Coconut flour cupcakes

This recipe adaptation comes from Bruce Fife's Cooking with Coconut Flour

I've reduced the sugar and replaced butter with coconut oil to make a fully dairy-free and gluten-free cupcake.

These are high protein, high-fiber and rich, even without the butter.

3 Tablespoons coconut oil (melted)
3 eggs (warmed in water first so they don't clump up the coconut oil by resolidifying it)
2-3 Tablespoons sugar (pref. Sucanat, Rapadura or date or maple sugar, or regular brown sugar)
2 Tablespoons coconut milk (not low-fat)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla (preferably alcohol-free if you are being strict about being gluten-free)
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Blend the following:
oil
eggs
sugar
coconut milk
salt
vanilla

Combine coconut flour (first sifted or at least de-lumped) with baking powder. Whisk dry mix into wet and mix until there are no lumps. Pour/spoon into muffin tins.

Bake at 400 degrees for 8-15 minutes (shorter length for mini-muffins).
Supposed to make 6 full-sized muffins.

Variations/Notes:
-Add in some carob powder to the whole batter for a chocolate-like flavor
-Add almond flavoring for more of a marzipan taste
-Don't add in cinnamon -- in my opinion, it just doesn't really work well with the coconut flavor unless you're making some more nuanced concept dish.

-You could easily double the recipe and go up to only 1/2 cup of flour, but then you're in for a half-dozen eggs! A little coconut flour goes a long way! But it also requires a lot of egg! (No, I've never tried this with egg substitute.)

Spring cleaning

I went to a great detox class the other night with Monica Corrado of Simply Being Well. She talked about ways to use nutrition to support your liver and why spring is the best and most natural time to do detox. I hadn't realized that a "cleanse" is the most intense thing you can do -- and shouldn't unless you're in great health and have support to live very low key while you undertake it. A "flush" is the next level of cleansing -- maybe a special liver-cleansing drink the morning and eat nothing for a 4 hrs. Again, this could result in headaches and other yucky symptoms if you're particularly toxic or too run-down for your body to handle the dumping well.

So really, what I did last spring was not a cleanse but a gentle "detox." I thought detox was a more intense term, but apparently it's the mildest of the three processes.

This spring I was hoping to step it up, now that my son has weaned. But I began from a chubby, chocolate-addicted, mildly-caffeine-addicted and sugar-happy place.

On March 31, I ate a ton of cake a friend gave me -- really gorged on it knowing the next day was April and I was going off sugar. So I made myself really feel plenty sugared up and ready to kiss it goodbye when I flipped the calendar.

Since then, I've had only minimal fruit, no refined sugar and only a little honey. I'm keeping the carbs to a minimum -- trying to do only real-food carbs, as in veggies and rice cooked in stock. I'm cutting back on meat, giving up the nut butter again but not soaked & roasted nuts and (store-bought) sprouts; I hope to start sprouting nuts and seeds myself.

I'm eating lots of salad with added dandelion greens. I'm starting the morning with lemon & turmeric in hot water and am turning to my parsley-lemon-celery juice for snacks during the day. I did have half a Lara bar today between breakfast and lunch, and I ate a salad at Corner Bakery tonight, including some dressing and currants. So I'm not a purist. But I have made changes that have resulted in having already lost 2 lbs. I'm generally feeling pretty good. I ran 9.5 miles on Saturday. I did snack more that night on coconut milk and sprouted sunflower seeds with a few raisins. But that's not bad.

Oh, and chocolate? After eating most of half a bag of chips in conjunction with decorating my son's bday cake a few weeks ago, I'm now off. The sole source for the past week has been unsweetened, raw, organic cacao nibs from Wilderness Family Naturals with a spoon of their centrifuged coconut oil and maybe some almonds or apricot kernals.

One goal is indeed to lose a little pudge but mostly I want to get my liver and the rest of my body happy and healthy (my dry skin is back a little on my knees) and generally break some unhealthy habits so that I can eventually get back to a place of more moderation and a happy relationship with my body.

Ionic foot soak

So, now that my son has weaned, I'm ready to do some detox. I tried an ionic foot bath twice the year I got pregnant. The water turned very yellow both times -- like egg yolk. I heard at the time that this was connected to hormone issues.

Last week I tried it again, and you can see from the before and after pictures, the results were brown and black. According to the information at Whole Health and Wellness, this indicates liver and heavy metal issues. A recent trip to a holistic doctor came up with liver toxicity and heavy metals as concerns for me, too.

I'm planning to do some nutritional liver cleansing in the next few months, but this visual makes me think I might need some other help, too! Especially if I'm thinking we might want another baby. To be continued...!