My weird diet

I was slogging along in a very comfortable culinary rut when all this candida nonsense upset my apple cart. Thankfully it happened in stages or I may have really lost my cooking confidence all together. In which case my diet would most likely be 97% comprised of almonds, rather than it's current 55%. Saying goodbye to my cooking and baking flavor crutches like balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, and dried fruit was temporarily paralyzing, but gave me the impetus to actually expand my repertoire and maybe even read a new recipe for a change.

I don't know how long it had been since I had actually followed a (non-baking) recipe and not just picked out the parts that fitted in with my (clearly superior) flavor scheme and preparation methods. The kitchen seems to be a place where hubris affects even the most modest of persons once they get a few good tricks under their belt, and for those of us who aren't the most modest of persons, well, keep your mouth shut and your dish washing gloves on if you find yourself unlucky enough to be trapped in a kitchen with one of us! As a non-confrontational weenie, I've learned to stick with fetching ingredients and professing awe when in the presence of another kitchen ego.

Of course, on those (oh so rare) occasions when the food dragon has taken hold of my sanity, questioning my over garlic-ed, hot pot-dependant, every vegetable in the fridge methods may result in some passive-aggressive wrath. I can't help but smirk every time I remember starting an argument with a boyfriend over the temperature of water he was adding to the pasta (he was wrong! oh yeah, and I was hungry). Ahhh, whole wheat pasta...God knows I'd be delighted to eat it with ice cold top off water these days!

Thankfully there are almonds to keep my caloric intake up and the food dragon at bay, so I can keep a sense of humor even when I have misadventures in pancakes. Below you will see four beautiful, carb free, green chili pancakes! There are four and they are tiny because the rest of the batter was lost in batches of crumb piles as I tweaked the recipe until I came upon the right combo of nut flours and xanthum gum and baking powder. They were slightly gooey in the middle, but very delicious!