Comfort Food

Posted by chickiepea on August 27, 2010 · 9 Comments 

I love raisin bread. It was one of my favorite breakfast items before we changed our diet. I always wondered what must taste like fresh, since it was still so good processed and wrapped in two layers of plastic. I have made bread now and then… trying first with recipes in old cookbooks, but never having success. Later with a bread machine after someone whose house smelled fantastic told me it was her bread machine rising dough for caramel rolls. (Insert drool here!) Still later, with a book promising you can have Artisan bread in 5 minutes and using Sally Fallon’s suggestions for soaking wheat.

Bread, in and of itself, it not something I have ever really HAD to have. I know there are people who have to have it with every meal, and people who grab it for a snack, and people who consider it a favorite food (Lil Pea and my mom…) I like it for toast and I miss a good cheesy garlic bread with my pasta, and most recently: miss it for tomato sandwiches, but I don’t wake up in the mornings and go to bed at night missing bread.

I will admit, however, that sometimes it does feel like something is “missing.” I think this is because we have grown up always having a lot of starch with meals. We have our potatoes and rice, and sometimes rice pasta. Beans are pretty starchy, so sometimes they fill the void.

Breakfast is the kicker, though. If you aren’t having cereal, cream-of-wheat, toast, bagels… well, a slice of breakfast meat and fruit starts to feel a little boring. We have added smoothies with raw egg and peanut butter, granola made from nuts, and I hope to experiment with soaking some other gluten-free grains for cereals soon (quinoa flakes, whole teff), but there is something about a muffin or slice of bread that is just… comforting.

So much of this diet has changed my attitudes about food. We have learned so much, and from so many places. We have joined an online (but local) Weston A. Price group for traditional eating, we read and read and read- both online and in real life: cookbooks, studies, the sides of boxes for nutritional info, books about where our food comes from and why, etc. But there is always a common theme and that is that we use food to fill not only our HUNGER, but for comfort too. Twig is definitely a prime example. He was raised eating out a lot and craves deep dish pizza among other things, especially when he is stressed.

One of the things that we were talking about recently in regards to eating out is that I have a very hard time with eating out now, both physically for how it affects me, but also psychologically. When we started the diet, I knew it was going to be hard. I was a junk food junkie, I will admit. I can plow through bags of cheezy goldfish crackers and potato chips like there is no tomorrow. I had already survived a year and a half without dairy due to Lil Pea’s intolerance for it and I was finally able to have goat dairy again. Cutting out more entire “food groups” (heh heh… the Nabisco one…) made me nervous about what, exactly, I was going to eat.

Before we began this particular diet, we had already cut artificial colors, then tried Feingold (which worked well and we still do a modified version of this.) Goose was to the point where we knew we needed to make a drastic change, and between her aggressiveness and Lil Pea’s round-the-clock nursing, there was little time for me to put food in my belly- at least in the form of meals, and certainly not anything nutritious. My best efforts, if I wanted to eat, were to drive through the McDriveThrough and get a grilled chicken salad and try not to think about it. After all, chickens don’t need much, so that had to be healthier than eating the beef, right??? (No.)

After the full-day starvation, trying to make sure everyone else was fed and cared for, I would look at Twig in sheer exhaustion at 9pm and we would pull out a 3-ring binder that we called the Menu Binder and call in an order of something battered, stuffed, deep-fried and covered in sauce. It’s little wonder my hair was falling out by the handful and Twig was suffering with allergies and sleep apnea and we were both depressed.
Aside from our life circumstances, which can then best be described as a special kind of hell, we were filling ourselves with poison. And we knew it, but we were stuck in a rut.

All of this to say, I knew it was going to be hard to change, so I decided to do something about it. I spent a lot of time psyching myself up for it, similar to how I convinced myself that I could get through labor without drugs. It works. I told myself that the foods I was used to eating were not foods (they aren’t) and they would be inedible. This is very effective and I have virtually no desire to actually EAT those things anymore, even if I do have some cravings now and again. It’s problematic though when faced with a circumstance where we have to eat out. It’s like someone telling me I should eat cardboard or plastic. All I can see is GMO this and the pus that is the pasteurized milk, sick cow meat that could kill my children, vanillin made from waste-paper products, etc. etc. I can’t enjoy the experience, and what’s more, I can hardly tolerate it. I know all of that might sound like I am a few cards short of a full deck, but it was a necessary thing for me to do at the time or I would not have been able to fulfill my promise to Goose, which is that if she is on a special diet, then we all are. I didn’t want to feel the guilt from sneaking food, and I really wanted to feel better for myself too.

So, back to making bread. I still haven’t attempted making a loaf from scratch. At least, not the sandwich bread that I envision. I have a stash of recipes that look like I could modify them to our needs, but it seems daunting nonetheless. What I can make though, is muffins. No yeast involved, just mixing things together and filling little cups. If it turns out, you have cute little cups of bread-like substance to enjoy, and if not, there is not much mess to clean up (one bowl) and you can just dump it all in the trash without (too terribly much) wasted time.

These are so simple. They are chewy and flavorful, just like gluten-filled raisin bread. Everything gets dumped into ONE bowl and stirred with one spoon. There is only one little bag of flour to contend with. Few dishes and tasty results. Also, super duper toddler-friendly, especially if you have one who loves to crack the eggs for you! Loads of eggs make these very protein-rich too. More bonuses? They are very portable and lunchbox-packable, and they freeze very well if you want to double or triple the recipe. (If you double or triple a baking recipe, always add an extra egg.)

Little Pea sees the pan and says: Are we muffin-ing? And then starts singing: Do you know the muffin man...? Love her!!!

Raisin Muffins:
Makes 6 regular-sized muffins

* 6 eggs
* 4 tsp coconut oil, melted
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 2 tsp vanilla
* 1/2 c coconut flour
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1 tbs ground nuts or seeds
* 1 tbs maple syrup
* 1/2 c raisins soaked in filtered water, juice, or alcohol (to cover) for 24 hours
* 1 tsp ground cinnamon
* 1 tsp ground ginger
* 25 grates of fresh nutmeg
* 2 dashes ground cloves

Soak raisins overnight if you can- it will make them much juicer and lend a lot of moisture to the recipe. Add one tsp of vanilla to the soaking water. Raisins are the main source of sweetness in this recipe and there are enough to have raisins in every bite, which I love.

Preheat oven to 400*F.
Mix everything together all in one bowl, including raisins and any residual soaking liquid. Use a whisk if it is lumpy. If your eggs, etc are cold, then your coconut oil will go back to hard clumps. It still works – unless you end up with one huge clump, don’t worry about it. I chopped mine up into dime-sized pieces and all was well.
Fill greased muffin cups or paper liners 100% full and bake for 30 min or until toothpick comes out clean.

At about 15 minutes into the baking time, you will see them start to rise around the edges. Then they will suddenly puff up in true muffin-fashion, and crack open. When you think they SHOULD be done (at around 20 minutes), you will see that they are glossy still and oozing sweet raising juices through the cracks forming in the tops. A few more minutes and they will look dry and cakey, and you will suddenly smell them. That is the time to open the oven and test them with a toothpick, and try not to burn yourself in your excitement to taste one!

Juicy raisins in every bite

Eat them: hot, cold, room temperature, plain or spread with cinnamon or maple butter. Crumble them in raw milk and eat with a spoon. Pack them on a picnic or tear them in half and dip them in your morning coffee.

They are comfort food.

*This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by The Food Renegade
and Two For Tuesday, hosted by A Moderate Life.

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