Wild Garlic Digestives

I'm learning to forage. It's something you have to be careful about but I'm a member of a Facebook group called Wild Food and Hedgewitchery which keeps us on the straight and narrow and allows us to post pictures to check what we've found is edible.

But wild garlic is fairly easy to spot; you just rub your fingers on the leaves and they smell of garlic. There was a great pathway of new growth  on Friday's beagle walk and I thought, this time, I'll do it!

Oh my! It's delicious all on its own but I was planning to make some gluten-free digestives and after crushing the leaves with a pestle and morter, added them into the mix.

Yes, I know they're not pretty (if you've read this blog before you'll know I'm not an artistic cook 😄) but oh my! Talk about yummy. With digestives, I can generally get the dough into the oven without too much interference but about a quarter of this stuff was gone before I could get it onto the tray.

I'm pretty sure that if you made the mix with a bit more care, you could roll them out and make them with a round cutter but they won't taste any better!

Recipe:

GF Digestives

12g porridge oats
20g mixed pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds.
75g Dove’s Farm GF plain flour (or use the SR but don’t add baking powder)
½ tbsp baking powder
Large pinch salt
25g soft brown sugar
1 tbsp soft butter
1 tbsp goat (or other) milk

Preheat oven to 200c/Gas 6
Line baking tray with parchment

Blitz oats and seeds in food mixer
Add flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and butter and whizz until well mixed
Knead briefly on a floured board and roll out (if you like neat stuff!) and cut into shapes about 3mm thick
Otherwise, spoon onto baking sheet and flatten with fingers

Bake for about 12 minutes until lightly golden.

Flushed with success, I made a wild garlic cauliflower cheese last night. Yum!

The Three Day Fast

I'm on a three day fast. Which means no food at all. Nada. It's not fun but it is interesting.

And of course, I've just driven myself crazy posting a picture of a quiche I made because you're 'supposed' to have a picture on a blog posting. Sometimes I do make myself laugh...

So, you say, why are you doing the fast if you don't enjoy it? Who would?! But there are three reasons really - it's good for my body and it's good self-discipline - and because of John-down-the-road.

When I was ill a year or so ago, I ate very healthily but since then I've gone back down the 'yummy carbs' route probably because I'll never be one of those people who only eat to live. I love my food! And I love baking and making treats for others.

When I was sick I ate keto as much as I could - no sugar, virtually no carbs for 18 solid months (and no alcohol either). I certainly got slender - though ironically that wasn't any part of the goal - and people said that I'd never want to go back to sugar. Really? On what planet? I have to say I'd love to be one of those people who genuinely discovers that sugar no longer appeals but it certainly wasn't the truth for me.

When I bake nowadays I bake gluten-free (which is probably why so much of my food is messy - see articles below!) but I still include maple syrup or sugar when the recipe requires it. I focus on the gluten-free not because I'm coeliac but because I just think it's healthier. Who knows how much mess there is bound into most gluten? Apart from anything else, most pesticides are formulated to destroy the insect's stomach and if you have enough of that in your own tummy ... well, need I say more?

Incidentally, the quiche pictured is 50-50 gluten free and normal flour. That was quite simple: I just made two pastries and stuck them together. The non GF half was for my husband.

It would, of course, be healthier to drop the sugar too - but I don't want to. And I am a fervent believer that what makes you happy is a valid pathway to greater health. Eat as well as you can and eat happily and you are doing okay. I hardly ate happily any day for those 18 months; it was a grind and that's not how I want to live my life. It's not healthy!

There is research that supports what seems to be true for me - that the body tries to re-build the fat it used to have before you dieted/got sick. It seems that it believes that being skinny is not the accepted, healthy norm for it - and as the dieting doesn't actually remove the fat cells, just makes them skinny. They want to fill out again.

Hence the fast. I reckon that if I want to stay as healthy as possible and I intend to eat stuff that is 'bad for me' and which makes me joyful then I also need to allow my digestion and immune system the chance to take some time out and re-set itself. Here's an article about it. If there's no food to process, the stomach can rest ... and if there's nothing to spark any reactions, the immune system can get on with sorting out what really matters like any rogue cells, that sniffle that's gone on too long or anything else that might need repairing.

What's fascinating is that, here on day two, I'm not hungry. Truly, there has been no rumbling yet at all. But I miss the routine of eating breakfast, lunch, tea and supper with my husband, I miss the anticipation of meals, I miss the cooking. And I miss the food!  I can smell Lion's lunctime soup and his supper much more than I would notice the scent of my own food. And I'm finding it hard to concentrate which means my blood sugar is (understandably) low. But I'm incredibly proud of myself. In many ways I lack self-discipline but this is an exercise in just that and it's pleasing that I am ready, willing and (so far) able to do it.

Oh...the bit about John-down-the-road: John is an incredible man who heals people with chronic pain through EFT and kinesiology. He truly has had some wonderful results but, just like all healers, he has had his failures too, including, partially, himself. He had arthritis. Now he didn't have it like he 'should' have had it because of his work on himself and his diet and his beliefs; it has reduced and reduced since he started healing work and became simply faint but it was still there. So John (who has shedloads of money and never charges for his healing work - bless him) went off to Arizona to do a three week fast, to reset his immune system enough to clear his arthritis.

This fast was fully medically supervised - he wasn't even allowed to leave the facility which, to me would have been hell! - and all he took in for 21 days was water. He was bored out of his brain but he did it.

And the arthritis went.

Now, I don't have the guts to do 21 days but I can be inspired by John and I can manage three days and I can intend to do this at least every six months as an act of love towards this marveous, beautiful body of mine.

And on Friday, I can have another of those uttely yummy GF, organic brownies I made on Sunday. If Lion hasn't scoffed the lot.

Baby Chickens

We have baby chickens. They're almost stolen baby chickens because they came from eggs I got from  proper chickens down the road when one of our bantams went broody. They gave her something to sit on and, to be honest, I never thought for a moment they would hatch!