grain-free Archives - Healthy Green Kitchen

Southwestern Stuffed Peppers

Carrie Vitt is one of the sweetest people I know and she’s got a great new cookbook out called The Grain-Free Family Table: 125 Delicious Recipes for Fresh, Healthy Eating Every Day. Carrie has experienced huge improvements in various health issues via diet change: she follows a grain-free diet and the focus of this book is grain-free recipes.

While I don’t eat a grain-free diet, I really like this cookbook because it’s packed with protein-filled recipes as well as recipes that feature fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, grain alternatives, natural fats, and wholesome sweets. Moreover, the food photos, shot by Carrie, are beautiful, and my recipe for sauerkraut is on page 258!

I have made these stuffed peppers a few times now and my family enjoys them a lot. For the record, I have not been too keen on adopting the “cauliflower in lieu of rice” trend but I did “rice” the cauliflower for this recipe and I am glad I gave it a try (it’s really easy to do and it increases the veggie quotient of this dish). That said, feel free to substitute cooked rice for the cauliflower rice if you like, and if you don’t need the recipe to be grain free. (Note that this is not a Paleo cookbook, but Carrie gives suggestions for how to make each recipe Paleo/dairy free if that’s something you need.)

Grain-Free Thumbprint Cookies from www.healthygreenkitchen.com

These thumbprint cookies are ridiculously easy to make. Seriously…they might be the simplest cookies ever, and they’re also really delicious. I adapted them from the Jammin’ Sugar Cookie Thumbprints recipe in my dear friend Abby Dodge’s cookbook—Desserts 4 Today—so that they’re gluten-free (in fact they’re free of all grains). This means they’re perfect for nibbling on this week if you keep kosher for Passover; they’ll be lovely on your Easter table, too, if you’re looking for an alternative to wheat-filled cookies.

Thumbprint cookies are great because you can fill them with SO many things. Take this opportunity to show off (and maybe use up, if necessary) your favorite jams, marmalades, fruit curds, and nut butters.

I filled the cookies you see here with homemade chocolate raspberry jam, tangerine vanilla marmalade (so lovely: the recipe is found in here), Meyer lemon curd, and peach rose petal jam (I promise to share this recipe this summer…it’s amazing). I also made a few with almond butter.

Have fun with these cookies, and have a very happy Passover or Easter if you’re observing one of these holidays this week :)

One Simple Change: Consider Going Wheat/Gluten/Grain-Free

I’ve lost count at this point, but I believe this is the 37th post I’ve written for One Simple Change. I’m also moving along with my One Simple Change manuscript…my deadline’s closing in fast!

Today I’m going to talk about the potential issues with eating wheat, gluten, and grains as a group. I hope that by doing so, you can make an informed decision about whether these are healthy foods for you, or if you might be better off without them. Before I go further, I want you to know that I could probably write thousands of words on this topic, but since this is One Simple Change, I am going to attempt to keep things as simple as possible.

Let’s start with a discussion of wheat since you most probably eat lots of it. Many people (at least in America) eat wheat at just about every meal and snack. This isn’t hard to do if you have cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, pasta or pizza and/or additional bread at dinner, and crackers, cookies, or other wheat-based treats in between…wheat is everywhere! Even if you make a concerted effort to eat a healthy, diversified diet, you probably still eat some wheat.

We’ve been led to believe that as long as we’re avoiding it in its refined form most of the time, there’s nothing wrong with eating lots of wheat, but I beg to differ. I think there are some issues with wheat, and that most people are eating far too much of it.