Suzanne Graham

Yesterday DD made the best tasting power bars ever. She used one of our favorite recipes that used to be on this website in Recipe Central. I was going to link it, but it’s gone. Here is the basic recipe.

2 cups of nuts – your choice. Whatever is beneficial for your family.
4 cups of dried fruit – I always include 1 cup of prunes, because they help the bars hold together.

Spin the nuts in a food processor until they are powdery. Slowly add the dried fruit. Add large fruits first (like prunes and dates) Add smaller fruits last (like craisins, pineapple and cherries)

Spray a 9x9 baking dish with cooking spray. If you have a small rolling pin, use it to evenly spread the mixture in the pan. If you don’t have one, contact a Pampered Chef representative or pat the mixture in with your hands. Cut into bars. If you are eating them at home, you’re finished. That’s all there is to it. If you are taking them on an outing, put each bar in a plastic sandwich bag. You can eat it out of the bag without having to wash your hands.

DD and I have tried a lot of combinations, but yesterday’s was outstanding. She used one cop of pecans and 1/2 cup each of walnuts and pumpkin seeds for the nuts. For the fruit she used one cup each of dried prunes, dates, and pineapple. The last cup of fruit was mixed dried blueberries and cherries.

When she was making them, she called, “Mom come look at these power bars. They look like Play Dough.” Usually when we take the mixture out of the food processor it sticks together in a ball, but is easily pliable. This mixture was stiff. It felt like Play Dough. She had to work a little harder to get it to spread out in the pan.

DD had a day off work, so we went to a water park. We played hard all day, and about 4:00 sat down by the pool and opened our power bars. Oh they were good! There were no avoids, and there were beneficials for both As and Os.

DD has been experimenting with nut butters this summer. Nut butter sandwiches on Ezekiel bread are easy to take to work and beneficial for Type As.

I had always made almond butter and pumpkin seed butter. Almond butter is very expensive, and I’ve never seen pumpkin seed butter in the store. However, I always bought peanut butter for DD and my husband. Natural peanut butter is cheap and easy to find.

However DD decided to try making her own. She used unsalted, dry roasted peanuts. It worked beautifully, and smelled heavenly. It made me wish that Type Os could have peanuts. One day I watched her make it. She put one jar of dry roasted nuts in the food processor, and started it spinning. “Now, Mom,” she said, “just when you think that it’s going to be too dry and you will need to add olive oil, suddenly, like magic, it becomes beautifully creamy.” She was right. Just as the food processor seemed ready to give up, the peanut butter turned creamy before our eyes. It’s fresh and it’s half the cost of peanut butter in a jar.

Next she decided to try pecan butter. She used raw pecans. They quickly became smooth and creamy. Pecan butter on carrots is a delicious snack. If you like nut butters, you must try this one. It’s heavenly.

I have been distracted this week because my husband was sick. He ran fever for a full week. He went to the doctor twice. His symptoms were very mixed up, and the doctor finally decided he had two simultaneous infections. He stayed free of fever all day today, and his other symptoms are improving.

Stress is the single biggest risk factor for many diseases. HH has been under a lot of stress lately. Some of it is just part of life, but some has been self imposed. He paid a big price for his worrying.

I read a photography newsletter published in Chicago. The editor complains that the weather has been cool and rainy. He laments that they are not having a summer. Those of us in South Texas would love to trade places with him. Our drought and over 100 degree temperatures continue.

Our electricity bill goes up every time the temperature goes up. HH raised the thermostat in the house to 80 degrees. We have fans running in every room. It’s hard to get excited about cooking when it’s so hot. However, it is delightful to have something cool to drink.

Last winter I saw guava juice in the store. I can see the cardboard carton that it was in, but when I looked last week, I couldn’t find it. However, I did find a bottle of concentrated goji juice. Since goji is beneficial, I bought some. I’ve been mixing it with club soda. Today I mixed it with club soda and grapefruit juice. The combination was good.

I’m drinking more grapefruit juice because it helps reduce cholesterol, and my next cholesterol test is coming up later in July. Goji is best known for its anti-oxidant and anti-ageing properties, but it also helps cholesterol.

The benefits make the combination sound healthful for me. Even better is how it feels when I drink it in a glass full of ice sitting at the computer with the lights off and the fan on.

Our family loves to watch movies. My first date with HH was to a movie. We purchased our first VCR because SS was such a fussy baby that we dared not take him to a theater. When the kids were growing up, we looked forward to Friday “dinner and a movie” on the living room floor. Because I was a health nut, I bought an air popcorn popper – no palm oil or microwave popcorn for my family.

After the BTD, I gave up popcorn, but still made it for HH and DD since corn was a neutral food for them. Then HH’s blood sugar went over the line into pre-diabetes territory, and popcorn was banned from the living room. We all missed it. DD loves to look in the Blood Type Diet Recipe Center for new foods to try. She found a recipe for a popcorn substitute. We have made it twice now with our Friday night movies.

The first time we made it, we had serious doubts about whether it would work. We were “popping” walnuts and pumpkin seeds in a covered sauce pan as if they were popcorn. But it works just like the recipe says. You hear the pumpkin seeds start to pop, and you shake the sauce pan to keep them from burning. When the popping stops, they are ready.

We have not added the nutritional yeast. I know I would like it – I eat nutritional yeast in my breakfast every morning. However, we wanted the flavor to be as much like popcorn as possible for HH, and nutritional yeast can be a little strong for the uninitiated. DD, SS and I love faux popcorn. DD thinks it is better than the real thing. HH would still prefer popcorn, but since that is not an option, he is willing to accept this as an alternative.

The popped seeds have a roasted flavor similar to popcorn, but they are delicious in their own right. The biggest difference between popcorn and faux popcorn is that the popcorn is mostly air, so you can eat a lot of it. Since these are nuts, you wouldn’t want to eat a whole bowlful. Type “faux” in the search box in the Recipe Center and you’ll find detailed instructions.

I cooked lunch for my Mom on Sunday, and put together a nice vegetable combination.

She lives close enough to the coast that it’s easy to get wild caught Gulf shrimp. Sunday morning we went to the grocery store to buy shrimp to steam. Right next to the shrimp was a small piece of salmon, so I bought that as well. Mom had carrots and yellow squash in her refrigerator that needed to be eaten soon. I also wanted a green vegetable, and the okra looked good.

When we got back to the house, I put the salmon in the oven. On impulse I decided to stir fry the three vegetables together. The natural juices from the okra provided enough moisture that I didn’t have to add water at all. When the vegetables were almost done, I sprinkled on a generous amount of ginger powder. At the last minute, I steamed the shrimp. Lunch was ready.

Mom and I thought the ginger vegetables were really good. Okra and tomatoes cooked together are common, but I’m not sure I’ve seen okra cooked with other vegetables. Because they were stir fried without water, they were still crisp, rather than limply floating in a pool of juice. I will try this combination on my family soon.

Our church had a brunch between Bible Study and Worship on Easter Sunday. The lady who was planning it told me she had an oversupply of desserts, so I said I would bring stuffed eggs. That was a challenge, because sometimes my hard boiled eggs turn out perfect, but sometimes I can’t get the shell off without tearing the egg to pieces.

I went to the internet, read at least 10 recipes, and watched several You Tube videos. Each said theirs was the perfect way to cook hard boiled eggs, but each was different. I was cooking eggs for my church – I had wanted a consensus.

First I looked for points of agreement. They all agreed that using old eggs was better than using fresh eggs. I didn’t know that. I had 8 eggs in the fridge that were 2 weeks old, and a dozen that I had just bought. The statement about old eggs being easier to peel was true. I could identify the 8 old eggs as I was peeling them. Two sites said that adding a teaspoon of baking soda to the water changed the ph and made eggs easier to peel. I did this, and I think it helped, because even the fresh eggs peeled better than I expected.

Most sites said to put the eggs in tap water, and then turn on the heat. Two sites said put the eggs in boiling water. I went with the majority opinion. The temperature and cooking time varied a lot. I followed the recipe that said not to bring the eggs to a rolling boil, but to keep the temperature at a simmer where little bubbles were steadily coming up from the bottom of the pan. I cooked my eggs uncovered for 12 minutes after they started to boil.

Some sites said rinse the eggs in cold water; some said immerse them in ice water. I usually rinse in cold water, so this time I lifted the eggs out with a slotted spoon and quickly put them in ice water.

The most intriguing way to peel eggs was to take off a little bit of shell on both ends, and blow the egg out of the shell. I did not try this. I was preparing food for a church brunch, and I expected other cooks to use safe and sanitary methods. Blowing eggs will have to wait for a time when I’m cooking them only for myself.

The most common way to peel eggs was to roll them on the counter. I watched You Tube cooks get perfect eggs this way. It didn’t work for me. The eggs were peeling better than usual, but enough shell was sticking to leave indentations in the eggs. Still intrigued by the egg blowing technique, I removed a little bit of shell from both ends, and then held the egg under cool running water. There wasn’t enough pressure to push the egg out of the shell, but the water did seem to run under the membrane, and peeling was much easier.

Whether it was the 12 minute cooking time or the ice water bath, I don’t know, but there wasn’t a hint of gray or green on the yolks. They were a beautiful yellow. Pre-BTD I used a prepared dressing for stuffed eggs. This time I used half mayonnaise, half mustard, both made from neutral ingredients.

I liked the way they turned out – but would the church members? Indeed they did. I hardly brought any left overs home.

An Easter brunch is a great time of fellowship, but an Easter sermon should point us to the Savior. Here is a taste of what I heard last week – People will say some nice things about God. They may even show up in a church service and go through pious platitudes. They are comfortable talking about our culture, our country and our world. Everything will be ok as long as God doesn’t get pushy. As long as God doesn’t demand ownership, everything will be fine. Man would rather worship nature, a moral code, or himself (I can be a god) than face the all powerful creator-father God.

DD came home for the weekend to attend a training session for her summer job. Her roommate came with her to enjoy a few days of warm weather in the country. The roommate is also Type A, and she has been curious to watch how DD has eaten this semester. DD and I planned the weekend’s meals around beneficial foods that are favorites of hers. We had salmon (her family doesn’t eat much fish) and black eyed peas (which she gets only at New Years).

I wanted to fix spinach, because it is the most socially acceptable of the cooked greens. I suggested one of my favorites – spinach, raisins, and almonds - but DD reminded me that raisins are toxic for Teachers. So we used dried cherries instead. It was fabulous. I’ll never go back to raisins again.

Sunday night after they left, I had a craving for fried okra. Someone had posted on the Forum that they oven fried asparagus the same way I oven fry sweet potato chips. If it works for asparagus, why not okra? I poured thin film of light olive oil on a cookie sheet and added frozen chopped okra. I cooked it at 400 degrees, stirring every 5 minutes or so. I decided it was done when it was a little brown on the edges. That night when it was fresh and hot it was very good. I’ll admit it’s not as tasty as deep fried okra - usually coated in wheat flour and corn meal - but since that is no longer an option, this is a good substitute. I ate the left overs the next day. They were not as good – a night in the refrigerator cancelled all of the crispness.

I got my cholesterol report from when I gave blood in February. It is an improvement over my previous cholesterol report, but not quite what I had hoped. Last year my triglycerides were 72, and my ratio was 3.0 – both excellent readings. But for the first time in my life my LDL bumped above the magic 130 number. It was 150.

Some would have advised me to abandon beef and lamb which are so good for Type Os, but I knew better. I stayed with beneficial foods. I had become very liberal in my servings of beneficial oils and nuts. I cut those portions back within the BTD guidelines. I also added extra Vitamin B6.

The new report shows my triglycerides at 71 and my ratio at 2.9 – still excellent. My LDL has dropped to 135. I have let paperwork encroach on my exercise time way too often since my Dad passed away. I’ve missed the release of tension that exercise always gives me. Now I have a double reason for making sure that I don’t let desk duties distract me. I’ve also added some time release niacin just to make sure that the LDL isn’t sticking anywhere that it shouldn’t be. I’ll let you know what happens in six months.

I was at my Mom's over the weekend. The paperwork mountain is gradually being whittled away. I cooked for her on Sunday. We had steamed shrimp - a favorite for both of us. Alongside I fixed two vegetables that my husband does not like.

The first was yellow squash. Usually I fix it with onion, ghee, and salt. But Mom's blood pressure has been bouncing around a little. Sometimes high; sometimes low. We had already had Chinese take out, and I didn't want to over do the salt. So I was thinking beneficial no-salt seasoning, and curry came to mind. I cooked the onions until they were starting to get soft, then added sliced yellow squash and sprinkled curry powder over the top. Sorry I didn't measure. It was very good, and no salt was needed.

Mom loves greens, but my Dad didn't like them, so she got out of the habit of eating them. I picked up a bag of turnip greens from the freezer section at the grocery store. When she thinks of turnip greens, I know she thinks of cooking them in salt pork. I certainly didn't want to do that. I really wanted to make ginger greens (I blogged about that recipe a year or so ago), but I didn't have ginger juice. However, the store had a health food section, and I found dried ginger. I put half a bag of turnip greens in a sauce pan, swizzled some olive oil on top, and diced a handful of dried ginger. I cooked them on low heat so I wouldn't have to add water. The ginger flavor permeated the greens, and they were great. I should give DD credit for the idea. She told me she succesfully cooked carrots with dried ginger in the dorm microwave.

Two favorite vegetables, altered just a little because I was away from my own kitchen. Be bold! You can find new ways to fix old favorites.

I enjoy grilled onions. I serve them often, mixed with cooked greens or on top of beef. However, grilled onions seem to have lost popularity and are being replaced in restaurants with the more stylish “roasted onions”. The big difference seems to be that, in a restaurant, grilled onions often arrive swimming in fat, where roasted onions do not.

When I fix grilled onions at home, I cook them in just a little bit of ghee, so my onions aren’t “swimming” and ghee is a good fat. Grilled onions are also fast, and I am usually fixing my lunch at the last minute, when I am already hungry. But Tuesday, I got an early start decided to try roasting an onion at home.

As long as I was planning ahead, I decided to bake a sweet potato as well. When we moved to our new house, I blogged that my husband wanted a microwave oven, and that while I didn’t plan to use it often, it was sure nice to have a sweet potato on short notice. In that blog, I compared sweet potatoes cooked in the oven with microwaved sweet potatoes and noted that I liked oven baked sweet potatoes better. However, more often than not, in the past year, time has triumphed over taste, and I have microwaved my sweet potatoes.

So into the 400 degree oven went a sweet potato wrapped in foil, and an onion, cut in half in a covered mini casserole dish. I went back to work on the computer. Soon the house was filled with delicious smells.

The roasted onion was very good and full of flavor. Mine was juicier than restaurant roasted onions. Perhaps they don’t cover theirs, so they don’t steam as much in their natural juices. The sweet potato was delicious. I really must take the time to bake them in the oven more often. They are much better.

One more note about onions. Before the BTD the only onions I liked were fried onion rings. Because onions are super beneficial, I resolved to eat more of them, and eat them in a healthy way (rather than coated in wheat flour and deep fried). I was a little scared, so I began with sweet onions. The more I ate, the more I liked onions, and they became a regular part of my diet. As food prices have gone up, I have been forced to notice that sweet onions are consistently twice the price of yellow onions. With fear and trembling, I switched to yellow onions about a month ago. They burn my eyes a little more when I slice them, but they taste every bit as good – and frankly every bit as sweet – as the more expensive varieties.

Warning: if you are a BTD purist, you may not like this blog. However, if you are still struggling between following the BTD and enjoying old favorite foods, this might work for you.

My Honorable Husband is one of those who wants to be healthy, and wants to follow the BTD, but isn’t quite ready to make the break with foods he’s enjoyed all his life. Sometimes I try to make beneficial foods more enticing. Sometimes I try to make avoids more beneficial. I’m always nudging him toward greater compliance.

He tends to be a starch-a-tarian, and he loves Alfredo sauce. In a restaurant, if HH finds noodles with vegetables and chicken tossed in Alfredo sauce on the menu, he considers that to be an ideal BTD meal. DD, much more the purist, rolls her eyes.

When I began to prepare dinner tonight, I was facing a container of tofu that was about to go bad. HH denies liking tofu. But if I make a salad and put an equal number of chunks of tofu and soy cheese, he happily gobbles them both up. But tonight I had more tofu than I could hide in a salad, and I hate to let something good go to waste.

Then I had an idea. I had already started cooking ground turkey. I opened a jar of Alfredo sauce and put the tofu and an equal amount of Alfredo sauce in the food processor. I mixed them together and they were delightfully creamy.

He ate a large salad with a lot of beneficial vegetables and a bowl of noodles topped with ground turkey and 50/50 Alfredo/tofu sauce. He enjoyed his dinner, and complimented me on the sauce.

You decide. Is 50/50 sauce a compromise of principal? Or is it a clever way to get someone to enjoy an extra beneficial that they might otherwise have turned down? Not everyone will answer the same way. And that’s ok, because, after all, the Blood Type Diet is the one diet that recognizes the biochemical uniqueness of each individual.

The kids and I went shopping this afternoon. SS got a pair of khakis for his January internship, but DD and I escaped the stores with all of our money still in hand. As we drove home I realized it was late, and I had no plan at all for dinner. It had been a cold day, so chili sounded like a good idea. But as we talked, I realized it wasn’t going to be easy to please everyone.

DD didn’t want beef. She didn’t want chili powder or salt. She said that she would eat any kind of beans, but HH doesn’t like black beans. Pinto beans are avoid for me. SS said turkey chili would be acceptable, but he definitely wanted chili powder. I decided that in a two Blood Type family, you need two pots of chili.

I cooked one onion just until it was transparent and put half in one pan and half in another. In one pan I browned a pound of beef; in the other a pound of turkey. In the beef pan I put a can of black beans, two teaspoons of chili powder, and a Mexican seasoned salt that has cumin and red pepper. In the turkey pan I put a can of pinto beans, 1 ½ teaspoons of cumin, and a generous shake of garlic.

Both pans simmered while I made corn bread and salad.

I’ll admit that the chili I cook all day in the crock pot is more traditional. But for a fast meal on a cold day, this worked out fine. The As were happy. The Os were happy. Both pots of chili turned out good.

HH saw some beans soaking on the kitchen counter and asked what they were. “I’m fixing fava beans for myself tomorrow,” I told him. “You don’t like them.”
“How do you know I don’t like them?” he asked. “I don’t ever remember having them.”

So I retold the story (I’m sure I blogged about it way back when) of how the first time I cooked fava beans he loved them. I had over cooked them in the pressure cooker and they reminded him of mashed potatoes. He requested that we have them once a week. The third time I cooked fava beans he said he didn’t like them, wouldn’t eat them, and not to fix them any more. OK I’ll admit it, I teased him quite a bit about his inconsistency. He said, “Maybe I’ll give them another try tomorrow.”

The next day I was listening to talk radio in the car, and one of the shows had a guest who was reviewing some recent research about how great the spice turmeric is. I thought to myself that if he followed the BTD he would have known long before his “recent research” that turmeric is beneficial or super beneficial for every Type.

Then I chided myself for not using it more often. I like the flavor, but somehow it gets pushed to the back of the pantry. With all of this in mind I arrived home to fix the fava beans. The package says to pressure cook the favas for 20 minutes. If I do that, they become so soft that goop starts to ooze out of the top of the pressure cooker. So I cook them for about 12 minutes. They are soft enough to mash, but they are not gooey or burned.

I added turmeric, garlic, and olive oil to the favas as I mashed them. I tasted them and I liked them. HH tasted them and said, “These are ok; you can fix them again.

Melissa left a comment that she thought my husband would like the Lemon Turkey she posted in BTD recipes. I fixed it tonight, and both of us thought it was delicious. HH suggested we have it again soon. That’s two victories this week!! I’m all smiles.

Though we have our differences about food right now, HH and I agree that this is the best cole slaw we’ve ever had. Last summer I wrote that Lynn, one of my best friends, had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. She had a year to reminisce with her husband, comfort her children, and enjoy her grand children. Her funeral was a joyful tribute to her life. For the dinner after the service, someone brought Chinese Cole Slaw. It was so good that I went back for seconds. Then I asked for the recipe. The original has too many avoids, but I have come up with my own version which is good for Type Os, and only has one avoid for Type As.

Here is the original recipe, which, though it is delicious, I do not recommend:
2 packages of Angel hair cabbage
2 packages of Ramen noodles
2 packages slivered almonds
2 Tbsp sesame seed
2 Tbsp butter
4 - 6 Tbsp rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup oil
salt & pepper

Crunch up the noodles. Brown the almonds and sesame seed in the butter. Mix the vinegar, sugar oil, salt and pepper together in a jar. Shake together. At the last minute toss all of the ingredients together in a large bowl.

I think part of the secret to this cole slaw is the angel hair cabbage. You can buy it pre-washed and pre-cut in the produce section of your grocery store. It is light and crisp. The other secret to this cole slaw is adding nuts. The recipe may be great for a big gathering like a funeral. I had to make it practical for two of us eating dinner alone.

Here is my BTD version:
In a jar shake together 2/3 cup light olive oil, ¼ cup honey, and 4 Tbsp rice vinegar.
Put a serving of Angel hair cabbage in a bowl for each person. For each serving, break 2 Tbsp pecans or walnuts into small pieces and mix them with the cabbage. Pour a little of the dressing into each bowl and toss quickly.

It is crunchy, tangy, and not too sweet. I like it and HH likes it.

Our son is home for a break between summer and fall semesters. I wanted to fix a grain dish to go with cod for last night’s dinner.

I cooked the cod with Mrs. Dash Garlic & Herb Seasoning Blend. It is loaded with Type O beneficials. The next to the last ingredient is orange peel, but I can accept that tiny diviation. There is probably more pepper that in good for Type As, but the Type Os outnumbered the Type As for this meal, and my husband liked it.

I sauteed spinach in butter, and added a handful of currants. I’m still not totally confident about the currant rules. The GTD website described the beneficial currants as looking like tiny raisins. The BTD website says all currants are neutral, but that there are two varieties – the tiny raisin-like ones, and the gooseberry-like ones. It’s really a moot point because I can’t get the gooseberry-like ones in South Texas.

After I got the cod in the oven and the spinach wilting, I turned my attention to the grain dish. I had quinoa in mind, but there wasn’t a box in the pantry. However, I did have buckwheat groats. Usually I follow the directions for kasha, which has has a texture similar to rice. But other things were cooking and I didn’t want to take time to precook the kasha in egg. Instead I put the buckwheat in boiling water and turned to another pan where I was grilling an onion and some portabella mushrooms. I turned back to the buckwheat and it had already cooked to mush. So fast! I added the onions and mushrooms and tossed stirred them together. What else could I do? This close to dinner I wasn’t going to start over.

When the family came in I told them that I had taken a short cut and goofed on the pilaf. The texture was all wrong. But after we tasted it, we all agreed that buckwheat with onion and portabellas was a good idea. Next time if I prepare the kasha correctly, I will have a tasty side dish that I can be proud of.

I made one other goof. I didn’t prepare enough. At the end of the meal the buckwheat dish was empty. There was none left over for today’s lunches.

We have tried a new food, and our reaction had interesting BTD implications.

While I was at my parent’s house, my Darling Daughter bought groceries and cooked BTD meals for herself and her father. The day before I got home, she cleaned the house from top to bottom, and when I arrived, she had a delicious dinner waiting. See why I call her DD?

She and I talked on the phone every day about lots of things, including food. She was really interested in trying stir fried snow peas. As she was looking for them at the store, she discovered a bag of edamame in the freezer section. Knowing that soy was one of her superbeneficial foods, she bought it.

The instructions on the bag were pretty clear – boil them or microwave them. They look a whole lot like snow peas. So yesterday she and I cooked edamame with carrots and celery. DD took some in her lunch to work, and I took some in my lunch to school. I took one bite and spit them out. It was like eating hay. The pods were disgusting.

I left a message on her cell phone, apologizing for the inedible lunch. I told her to pick the beans out of the pods and just eat those with the other veggies.

When she got home, she said, “What were you talking about? The edamame was good.” She had eaten it pods and all. She liked it so much, she wanted more today.

I looked at the bag. There was nothing in the directions about eating or not eating the pods. I went on the Internet. Of all the sites I checked, the vast majority say don’t eat the pods. They recommend eating edamame as finger food, squeezing the little green beans out of the pods and throwing the pods away. But there are a few sites that say eating pods is fine, as long as they are cooked. A few people write that they actually like to eat pods and all.

All I can say is that those people have to be Type As! Unless you had some internal sense that you were eating something very beneficial, you wouldn’t eat soybean pods and like them! I’ll give edamame another try, but I’ll be eating it like they do in Japan, with a bowl nearby for discarding the pods.

When I first started eating pumpkin as a vegetable, I seasoned it like pumpkin pie, just without any sweetening. I'd add ghee, cinnamon, ginger, and occasionally a little all spice or cloves. It was delicious. I ate it happily just like that for 4 1/2 years.

Then DD started eating pumpkin with me. She liked the pumpkin pie version, but one day she suggested adding nuts. Another day she said how about a little dried fruit. We now have a variety of pumpkin recipes that are all delicious.

We always start with a can of 100% pure pumpkin. We always add ghee, 1 tsp ginger juice and 1 tsp cinnamon. Then the fun begins. Here are three of our favorite combinations:

chopped pecans and dried cranberry
chopped walnuts and dried pineapple
chopped walnuts and dried cherries

Warm together until the flavors have a chance to blend.

While I may think of pumpkin as a vegetable, grocers disagree. Canned pumpkin seems to always be placed on the isle near the cake mixes. It would be easy to miss if you were looking for a tasty beneficial vegetable.

With yesterday’s blog about why I eat a nut, seed, and fruit mix for breakfast as background, let me tell you my all time favorite combination. It’s the seed and nut mix as usual, plus one banana and a tablespoon of unsweetened carob powder. The flax seeds and carob plump up to a pudding like consistency. The banana offers sweetness. The combination is heavenly. It’s better than dessert.

Perhaps you’re skeptical about my last statement. Is it really better than dessert? If you have absorbed Dr. D’s theory or turning certain genes louder and softer, you may agree that indeed it is.

In my teenage years, I ate a lot of sugar. My Mom had a snack ready for my sister and me every afternoon when we came in from school. One snack that I remember was an orange cake that had Jello in the batter. I remember bowls of ice cream and brown edge cookies.

Of course there was a dessert in my school lunch, and dessert after dinner. I was eating a lot of sugar. I remember eating dinner at a boyfriend’s house. His mother served fruit for dessert. How odd, I thought.

I read my first nutrition book at 23 (Dr. D. was still just a kid). The focus was to get all refined food out of your diet. I got rid of lunchmeat, white flour, and white sugar on the spot. It was hard! You might say I was addicted to sugar. You might say that my genes had adapted to the point that they expected that much sugar. At any rate, I persevered, and in 6-8 months (about the same amount of time Dr. D. recommends giving up black dot toxins) my tastes had changed. Today I can appreciate a bite of dessert as much as anyone, but if I tried to eat three desserts in one day, I would get sick. Even the thought of it is not appealing. If I understand the vernacular of the GenoType Diet, I drastically turned down the volume on my sugar loving genes, and thereby made a change in my health.

If you still have a lot of sugar in your diet, you may not care for my “Best Breakfast Ever.” However, if you have been eating right for your type for a while, I think you will agree that it is delicious.

As I read my old breakfast blog, I realized I’ve changed a few things since 2004. I wrote that I used 1 Tablespoon of ground pumpkin seed and 1 Tablespoon of ground flax seed every day. Now I change things up a little for variety. Sometimes I substitute a tablespoon of ground almonds walnuts or pecans. I currently use 1-2 Tablespoons of lecithin and 1 Tablespoon of nutritional yeast.

I planned to write about my absolute all time favorite breakfast. I was going to start with a link to a blog I wrote several years about the basic breakfast I eat nearly every morning. When I say almost every morning, I literally mean 29 days out of a month. But it’s not at all boring! There is infinite variety. Today’s blog was going to be about the best combination I've tried. It is so good I feel like I’m eating dessert for breakfast.

However, the link to the old blog is missing. The new blog won’t make any sense without the old one, so I’m going to repost today, and tomorrow I’ll tell you about the best Type O breakfast. Don’t let the title fool you; the blog really is about breakfast.

Type O and Constipation
Originally written May 14, 2004
While I was swimming this morning, I wrote a blog in my head about last night’s spaghetti dinner. However when I went on the website and saw today’s D’Adamo Clinic Column on Type O and Constipation, all plans changed.

First let me be clear that I don’t dispute the advice from the Clinic. I’m not an expert and this is just a blog with my experiences!

During my health nut years, I read a lot about wheat germ and wheat bran. “Eat these foods,” I read, “and your bowel movements will be fluffy.” Fluffy was an intriguing word since it was quite different from what I had experienced all my life. I tried it, and fluffy was an accurate description. I was never constipated in my health nut years, even when I was pregnant.

However that wheat germ and wheat bran every morning for breakfast was doing other bad things to my Type O digestive system. Those two were the first foods to go when I started the Type O diet. I was thrilled that indigestion was disappearing, but constipation was arriving. This was a problem that had to be solved!

I tried magnesium and it brought the indigestion back. I still have to watch how much magnesium I take, too much makes my stomach hurt. I tried psyllium, and while it did get things moving, I would not use fluffy to describe the outcome. Squeezing toothpaste comes to mind as a description of my psyllium results (hope I’m not getting too personal here).

I read good things about ground flax seed. It helped. I tried apples, carrots and dried fruit. They helped also. Rice was neutral for Type O, so I bought a bag of rice bran. Now I was getting somewhere!!!

Every morning I put 1 Tablespoon of rice bran, 1 Tablespoon of ground flax seed, 1 Tablespoon of ground pumpkin seed, 2 Tablespoons for lecithin, and ½ - 1 Tablespoon of nutritional yeast in a bowl. I moisten it with water or fruit juice. I add 2-3 different fruits (banana, blueberries, pineapple, frozen cherries, and grapes are all favorites).

I’m not going to lie to you. This does not taste like a Krispy Kreme donut. But it tastes a lot better than my old wheat germ and wheat bran! And I’m back to fluffy again.

I have blogged several times that beets are not my favorite vegetable. I love beet greens, but could easily pass on beets. Sometimes I've eaten the beet greens and juiced the beets. Sometimes I've cooked the beets for HH, who likes beets.

Because beets are super beneficial for teachers, DD wanted to try them. Beets are neutral for Hunters and Type Os, however, they are beneficial on the Type O Aging diet in the D'Adamo Health Library. I agreed to try them again with an open mind.

While I was cooking the beets, I asked DD to look in the BTD Recipes and see what she could find about seasoning beets. DD said that she had been thinking about them, and that she thought we could season them with ghee and honey.

I took one bite and said, "These are great beets!" Both DD and I liked the honey flavor. HH, I confess, prefers regular beets with more of a vinaigrette dressing. I do not think it would work to combine the flavors. However, it would be easy enough to cook beets and serve them with two separate toppings.