Guest Post: Elimination Diet Banana Bread

Hi Friends!

Today is another first day of school for me…so I’ll probably be blog MIA. Have no fear though, my best friend Katharine is here to entertain you! You may remember her from her Fancy Feast guest post! She’s been experimenting with an elimination diet and recently embarked on an adventure in banana bread making! Take it away, Katharine:

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A lot of people seem to have childhood food traumas: they were forced to eat peas until they threw up or they were locked in the basement with rats after they groaned “meatloaf again?!?” Food was pretty much a non-issue in our house. I ate the, more or less, healthy meals in front of me and didn’t get too philosophical about it. My Wisconsin-born-and-raised father cultivated in me an unwavering love of peanut butter, ice cream, and cheese.

Several weeks ago I was on the phone with a dietitian-turned-integrative-doctor and family friend. We were talking about a blood disorder I discovered I have that results in a severely low platelet count. She suggested I try an elimination diet, removing certain foods from my eating regime and slowly reintroducing them one at a time. This seemed like a ridiculous suggestion at first (uh, hello, blood is in your veins…food goes in your stomach…two don’t really mix…) But I masked my skepticism with “uh huhs” as she continued on. She explained that the majority of your immune system is housed in your stomach and GI tract; therefore, problems with your diet/digestion can potentially cause problems with your immune system, maybe even make your body go all auto-immune on itself as in my case.

I’m now in my second week of the elimination diet. (“elimination” and “everything you love to eat but can no longer eat” being interchangeable.) The idea is that you embark on a 21-day stint of eating anything you’d like except dairy, gluten, soy, corn, refined sugars, caffeine, and alcohol. Easy, right?! Actually, there are many substitutes that allow you to cobble together meals that adhere to the diet. The only thing I’ve really missed is cheese (and no, there is no substitute for cheese, especially not a liquified nut), but I’ve discovered many culinary wonders I would have otherwise never considered food: coconut butter, garbanzo bean flour, arrowroot, brown rice pasta, hemp milk (this was one of the less pleasant finds, in my opinion, as it tastes like a dirty foot), and coconut aminos to name a few.

Unlike my dear friend Lindsay, I am no whiz in the kitchen. I make my way through recipes like a three-legged dog makes his was through an obstacle course–slowly and peeing on everything. (Ok, kidding about that last part.) For the past nine days, however, I’ve been doing my best hacking onions, boiling lentils, and mixing dairy-free, gluten-free, refined-sugar free, soy-free banana bread. Sounds gross, doesn’t it? It’s a lot less sweet but the texture and flavor are pretty damn close to the real deal.

To make this “banana bread” as delicious as possible I suggest listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album, the ultimate goal being to time the bread’s placement into the oven right as The Chain is cuing up. If you achieve this, then you have reached culinary greatness.

(Look closely and you will see Chef Tilly-my cat-presiding over the baking)

So once you’ve got Niki Stix tuned up, preheat the oven to 350. Mix the following:

-1/4 c. walnuts, finely ground in blender
-1 3/4 c. brown rice flour
-1/2 c. arrowroot (This definitely smells like something that would be an ingredient in a homemade bomb. Don’t be alarmed, it is just tapioca.)
-2 tsp. baking soda
-1/4 tsp. salt
-1/2 c. chopped walnuts

At this point I realized I only had one banana. This is kind of a problem when making banana bread…To compensate I used, oh say, about a 1/2 c. ground walnuts. Then, in a separate bowl I mixed together:

-1 mashed banana (I would recommend, well, at least two bananas)
-1/8 c. sesame oil (Recipe calls for 1/4 cup–they are idiots.)

And then I realized I was also lacking another ingredient–apple juice concentrate. No fears, I had unsweetened apple sauce. So I added
-7 tbsp. unsweetned apple sauce (And then later, because the dough was dry, the rest of the jar.)
-2 “eggs” (“Eggs” are nothing like eggs. “Eggs” are made by combining 1 tbsp. flax seed with 1/3 c. water. You let this sit for about five minutes and you’re left with a gooey, liquidy substance that will, in the absence of real eggs, bind your various baked goods together. These “eggs” work surprisingly well until you try to make an omelet.)
-1 tsp vanilla extract

To compensate for the lack of fruit I added a handful of dried cranberries and dried cherries. I take a very Joey-from-Friends approach to cooking. My thinking is that if an ingredient by itself is tasty then surely when mixed with other tasty things it will yield one very delicious thing! That’s math, folks. So at this point add in whatever else you want to, like some agave nectar, then mix all that dough together. And then realize you also lack a bread loaf pan. (There may or may not have been a flurry of swears at this point.) In the absence of a proper loaf vehicle, an 8″ x 8″ ceramic vessel works just as well. And because this is going on Lindsay’s blog–Lindsay who’s never licked a piece of raw dough in her life, Lindsay the most disciplined person I know, Lindsay who is actually a cook with restraint–for this reason, I will underscore the fact that because there are no raw animal products in this recipe, all of you raw-dough-eating maniacs can go crazy.

Now the careful reader might be suspiciously scrolling upward to reread that part earlier about alcohol. Wait a second. I thought she said she couldn’t have alcohol? But you’re using vanilla! That has alcohol in it! You cheater!! Yes, it is true. I cheated. Five days after I started the diet I had already rationalized alcohol back into the diet as long as it was only consumed once a week and as long as the alcohol’s ingredients adhered to the diet. For those of you who know me, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s better for everyone this way.

Depending on the pan you’re using bake anywhere from 25-55 minutes, or until a pointy object of choice inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let the bread cool for about 10 minutes then eat that sucker! It’s perfect for breakfast or for after dinner when you’re craving sweets.

In the end, I have no idea whether this diet will make one platelet of a difference. If it doesn’t, it still proved edifying. One reason I greatly admire Linds is because she thinks about what she eats and in that way respects her body. I used to think that if it was in a grocery store then it must be okay to eat. Reading ingredients labels at Whole Foods is an eye-opening experience–even there I had to search to find a chicken broth that didn’t contain evaporated cane juice or corn starch. I think everything in moderation is a good motto, but every once in a while there’s something to be learned from extremes.

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Have you ever done an elimination diet? Was it helpful?

Enjoy!
–Lindsay–