Cocunut baking products. Coconut-Almond Balls, Coconut/Ginger Cookies and Coconut Bread.

Today, Catherine and I are on day 24 of a 30 day candida cleanse, more on that later.  This is a pretty strict cleansing regime which put a lot of limits on what we could eat. The diet was primarily low-glycemic vegetables, quinoa and millet for grains, nuts and seeds, lemons/limes and good fats like olive oil, avocado and coconut oil. Coconut oil was highly recommended, especially virgin coconut oil, since it contains caprylic acid, a natural anti-fungal substance. In fact, the diet recommends just eating up to 5 tablespoons per day and I began doing so, a pretty yummy source of calories that I’d never really considered munching on before.

I’d first heard about eating coconut oil from Ultrapedestrian Ras who fueled his 200-mile Pigtail Challenge mostly with fat including coconut mana and almond butter.   Ras later went on to run the Grand Canyon sextuplet eating primarily coconut mana and almond butter.   I’d still never tried the fat fuel approach with running and instead ate homemade pinole and chia based foods.  But when corn, and almost all grains and carbs, are off your diet you turn to fat which is what I did during the cleanse.

Along with just eating coconut oil I began cooking with it in many dishes in place of olive oil.  It adds great flavor to eggs and stir fry dishes.   We also found that soy sauce (and all soy products) were off the list of foods but that there was a thing called Coconut Aminos which can be used in place of soy sauce.   I also started using more coconut milk for soups and curries, especially good when paired with coconut oil and aminos.

After three weeks in I was in some serious need of snack foods and something a bit more to fill me up.  I’d already dropped 14 lbs. during the cleanse and was about where I wanted my weight to be so I started looking into options.  What I found surprised me quite a bit – there was actually coconut flour and one could bake with it.   So, in the last few days I set about experimenting with coconut flour, coconut oil, coconut milk and shredded coconut to see what I could make.  Luckily the TheCandidaDiet.com has many good coconut recipes that really took care of my snack cravings.

First up – Coconut/Ginger Cookies.   These are kind of funky and not really the chocolate chip cookie I was craving but I actually found that they are pretty good and especially good when spread with almond butter on top.    They took about 5 minutes longer to bake than the recipe called for and they look a bit funky but they are fairly tasty.

Second – Coconut & Almond Balls.  These immediately rocked but why wouldn’t they, they are a ball of tasty fat basically.  These appear to be the perfect long-distance running fuel, made up mostly of almond butter and coconut oil with shredded coconut, coconut flour and coconut milk.   I did find that the initial batter was too runny to form into balls, maybe since I used freshly ground almond butter, but after about 20 minutes in the frig they were easy to form.

Third – Coconut Bread.   I gave up bread for the most part months ago, having it occasionally when we made a sandwich for hiking or at a restaurant which we rarely go to.   Then I found this recipe for a bread made from coconut and buckwheat flours and it is unbelievably good.