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An IBS breakfast...start the day off right!
I know this is not a sexy title for a post, but it's sometimes key for when your stomach and digestive system just won't settle down. It makes good sense to start off the day with a breakfast high in soluble fiber to provide a stable base for the rest of the day, but of course it needs to be tasty! However, with my food allergy restrictions, some of the soluble fiber foods recommended for those with IBS (French bread, rice and oatmeal) are off the list. When combing through the cookbook Eating for IBS by Heather Van Vorous, which has been EXTREMELY helpful in figuring out how to reconfigure my diet, I found this recipe for Banana Cornmeal Pancakes. This is made in a blender so is fast and easy.
Banana Cornmeal Pancakes
4-6 Servings
3/4 c. soy or rice milk (I used almond milk)
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 ripe-black large bananas
1/2 c. plus 1 TBS all-purpose unbleached white flour (I used 1/4 c cornstarch, 1/4 c potato starch)
1 TBS baking powder (gluten-free if necessary)
2 TBS brown sugar
1/3 c. cornmeal
2 organic egg whites
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 TBS finely chopped nuts (optional)
In a bowl, add vinegar to soy milk and stir well. Let sit a few minutes (you're making sour milk) the pour into a blender and add all remaining ingredients except nuts (if using). Pour batter into a bowl or large measuring cup with a spout. Heat a non-stick frying pan or griddle over medium heat and spray with cooking oil. Pour about 1/4 c. of batter at a time onto griddle to form pancakes.
Cook until surface bubbles, about 1 minute, and flip pancakes over. Cook until undersides are golden brown and pancakes are cooked through, about 1 minute. Serve immediately with maple syrup.
The verdict? These were hearty and tasty, if a little heavy. I used a few of the leftover pancakes later to make a ham sandwich for lunch, but they were much better when served hot.
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Citrus Allergy Question
Today's post is to answer a reader who recently sent emailed me with the following question: "My son just recently got diagnosed with a citrus intolerance. He doesn't have an allergic reaction to it... so it's not a typical "allergy" but I need to treat it like one. So anyway, absolutely every thing has citric acid in it it seems. I heard that most citric acid in processed foods actually come from corn. Do you know if there's any truth to that?"
Hm. I had no idea the answer to this one, but i did some research and came up with the following.
According to Wikipedia, commercial citric acid is produced by: "cultures of Aspergillus niger are fed on a sucrose or glucose-containing medium to produce citric acid. The source of sugar is corn steep liquor,[9] molasses, hydrolyzed corn starch or other inexpensive sugary solutions.[10] After the mold is filtered out of the resulting solution, citric acid is isolated by precipitating it with lime (calcium hydroxide) to yield calcium citrate salt, from which citric acid is regenerated by treatment with sulfuric acid."
I also found that in some cases citric acid is made with pineapple juice or lemon juice but these are far more expensive so the mold/corn/sugar combination mentioned in Wikipedia is far more likely.
So the answer is YES, a majority of commercial citric acid is produced with corn. The Aspergillus niger is also a mold, so people who are allergic to mold may also react to commercial citric acid. So those with corn allergies should also avoid citric acid as well. What a world.
Citric acid is used as both a preservative as well as a flavoring, so obviously anything with a tart taste will contain it. In addition to fruit juices, it's also included in places you wouldn't think like soda and ice cream. The sites I sourced (listed below) also noted to be careful of toiletries including citric acid (the rule of thumb was any ingredient that began with "citr-" contained it), but they found that Dove soap did not.
The answer is to try to cook at home as much as possible. I try to make a lot of some staples and keep them in the freezer for the times when I just don't have the time to cook from scratch. Soup stocks, brownies, waffles are ready in a hurry. A good substitute for cooking with lemon juice is to substitute vinegar when the recipe calls for a small amount (I like champagne and sherry vinegars).
Additionally, I had no idea that while rare, citrus allergy reactions could be so severe. Mine is fairly sensitive (just being around the sliced lemon I photographed made my sinuses hurt) but not brutal. And btw, does anyone else get the "you are obviously insane" look from restaurant servers when you ask them to NOT serve your water with a lemon slice? :) If they bring it by accident I usually have to send it back because just one or two swallows of water with a lemon squeeze makes me react.
Here are the URLs for the sources I used to answer this question.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~vclarke/citric.html#manuf
http://blog.nutritiondata.com/ndblog/2007/03/ask_nd_citrus_a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid
I tried to shoot some lemons to make them look appropriately evil for this topic.
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Fast and Fabulous Fake Pho
I've shared in previous posts that noodles are one of the favorite foods that I miss the most during my reign as the Food Allergy Queen. Chewy, warm, fun to play with, a perfect background for lots of flavors and textures, what's not to love about noodles? I've tried making my own soba (horrible results), purchased quinoa and corn pasta, 100% corn pasta (my current western favorite), and of course used the different FAQ-friendly asian noodles -- both bean thread and yam noodles (also called glass or cellophane noodles). Anyhow, the sad fact is that noodles are a comfort food that don't appear in my life as much as I would like. For western noodles, I am running out of ideas for tomato-less and dairy-free sauces. I have a great olive oil and shallot recipe, but am burning out on that. Same with pesto.
So the other evening around 11 p.m., I was having noodle cravings and became obsessed to try to whip up pho (prounounced "fuh"), which if you're not familiar with is the national dish of Vietnam. It's traditionally made with rice noodles in a beef broth and can be served at breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are pho places here in LA near Koreatown, which service the people coming out of Korean nightclubs at 3 a.m. and they eat pho instead of going to Dennys! I once had my favorite pho which is Vietnamese, served to me by Koreans, shared with my Japanese friend, and I'm Chinese. It was all kinds of crazy. :)
Usually, soup broths take a while to simmer and get their flavors through, but I was feeling inspirational/desperate and just jumped in, guessed at the ingredients, and about 30 minutes later, voila! Fake pho! I was TOTALLY excited about it and showed my man the results, and... he was supportive but in reality had to suppress a yawn. (Perhaps the pungent fish sauce smell that sent him screaming from the room had something to do with it?) Not being Asian, he sometimes doesn't understand the comfort-food role that noodles play for Asian peoples. Oh well. That means more for me! Bwah ha ha. This is how I did it.
Fast Fake Pho
Serves 2 small portions, or 1 big one!
4 cups beef broth (I use Savory Choice concentrated packets...no carrots, celery or garlic, no preservatives, GREAT taste)
2 pieces of star anise
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon Vietnamese fish sauce
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon salt
pinch of sugar
cooked beef slices (I had leftover steak already)
1 diced green onion
handful cilantro, washed and dried
yam or bean thread noodles (or rice if you can have them, of course), that have been rehydrated and warmed up in hot water and drained
NOTE: For IBS sufferers, substitute cooked sliced chicken and chicken broth for the beef, and rice or yam noodles. The bean thread noodles my be too much insoluble fiber.
Heat up the stock, beef and all the seasonings except for the cilantro and noodles and let them boil for about 10 minutes. Stir well so that the cinnamon doesn't float around on top because it just looks weird. Correct seasonings, it should be mild but flavorful. Fish sauce is salty, and adds more flavor than just salt, so if it's flat, try that first. Keep in mind that premade broths vary in their amount of salt, so start off easy and add as you go along.
Slide the drained noodles into a bowl, pour the broth on top and garnish with a good handful of cilantro. If you have fresh basil, that's great too. (You'll see in my picture that I had a few stray veggies in there, but I was just cleaning out my fridge...it's not traditional but it was gooood.) Very happy with my pho at midnight.
Traditionally you can also add in sriracha (the hot sauce with the rooster on it) and hoisin sauce too. But sriracha has garlic, and hoisin has soy, so I avoid them both.
Slurping noodles in Asian cultures is considered a compliment to the cook, so because you did a good job, slurp away.
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