Help needed: Very limited diet

[scottie]

I'm a student at the Natural Gourmet Cookery School, in NYC. Their Chef's Training Program is focussed on health-supportive cooking, which often includes foods for limited diets. We've had a wheat-free baking course, and the program is very conscious of vegan diets, as well as common food allergies such as nightshades.

I recommend checking out the website or even contacting the school- they are very helpful in finding resources for people with limited diets.

For sweeteneers, we often use agave syrup, brown rice syrup, and barley malt. The agave syrup has the best and least obtrusive flavor. For baking, sometimes we use date sugar, which is just ground dried dates, and that works pretty well.

If I were sensitive to dairy, I would miss it a lot. One thing we do at school for vegan desserts is, we use coconut milk and coconut cream a lot. I find the coconut cream really yummy- it has the same creamy mouthfeel as dairy, sometimes even better. All you do is scrape the more solid "cream" out of a can of coconut mik, then whip it in a food processor or blender to fluff it up. You can add flavorings, to, like lime zest or almond extract- anything, really.

If your brother can eat almonds, he ought to try home-made almond milk as well. Just take some almonds, soak them overnight, remove their skins, and grind them up in a blender with some water. Then strain it through a cheesecloth, squeezing as much as you can out of the nut meal. Boil the liquid a little to take out the raw flavor- you can simmer it longer to reduce it to a creamier consistency. It's a bit of a process, but it's another dairy substitute which I, as an omnivore, find delicious in its own right.

You can do the above with just about any nut. If you use cashews, you can make a "cheese" with the ground soaked nuts, which can be flavored and used as a dip, spread, or even a pasta filling (spelt, of course). The school has done cashew-cheese ravioli for the public dinners, and it was a hit.

Also, I would recommend that your brother try eating some naturally-fermented foods, as he is probably going to have to work to maintain a healthy probiotic level. Bubbie's brand sauerkraut and pickles are good for this, as is miso. Check out Asian grocery stores and macrobiotic cookbooks and websites for this.

Sorry this is such a long post! Good luck to your brother and I hope this helps. There's plenty of good food out there he can still eat- don't get discouraged and hang in there!