Low Histamine Recipes

I need these, like, today. This minute. Because it turns out stress and anxiety can SET OFF this MCAD  thing, and I'm stress enough about trying to figure it all out that I'm feeling worse right now than I have in weeks. Sigh.

This site looks like a good place to start, at least! Tons and tons of low histamine recipes, which it looks like I've gotta start eating, at least at first.
http://mastcellblog.wordpress.com/histaminerecipes/

At least I can still eat my falafel!

Seriously, this is my favorite meal

Melon Smoothies

As it's the season for melons, we've been getting a lot of them at the store. However, as I think I've mentioned before, I dislike the mouth feel of melons intensely. The taste never really does it for me, either.

However, since I made that last cantaloupe smoothie, I've been experimenting, and I'm in love with the melon smoothie, wow. Just awesome.

Seriously, LOVE this.

Cantaloupe smoothie - dairy free

OMG - I loved this so much!

Dairy free Cantaloupe smoothie

Can't even express the love for this

Roasted melon seeds

Winter squash are not the only gourds that have edible seeds. Many melons have them, too. You roast or pan fry these seeds and crack them open like sunflower seeds. In Egypt, watermelon seeds are a traditional snack food, actually!

So if you wish to try this snack out for yourself, here's how you do it.

Kale Chips

I just haven't made these in a while and kind of forgot about them. Wish I hadn't! They are SO easy to make, and the kids will eat them which is always a plus, just like the cauliflower.

A warning for the sulfite sensitive. If you react to anything in the brassica family, this may be problematic for you, so take care. I could eat it when I was reacting a bit less, so I hope that some day I may be able to eat it again. :-)

Roasted Cauliflower

I've been trying to find ways my children will eat more variety in their veggies - as this makes up a huge part of our diet - and finally found a way that they like cauliflower, yeaaa!

Roasted cauliflower. I used this recipe.

Basically, I chopped the cauliflower, roasted it around 400-425 with a little oil or melted animal fat and salt rubbed over them. The kids liked the smaller pieces that had more browned area the best. The bigger pieces didn't go over as well. I'd highly recommend this one!

It always feels great when you can find something the kids like to eat!

LOW HISTAMINE DIET - make this sucker as is. :-)

Socca - A French Flatbread

Socca is a completely grain free flatbread that comes from France. It's even a traditional grain-free flatbread, so no weird substitutions to alter the taste, woo hoo!

This stuff is SO easy to make, it's awesome. And it tastes good, too. My kids tell me it reminds them of the batter around a corn dog; I assume that's a positive review, heh.

Baked Apple Sorbet

I utterly love this stuff.

Baked Apple Sorbet

We cooked chopped gala apples (seeds removed but with peels still on) in a solar oven all day a few days ago. You could use a crock pot with a little added water, as well. They were nearly mush by the time they were done. We let them cool and then blended them all together until smooth, and then a little more. I blended until they looked almost a little frothy.

Melon sorbet...again

This week at the farmer's market I picked up something called a Galia melon, which is a Cantaloupe-honeydew cross, created in 1970. According to the All Powerful Internetz, the scent is how you tell this is ripe, as opposed to the melon becoming soft.

On the outside, it looks like this:

Looks like a Cantaloupe, right?

Roasted Chickpeas - Gluten free

Another recipes from my buffalo blog.

Great on-the-go snack

After realizing that there was such a thing as roasted chickpeas, I had to hunt down how people made this. The result is this recipe. I messed around with different techniques based on a few different recipes and found what worked for me (thanks go to choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com for the idea of cooking them before roasting). I also pared the ingredients down to the bone until they matched what we could eat.

Another recipe yoinked from my buffalo blog.

Roasted Bell-Pepper Sauce

Simple sauce, relatively cheap, and easy to make. Also involves food items that are frequently in season at the same time, so that’s a plus!  This sauce is GF, CF…a lot of F’s, really. It’s not nightshade free, however, and a lot of sulfite sensitive folks can't tolerate garlic, so leave that out if it's a problem. Still tastes great!

Honeydew Melon Sorbet

So, we tried yet another sorbet - they had honedew at the Farmer's market this week, woo hoo!

I looked at a lot of recipes for this on-line, and the most common addition for honeydew seems to be lime or lemon, so we went that route.

Falafel

I love falafel. It's a Middle Eastern, chickpea(garbanzo bean)-based, fried, crispy little pseudo-hush-puppy. These are awesome. I even managed non-onion versions, for those who can't tolerate high-sulfur foods.

If you can tolerate beans, though, these should be fine for you, I believe. But if beans are an issue, or only to be eaten when you have a low sulfite load for the day, this should be eaten with caution. Falafel is typically eaten with more Greek or Mediterranean sides, like hummus, but I've varied the herbs on numerous combinations to go with a variety of different cuisines - or in other words, I was desperate and bored and fiddled until I found something that worked.

A Mexican version of my falafel, with tomato and green chile

Watermelon-mint sorbet

Yes, I serve my sorbet on plants. Doesn't everyone?

This turned out just awesome. It was sweet, a teeny bit tart, and with an extra cool punch lingering just after you swallow a bite. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Could have eaten it all myself!

Easy Refried Beans

If you've never made refried beans before, no worries. They are so easy, you'll wonder why you never made them before.

Rice Milk

My son can have rice milk periodically, so today I'm making up a batch. Lundberg rice, so it's as gluten free as I can get it. I'm using a recipe from the Vegan Reader. It's worked well in the past, and I like the simplicity of the recipe.

Isn't it so pretty and white?

Watermelon Rind

I've heard of pickled watermelon rind, that Southern specialty, but I never realized how many different ways you could use watermelon rind, or even what it actually is.

I suppose I always thought it was the part of the watermelon that was left over, but I was wrong. It's the pale green part of the watermelon, in-between the outer skin and the pink inner flesh. One has to cut off the outer, dark-green skin, after you've eaten the pink skin, and that will leave you with the rind to use in recipes.

Asparagus Pesto

WOO HOO, CAMERA SUCCESS!!
Time: 10 min
(5 min. prep/ 5 min cook)

Faux Mexican Baked Beans

Time: 1-2 hours (plus overnight soaking time)
(5 min prep/1-2 hours hands-free cooking) (Add 8 hours for soaking, if needed)

Ingredients
1/2-1 pound dried beans - I tried Sangre de Toro beans (yeah, woo hoo, pretentious me), but black beans, kidney beans, or pinto beans would probably do great, too.
1-3 sweet potato
a fat of some kind - lard, oil, whatever you got. Optional, if you really can't have any.
sea salt to taste
seasonings to taste (I used crushed chile peppers, just a bit)

Pecan milk

Time: 8 hours 10 min
(8 hours soaking/ 10 min prep) Or, if you're like me, 40 hours, since I forgot I was doing this for over a day. Oops.

Ingredients
1 1/4 cup raw pecans, chopped
4 cups water
1/2 tsp. sea salt
agave syrup to taste (optional)