Chicken Borscht

Note: This is another one of my gluten free recipes. It is perfect for impressing your boy or girl friend, family, or take to a potluck. Might want to halve the recipe if you just make it for yourself. Excellent for overcoming a migraine  or accidental glutening–or if you otherwise just want to detox. Very tasty! The ginger, rosemary and basil really brings it out.  The plain yogurt topping is optional– however I find it really adds to the zest of this dish.

Remove skin and chop chicken into roughly one inch pieces (can chop and de-bone after cooking a while  if desired).  Place in large skillet with 2 cups water.
Add the chopped ginger. Cover and bring to boil, then simmer until chicken is well cooked (15 min).

Add sliced beets with 1 cup water. Again bring to boil and simmer 5 minutes.

Add sliced sweet potato, celery and loosely chopped beet greens (or cabbage) and salt with rosemary and basil. Simmer one minute with lid on. Then distribute zucchini evenly over top surface.  Simmer covered 8 to 10 minutes until veggies poke easily with fork.

Sprinkle chopped garlic over surface, stirring into juices. Replace lid. Remove from heat.

Let sit for 5 minutes.

Serve over brown rice (optional) topped with some plain yogurt and a little fresh squeezed lemon juice to taste (if desired) — or Bragg’s apple cider vinegar.

Basic Chicken (Beet) Soup,

gf, low histamine/amine–or what to do when eating anything is hard

by Bea Garth, copyright 2015

“Empathy” acrylic painting by Bea Garth, copyright 2009/2015

Hi Tory,

I am so sorry to hear you are suffering so much its difficult to eat anything! That is a rough place to be in.

If your gut is that sensitive, I think its best to start with eating only cooked foods, rather than raw at this time in order to give your gut a chance to heal.

I am hoping you do not have histamine/amine sensitivity, or if you do that its not that severe. At any rate, I think its best to go from simple to more complex in figuring these things out.

You said that eating meat agreed with you more than eating vegetarian meals, so I think you should go with that.

Thus I suggest you make up some chicken soup with lots of both green and root vegetables. I’d avoid heavy duty spices for now. However its likely something mild like parsley and/or fennel would be fine.

Chamomile and peppermint tea may agree with you too. I say may, since there are of course exceptions like with my friend Graeme. But for most people chamomile and peppermint are very soothing and healing for the gut and nervous system.

As said, another very soothing herb is fennel. You can actually buy the long white and green bulb at some stores. The fronds are very healing too. The fennel can be used both in tea and in your soup. Its easy to grow by the way, assuming you like it of course,

The rosemary is likely OK too unless you are particularly sensitive, plus its a natural antihistamine. Its good for both the digestion and nerves. The marjoram is another tasty natural antihistamine.

If you can handle it, ginger would be great. Its fantastic for the digestive system, is very tasty, plus is a very effective antihistamine.

If you are uncertain of the spices, just leave them out. Ditto with the onions and garlic–and even the beets. You can try them out again later on when you are feeling better.

Basic Chicken (Beet) Soup:

1 skinned fresh whole chicken, cut up. Cut off the big globs of fat if you can. Lots of places will skin the whole chicken for you as well as cut it up for free.
Cover in enough water to boil for a while.
Let simmer with the lid on until the chicken comes off the bones.
Remove the bones, or keep them in if you like (I always liked–extra calcium that way!)
Add in:
2 to 3 peeled, sliced rutabagas
2 to 3 peeled, sliced beets (if there are beet greens–they are great to dd to the soup a little later on. Beets are optional–some with histamine condition cannot handle eating them right away)
2-3 large peeled, sliced carrots (I am allergic to them, but you probably are not!)
1 to 2 chopped leaks (only if you can tolerate it)

Boil above mixture for 5 or 10 minutes before adding in the greens for another 10 minutes (or until you can easily put a fork through the veggies):

chopped beet greens (?)
2 to 3 large stalks chopped celery
2 cups (stem peeled) cut up broccoli
2 cups chopped cabbage (only if you can tolerate it–bok choy is easier for some–but should be added in the last five minutes or so of cooking the soup since it cooks fast)
1 cup chopped fennel
1 tsp. rosemary
1 tsp. marjoram
1 to two tablespoons fresh chopped ginger, or 1 1/2 tsp. to 2 tsp. ginger powder
1 chopped red onion (only if you can handle onions of course!–red onions are better for you than other onions if you have a histamine problem)

3 or 4 chopped cloves garlic (ditto on handling it)
salt to taste

Serve hot.
If you can tolerate it, its great with plain yogurt, esp. if you included the beets–a type of mini borscht!

If you suspect a histamine/amine sensitivity, then freeze the soup when its cooled down. I suggest you put it in small heavy duty plastic serving sized containers. You can date them so you know how old they are later on.

The less the soup sits around, the less histamine/amines it will have in it–again assuming you have a problem that way, which you really might not.

Further you can find a lot of good dietary and other suggestions at celiac.com, plus the low histamine chef online.

In addition, its very possible a good digestive enzyme complex could help you digest your food like Source Naturals Daily Essential Enzymes, and possibly HCL capsules. Or you could start simple with just bromelain/papain or pancreatic enzymes. Of course make sure the capsules are gluten and dairy free. For me and Chris with our histamine/amine sensitivity we have to make sure the capsules are not made of gelatin. Instead they have to be vegetarian.

I hope this helps.

Beet Green Yam Zuke Soup

gf and low histamine
Recipes (Gluten Free), Recipes (low histamine), Recipes (vegetarian)
by Bea Garth, copyright 2015

This soup is great either served with or added to re: beans, yellow split pea, chicken or fish etc. Very nice served hot for lunch or on a cool night. A complete meal for two if eaten with hot beans or yellow split pea.

In a largish pot put in roughly 3 cups water (or more or less, depending on how “soupy” you want your soup!)

Turn burner on and add:

1/2 largish peeled yam, sweet potato or equivalent amount of red potato (red potato has less histamine than some other varieties of potatoes), sliced thinly. (Yam and red potato have medium histamine)
1 small zucchini, also sliced thinly (has antihistamine properties)
2 tbsp. ginger (sliced and chopped–very anti histamine)
1 small frond rosemary leaves, leaves stripped from stem (natural antihistamine)
1 tsp. thyme (natural antihistamine)

Cover, and bring above mixture to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Then add:

washed and chopped leaves from 3 golden beets, or about 6 or 7 leaves of washed and chopped chard (am saving the beets for another dish or two–golden beets have less histamine than red ones do)

Again cover, bring to boil and simmer another 5 minutes.

Then add:
1 washed and chopped baby bok choy bunch
1/2 red onion also chopped (red onion has less histamine than other types of onion)

Cover and boil and then simmer another 5 minutes. Then take off burner with cover still on.

Add hot to soup bowls. Nice to add in either olive oil or coconut oil to taste plus some salt.
Delicious with a couple of ladles of hot yellow split pea per person, or some garbanzos or navy beans etc. put directly in the same bowl. Also fine with chicken or fish–in bowl or not.