Food Makes You Feel Like a Person

Even though I think calling my banana-carrot smoothie a recipe is a bit of a stretch, it really does make me feel good while doing this SCD-thingy to actually make something that requires the blending of more than one ingredient, and maybe even some vanilla to taste or an adjustment for a nice texture. Cooking, and eating something prepared, just makes me feel more like a real person again. There's nothing wrong with eating a boiled egg or a bowlful of applesauce, but when it's all there is, eating starts feeling less like a culinary experience and more like self-medication. So, for the first stage of SCD I found one more recipe which allowed me to "cook" a little more than just the regular boiled carrots.

Speaking of recipes and apple sauce, it seems that cooking fruit is a science unto itself. I tested dried fruit in applesauce, or in jam like here, but since I am doing only apple or pear sauce at the moment, the most complicated tweak I've attempted was inspired by this recipe over at Family Fresh Cooking. Danish apples are finally in season, so this will be the first year of my life that I don't find myself perpetually OD-ing on apples, pears and plums during the season. The apples are still small and delicate and not that sweet, so I'm using pears. 8-9 peeled and sliced pears boiled with a small cup of very strong green tea, and a small tablespoon of raw organic honey stirred in while they cool. THAT is a recipe for sheer and very, very sweet bliss.

The SCD stage 1 recipe I tried out was meringues. I've honestly never tried meringue before, but I needed a break from egg yolks and I wanted something sweet that wasn't plain apple sauce. The recipes for SCD legal meringue abound, like here, but essentially it's whipped egg whites with honey stirred in. A word of warning, though, is that they won't get crunchy like regular meringues, they are gooey like baked marshmallow, and they won't hold up when you store them, they'll kind of wrinkle up a bit. But I'm not picky, so they lasted me a couple of days.