Ingredients

All recipes presented in this blog are created for our friend with specific and strict dietary restrictions on medical grounds. When creating these recipes I did not have in mind any particular diet or current trend. I had a list of ingredients I can use, and a very specific list of ingredients I am not allowed to use. My main goal was to create dishes from fresh ingredients, balanced in all main macro- and micro- nutrients, with abundance of flavours and which are easy to cook and a joy to eat. Organic produce was the preferred choice, taking into consideration its seasonal availability, freshness and budgetary matters.

Ingredients never to be used in any of the recipes published in this blog:

• Grains and their derivatives
• Pseudo-grains, such as buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth
• Starches: potato starch, potato flour, tapioca, arrowroot
• Any ingredient containing gluten
• Any dairy product, containing lactose (butter was initially excluded from the list, because it was tolerated without any ill effects), it is not allowed any more
• Added sugar of any origin, including natural unrefined sugars
• Cocoa powder
• Soy and its derivatives in any shape or form
• Potato, sweet potato, yams, corn
• Beans and lentils

Update 27.05.2015

Regular readers might have noticed that I do not use butter as an ingredient any more. This development is due to recent changes in the ability of our friend to tolerate butter in the diet. I decided to leave all the recipes with butter as an ingredient which were already published.

Update 14.12.2016

After several testings we realised that small quantities of pure cacao powder are well tolerated in raw and baked products. Since that discovery I created several recipes with cacao powder, usually raw and organic. My guess that pure glucose (often sold under chemical name dextrose) might be tolerated as well, based on the fact that honey mainly contains monosaccharides, turned out to be right and now I occasionally use pure glucose powder when I need sweetener in the dry form.

Update 3.9.2019

There had been changes in allowed ingredients. Buckwheat kernels, first in fermented form, and later without preliminary fermentation, had been included in recipes for making bread, main dishes and sweet baking. Buckwheat flour, certified gluten free, is the next stage of incorporating buckwheat as dry ingredient into baking.

Ingredients allowed:

Proteins:

eggs, chicken, fish, lamb, veal in small quantities

 Fats and oils:

olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, lard

Vegetables:

all, except potato, sweet potato, corn, yams, fresh cabbage

Fresh fruits:

all

Dried fruits:

all allowed if without preservatives and sulphur

Seeds:

all

Spices:

all without anti caking agents

Herbs:

all

Other:

honey, coconut, garlic, salt, pepper

Ingredients allowed with quantity minimization:

• Nuts all allowed, but in limited quantities, due to their effects on  mineral imbalances

Overall these dietary restrictions can be associated with currently very popular Paleo diet. I would probably call it Paleo eating plan, or even lifestyle, based purely on the fact, that Paleo is usually self-imposed way of restrictive food consumption as the way to improve eating habits, as well as being very helpful and instrumental in weight management.

I will go completely against the trend and say, that I find restrictive diets, eliminating whole food groups without specific medical grounds, quite extreme. They can’t be considered  physiologically sound, if applied for relatively long periods of time. Fortunately, we all are free to make our own choices in what we eat and enjoy. If recipes from this blog fit into your eating choices, I am only glad to be of help. But my main task is to help people on food restrictive diets based on medical conditions out of their choosing.