A Date With A Diet

I knew exactly who to go to for an almonds-themed recipe. Rather than recount the story of a friend's "crazy diet", as he calls it, he was kind enough to add the personal touch himself:

People may not know that I have a chronic, incurable medical condition known as ulcerative colitis. That's because I'm pretty heavily medicated on it now, and am able to get by with 99.99% normalcy. However, a few years back I took a sabbatical from medications and tried maintaining my health with all sorts of crazy diets: low fat, low residue, no roughage, no sugars, high omega-3s, high supplements, and, for about 7 months, one particular diet known as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. The idea behind the diet is to eliminate all complex sugars — only allowing monosaccharrides. This means no sugar, lactose, maltose or isomaltose (which eliminated most breads and starches as well) — to the point where you aren't even allowed to use most store bought spices since they contain unlabeled anti-caking starches... it's a pretty fanatical diet and for awhile I was as big a zealot as they come. I learned to use honey, a 'predigested' sugar, to sweeten things, as well almond flour to cook my own cookies, muffins, breads, cakes, and more. Working with almond flour is trickier, as it's denser, contains a lot of oil and fat, and has a much more 'mealy' texture than flour, but you can get some decent results with it. However, everything you make will basically have the calorie count of a powerbar — which, for being on that diet was a good thing! In the long run the diet didn't maintain my weight or health, but there many who have remained on the diet for decades. Good for them — it was fun to revisit almond flour for an evening, but I don't miss it!

-Joe Mirabello-

Recipes

We made two recipes, "Cinnamon Cookies" from Lucy's Specific Carbohydrate Diet Cookbook and "Noodles with Roast Pork with Almond Sauce. The second recipe would not have been legal for Joe's diet, but used almond butter — which we thought was interesting.

The recipe for the cookies:

Cinnamon Cookies

• 4 tablespoons butter, melted


• 1/3 cup honey


• 1 teaspoon cinnamon


• 1/8 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda


• 2 cups blanched almond flour

Place butter in a mixing bowl. Add all other ingredients, except pecans, stirring the flour in last. Form dough into 1-inch diameter balls and place on a buttered cookie sheet. Press a pecan half into each ball to flatten. If not using pecans, flatten cookies with the back of a fork.

Bake at 275 degrees F for 10-15 minutes, or until done.

Pictures!