I love Thanksgiving because it’s the one day of the year were it is socially acceptable to eat a lot of delicious food. And who doesn’t love that? Plus, in my household, Thanksgiving is our favorite because we love cooking! My mom and I put together a unique and delicious meal every year. We always make everything from scratch (I mean everything). As my dietary needs have changed over the years, we cook to accommodate and that makes it all the more fun. I always love a challenge in the kitchen.
Anyway, butternut squash is not only a classic winter staple but a must as some part of the Thanksgiving meal. So here is SIMPLE butternut squash recipe that no one will be able to resist when you are sitting around the table on Thanksgiving. You can easily sub out pumpkin in this dish, but I promise butternut squash gives you the perfect sweetness needed in this recipe.
allergy friendly paleo and pumpkin seed butternut squash
This is a delicious and easy side dish that is perfect for part of a holiday meal or just a weeknight dinner!
Course Side Dish
Cuisine American
Keyword Easy, fall, Simple, winter
Servings 4servings
Author Victoria Faling
Ingredients
1large butternut squashpeeled and chopped into cubes
2Tbspextra virgin olive oil
8fresh sage leavesfinely chopped
1/4cuppumpkin seeds
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425F.
Mix butternut squash and sage leaves with the olive oil and spread onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 30 min.
Remove from oven and mix in the pumpkin seeds. Bake for another 10-20 minutes until butternut squash is easily pierced with a fork and pumpkin seeds and sage are fragrant and golden.
allergy friendly paleo and pumpkin seed butternut squashallergy friendly paleo and pumpkin seed butternut squash
A (Lyme) friend of mine introduced me to Kohlrabi the other month. I’d seen it in the store before but had never tried it. She eased me into the process of what it was, what it tasted it like, and how to “deal” with it. And now I’m obsessed.
I personally think kohlrabi tastes like a milder version of jicama, not quite as sweet. I’ve enjoyed snacking on it raw or in salads along with cooking it. This recipe makes for a super yummy, uber simple, soul-warming side as the months get colder.
This would also make a totally appropriate Thanksgiving side if you doubled or quadrupled the recipe (depending on number of guests). Get ready, over the the next 3 weeks I’ll be bringing you all Thanksgiving worthy dishes!
Cinnamon Kohlrabi
Serves 2-3
Ingredients:
2 kohlrabi, peeled and chopped into cubes
1-2 tbs. EVOO
3 tbs. coconut aminos
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
Heat 1 tbs. of EVOO in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the kohlrabi and saute for about 5 minutes until it begins to soften.
Add the coconut aminos, cinnamon, and ginger. Cook for 5-10 minutes until soft and easily pierced with a fork. Add more olive oil during the cooking process if kohlrabi begins to stick to the pan.
This Kale and Persimmon Salad is a simple, but delicious holiday salad. It highlights one of my favorite seasonal fruits and is a fully gluten free and dairy free recipe.
healthy kale and persimmon salad
This Kale and Persimmon Salad is a family favorite for Thanksgiving. If you’ve never had a persimmon, you need to try one! They are absolutely delicious, but you can only find them a few months out of the year. Persimmons are sweet with just a little tang.
This salad is very easy to make. You combine everything in a bowl, mix the dressing, and serve. The dressing is a simple honey-mustard type dressing with a little bit of tang from apple cider vinegar.
What kind of persimmons to use?
I recommend Fuyu persimmons in general and for this recipe. You want to use ripe persimmons, so they don’t leave your tongue feeling fuzzy.
What to add to this kale and persimmon salad
This is a simple salad, so the added cranberries and pumpkin seeds are important for making this salad less boring. If you can’t have pumpkin seeds, you could try another nut or seed, but I can’t speak to the flavor. The pumpkin seeds pair perfectly with the other flavors in this recipe. If you do try something different, leave a comment and let me know how it went!
If you don’t like cranberries, dried cherries would also be a lovely option in this kale salad.
This simple salad is a Thanksgiving favorite in our American household. It’s a lovely fall salad that takes advantage of the short persimmon season. The sweetness of the persimmons is complimented by the more acidic dressing.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine American
Keyword Easy, fall, Simple, thanksgiving
Servings 6people
Ingredients
Salad
1/2bunch of green kale
1/2bunch of red kale
1/2head of butter lettuce
2-3persimmons, thinly sliced
1small red onion, diced
1/4cupdried cranberriesfruit juice sweetened
1/4cuppumpkin seeds
Dressing
2Tbspapple cider vinegar
1/4cupolive oil
2tspdijon mustard
2Tbspfull fat coconut milk
1Tbsphoney
Instructions
Wash and dry your lettuce. Pull the kale off the stems and chop/tear into bite size pieces. Place your kale in your salad bowl and sprinkle with salt. Massage your kale until the greens begin to darken and soften.
Tear/chop your butter lettuce into bite size pieces and add to the kale. Add the remaining salad ingredients to the bowl.
Combine all your dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined.
Taste and adjust, sometimes you need a little more mustard or honey
If you are looking for a different, new, simple summer grilled dish then this is it!
This past weekend my parents and I went down to our river house and celebrated a belated Father’s Day. We made a delicious dinner Saturday night on the grill that included Hawaiian Pork Skewers (a guest post from Canada Girl Eats Paleo from a while back!) and grilled kale and romaine.
Ingredients:
1 bunch of Dino Kale
1 head of Romaine
Olive oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Get your grill ready! I used a charcoal grill on this occasion.
Kale first: Wash and dry your kale. Toss the kale lightly with some olive oil (about 1-2 tbs., you don’t need much). Next, lay the leaves of kale in an even layer over the grill and generously drizzle Balsamic over the kale leaves (trust me, Balsamic is your best friend tonight, you want to use way more then you think). Let the leaves cook for about 1-2 minutes then use tongs to flip them. Generously drizzle the Balsamic on this side of the leaves and again cook for 1-2 minutes or until the leaves start to char on the edges and the leaves look crisp. Place on a serving dish.
Romaine next: If you are using hearts of Romaine, cut them in half. If you are using a full head of Romaine, cut into quarters. Wash and dry the Romaine. You DO NOT need to coat the Romaine with olive oil. Place your Romaine on the grill and generously drizzle with Balsamic (like you did the kale). Let the Romaine cook for about 3 minutes before flipping and repeating the process. Again, pull the Romaine once it begins to crisp up and char on the parts that were touching the grill.
Serve along some grilled meat and you’ve got a new play on boring lettuce.
When I was in Santa Fe I had this amazing jicama fake potato salad at one of the raw food bars we went to. I wanted to re-create it but not exactly. I’m NOT a mayo fan plus I’m not doing eggs right now so I wanted to make a different type of “sauce” per-se for a jicama salad. I use mustard in this recipe so it does have a little bit of a different kick then potato salad but I like it :). This salad is very light and refreshing so it makes for a great side dish to classic summer dishes. It makes me happy because I think of warm weather when I eat it. Perfect for this sneaking up spring weather (yay!).
Jicama Fotato Salad
Ingredients:
1 small-medium jicama
4 stalks of celery
2 tablespoons of raw tahini
2 tsp. stoneground mustard
2 tablespoons of olive oil
juice of 1 small lemon
2 pinches of salt
1/2 tsp. cumin
Chop up the jicama into cubes and place in a bowl. Slice up the celery stalks into thin bites and mix with the jicama. Mix all the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Pour the dressing over the jicama/celery and mix thoroughly.
Just store in the fridge. I find that when cooled in the fridge, it mutes the dressing taste a bit so feel free to add more mustard to the dressing when you make it (even though it may taste very mustard-y at that time). Simple and yummy. Get on it!
Lyme update is up first so skip over this next part if all you care about is food.
The past few weeks… okay months… have been hard. Really hard. Lyme wise. I feel like I’ve slowly been headed downhill. Despite learning all these things that may be affecting treatment and my health (mold, heavy metals, etc) and addressing them, it doesn’t seem to be doing much. I feel like nothing, treatment wise, touches me. It may help for a week or a few weeks then it’s like I’m not even taking anything. I start treatments that other people rave about (yes, I realize everyone is different but something has to work for me, right?!) and it makes no difference for me. I’m hoping to start more of an herbal protocol at some point in the next 6-months and see if that makes a difference. I take some herbs now but I mean a real hardcore herbal protocol.
Side note update: Last week I got my heavy metals test back which came back positive for mercury, lead, thallium, and a little cesium. I’ll be starting a chelation protocol for that within the next week or two. I’ll be doing 4 days a week of oral chelation then 3 days of mineral replacement (since chelating pulls out essential minerals with the metals).
A year ago at this time wasn’t great either but I was able to workout at least 3 days a week, go out occasionally, and do more (granted, I still had a lot of other symptoms and would crash at least once a week). The past few weeks I haven’t even been able to do any yoga because I’m EXHAUSTED beyond belief, my muscles feel weak, and my joints are killing me. I have to say, though, that I don’t feel like I have specific Lyme symptoms (like night sweats, air hunger, vision spots, etc) besides joint pain. I feel more just extremely fatigued, worn out like nobodies business, and like I am repeatedly being run over by a bus. Every little task of the day takes SO MUCH ENERGY. Brushing my teeth is like death. I’m wondering if it is just intense toxin overload from killing off the bugs and I am not detoxing enough or if I’m legit Lyme sick. Detoxing has been tough because 1) I’m in school which means less time for it 2)our water doesn’t get/stay hot so I can’t really take detox baths… unless a cold bath counts 3) when I feel like crap my eating goes to crap because I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy and frankly I stop caring because I feel shitty as it is already. I realize when I feel the worst is when my diet needs to be the strictest…. you don’t have to tell me. Come make me food, please?
It’s been extremely cold and snowy here, which also doesn’t help because cold makes me feel worse. This also means walking to class (in the cold) through snow and it feels like I’m hiking a mountain. So, my body is dead by the time I get home. BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS! I saw a new doc yesterday. He is a Naturopathic Doctor who went to the grad school I am considering AND he has trained with Dr. Klinghardt (they are on a first name basis). He is not a Lyme-specialist but knows about lyme (obviously, Dr. Klinghardt) and works with other Lyme patients. I found him because he is also an acupuncturist, which is my main reason for seeing him (yay some detoxing help!), but figured he might have some other insight and ideas for treatment. My appointment went great and I felt able to be open and honest with him about my disease and symptoms. He was very receptive and listened intently. He writes everything down, even the information he wants me to remember (writes it down FOR ME to take home… doesn’t just say it) and maintains constant open communication with his patients (you can call whenever or email and he wants to make sure you keep him updated about how you are feeling with treatment).
Anyway, just by feeling my pulse (based on the Chinese Medicine standards) he immediately pointed out what systems in my body are out of whack… the exact ones I knew where and had been giving me hell all week! We did some acupuncture which helped a lot. I’m going to continue seeing him for acupuncture but he is also having me do ozone enemas. I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! I have heard that ozone is supposed to be great for Lyme and I also have heard good things about enemas for detox (plus my digestive system is whack) so I hope this helps at least some! He said he has tons of ideas but we will start slow and see how I respond. I’ll keep you guys updated.
So, food now? Yes? Yay. This was my first attempt at making any type of sushi period but it turned out AWESOME. This recipe is very flexible but below is a basic starting point. You can use whatever veggies you like for inside the wrap but I will post exactly what I used. There are some sprouted ingredients (the most important is the buckwheat), which needs to be done 2-4 days in advance. Buckwheat is awesome because it’s actually a fruit seed. Plus it is gluten-free. It is a complete protein and healthy for your heart and digestive system! Here we go:
Raw Vegan Sushi with Sprouted Buckwheat Spread:
Ingredients:
Nori Wraps (can get at local health food store like Whole Foods)
Beet
Jicama
(Any veggies would work… carrots, cucumber, zucchini, etc)
Pea Sprouts
Sprouted sunflower seeds*
Buckwheat spread (recipe below)
Avocado
*To sprout sunflower seeds: Get some sunflower seeds, shelled, from the store. Rinse well and soak in water overnight, first. Drain in a strainer and rinse again. If you have mason jars with mesh sprouting lids you can put them in there, without water, or you can spread them out over a strainer. You basically want to let them sit in the strainer or jars (spread out so they aren’t all piled on top of each other) for 2-4 days, rinsing twice a day, until they have sprouted. You can google videos for a better understanding if you need! 🙂
Let’s make the sprouted buckwheat spread first….
Sprouted Buckwheat Spread
Ingredients:
2 cups raw sprouted buckwheat*
1 tbs. apple cider vinegar
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 tbs. olive oil
Water, as necessary
*First you need to sprout your buckwheat. Go to the store and buy raw buckwheat groats (THESE ARE GLUTEN FREE). Rinse and soak your buckwheat like you did your sunflower seeds. After soaking for 1-24 hours rinse VERY well (they will have a slimy mucous on them, which is normal). Spread them out on a plate and let them sprout for 2-4 days, placing in a strainer and rinsing well 2x a day. They are done once their little tails are about as long as the groats themselves (too long and the flavor changes). Now they are ready to go!
Place all ingredients, except water, in a food processor and process until smooth and creamy! May take some time like when you make other nut/seed butters. If it seems thick add a tablespoon of water at a time until smoothed out. Add more salt, lemon, or spices as you desire.
Okay, now onto The Sushi
First, you’ll need to peel and chop your beet and jicama. Cut your veggies into strips (so they look like french fries). Now, lay out a nori wrap on a cutting board and lay your chopped veggies in a line at one end of the wrap.
Next, take some sprouts and place them over top of the veggies. Sprinkle on your sunflower seed sprouts and sliced avocado. Spread the buckwheat spread onto the OPPOSITE end from your veggies.
(I used carrot and beet pulp from juicing as a “rice” for this one after an idea I got from detoxinista.com… have to say, didn’t like it, though).
Okay, time to wrap it up! Don’t be scared, this isn’t as hard as it may seem and I find it easier then wrapping a burrito (this is saying a lot… I can’t wrap a burrito for my life). Start at the VEGGIE END, rolling your wrap tightly. You may have to push the ingredients in on the ends. Roll until you get to the buckwheat end, the buckwheat spread will help seal the wrap and keep it closed.
Next up we will cut the wrap into sushi bites. This is easy, you guys got this! Just take a knife (I mean you can try it with a spoon if you want but I don’t think you will be very successful) and cut your roll into bite sizes so it looks like sushi.
YESSS! NOW IT IS TIME TO PUT IT ON A PLATE AND EAT IT!
Clearly that is snack size status right there ^^^. I would advise making a couple wraps if you are having these as a meal OR serving them along side something else. Below I served mine with marinated veggies.
Do you love sushi? What is your favorite kind? I love sushi and it was a blast to finally make my own, especially raw style. As always, let me know if you try these bad boys out and how you liked them.
Hi! I'm Victoria. I was diagnosed with Lyme in 2012 and have been on a healing journey ever since. I love helping others on their road to healing through allergy friendly recipes, exercise, and overall well-being.
