Brozyna - Easy paleo meals : 150 gluten-free, dairy-free family favorites

150 gluten-free,
dairy-free
family favorites

KELLY V. BROZYNA

from The Spunky Coconut

VICTORY BELT PUBLISHING INC.
VASVEGAS

First Published in 2015 by Victory Belt Publishing Inc.

Copyright 2015 Kelly V. Brozyna

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-628600-85-8

This book is for entertainment purposes. The publisher and author of this cookbook are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any adverse effects arising directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided in this book.

Photography: Kelly V. Brozyna

Design: Yordan Terziev and Boryana Yordanova

Printed in the U.S.A.

RRD 0115

When I was in elementary school, we put on a play where we dressed in leotards and wore animal masks of our own making. I can still remember the way I looked in the photo from that play: slim-figured, but with a huge round belly. I had stomach pain to go with the bloating, and I was always constipated. The doctor told my mom to give me prunes, which unfortunately did nothing whatsoever to help.

In high school, I hunched my shoulders and wrapped my arms around my waist to try to conceal how bloated I was. In college, I decided that my enormous belly was fat, so I dieted like crazy in an effort to get rid of it. Although it was less noticeable when I lost weight, I was as constipated and unhealthy as ever.

Until I had children, I thought I was normal. I thought everyone pooped only once a week. I often looked like I was six months pregnant. Thats how everybody is, I thought.

I was misdiagnosed twice. First a doctor thought I had a stomach ulcer because I was having horrible pain followed by vomiting. (Vomiting was not a regular symptom of mine.) A year later, a different doctor thought I had a parasite. He gave me mega-doses of antibiotics (which I took), and then he found out that it wasnt a parasite after all. Just keep taking the antibiotics, he encouraged me. Whatevers wrong, it cant hurt to take them. (Currently slapping my palm to my forehead.) That time I lost around forty pounds in two months. I looked like a skeleton.

The pain, bloating, and constipation continued, but I just lived with it, and my weight fluctuated.

When my oldest daughter, Zoe, began eating solid food, she stopped growing and gaining weight. When my in-laws came to visit, I wished that they wouldnt take her photo, because she looked so unhealthy. I went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong. Then an osteopath suggested that I go see a nutritionist. The person he recommended, Cheryl Diane, turned out to be a family friend. Sometimes the person you need is right there all along!

Cheryl told me about EnteroLab, the laboratory that I still recommend for gluten testing. We found out that Zoe is gluten and dairy intolerant. I removed gluten and dairy from her diet and, for the first time in a year, twenty-four-month-old Zoe gained weight. She gained five pounds immediately. Not only that, but she transformed into a different child. Her behavior had been crazy: She would run away from me, right into the road. She constantly scratched my face so that it looked like I had been clawed by a cat. The minute I stopped feeding her gluten and dairy, all of that stopped.

At first I blamed Zoes condition on my skinny husband. You cant gain weight, I said. The gene must have come from you. So Andy was tested and found to be intolerant of gluten and dairy, like Zoe.

Could I be gluten and dairy intolerant, too? No way. After all, I was normal, right?

My denial went on for a few more months, but I refused to make six meals a day: one meal with gluten and one gluten-free meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No, thank you. So we all went gluten-free at home, and I cheated when I was out. Oh, baby, that hurt. Literally. I insisted that it was a coincidence, until one night it hurt too much to deny anymore.

I sent my samples to EnteroLab, and guess what? I have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that leads to intestinal damage, nutritional deficiency, and other serious health problems when gluten is consumed. Back then, in 2004, it was a real bummer. No one, except for medical specialists and professional bakers, knew what gluten was, nor had they ever heard of celiac disease. There wasnt a plethora of gluten-free recipes in books and online or a wide variety of prepared gluten-free foods on grocery store shelves like there is today. Whats more, I wasnt an avid home cook at that time; I relied quite a bit on prepared foods and dining out, both of which, to be on the safe side, would need to be eliminated. Simply put, I didnt know how to eat without prepared foods, and I worried about how I would live without them. Cheryl told me to bake with almond flour and coconut flour. Do what, now?!? But I trusted her, so I bought almond flour and coconut flour. I also bought the book Cooking with Coconut Flour by Bruce Fife. And thats how it all began.

At first, we werent consciously trying to eat grain-free, just gluten-free. For the first several years I used buckwheat flour occasionally, and we ate quinoa, both of which are considered pseudo-grains. I dont remember ever thinking that buckwheat and quinoa were causing us issues, but my second daughter, Ashley, and I did react to brown rice every time we ate it. A few times a week we would have brown rice pasta or stir-fry with brown rice, and we would get painfully bloated and gassy.

My friend Shirley Braden, creator of the blog Gluten-Free Easily, encouraged me to prepare grain-free meals to see if it would make a difference for Ashley, but I was reluctant. Then one day in 2010, after Ashley ate a big bowl of brown rice noodles, she sat down on the couch and just stared at the wall for an hour. It freaked me out.

So that was itno more brown rice or brown rice pasta. I even cut out pseudo-grains just to be safe. We were officially Paleo. We became Paleo because it was necessary, but I tell you honestly: we have never eaten such delicious food in our lives! If someone told me that I could go back to my old ways of eating tomorrow, I would have to say, Thats okay, Im good!

Though eating the way we dogluten-free, grain-free, and dairy-freehas helped all of us thrive, its effect on Ashley, my second baby, has been the most dramatic by far.

When Ashley was four months old, she began having sudden seizures that lasted for two hours. Over the following week, her head increased 20 percent in size and developed bulges here and there. At the childrens hospital the staff performed a sonogram on the soft spot on her head to look for an accumulation of fluid in her brain. When that proved negative, the doctor wrote down head growth spurt as an explanation in her records.

From that night on, Ashley stopped developing. She also became intensely fearful. When she was a year old, we had her evaluated through our states early intervention program. The team found her level of development to be that of a four-month-old.

At eighteen months, Ashley was not only terrified all the time, but also banging her head on the floor and walls, flapping her arms, screeching, and stimming (engaging in self-stimulating repetitive behaviors). A developmental pediatrician diagnosed her with global delay, sensory processing disorder, hypotonia (low muscle tone), and autism.