Eating Vegan with Crohn's Disease

Groundnut Stew and Fufu

A classic West African dish, this recipe is made with mostly premade ingredients for a super quick and satisfying meal. I omitted oil for this (coz Crohn’s) but for a more authentic feel and flavor, you’re really gonna wanna put some palm oil in it.

Groundnut (peanut) stew:

2 c tomato sauce (store bought pasta sauce, or get fancy and make your own)
4 tablespoons peanut butter
Grated ginger to taste
2 Tablespoons palm oil (optional)
Chopped medium tomato

Pour the sauce in a soup pot over medium heat. Drop in the peanut butter and stir until mixed in. If your sauce is homemade or chunky, hit it with an immersion blender for a smooth creamy consistency. Then add your grated ginger, palm oil if you want, and chopped up tomato. Simmer for 10-15 mins until you see the tomato doing it’s thing, making that special red color at the top of the soup.

Fufu:

1 cup Cassava flour aka fufu flour (in the “African” aisle of the international market, or if you’re lucky enough to have a dedicated west African market, look there)
2 cups Water
4 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional and not traditional, but adds a little more nutrients to the dish)

Mix the cassava flour (+ nutritional yeast if using) and water together by hand in a bowl. When it has become a smooth slurry with no lumps, pour it into a sauce pan and bring it to a boil, then stir constantly with a wooden spoon until it becomes thick and translucent. It might take a couple tries to get the knack of this process, but you’ll catch on. If you get stuck, there are lots of tutorials on YouTube and many different methods for making fufu. DONT STOP STIRRING. Once your fufu is set up, dump it onto a plate or bowl with a little water on the bottom to keep it from sticking. Let it cool down until you can handle it safely, then pinch it into dumplings and drop it on top of your soup.

I put a handful of microgreens from the farmers market on top of my soup. You can also add spinach, kale, collards, or your green of choice to this soup, or a sweet potato. Do you. It’s your friggen meal.

I have energy now!!!

In June the unexpected happened. As I was recovering from a flare, I started feeling levels of energy I haven’t felt in 2 years. I started taking a new thyroid medication with T3 in it late in May, and I think it is finally making a difference.

I am kind of in shock in the best way. I can’t believe it’s finally happened. I went back on birth control early in July, so we’ll see if that impacts the tyroid meds or no. But I can truly say I am thankful to have added liothironine to my health routine.

HELL YES

Coconut Curry

Cut into 1/2 inch pieces and heat in a dry soup pan:

2 small red bell peppers
1/2 sweet onion
1/2 large slicer tomato or 2 small tomatoes
1/2 medium sweet potato
Minced garlic cloves to taste
Grated fresh ginger to taste

Dump in 2 cans of coconut cream (not coconut milk — you want the thick cream with all the fat in it)

Sprinkle on top

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
Red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper to taste (I like aleppo pepper, you can also use garlic chili paste)
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
Fresh cracked black pepper
A handful of chopped cilantro

Stir, bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 mins. While it simmers, prepare

Chop a broccoli crown, or a bunch of broccolini
Coarsely chop a half cup of fresh basil leaves
Juice a lime into a small bowl or measuring cup

After ten mins, drop the broccoli on top and simmer for another 6 mins. Test the veg to see if everything is cooked thru. Serve into a bowl and top with fresh basil and lime juice.

You can serve it with rice if you want to, but the sweet potato probably has you covered for satiety, nutrients, and low glycemic starch.

The Lab Results are in…

It’s been 2 months since I last got my inflammation markers checked. In April, my C Reactive Protein level was 12. This is high and indicates I had an active Crohn’s flare. Yesterday my level was .3

.3 BITCHES

FUCK ALL THE GASTROENTEROLOGISTS AND GIVE ME A NOBEL PRIZE

The moral of the story is, yes, you can induce remission in Crohn’s disease with diet and rest as quickly as you can with steroids and/or remicade.

I look forward to getting results from other tests soon and then gloating to everyone about it.

Vegan Whole Food Lasagna

I spent the last 4 hours researching, planning, acquiring, concocting, and assembling this amazing dish. It’s in the oven now so I guess it’ll be a surprise for everyone how it tastes.

This lasagna uses thinly sliced eggplant and zucchini for noodles. I purchased a $20 mandolin for this experiment and only cut myself a little bit. I bought the sauce at the store. I made a couple nut cheeses and a fake meat ish thing for the filling.

Cashew ricotta

Soak 2 cups cashews in boiling water for 1 hour or overnight
Drain cashews and blend in food processor or blender until smooth
Add 2 cloves garlic, 1/2 cup Italian parsley, 1/2 nutritional yeast, and 1/2 teaspoon tumeric, blend until smooth
Finely chop fresh Italian parsley, oregano and thyme (amounts to taste) and stir in by hand

Mushroom walnut lentil pate

Sautee 16 oz mushrooms with 1/2 onion in 1/2 cup broth
Scoop our mushroom and onion into food processor, save liquid (keep in pot)
Blend mushroom, onion, and 1 cup walnuts to desired pate-like consistency.
Cook 1 cup dry lentils (I used green for better texture) in mushroom broth for 30 mins. Add additional liquid if necessary
Chop 1/4 cup Italian parsley and stir into pate with cooked lentils
Salt and pepper to taste

Alright. Now that you’ve spent about 2 hours doing that, turn on Erykah Badu’s album Mama’s Gun and dance in the kitchen as you assemble the lasagna. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Use a glass casserole dish. 1 medium eggplant and 1 zucchini will probably be all the veg noodles you need. Thinly slice them with a knife or mandolin.

Sauce on the bottom of the pan
Eggplant noodles layer (I recommend doing 2 layers of veg for each veg layer, it’ll help maintain the structure of the lasagna)
Cashew ricotta
Meat pate
Zucchini noodle layer
More sauce
Now is a good time to sprinkle some chopped fresh basil, or whole leaves of basil, or even spinach if you like that
More ricotta
More pate
Eggplant noodles
At this point, add some water or broth to the sauce jar to make it more liquidy and get all the sauce out. Pour that over top. The extra liquid will help all the flavors come together and to cook all the veg.
Top it off with ricotta, or if you’re like me and you ran out because you made some DANK layers, just whip up some more nut cheese for the top.
Finish with a dusting of nutritional yeast
Say a prayer and cook this sucker for 45 mins

Some other nut cheese topping

1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup walnuts
Some nut milk to get it going in the blender
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
Handful chopped onion and a garlic clove
This isn’t science I don’t even use a recipe

Alright! Hope that works out for you. No grains, no oils, nutrient dense, no added sugar, low salt, fucking MAGIC.

Erykah Badu, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Functional Medicine

On Friday I met with a new doctor. He is a functional medicine doctor at the institute for functional medicine at Cleveland clinic. We had about an hour long meeting, and by the end I was signed up for 40 blood and stool tests and a handful of supplements to help even out some of my body processes. This is more information than any doctor has ever gathered on my body.

My doctor told me I was on the right track with using diet to put Crohn’s in remission, and we would probably only need to tweak a few things to restore my vitality and banish fatigue. Wow! That’s a big confidence boost, considering the other doctor treating me for Crohn’s wouldn’t even DISCUSS diet with me.

Today marks the end of week 10 of my dietary intervention. I have not been drinking nutritional shakes daily for the last week or so. Instead, I am trying to shift to all solid foods. This week I started eating a lot more raw veggies, which have changed my BM patterns. I had 3 days of not perfect BM this week, but before this raw veg I had a 2 week streak of digestion perfection.

As I am incorporating raw veg, it has become much more important to CHEW!! I’ve noticed when I eat with friends that I take 3+ times longer to eat, because if I skip on the chewing phase I won’t digest all the nutrient goodies in my food. That big social difference is going to be a challenge. Raw veg also requires different enzymes and bacteria than cooked, so my guts and microbiome will need a little time to adjust to this new eating pattern.

I’ll leave you with this amazing recipe I enjoyed last night.

8 Week Report Back

8 weeks since I started my dietary intervention to put my Crohn’s flare in remission. I am now able to eat a wide variety of cooked veg, legumes, beans, and grains. I am trying to keep grains as a very minimal part of my diet, but I have noticed when I get a good blend of these foods in a day or meal my digestion is perfect and I feel nourished.

I tried adding in rice, oats, and lentils 2 weeks ago and they weren’t digesting. I took a full week of going hard on only fruits and veg, then came back to grains and legumes with success. Indian and Ethiopian veg combos greatly helped with this, offering a variety of flavors and veg with the grains and legumes.

Because I have been able to consume wheat without issue, I am assuming that I am not gluten intolerant or sensitive. I think it’s important to note that getting into remission requires a different diet than one would eat to maintain remission. Whether omitting gluten/grains helped because (1) grains cause intestinal permiability or because (2) I was able to eat more nutrients in an only fruit and veg diet is unknown. But the results speak for themselves.

I will continue to omit dairy as I am lactose intolerant, but also because I kinda think drinking cow mammary hormonal secretions is gross, and also because I don’t support the conditions cows are kept in, and also I don’t support the environmental impact of the dairy and meat industries. Having lactaid in my purse for eating restaurant food is a good idea, just in case there’s something in there I don’t know about.

My energy level is still not optimal, but I hope that I will see improvement thru the summer as I regain strength and have time to exercise. I garden whenever the weather provides. My whole yard is a garden so weeding is constant, in addition I am starting a number of new beds this year, which requires moving a lot of compost.

Two fitness goals for summer are to (1) develop a walking habit and (2) either start biking again, swim more, or go to my friends Sunday yoga class. Nothing too serious, but hopefully things I can continue into the school year and thru various seasons here in Ohio.

The most joyous part of the last week, however, was getting to see friends and spend quality time with them. Things I haven’t done in the last year and a half because of the pandemic. I feel supported and loved and realized that hugs are actually pretty nice after all.

Nutrient Dense Food Graphics

So you want to eat more plants. Great! But where should you start?

Different kinds of food have different amounts of the nutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, all that jazz). If you are aiming for optimal health, eating a diet rich in a variety of fruits and veg is important. As the following graphic shows, you can focus on fruits, beans, non-starchy veg and green veg to increase the amount of nutrients you are getting in each bite of food.

Here are some more specific details on some fruits…

Caloric Density of Fruit & Veg

Use this information to help you eat the appropriate amount of calories in a day. You can calculate how many calories your body needs with Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator. Common dieting sense holds that “a calorie is a calorie” and “calories in = calories out.” But that doesn’t tell the whole story of nutrition and foods. Whole foods have synergistic effects, meaning that you can’t use simple arithmetic to determine how fruits and veg will benefit your health. The sum is often times greater than the total of its parts.

Most people need to eat between 2000-3000 calories a day. This varies widely depending on your activity level, if you are ill or well, and what kinds of foods you are eating. All of that said, you can at least aim to eat ENOUGH of certain kinds of fruits and veg to ensure both (a) adequate caloric intake and (b) sufficient nutritional intake.

For optimal health (of both you and your gut microbiome) it is best to eat a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables.

Diet for Remission Update

I have reached the 6th week of my Crohn’s disease exclusion diet. Half of my daily calories are from enteral nutrition (Kate Farms chocolate flavor nutrition shake). Half of my calories are from fruits and vegetables, mostly smoothies, soups, and the occasional salad.

I actually guess I haven’t been following the diet, per se, because I am not eating the required foods, which include chicken and egg. I have eaten 2+ green bananas every day, and cooked and cooled potatoes most days. I have been eating a lot of blackberries, hemp seed and spinach in smoothies. I have also been eating carrots, celery, garlic, onions, and beets regularly in soup form. Salads usually have a lot of herbs, avocado, and some red leaf lettuce.

I have been tracking symptoms, mostly BMs. In the first week, I was having diarrhea every day. By the 5th week, I had diarrhea once, and this week has been pretty regular. However, I am still experiencing some abdominal pain, bloating and gas pain, and intense fatigue. (Fatigue coupled with difficulty sleeping! The best.)

Next week I will reduce the amount of enteral nutrition to 25% of my calories (from 4 shakes a day down to 2). I am also going to start juicing vegetables, so I can get some extra nutrients and enzymes not available in their cooked form.

I tried adding in some excluded foods, and this is what happened!

Phò caused me abdominal pain and bloating (possibly due to overeating)
Roasted broccoli didn’t digest at all
Brown rice didn’t digest at all
Oats didn’t digest
Lentils I think were fine? But hard to tell because I cooked them into a paste/soup consistency.
Nut butters and hemp seeds have been fine (and delicious)
Tofu, which gave me some problems before this flare, was terrible on my body!!! GI issues, plus nausea the next day. Killer tofu!!!

Based on this experience, I am definitely going to hold off on adding in more grains and legumes for now. I am going to focus instead on diversifying the vegetables I am eating. I am going to keep on with smoothies and soups, as those seem to go well, and add in raw juice.

We just finished the school year, so I have two solid months of health sabbatical until going back to work in August. It’ll be about 4 months in total, which seems like a long time, but 6 months is typically the time frame for mucosal healing.

We’ll see what the future holds.

Vegan Cream of Mushroom Soup

1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked for 30 min in 2 cups boiling water
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, stems off, caps cut into slices
1/2 medium onion, cut into moons
3 cloves garlic, diced
1T olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lemon thyme
A couple sprigs of fresh parsley

Sautee onions, garlic and mushrooms in a soup pot with 1T olive oil and water until onions are translucent. Puree cashews and 2 cups water in blender for 3 mins until creamy. Add cashew cream to mushrooms. Separate thyme leaves from stems and add to soup. Simmer 20 mins. Add Braggs liquid aminos to taste. Garnish with a few sprigs of fresh parsley.