cup of puree. Discard the rest of the puree (or drink it!).
2. Place the 2 cups of yellow pea flour in a large mixing bowl with the 1/2 cup filtered water and 3/4 cup of blood orange puree. Stir well.
3. Store mixture in the fridge overnight.

Day of Making the Cake:

1. First pull the yellow pea mixture out of the fridge to bring it to room temperature while you work on everything else.
2. Preheat oven to 350° F.
3. Grease an extra large loaf pan (or line it with parchment paper). The loaf pan used for this recipe was very close in size to a 1.5 pound loaf pan with the dimensions of 10″ x 5″ x 3″ high (except the one used for the recipe was closer to 2.5″ high). Here is one that is similar at Williams Sonoma (make sure to click the 1.5 pound option).
4. Mix dry ingredients together in another mixing bowl — the brown rice flour, ground flax seeds, coconut flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and stevia.
5. In a large food processor, blend the following together: yellow pea mixture from overnight, 1 cup coconut oil, 2 Tablespoons honey, 1 Tablespoon vanilla, 1 Tablespoon lemon juice, and 1 cup coconut milk. If all of these ingredients do not fit in your food processor, puree it in batches.
6. Pour the wet mixture back into the mixing bowl that contained the yellow pea mixture from overnight. Grate about 1/2 inch of the fresh ginger root into the bowl (you need a larger piece so that you can hold it properly to grate enough into the bowl). Thoroughly incorporate the ginger into the wet ingredients.
7. Slice two blood oranges as thinly as possible. Get them ready to place on top of the batter.
8. Empty the contents of the dry ingredient mixture into the wet ingredients. Stir well, but don’t over stir!
9. Pour batter into the prepped baking pan. Ensure to save about an inch of space at the top of the pan.
10. Carefully layer the orange slices on the top of the batter, being mindful of double layering. If the orange slices are layered too thickly, it may take longer for the cake to bake and/or may not bake all the way through at the top of the cake.
11. Sprinkle a dusting of coconut sugar on top of the oranges.
12. Bake at 350 F for 1 hour and 15-20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean and the top bounces a little bit. Baking time may need adjusted depending on thickness of orange slices and layering.
13. Serve warm. Do not recommend serving or eating it cold. (although it does cut nicely when cold)

I recommend for both adults and children to get their blood checked every year.

In the medical world, blood work done on a yearly basis is known as your “annual lab work” or “annual labs” for short. The purpose is for health maintenance and monitoring on a yearly schedule. Note that not every doctor likes to monitor the same things on a yearly basis (more on that later). Annual labs are often ordered in conjunction with a yearly physical, although not always.

Why should you get it done every year? Because things change from year to year. Your environment changes, your life, your people, your work, your exercise, your diet. A lot can happen in a year. I’ve seen blood work look normal one year, and then the next year, there are lots of wonky things going on.

In terms of health monitoring as a reason to get your annual lab work done, your labs can show me if something is going awry before it turns into an actual diagnosis. An example of that would be Type 2 Diabetes. Some people are completely shocked when they get a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. Yet, if you go back and look at their labs, you can see the story unfolding for many years.

Part of my training as a naturopathic physician is the gray zone — I’m specifically trained to see things before they turn into a permanent problem.

Because no one wakes up out of the blue with a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. It shows up over time, and you can check that by ordering the appropriate annual lab work.

Getting your blood work done on a yearly basis also helps to establish your normals. We want that. It’s great to have a baseline, so when things start to go haywire, you have your “what normal looks like”. Although I do have to interject this here — even if all of your labs are normal, doesn’t mean that you are healthy! I know, mind blowing, right?

What a doctor considers as annual lab work can vary greatly. What a naturopathic physician orders versus an MD or DO or a nurse practitioner may be very different. Even among naturopathic physicians, you’ll see a lot of variation. I have seen several different naturopathic doctor’s annual lab list, and mine is not the same as theirs.

Even though “the list” of recommended annual lab work varies from practitioner to practitioner, there are some very basic things that would be on most annual lab work, like a CBC, CMP, and a cholesterol check. Some people don’t check the thyroid on an annual basis (although that is certainly puzzling to me). Others don’t check the HbA1C on annual lab work.

My list may look very different than your doctor’s list. Please note that if you take this list into your doctor and ask them to order it for you, well, that would probably annoy them. Your best bet is seeing a physician who is more familiar with ordering these tests. If a practitioner is unfamiliar with these labs, it may also mean that he doesn’t know how to interpret them, which doesn’t really help you.

I recommend for both adults and children to get their blood checked once a year, every year. This list is what I recommend for adults. I’ll go through each test I order and explain why!

I recommend all adult annual lab work to be done between 7 to 9 am after a 10 hour overnight fast. I have my patients avoid all food, supplements, medications, and any beverage that isn’t water during that time frame. Water is A-OK!  Water is important because you want your veins to be nice and juicy.

I rarely see this list of annual lab work come back with 100% normal results. I almost always find something abnormal, something sub-optimal, something in the gray zone, or something a patient can improve. Which is why I think it’s pretty crazy that people go for so long without ever getting their annual lab work done!

You can prevent so much, if only you knew!

There were two very specific times in my life where I felt like my life was over. Both of these times came after a traumatic event. The things I believed about myself and my life after these events, are strikingly similar.

Both times, I believed with all my heart that I was ruined for good. I considered what had happened as the end of the life I had wanted. It felt impossible to see things any other way. I said goodbye to my hopes and dreams for the future. I deeply feared to the point of believing that my life was ruined forever.

Those feelings were hard to shake. I felt them for years after each traumatic event. Years. For so long, it was nearly impossible to believe otherwise. I was kind of hard-hearted too — unwilling to be open to the possibility that perhaps what I had believed all those years wasn’t actually true.

Immense pain from significant trauma can warp us into believing the absolute worst for our lives. I have experienced this and I know this. I know how hard it is to believe otherwise. I know how hard it is to have hope. I know how easy it is to be closed off towards any other possibility or outcome for your life.

It was my pain that resisted all the good that could come. It was my pain that made me feel dead inside. It was my pain that told me my life was over.

And you know what? The pain sucks, but believing all these lies about your future makes it ALL THE WORSE. It adds a suffocating and unnecessary weight to the grief.

Even though the pain is telling you that your life is over, and it really feels that way, your life is far from over. You’re not dead. You can find good in your life again. Good things are coming your way, even if you can’t see that right now. Even if you think that is impossible! You will be okay. You will see goodness in your life.

Your life is changed forever because of the trauma, but it’s not ruined. Changed? Yes. Ruined? No. Changed means that it’s different now. You’ll be making a new path. Things aren’t as you thought they would be, but you can still have a good life.

You need to remind yourself that this is not the end. You are alive. I know it feels like it’s been the end of you and the death of all your dreams and how you thought life would turn out, but just because the life you thought you wanted ended, doesn’t mean your actual life has ended.

Right now, your life is starting a new story. It looks very different from the story you wanted to happen. I know that’s incredibly painful, but this story is going to be something good. I’m excited for you.