Years ago I tried Anderson’s flax rolls in Vancouver. I thought the flax roll idea was decent, but the fillings didn’t impress me.
For the past few months, I have been totally grain free eating a keto diet which is basically lower carb than you can possibly imagine, higher fat than you ever dreamed possible and moderate protein.
I really don’t miss bread much, save for the convenience.
Julian Bakery wraps were doing the trick to give me the sandwich roll experience (I figured out how to take them WAY to the NEXT level in the oven….raw they kinds taste like eating a wax roll), but they are super expensive and once you open the wrap they start to dry out and flake apart.
So for a while I thought maybe I would try learning how to make my own coconut wraps at home in a dehydrator, but never really got to it as it sounded like a lot of work to figure out the exact temp and timing to keep it a wrap and not a cracker.
Then I remembered the Anderson rolls and thought by now someone must have published a make your own flax rolls at home recipe….I couldn’t find anything….except for this youtube video.
Apparently, her flax roll discovery was a happy accident.
She makes her dough a bit more watery than I do. Usually I get the water just right on the first try and don’t have to let the dough set for an hour….I think that is because I use my hands to mix it. Oh and I use chia because it is more affordable and works exactly the same as flax.
I don’t add any oil and do not need to add oil to my hands as my dough isn’t wet.
Since I use coconut flour to roll it out, mine is gluten free.
What you will need:
1 cup flax seed
water
coconut flour (to roll it out)
How to do it:
Blend flax into flour
Add enough water to be able to form a dough with hands (if you accidentally add too much, let it sit for an hour)
Create into balls and roll out using coconut flour to keep it from sticking.
Bake or fry in butter!
You can even change the texture by taking out a 1/4 of the flax and using a different flour in the dough to change things up and make it less “flaxy”.
I also like to stir in salt, crushed garlic, fresh herbs and dried spices before I add the water.
Next sprinkle coconut flour on your countertop and also spread it on your rolling pin.
Pull off a piece of dough the size of a golf ball and flatten it best you can into a flat round.
Now roll it in all directions.
Keep flipping and adding coconut flour to the rolling pin and on the counter as much as you need to, to keep it from sticking.
Roll it as thin as you possibly can, otherwise it will taste doughy. The thinner you can get it, the better the texture.
Next bake it for 5 min at 350 F or pan fry it for a few minutes on each side (no need to add a fat, but you also can if you want to…but not too much or they will get soggy).
Once you have pre cooked it, now it is ready to use. I have used it to make rolls, as a chapati, quiche, ham roll and pizza…..so far!
Another amazingly awesome thing about flax/chia dough is that it stores well in the fridge simply wrapped up in parchment paper.
Just grab a piece at a time to make a fresh roll for lunch.
The options are endless.
You can make a pizza or a pizza roll. When making pizza make sure to bake the crust for 5 minutes first so that it is firmer (otherwise it will be doughy). If you want slices, make sure to let it cool for 10 minutes before slicing or it will fall apart.
Other ideas for fillings:
Tuna Egg Salad Avocado, Tomato and Bacon BLT Spinach and Cream Cheese Sauté Veggies and Cheese (make it like pizza first and then roll when cheese it melted)
Roasted root veggies and smoked tofu
You’ll love this easy peasy grain free quiche. Makes a great treat on the weekend.
The crust
What you will need:
1 cup flax seed
water
coconut flour (to roll it out)
How to do it:
Blend flax into flour
Add enough water to be able to form a dough with hands (if you accidentally add too much, let it sit for an hour)
Create a golf size ball and roll out into crust (use the remaining in other recipes) using coconut flour to keep it from sticking.
Pre bake it at 350 F degrees for 5 min before adding the filling.
For the filling
What you will need:
1 small zuchinni (slice very thinly with mandolin)
1 small red onion (slice into rounds)
2 large mushrooms (slice very thinly with mandolin)
1/4 cup butter
2 cups shredded parmesan
4 eggs
3/4 cup whipping cream
1/2 – 3/4 tsp salt
How to do it:
Saute red onion rounds in the butter until caramelized.
Add zucchini and mushrooms and keep sauteing until it’s a texture you like.
Place veggies into flat crust.
Mix eggs, whipping cream and salt in a separate bowl and then pour on top of the veggies.
Top with shredded parmesan
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
Let cool about 10 min, slice and serve with sauerkraut on the side!
Skor bar is a holiday favourite around this house. This sugar free version is sure to please without the side effects (lowered immunity, weight gain, hyperactivity and cavities).
In fact this version is super nutritious as almond, grassfed butter and pure chocolate are all nutrient dense foods!
Instead of depleting your body of nutrition, this Skor bar adds to your nutrition with good fats, minerals like magnesium and fat soluble vitamins like A & D.
Let’s do it!
Bottom Layer
First you’ll have to make the crackers.
What you will need:
1 cup blanched ground almond flour
1 large egg
1 tablespoon olive oil (or butter)
1/2 tsp salt
coconut flour (keep adding until the dough sticks together and can be formed into a ball)
How to do it:
Preheat your oven to 350°F
Combine the almond flour and salt in a bowl and blend well.
Add the egg and oil, and blend and enough coconut flour to shape the mixture.
Form into two balls of dough.
Place each dough ball on a non-stick baking mat, then place a piece of parchment paper (or other non-stick mat) over the ball and roll the dough into a thin layer.
Score the crackers with a pizza cutter and sprinkle extra sea salt lightly across the cracker sheet.
Bake for about 13 minutes, or until they start to lightly brown.
Cool for about 15 minutes and break apart into crackers.
Place parchment paper in the bottom of a baking sheet or shallow glass rectangular baking dish.
Place a layer of crackers as the bottom layer of your Skor bars.
Store the remaining crackers in a sealed container.
The Middle Layer
What you will need:
1 cup butter (unsalted)
1 cup whipping cream
3 Tbsp erythritol
For later:
1 cup of soft butter (unsalted)
2 tsp English Toffee Liquid Stevia
How to do it:
Melt the butter in the pan over LOW heat.
Let the butter cook on the lowest temperature until it begins to turn golden brown.
Once the butter has turned light golden brown, remove the pan from the heat and add the cream and erythritol.
Immediately return the pan to the heat and turn up to high stirring the cream into the butter. The cream will foam and bubble, the cream should come to a full boil… keep stirring THE WHOLE TIME!
Once the bubbling has slowed and the ingredients are well combined, continue cooking until it has thickened and feels “sticky” (the bubbles will take longer to come to the surface).
The minute you take it off the element, the butter will start to separate. No worries, we are going to blend it. Again the minute you stop your blender it will separate again.
Now it is time to pour off the butter liquid to get the caramel. Pour off the butter through a strainer into a glass jar (stir in cinnamon for deliciously sugar free cinnamon butter and put in the fridge).
Add 1 more cup of soft butter to the caramel, 2 tsp english toffee stevia and blend. You will have a beautiful caramel the texture of a thick frosting.
Put it on the stove to heat it so that it is more easy to spread over the crackers.
Spread it with a spatula and put in the freezer to set before you spread the chocolate over it.
Top Layer
What you will need:
3/4 cup cocoa butter (or coconut oil if you don’t mind having to eat them straight out of the fridge only)
3/4 cup cocoa (or a little less if you don’t like dark chocolate)
2 tsp liquid stevia
1/4 cup – 1/2 cup or more erythritol (or more to taste)
How to do it:
Place cocoa butter or coconut oil in a small pan to melt.
Stir in cocoa, stevia and erythritol.
Pour over the caramel layer and refrigerate until set.
Once it is set, pull out of dish by lifting parchment paper and break apart using your hands into individual serving sizes and serve!
If you are like me and love peanut butter squares, but hate the marshmallows, you are in luck with this easy skinny bomb recipe!
What you will need:
1 cup peanut butter (no salt added and tastes even better with low sodium peanut butter if you can find it)
1/2 cup coconut oil (0r cocoa butter if you want them to hold up at room temp…please note you’ll have to warm the cocoa butter into a liquid before you can blend it)
1 cup butter
2 tsp of butterscotch or english toffee stevia
How to do it:
If everything is at room temp, just mix in a high power blender or slowly heat up ingredients on med low in a saucepan and then blend.
To prepare the dough you’ll need to grind the flax or chia seed into a flour. In a bowl add remaining ingredients and then mix in enough water until it is a dough like consistency (start mixing with a fork and then your hands to get the right texture. If it feels too wet, let sit for 1 hour to keep absorbing the water).
Dough:
1 cup flax or chia seed ground
water
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Once the dough is ‘set’ take of a piece the size of a golf ball and roll out as thin as possible into strips using coconut flour to keep it from sticking.
Lay the strips from the centre outward hanging over the side. As you go you will place the strips farther from the middle and keep pressing down until the bottom looks flat like a normal pie crust. Keep pressing the strips together as best you can. Some strips will end up too long, you can trim them later.
You’ll have a ton of dough left over. You can use it to make tortilla rolls or even try your hand at boiling them for 3 minutes into noodles.
Filling:
cooked ham ring (chopped into bit sized pieces)
broccoli steamed for 3 min
2 cups shredded cheese
2 Tbsp mustard
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Meanwhile, steam broccoli for 3 min.
Turn the oven on to 350F
Chop the ham ring into bite size pieces and place in a medium size bowl with 2 cups of shredded cheese. Mix in mustard and lemon juice.
Place filling into the pie and then pull the ‘ropes’ over and arrange on top so that they are all touching but not overlapping too much in the middle (this is where you might have to trim them a bit).
Brush with olive oil and then bake for 17-18 min at 350 F.
Let cool for 10 -15 min before slicing which will hold it together better. Also, it works best to cut along the natural lines with a serrated knife.
Omigosh I love the flavour of halvah, but most recipes pack 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sugar! That is way too sweet for my taste! This version is great in bite sized pieces and makes a great keto ‘fat bomb’.
Heavenly Halva
2/3 cup coconut oil
2/3 cup tahini
1 tsp vanilla flavoured stevia (tastes test to see if you prefer more)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract (essential to eliminate the bitter sesame seed flavour)
Blend all ingredients until silky. Pour in a dish and refrigerate. Serve in bite size squares.
What if more vitality, beauty and health could be yours through the sacred act of giving birth and raising a child?
You are a mindful mama. You want to raise your family on nourishing, delicious meals that nurture growing bodies- as much as family connection and pleasure at the dinner table. You already know you need to nourish yourself to nurture your family, but sometimes you need a little reminding (with a healthy heaping spoon of inspiration on top!).
Let me hold the door open for you (and make yourself at home) if….
• You want to learn all that you can about nourishing your family-from textbook to table.
• You are excited to embrace the whole continuum of motherhood from an empowered place (you have a passion for pregnancy, birth and natural parenting).
• You want to get connected with a strong circle of women who ‘get it’ and want to help you savour and celebrate the journey of being nourished as a mama (and walk the path with you)
I am a mindful mama too….
I am Sherry Rothwell, RHN founder of Nourish Mama and mother to 2 delightfully home born children, Isaiah 14 and Jasmine 9. I am also a nutrition educator and business coach for holistic nutritionists. I created Nourish Mama to make holistic nutrition knowledge during the childbearing years more accessible to mamas- and to mentor healing arts practitioners to expand their practices to include more hands on nurturing and nourishing wisdom to share with the women they serve. I believe that childbirth is a woman’s visionquest and that motherhood is one of life’s most deep spiritual journey’s. My greatest vision is to empower women to savour the experience -and their potential to create a new world through the beauty and power inherent in conscious healing, birth and mothering.
You might want to sit down and stay a while if….
• you want to study or explore nutrition during the childbearing years from the perspective of holistic nutrition
• you know a pregnant woman and you want to LOVE her up (because she’s awesome) and so that she feels taken care of and free to joyously focus on nurturing that sweet babe!
I am pretty sure you’ll love what I’ve cooked up for you if….
• You are delighted by the spiritual significance of your role in bringing a new soul to the planet and in stewarding your child’s life (you are humbled by that responsibility and equally honoured by the power you have to nourish your family- body, mind and soul).
• You love to study, learn and grow (bookstores make you giddy)!
• You are a mama on a mission, starting with your family and your community. You want to make a difference in the world.
I have come up with 18 Nut FREE, Mostly Grain FREE and Mostly Dairy FREE Lunch Ideas that I am happy to share with you here! Even if your child’s school doesn’t have food restrictions, I think you’ll find a few ideas that you might want to add to your roster of wholesome take a way lunch ideas!
While in North America soy used to be reserved for hippy’s past, today soy is mainstream and these days has become controversial in the natural health community.
As an ex vegetarian, I fell in love with the versatility of tofu decades ago. As a nutrition educator, I am well aware of the arguments for and against soy.
I believe that the truth comes down to context, so let’s take a look.
You may have heard that the Okinawans (the world’s longest-lived people), have eaten whole, organic and fermented soy foods like miso, tempeh, tofu, soy milk, and edamame (young soybeans in the pod) for more than five millennia.
Today soy is recognized as a healthy food with it’s long history of safe use in Asia.
According to Dr. Mark Hyman, “Human studies on soy while limited, have demonstrated that soy may help lower cholesterol, prevent cancer, increase bone density, protect the kidneys of people with diabetes, and relieve menopausal symptoms like hot flashes.”
It is believed that the beneficial effects come from isoflavones, which are considered weak plant (phyto) estrogens, that can block the absorption of more powerful human estrogens and harmful xenoestrogens (toxic environmental chems).
On the other hand you may have also heard that…
Soy might promote breast cancer, block thyroid function and prevent the absorption of minerals and interfere with digestion.
Here is what Dr. Hyman has to say about these concerns…..
He says that studies that show poor outcomes with soy were done with unusually high amounts of soy, much more than the average person would ever eat on a daily basis and goes on to say “breast tissue density is linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. Breast tissue density increases with estrogen replacement, but decreases with isoflavone consumption in postmenopausal women. That’s a good thing.”
He says that studies also show that “Eating soy foods at an early age (childhood and the teen years) appears to have a significant protective effect against breast cancer.”
As for the impact on thyroid health, he says, “A review of the research found no significant effects of soy on the thyroid except in people who are iodine deficient — a condition that is rare in this country. Based on my assessment of this and other research, I am convinced that normal amounts of traditional soy foods pose no risk to thyroid function.”
He believes that the effects on the thyroid are not relevant unless you are deficient in iodine and that one can mitigate the effects by eating fish, seaweed or sea vegetables, or iodized salt.
Not everyone agrees…..
The Weston A. Price Association, an organization that promotes staying true to the traditional foods of our ancestors, is strictly against the use of soy products. And that’s because the way that North American’s consume soy is not in keeping with the safe and time tested traditions of Asia.
The organization stresses that soy should never be consumed without being first fermented – and then only served in small amounts, alongside animal foods like meat and iodine rich fish broth, to mitigate their goitrogenic effects, as well as to prevent mineral depletion from their naturally occurring phytic acid content.
They discourage the consumption of any unfermented soy, as they say it has been shown over and over to have many detrimental effects in animal studies.
Soy seems to be both good and bad, so which one is it?
It is very possible that negative outcomes associated with soy are based on the consumption not of the whole bean, but of SPI (soy protein isolate) and hydrolyzed soy (HVP) which is a second cousin to MSG (the soy is boiled in hydrochloric acid and then neutralized with sodium hydroxide leaving a brown powder that contains a form of MSG used by food producers as an additive to make things taste savory – in place of meat broth). SPI is the type of soy used in processed foods and meat substitutes.
According to www.soyatech.com……
“About 85 percent of the world’s soybean crop is processed into meal and vegetable oil, and virtually all of that meal is used in animal feed. Some two percent of the soybean meal is further processed into soy flours and proteins for food use… Approximately six percent of soybeans are used directly as human food, mostly in Asia.”
Processed soy foods are made from soybean meal that has been dehulled and defatted and processed into three kinds of high protein commercial products: soy flour, concentrates, and isolates used in soy junk foods and animal feed. Not to mention these types of soy are most often genetically modified (typically Monsanto’s Roundup Soyabeans) unless they are certified organic.
Examples of these processed and harmful soy foods include:
soy supplements
soy cheese
soy ice cream
soy oil
soy burgers
soy hotdogs
soy margarine
These poor quality foods don’t have the thousands of years of traditional use that whole soy foods do. Not only are they processed, but they contain unhealthy fats and other toxic additives.
Processed forms of soy can sometimes be hard to detect……
In order to avoid hidden forms of soy, you must also avoid products that list these ingredients:
soy protein concentrates or isolates
hydrolyzed
TSP textured vegetable or soy protein,
“boullion,” “natural flavor,” and “textured plant protein.”
Mono-diglyceride
Soya, Soja or Yuba
Lecithin
MSG (monosodium glutamate)
But is there a healthier form of soy?
The health benefits from soy are most likely attributed to soy consumed in moderation in a fermented form.
Fermented soy is definitely a better choice than non-fermented soy, and of course it beats out SPI and TSP by leaps and bounds.
Here is why……
Soybeans (as well as other legumes contain phytates- naturally occurring food chemicals that binds to minerals, thus reducing their absorbability).
The Asian cultures that have traditionally consumed soy, typically ferment it first thus reducing the phytic acid, and through fermentation adds extra nutrients and beneficial bacteria (probiotics).
Fermented soymilk (the most recently developed and the only one to have originated in Europe in the early 1900s).
To be on the safe side, Dr. Hyman recommends limiting yourself to 2 servings a day.
But what about the minimally processed unfermented tofu and soymilk, edamame and sprouted soya?
A little every once in a while in small amounts should be fine (but only if they feel easy for your body to digest). These foods are eaten occasionally in Asia, and specifically, sprouted soy beans have been a consistent part of the Korean diet (and seemingly so without harm).
In my home, we eat certified organic tofu occassionally (never soy milk) and first ferment it in a marinade that includes at least one ferment: traditionally brewed soy sauce and unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or Kombucha…..but we pass on both processed soy based meat alternatives and non organic tofu.
Practicing moderation, eating according to the food traditions of our ancestors and avoiding processed foods is just good common sense.
What you will need:
