The Endometriosis Diet

So here's the deal about this new diet of mine. Since my endometriosis surgery, I've been following a special endo diet which is supposed to help prevent the (very likely) recurrence of the illness. There is ample explanation of the science behind that online (plus my Chinese herbalist had been telling me all along), so I was ready to buckle down and do it in spite of any sacrifices required. The diet at first seems really restrictive - no sugar, no dairy, no soy, no wheat, no processed foods - and I was bracing myself for a lot of suffering and deprivation. I had gotten myself Carolyn Levett's Endometriosis Cookbook online but it being an e-book, the print-out wasn't pretty and didn't look like anything to write home about. But honestly, this little Australian book has blown my mind! Every single thing I've made from it so far hasn't just been acceptable in a restricted-diet kind of way but absolutely fantastic. I am really, really impressed. This is not just a great cook book for people with endo, but a great cookbook, period. It's available at www.endo-resolved.com.

Here's the first thing I made from it - just a nice fruit salad, but with a dollop of fresh home-made dairy-free yogurt made from pine nuts, of all things - delicious!

Here's the pine nut yogurt in its jar - the creamy yogurt is on top, the whey at the bottom

and here's the fruit salad again, just so you can see evidence of the fact that I finally invested in a melon baller! Oh, and the green stuff is not parsley but chopped fresh mint.Recipe No. 2: an amazing lemon-garlic pasta with grilled veggies. It's hard to describe just how fabulous this was. So super-simple but very intensely flavorful. Gave it five stars.

the veggies wanted to sit on the stove for a bit before going into the oven...

Recipe No. 3: Grilled peppers and onions salad with a Nicoise olive and caper dressing. Great appetizer. Another five stars. Recipe No. 4: Oh my. This was so good. This is brown-rice pasta with a fresh Vietnamese pesto made with sweet Thai basil, cilantro, lime, fresh roasted peanuts, rock salt, a pinch of cinnamon and a good amount of fish sauce. Five and a half stars. Absolutely incredible.

A close up of the Vietnamese pesto...
Recipe No. 5: a banana pie for Ritesh. This is a raw, vegan pie with a walnut-almond-date crust (ok, I smuggled a bit of hazelnut butter in there too) and a banana-date topping. Should have used more fresh fruit on top, but we were low on strawberries, and the nectarines weren't quite ripe yet. And the topping didn't quite gel enough because I used too much lemon juice for the amount 0f agar-agar, so it was my fault, not the recipe's. But this rocked anyway. Definitely way more flavor than any old wheat-and-sugar based pie.
I also made a raw Italian pesto soup from the book but forgot to take a picture. But there'll be plenty more to come - I'm loving this book so much I have half a mind to cook my way trough the entire thing.