If you’re doing GAPS, or just trying to avoid sugar and grains, and you miss cookies, I’ve got a solution for you: Jennie’s Coconut Macaroons!
I found them at the health food store (I’ve seen them at Whole Foods in Dallas, and our local Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica). Anytime I see them, I snap them up because they are so good. And totally GAPS legal!
I can even feed them to Kate because they are not made with grains or sugar.
Ingredients: coconut, honey, egg whites.
Just to clarify… Baby Kate is not doing the GAPS diet. I mean not officially. She’s just doing the WAPF baby diet, which turns out is very similar to GAPS. She gets lots of whole raw milk (I still make her the raw milk formula, which is designed to closely simulate breast milk), raw butter and cream and other good fats (duck and chicken fat, beef tallow, and coconut oil). She eats eggs and organ meats almost every day (usually liver, sometimes heart).
And muscle meats: chicken or duck with the skin and the fat, homemade roast beef with bone-broth-based gravy. Oh, and lots of soup made with bone broth. I like to put it in her sippy cup.
She also gets fish a few times a week: pole-caught tuna (with plenty of homemade coconut oil mayonnaise), salmon, shrimp, or soup — Thai lemongrass soup (made from Thai snapper fish stock) or miso soup (made from bonito fish stock). I think I’m also going to start giving her salmon roe. And of course, she gets her daily dose of cod liver oil.
She does eat vegetables and fruits — all organic and usually served with either butter or cream. She also gets lots of lacto-fermented foods (kefir, sauerkraut, yogurt, lacto-fermented ketchup and pickles, etc.)
For something sweet and nourishing, I feed her homemade ice cream (made with raw cream, egg yolks and a little maple syrup). She does not eat white sugar — but she does get maple syrup or honey. In her ice cream or yogurt. And in her macaroons!
I’m not feeding her grains until she is around two years old. I know, it seems odd if you’re not familiar with the Weston A. Price diet, especially the thing about waiting on the grains. But it turns out that babies do not have the enzymes needed to digest grains until they are around two years old. Around the same time they develop the molars needed to crush and grind grains.
Hi Ann Marie
I was going to buy those but I was bummed they were not organic. I have been seeing them around. Why don’t they make them organic?!
I’m not too worried about it not being organic. Coconut has a thick shell so even if the coconut trees are sprayed, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing is going to penetrate that shell. The fruits I worry about being organic are things like berries and peaches — I always buy those organic.
Honey is pretty much organic by default right? I mean, they don’t spray bee hives. And egg whites — OK those are not organic but I’m not too worried about it.
I’ve also heard that the farmers growing coconuts most likely DO NOT use pesticides as they cannot afford them. I can’t imagine bugs or others critters getting throught that shell for the sweet meat either. They would have to be pretty strong and determined bugs!
The issue with pesticides is not that is penetrates the fruit. It goes into the ground water and is sucked up by the plant. It becomes systemic. But I think I have also heard that coconuts are not sprayed anyway. I wonder what the difference is between organic and conventional honey. Anyone?
The issue with pesticide is not that it penetrates the fruit. It goes into the ground water and is sucked up by the plant. It becomes systemic. But I think I have also heard that coconuts are not sprayed anyway. I wonder what the difference is between organic and conventional honey. Anyone?
I’ve heard of bees being given medicine, i.e. antibiotics, for certain diseases and that this affects the quality of the honey. One day while I was hiking, I ran into a bee enthusiast that cautioned against buying “standard” honey in the grocery store. He said to buy honey from a producer that you know and trust, preferably local.
I’m not really trying to avoid grains, so I use sprouted spelt flour to make the best freaking chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had with raw butter, rapadura, Sweet Earth organic bittersweet chocolate chips, and a dollop of ghee. Yum.
Jeannette, can you PLEASE share this recipe PLEASE? Chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorite foods in the whole world.
I would also like to learn to make brownies the NT way (one of my other faves)
Do you use the Summers sprouted flour or do you grind your own?
Yes, Jennie’s are heavenly. I’ve been snooping around for a recipe that mimicks those….surely it can’t be difficult, but somehow I can never match the perfect chewy texture of Jennies!
I tried to make the macaroons from NT once — they came out awful. I had to throw them away. I’m still looking for a good recipe…
OHHHHH, I’ve made the macaroons from NT and they are GREAT! I didn’t use honey, but will try them again this time with maple syrup. Because we are dealing with some very serious diseases, we only do organic…we just can’t risk it. It’s a great “good” snack. My DH will eat them for breakfast with his coffee at work.
Sorry it took me so long to respond! I use Shiloh Farms sprouted spelt flour. Otherwise, the recipe I use is pretty much a standard chocolate chip recipe with the typical ingredients — vanilla, eggs, baking powder, sea salt, etc. I use 3/4 cup of rapadura, which is plenty sweet enough for me. I also add a heaping dollop of ghee, in addition to the raw butter, which gives the cookies a super yummy flavor. Of course, the Sweet Earth chocolate chips are amazing. I use the 65% dark chocolate.
Hi Cheeseslave, I like your blog so much. I’m interested in the GAPS diet as well and will be buying Dr. Natasha Campbell Mc Bride’s book.
Btw, coconuts should be organic. Nobody in the Philippines deliberately sprays coconuts. Coconut trees are so common, you can buy coconuts for $.33 a piece.
Would like to ask your permission to iadd your 10 ways to boost immunity to my blog. I will indicate your website address as well and credit you as the source.
Hi, Steph!
Sure you can add it.
Ann Marie
Steph, what is your blog address?
Thanks, Jeannette! I am going to try this recipe!
It’s awfully difficult and expensive to have truly organic honey. The difficulty arises in that we can’t get the darn bees to visit only organic plants…unless the hive is situated in the center of an organic farm that is more than 2 miles in diameter…and that’s a LOT of acres to have control over. I would suspect that only the largest corporately controlled farms are that big and still organic.
Hmm I guess so. I am not too worried about it I guess because I don’t eat that much honey and I think the pesticides in honey would be much less concentrated than in say, meat or dairy or even fruits and vegetables. I buy my honey from a local beekeeper who sells it at the farmer’s market.