SCD Egg Drop Soup: The Ultimate Chinese Comfort Food

It's a Friday night. In my pre-SCD life this day would be a date night for my husband and I composed of picking a local eatery and enjoying the free-ness of having someone else cook for you, serve you, and not worry about any potential non-existent consequences. Alas, that is the past and I no longer enjoy that freedom. I don't deny it for my husband though, so when he ordered some take-out chicken wings smothered in BBQ sauce, I wanted a reminiscent treat too. My mind began to turn- what did I have in my refrigerator? Yesterday I made slow-cooker chicken thighs, I had eggs,...wait! Suddenly I remembered those nights when I used to work late and have to eat dinner at 9pm, I would always make egg drop soup on the fly. All it consisted of was boxed rang-free chicken broth and eggs. Those are potentially SCD legal ingredients! So I grabbed my leftover chicken still in the crock-pot and scooped out all of the gelatin-ized  juices. There was only about 2 cups but that is enough for one bowl. Perfect. I then heated up this goop and strained out all the icky chicken parts. Then all that is left to do is bring to a boil, scramble an egg or two and toss it in! Yay! Homemade Chinese food without the bad-tummy feeling. No corn syrup either! So here is the recap:

2 cups chicken stock (homemade)

Bring to a boil

1 or 2 Eggs (depending on how eggy you like your egg drop soup)

Scramble in a separate bowl like you're making breakfast. Then slowly drizzle the eggs into the boiling broth, as soon as the egg hits the liquid take a chop stick (or the like) and wave it back and forth to create ribbons out of the egg.

Voila. that's it. I added a little garlic powder (1/2 tsp), and white pepper (1/2 tsp), and of course salt (1/2 Tbsp)



Make sure you add enough salt, that is what gives egg drop soup it's distinctive flavor.

Baked Papaya

For a new twist on dessert, try this fruity South American traditional treat. Cut a papaya in half and save the seeds (they are good for assorted uses like salad dressings, etc). Slice the skin off of the papaya and place the halves face down in a baking dish. Fill shallowly with water. Then sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top. Bake at 350 for about an hour or until fork tender. Then slice off a piece and sprinkle lime juice on top!

Hot 'n' Crispy Cauliflower Tader-Tots

I saw the recipe posted for these things here and I immediately started craving them. I was not sure how close to actual potato tader tots they would turn out to taste like but by the picture I knew they would be worth the try. For such a small snack it is rather labor intensive, but I assure you it is well worth it because they taste like the real thing. Here is what I did:


Par-boiled an entire head's worth of cauliflower until just fork tender, not too much

Put all of that cauliflower into my Vitamix machine on about speed setting 7 and blended until only slightly chunky, mostly puree.

Add 4 whipped egg whites (make sure your cauliflower isn't so hot it cooks them)
Add 1/3 cup white cheese (I used Montery Jack)
Add 1/4 cup of yogurt
Add 1 tablespoon of garlic powder
Add 2 teaspoons of white pepper
Few Tbsp coconut oil

Mix the above well and since I don't own pastry bags cut the tip off of a ziploc bag and spoon into the open end, then pipe out shapes onto a baking sheet and place in oven at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Once these are done, get some coconut oil hot in a frying pan (not much is needed) and plop on the tots!

Fry until golden brown and crispy.

Then load on the salt and chow down.

The whole head of cauliflower tots were devoured in one evening....leftovers? Psh.

Carrot Cake & Frosting & an Update

If you have extra carrots laying around, and a spare full dozen of eggs- then here is the perfect recipe for you. This, of all the SCD carrot cake recipes I found, appealed to me the most because it only uses 1 & 1/8 cup of [coconut] flour and it makes an entire 9x13 pan of cake. Perfect for entertaining even non-SCDers. Here is the original recipe & here is what I did:

1 cup honey
1/2 cup melted butter
12 eggs
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
1 1/8 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
4 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
3 cups shredded carrots (about 6 medium)
handful of walnuts & raisins

I shredded my carrots in about 10 seconds with my Vitamix and chopped my walnuts in my Vitamix in literally 1 second. Mix all the ingredients together, saving the flour, carrots, walnuts, and raisins for folding in last.

Grease a 9x13 baking dish with some olive oil (i use my fingers and about 1/2 tablespoon of oil) and pour in the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees until a toothpick comes out clean or you can touch the top and it bounces back.


To make frosting:

1 cup Greek-dripped yogurt
1 cup honey
1/4 to 1/2 cup butter

Mix well, enjoy. I like this recipe and will be making it again, although my cake didn't have a lot of flavor. Maybe I will try using the entire 1 cup of butter the original recipe calls for next time; but it provides the cake-y texture you tend to crave.

As for me, I have not written anything about my health in a while so if you care to know here it goes: In my most recent updating post I wrote that I started seeing a naturopathic doctor. This has helped more than I thought it would. Staying on SCD was making me better, but at such a slow pace I was concerned. My doctor told me to limit my fruits to only 2 servings a day, and not to eat fruit in conjunction with any other food. I also learned that I am hypoglycemic meaning that my blood sugar  levels spike and drop all of the time. For this I am supposed to eat something every 2 hours (which I have no problem with!). I started taking some Standard Process Whole Food Supplements (okra pepsin, an enzyme, and chlorophyll) which are supposed to help digest foods and clean out the walls of the intestines where the inflammation that is the result/cause of Crohn's hides. It took about a month but after I started taking these supplements in conjunction with my diet I started noticing good changes. My loud noises that I used to get rumbling in the bottom of my stomach, that are as embarrassing as anything, are gone. Once in a while I will hear something but it is like once a week and only for a second compared to everyday for hours on end. I have more energy. The case used to be I could select one or two chores to accomplish each day and that would be all that I could handle, just short of passing out. I would get a few things done and then be stuck on the couch the rest of the day on the edge of falling asleep. Now, for example, I have spent the last couple of days running errands and cleaning my house non-stop. It's wonderful! I did get tired about mid-way through the second day of doing chores but I know I am still sick- this is an improvement though. And most exciting [for me] of all- the bleeding is almost completely gone. Even through my entire 9 month journey of SCD I still had frequent blood loss associated with Crohn's. This is disappearing. Since I have started taking these supplements I can say that I notice this symptom very rarely, if at all. In addition bathroom trips are as they should be, without pain, frequency, urgency, or nastiness. Yay!

Per the advice of my doctor I also had a hair analysis done. If you are not familiar with this then please Google it. Basically I took a sample of my hair and sent it into a lab to get it evaluated for minerals and elements that are essential to our bodies functions. Turns out I have a serious Zinc overload, way too much aluminum, and even some mercury. I wasn't getting nearly enough salt and so the other compounds my body needs like calcium, manganese, etc, are not getting into the cells that need them. To fix this my doctor told me to eat Celtic Sea Salt everyday (other salts are washed and void of any nutritional value), eat 2 Brazil nuts for vitamin E everyday, and added one more supplement (Congaplex) to my regimen. On it's own this supplement contains many non-legal ingredients but I trust the advice of my doctor (after seeing these kind of results) more than a book written for everyone. I hope to continue to see good results and hopefully at my next 3-month visit I will be able to incorporate some raw foods into my diet (?). We will see.

Road Tripping & Traveling on SCD

Recently I took 2 separate 12 hour each way round-trips to Florida. That is 48 hours in a car within two weeks, which adds up to 8 meals and 9 snacks. I stayed three nights in a hotel, and a whole lot more nights in an in-process renovation house with concrete floor and no refrigerator. At the current moment I can only eat completely cooked fruits and vegetables. Needless to say, I learned a few tricks about traveling while on the SCD. Here are 10 tricks & rules to abide by:


1. Bring a cooler if possible. (and bring a gas grill too like this one.)

2. If staying at a hotel, ask for a room with a mini-fridge and a microwave.

3. Make tons of yogurt ahead of time. You want to have enough to eat everyday while you are gone and at least two days worth for when you get back home, that will give you enough time to make more.

4. Know where the grocery store is located.

5. If traveling by car know before you leave all of your meals for the next two days at least. Cook enough food for the day of travel and store it in your cooler, have at least breakfast and lunch for the next day pack too, in case you can't get to a grocery store or place to cook food by the next day.

6. Have plenty of "snack-y" foods on hand. Things like whole nuts, pickles, olives, SCD Crackers, applesauce, dried fruits, cheese slices, SCD cookies, etc.

7. Freeze your leftovers at home before you leave so when you come back, dead tired, and need a vacation from your vacation you don't immediately walk in your home, know your refrigerator is empty, and have to worry about what to eat because you are starving.

8. Cook simple foods and implement condiments like SCD legal hot sauce and mustard. I cannot tell you how many days in a row I ate chicken 2 to 3 times a day but mixing and matching condiments made it tolerable.

9. If you will not have easy access to a stove or an oven, bring a camping grill along with a small propane tank and grill away!

10. Please don't forget your eating utensils and dishes, disposable ones work great while away from home, so even when you are eating in the car the last think on your mind will be dish soap or finding where on Route 66 to find a fork.

I survived off of the following for a meal plan in the car:

Brought a 16-can capacity Igloo cooler and sat it next to me along with a bottle of local honey. I packed one Gladware container full of yogurt, one Gladware container full of cooked chicken tenders and a few pieces of cold, cooked broccoli next to the chicken, one baggy of legal pickles, one Gladware container full of cooked fruits, a Ziploc bag with 3 to 4 cookies in it, and a small Ziploc bag of dried fruits like prunes. For breakfast I woke up early enough to cook myself eggs, although I had the option to bring boiled eggs in the cooler I just don't like boiled eggs. Then for a 10 o'clock snack I would eat either fruit or yogurt, then lunch time I would eat chicken and pickles or cold veg and mustard (if I had room in the cooler for condiments), then for a 3 o'clock snack I would eat a cookie or two, then for dinner I would eat the other half of my container of chicken and another pickle, then for a 6 o'clock snack I would eat yogurt or fruit again. If I was still hungry I still had a few cookies and pickles to chose from or some dried fruit. It is not the most glamorous days worth of eating but it kept me full and didn't taste half-bad at all. I was very anxious before the initial road trip but after doing it 4 times in two weeks I feel very comfortable with eating and traveling. Even the smallest tasks can seem overwhelming when you are on such a strict diet, knowing what one mess-up can make you feel like. But hopefully these tips can help someone else not be so nervous as well.

Chicago Style SCD Pizza

What makes it Chicago style? The cheese is on the bottom, of course- toppings on, well, top!
This is my adaptation of Deep Dish Pizza from Comfy Belly. I will be making this recipe on a regular basis, this is one of my new favorites. Nothing replaces the taste of warm, melty cheese on a crust with rich tomatoes to top it off! The original recipe noted that you could use shredded cheese as a moisture barrier between the crust and the toppings, but i used both slices and shredded cheese and I think the slices provided a much more consistent texture and served a better purpose. Here's how it goes:

For the crust- this is "deep dish" compared to other SCD pizza recipes with a very thin, edgless crust so use a pie pan:

1 and 1/2 Cups Almond Flour
1/2 Cup Shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese
Sprinkle of basil or oregano
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Egg

4 slices of any white cheese (I used Monterey Jack)

Mix all ingredients together, mashing the cheese, so that it forms a consistency that seems like it will stick enough to form into the pie pan. Then place the cheese slices across the bottom of the crust to form a "barrier"-like setting so that the veggies and such don't make the crust soggy. Bake for about 8 minutes, until the cheese just starts to bubble.

Use any combo of veggies (and/or meats) you wish, I used:

Artichoke Hearts, halved
Sliced Tomato
Sliced Black Olives
Sliced Mushrooms

Put the veggies on an oven safe plate and bake at about 400 degrees for around 8 minutes, enough to get their "juices" to come out, so they are holding less water.

Add the veggies to the crust/cheese pie and I added some dollops of SCD-legal tomato sauce on top as well.

Bake at 400 for another 8 to 10 minutes, until everything is nice- warm & melty. Then use a pizza slicer (I had to dig mine out of the back of my drawer, I hadn't used it in so long!) and dig in!

Delicious!!