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Special ingredients in my pantry


My pantry doesn’t look like a standard-American-diet (SAD) pantry.

What’s absent:

In my pantry you won’t find sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, molasses, corn syrup. 

In my pantry there’s no wheat flour, no cornmeal, no cornstarch. There are no breakfast oats (even though they’re supposedly “gluten free,” they don’t make EGE-FamilyMember’s gut happy). There’s no pasta, no substitute pastas, except for the 100% lentil kind.

There are no crackers, no cereals, no granolas, no snack bars (UC-FamilyMember ran through the SCD-qualified Larabars, and called it quits.)

Okay, full disclosure: there is a tiny jar of sugar so I can fill the hummingbird feeder in the winter. (In the summer the hummingbirds eat from all the flowers in my garden.) And, there’s a bag of rice for when we have visitors, and a bag of quinoa for when EGE-FamilyMember craves something different from our usual IBD-AID fare. But aside from those, our pantry is rather different.

What’s well-stocked:

What you will find in my pantry includes: almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, buckwheat flour, chickpea/garbanzo flour (also called besan). Organic, gluten-free tamari (a kind of soy sauce). Avocado oil, Coconut oil, three types of coconut milk (lite, regular, and coconut cream), and coconut aminos*. Avocado-based paleo mayonnaise, as a little luxury, because I don’t like cleaning the blender from making homemade.

My fridge has a full shelf devoted to nuts and dried fruits. My fridge door has plenty of bottled stuff, like many people’s, but all of mine are the result of careful label-reading. Flaxseed meal and chia seeds are stored in the fridge, to extend shelf life. Most of the shelves are packed with vegetables, or a few glass containers of leftovers.

My freezer is really different. There you’ll find lots of frozen cauliflower rice, for when I’m in a hurry. There is a slide-out drawer in my freezer, and it’s overflowing with zip-lock baggies with small portions of homemade sauces—like homemade oyster sauce, homemade jam—it’s easier to make a bigger batch and freeze part for later. There are frozen ingredients—like a bag of jalapeño peppers, and one of serranos, a bag containing cubes of frozen lime juice, a plastic tubbie with tablespoons of tomato paste, for when you need just a little bit. 

Also lots of portions of IBD-AID baked goods, stashed away for future snacks.

* Note: coconut aminos are SCD-illegal, and IBD-AID doesn’t approve of them. Many paleo recipes call for them, and Chef Mom used them extensively with no ill effects before discovering IBD-AID. Chef Mom now uses tamari, although UC-FamilyMember prefers coconut aminos. 

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