My third week on the AIP diet is over. I’m honestly getting so tired of not being able to eat much, so this past week, I did not fully engage my inner chef. However, where I lacked creativity in my menu, I made up for in my re-design and full revamp of my blog! Check it out! I finally moved my blog from Blogger to this new site! And now Noodles Knows has it’s own domain name! It only took eight years!

While I did not make many exciting dishes this week, I did find some AIP-friendly items at Whole Foods that I used to concoct a few meals.

Bone broth

First, turkey bone broth. As I mentioned in my previous post, most boxed stocks or broths contain tomato puree or yeast extract, or some other non-AIP compliant ingredient, but I found this bone broth, which contained only AIP-safe ingredients. Score! Bone broth might sound strange, and yes, I was a little hesitant to try it myself, but because bone broths are well-known for their health benefits, I forced myself to try it. Bone broths are mineral-rich with calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium, to name a few, and have marvelous immunity-boosting and healing properties. One cup of broth contains nine grams of protein, an abundance of glycosaminoglycans (which help repair intestinal lining), glutathione (essentially, a super antioxidant), collagen, and so many other nutrients! I simply simmered the broth on the stove with some carrots, parsnips, onion, and fresh dill for a delicious sipping broth.

Carob powder

I also purchased carob powder and tiger nuts, with the ambition of making some sort of dessert. Carob powder is a wonderful cocoa powder replacement, since chocolate is forbidden on this autoimmune protocol. Derived from ground-up, dried carob tree pods, it’s naturally sweet and has a taste resembling that of chocolate. While carob powder tastes much like cocoa, it’s rather a healthier alternative, containing seven grams of fiber per serving, antioxidants, iron, calcium, not a trace of caffeine.

Tiger nuts

And now tiger nuts. What are tiger nuts? Tiger nuts are not nuts at all; in fact, they are actually small AIP-friendly tubers. Usually dried and kept whole, sliced, or ground into a flour, these little super-tubers are high in pre-biotic fiber, the proliferative fiber we need to build healthy gut bacteria. Tiger nuts are also a good source of unsaturated fats. I wanted to make a carob banana bread, so I attempted to grind my own tiger nuts into a flour. I would not recommend this! These little buggers are so rock-hard, I nearly destroyed my food processor blade, even after soaking the tiger nuts for an entire day! Nevertheless, I pulverized them enough to make a coarse “flour”. I mixed the tiger nut flour with four over-ripe bananas and a healthy dose of carob powder, then poured the mixture into a non-stick loaf pan. I baked the banana bread for about an hour at 350F. It was still wet and mushy inside, even after baking it longer several times, so I think I needed to cut back on the bananas, increase the amount of tiger nuts, or add some arrow root starch. And since my tiger nut meal was coarse, it gave the bread an unusual texture, almost like a water-chesnutty crunch…..a work in progress that definitely needs some tweaking. I will say, however, that it was a tasty, sweet dessert that well-fueled my CrossFit workout early the next morning!

This week, I also utilized more nutritional yeast in my meals, sprinkling it on top of my classic sweet potato-avocado duo, and even making another broccoli soup with carrots and an extra generous dosing of vegan “cheesy” goodness.

Since my carob-banana bread recipe needs some serious tweaking, I won’t post a recipe until I’ve gotten that nailed down. So, no recipes this week, just some updates on how my AIP journey is going.