As we know, my health is still very much in flux and I am continuing to take every precaution to eat healthy, even on such a glutinous holiday. My husband and I spend the holidays at my his family's farm. As is typical with the farm lifestyle, foods are rich yet simple. No fancy stuff at that Thanksgiving, and everything is made with whole milk and butter. Totally not exaggerating. The gravy has whole milk in it (though I still can't figure out why), the mashed potatoes have whole milk and butter, and the stuffing is actually cooked with the turkey drippings so it is full of fat. Not exactly a health conscious meal. Being proactive, I asked if I could bring a healthy "GB diet approved" side dish with the pie I bring every year. Thankfully, they said no problem. And thankfully, I did that because there was so little "safe" food this year! Armed with my arsenal of GB supplements I tried most everything.
Side dishes this year included sour cream mashed potatoes that were quite possibly the richest, thickest mashed potato I've ever had. One bit of my teaspoon size serving was all I ventured to eat. One side dish down. Another side dish was a sweet potato casserole with a pecan strudel. Nope, can't eat nuts. Two side dishes down. And the third side dish, which I did eat a small amount of, was corn casserole. I should have nixed that one to because I don't digest corn well, but I was desperate. One plus to day was a guacamole appetizer! GB safe and healthy food! And better yet, is that everything digested well and my GB did not complain even when I ate bites of the unhealthy whole milk laden foods. In fact, I didn't take digestive supplements after my second meal of the day and did okay! There was a bit of sluggishness in my digestion and I was very aware of my liver and gallbladder for a short time (they kind of ached a little), but in less than an hour after eating I felt completely normal. Making improvement, and I like that!
To help myself out with an easy to digest, healthy side, I made a recipe from Good Housekeeping magazine for a Spinach Salad with a creamy cranberry dressing. The salad had cranberries and toasted pumpkin seeds in it and was quite good. In lieu of pumpkin seeds, I got resourceful and used butternut squash seeds since that's what I had in the house fresh from the squash itself. I also discovered that store bought pumpkin seeds are manufactured with tree nuts, so I decided I would rather be safe than sorry and make my own. Toasted butternut squash seeds are surprisingly good! No picture of the salad, but I do have a picture of the toasted seeds.
The cranberry dressing was homemade and had actual real cranberries in it. The dressing featured a small amount of sage in it as well, and was quite thick and creamy. I will definitely make it again, but it needs something to up the flavor a bit and I haven't decided what that is yet.
One of everyone's favorite things I make is a cranberry pear pie (that I found on the Internet, I won't lie). I wanted to make it healthier this year by making the pie crust with more nutritional ingredients. The filling is chock full of fruit so I didn't do a whole lot of tweaking there today, though I might try to adjust the type of sugar I use next time or use less of it. The filling today turned out exceptionally well and I think it had to do something with the addition of orange juice I poured on the pears (four kinds) to keep them from browning and the extra lavender vanilla sugar I put in the sauce. Here is a yummy picture of the pears before going in to the cranberry mixture.
Side note: I can't wait to have a proper kitchen with natural light coming in to it. Everything looks so yellow, and I swear it's not!
As mentioned earlier, I wanted to make the crust healthier. To achieve this I decided to use a whole wheat flour and followed the recipe the flour had for a butter based crust. Usually, I make my crust with shortening because it makes the crust so light and flaky. I thought perhaps we would get the same effect with butter. Not quite, but I can't say it tasted bad either. The crust was definitely rich and buttery, and not at all the light and flaky crust I am use to. But, again, I can't say it tasted bad. And you know what? Because of the whole wheat flour it had fiber in it so I get bonus points for that, right!?
On this day of thanks, I leave you with a picture of the finished pie in all of it's glory. Cranberry pear pie with a whole wheat lattice crust, sprinkled with Lavender Vanilla Sugar.
1 comment:
Your pie looks AMAZING, girl!!! I am totally impressed.
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