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.