61: Bright Holiday Plates, No Artificial Dyes: Natural Eating Tips and Recipes

Stacy Griffin: Welcome back to Autoimmune Adventures of the Holiday, sparkle with color, red sugar cookies, red candy canes, glittering treats, frosted cupcakes. It's festive, it's magical, and it's a whole lot of fun to look at. But here's the thing. For those of us that are living with autoimmune disease or other chronic illness, those colors can come at a cost.

Alysia Thomas: Artificial dyes and added sugars, funky preservatives in, in all the processed holiday treats. They might look festive and Mary, but they can trigger inflammation, they can trigger flares, and they can cause fatigue. So today we're going to ask a really empowering question. How do we keep all the fun and magic of holiday colors without the fallout?

Becky Miller: And the answer is simple and beautiful. We bring the color back to where it belongs nature.

Stacy Griffin: Exactly. So we're gonna be looking at fruits. Veggies, spices, herbs, nature's palette is every bit as bright and far more nourishing, honestly. And we're going to show you how to create stunning, festive holiday color in your food, drinks, decor and celebrations without a single artificial dye.

Alysia Thomas: And before we dive into recipes and creative ideas, we wanna bring in a bit of insight from our friend Hannah Birch, whose full episode aired October 28th of this year. She's been navigating a red dye sensitivity that so many people with autoimmune illness can relate to. Hannah couldn't join us today for filming, but she shared something with us that's worth talking through.

Becky Miller: She, um, she herself noticed several years back she was having, um, trouble, uh, with her digestion and other issues that she and her doctor. Recognize she has, along with her rheumatoid arthritis, she also has autoimmune hepatitis, which kind of came because of her other autoimmune problems and her doctor recognized that she was having issues with her liver.

Um, red dye is also a really bad culprit for anybody who has kidney issues, especially if you are having, uh, dialysis. But for her. The red dye and, and not even in her case, it's not just red dye, it's also like red foods, like tomatoes and apples and things can actually cause problems and inflame her liver.

And so these are just some things to be aware about. Obviously not everybody has the same inflammatory issues or chronic illnesses, but we all get excited about our green and red dyes at Christmas time. Or even, you know, whether in you're into Hanukkah, the blues, the yellows, like all of these artificial dyes, they really can cause some problems and wreak some havoc from an inflammation level.

And so we wanna look out for those and we're gonna show you some ways to do that.

Alysia Thomas: As a quick side note, let's bring attention to Red 40. That's the one that is, seems to be everywhere, especially during the holidays when everything is red and green. You're gonna find it in cupcakes and cookies and punch bowls and frosting and candy and all over the place. So it's a sneaky one. And that seems to be one that is a, a major, um, like up there high on the trigger list for people, right.

Stacy Griffin: And here's another important part you need to think about. Artificial dyes are immune irritants. They cause inflammation. They can trigger histamine reactions in your body, which we don't need any help with that.

With autoimmunity, they even disrupt our gut balance and we are already running through what I feel like is a maze of triggers during the holidays. So if it's something we can easily avoid, it's something that we should avoid. So for anyone with autoimmune disease where your immune system is already overwhelmed, a little bit of dye can actually push you into a flare.

Becky Miller: And Hannah, um, shared with us, she learned some simple swaps and just in her case, you know, for some people they can actually do natural red. She can't do natural red even. So she has to substitute red entirely. And she finds other ways to bring color into it. I mean, it sounds funny 'cause some people wouldn't think of it as color, but white is great this time of year and this season for snow and, and she talks about how even if it's the families ordering out pizza, they make sure they order her one with white sauce. So she finds ways to exchange those out.

Alysia Thomas: And so. If there's options, and I think it's important this time of year to have options, to have choices because we don't wanna feel excluded from the festivities or the beautiful food. And so today's episode honors that journey 'cause we all have to figure out what we can eat safely during the holidays. So festive, colorful, joyful, and most importantly, autoimmune friendly.

Stacy Griffin: So let's talk about why natural color actually matters, because color isn't just pretty, it can actually be healing. We're gonna break it down by color group because each color brings its own nutrients in nature. Antioxidants and immune support.

Becky Miller: So the first one, I know we were just talking about the problems with red dye, but if you can eat naturally red foods that do not have red dye in them become naturally like strawberries, pomegranates, cranberries, beets. Um, you can do fun things with them. You can, strawberries can be santa hats. You can make red glazes. You can do beet hummus. Um, the benefits of all of these are their powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory support.

Alysia Thomas: Then for green foods, we think about things like spinach and kale, herbs and um, pistachios, avocado. These are all things that are nourishing to our body and bring that beautiful pop of green. So, um, making a wreath salad or green dips. Everybody loves dips at Christmas time, you know, guacamole, um. Spinach, artichoke dip, things like this. Um, roasted veggie platters, fresh veggie platters. So the benefits of these green foods are that they help us detox, they're supportive to our immune system, and they have really grounding nutrients in them. And nothing says Christmas like green and leafy to me.

Stacy Griffin: Then let's talk for a minute about yellow foods to get that golden starry glow in our lives. Um. And things that are great to eat in December. Pineapple corn, yellow peppers, turmeric is always going to be really good for you and it's extremely anti-inflammatory.

You can use them for roasted veggies. Um, one of my favorite things to eat during the holidays is roasted root vegetables. They're extremely nourishing and they're delicious, especially if you take some turmeric and some other spices and herbs and toss them with some olive oil. It's, it's beautiful.

Stacy Griffin: You've also got things like spice nuts, and they make for really bright sides, nice, bright colors, like a bright yellow or orange pepper can make a huge difference in a salad and kind of liven it up.

Alysia Thomas: Have you ever seen the Turkey veggie tray that some like Pinterest moms, this is not me, Pinterest moms who do the little Turkey veggie tray and they have like all the different veggies of different colors looking like the ve, the Turkey tail.

Stacy Griffin: It's beautiful. It's beautiful and it's all so good for you. Yellow foods are great for mood and energy boost. That's the reason why they're so important during the holidays. People are prone to having a difficult time keeping their moods high and happy when they're struggling with their autoimmune disease. So yellow foods are good for giving you that extra boost and giving you a little energy.

Becky Miller: Maybe some less traditional holiday colors, but ones that are still great if you like to have a colorful palette is our orange foods like carrots, citrus, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes. They are great this time of year in soups, um, glazed root vegetables like carrots.

I love me, some glazed carrots. Honestly, and you don't have to. I know traditionally a lot of times glazed carrots are made. A lot of times people do them with sugar. You can do them instead with like maple syrups or even date sugars or things that don't spike your blood sugar. Um, there's some really great options and they still taste wonderful.

Becky Miller: Um. And we looked one up roasted citrus. I don't know if anyone here has tried that one, but I have heard good things about that as well.

Stacy Griffin: I love, I love roasted citrus, um, roasting oranges, and then using the juice from the roast. It's delicious.

Alysia Thomas: I also, I've, I've never considered roasting citrus. I have had roasted pineapple, and that is delicious. Yeah, so I guess roasted citrus, isn't that crazy? But I've never heard of it. I'm intrigued. I'll give it a try.

Becky Miller: Yeah, but all of these, for orange ones, the vitamin, vitamin A is pretty prevalent in all of these, which is great for immune support.

Alysia Thomas: So moving on through the rainbow, that leaves us with purple foods. And so those are the things like grapes and blueberries, red cabbage. Um, you can find red potatoes, you can find, well purple-ish red potatoes. You can get red and purple. Um, and carrots even come in in purple. So. Those are also beautiful on, um, on platters, charcuterie boards, um, winter, you know, winter fruit platters and those, that beautiful, deep rich purple is so good for our brains and for and for our hearts.

Alysia Thomas:  They're purple foods are usually fairly high in antioxidants, so even if you're not going to eat all these things, you can use them to bring color. Like, we encourage you to eat the rainbow.

Stacy Griffin: Finally, on our little trek through the colors, we're gonna finish up with white. You have cauliflower, coconut, pears. They're all wonderful for you for very different reasons. You can use them for snowy toppings. You can make mock whi, whipped cream with coconut cream. That is really delicious. Um, you can make creamy dips. I love pears at Christmas. I love all the different kinds of, like spike them with cloves and steam them if you like to steam them in alcohol or, um, apple cider is delicious.

All of the, there's lots of beautiful ways that you can do it. And the great thing about white foods is that they have a lot of gut friendly fiber. The pears, the coconut, the cauliflower, they're all very fibrous and they're all very good for your gut. As we've seen going through this nature has already given us a beautiful color palette to work with, and we just have to use it.

Alysia Thomas:  Right. So it doesn't have to be complicated. You could try doing something to color your frosting. Um, maybe use beet powder or you could try a pomegranate glaze. Um, I've even done raspberries. I've cooked raspberries down and strained out the seeds, and I have used that. And that is a brilliant red, it's a beautiful red.

Stacy Griffin: So there are things you can do. You, you might have to put a little more work into it. Instead of green icing dye, you can use matcha or spinach juice or crushed pistachios. And I know spinach juice sounds gross, but honestly, if you put a little flavoring in and it, it goes a long way, is what I'm saying.

Alysia Thomas:  It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have much of a taste to it really. It really doesn't.

Stacy Griffin: When you, when you take the fiber out of the spinach, really all you have is green water. Mm-hmm. So it doesn't, it doesn't change the flavor very much, but creed, pistachios can make something truly beautiful and a lovely vivid green.

Becky Miller: So we wanted to talk about actual foods that, you know, practical ones that are easy recipes that you could maybe try this holiday season yourself. And so each of us, we're going to talk about one of our favorite, um, more autoimmune friendly drinks as well as foods.

Alysia Thomas: Talk about actual, like actual food that you would want to eat, not just something that's healthy, but food that tastes good and is going to be a hit. So the dishes that we love to make this time of year, right, most of them aren't the healthiest, but we have some that are healthy, good choices. Beautiful. So what's yours, Stace?

Stacy Griffin: I really like having a red and green holiday fruit board, so I will get strawberries and kiwis mint, and then a drizzle of dark chocolate. I love me some good dark chocolate. It's simple and it's bright, and it's gorgeous, and it's healthy. Even the chocolate because it's dark chocolate. So that's, that's one of my favorite simple and easy things to do.

Stacy Griffin: So I have actually two drinks that I really enjoy at this time of year. The first one is a chocolate drink that is made by Lakanto, which does monk fruit sweetener, and it's a dark chocolate cocoa. That is sweetened with monk fruit, so it doesn't have that sugar trigger in it. And I know that a lot of people like cocoa at this time of year. There's something about sitting and looking at the lights and drinking cocoa, but I also am a huge advocate for fresh pressed apple cider, and you can usually find that in your grocery stores, or if you're lucky and you live near an apple orchard, you can probably find it there as well. But the nice thing about fresh pressed is that, or even just, you know, whole apple cider, is that even though there is sugar content, it's not the kind of sugar content that will trigger you unless you're diabetic. So be careful if you're diabetic, try the Lakanto instead.

Stacy Griffin: But those are my two favorite drinks at this time of year, and they don't trigger me because they don't have anything in them to trigger.

Becky Miller: One of this time of year, one of my favorite dishes to make is candied yams. And I will admit growing up, um, we had the extremely non, non-healthy version with excessive amounts of butter and, uh, lots of, lots of brown sugar.

Um, in recent years as I have tried to significantly cut down on my processed sugar. Um, I have found that I will cook up my sweet potatoes and blend them, mash them, and, um, sometimes I use milk when I'm mashing them. Um, and sometimes you can use like a plant-based milk, coconut milk, whatever works for you, depending on what you tolerate.

But instead of using a ton of brown sugar. Um, I try to find, I use date sugars. Um, you can also use swerve that has, like, they have a brown sugar variety that won't spike your blood sugar, but I kind of like the date sugars and I love adding real maple syrup because that just makes it taste great. Um, I will admit the one part that still has sugar, I usually do like to, especially, um, I can eat it without the marshmallows.

Becky Miller: But when I'm making it for Thanksgiving or Christmas and we have guests or whatever, most of them like to have marshmallows. But the thing that I've found is even people who don't have any of the dietary restrictions and um, you know, would be totally fine with having tons of sugar and butter in the sweet potatoes.

They do okay with it too, and they love it. Um, so, uh, we will share all these recipes with you in our show notes.

My personal favorite drink is I like to make this time of year, I like to make herbal teas, and some of my favorites are just honestly, like a basic mint tea, or I love Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice is super delicious. Um, when I'm craving hot cocoa because I do try to limit my sugar. Um, my solution instead is to add a little bit of hot cocoa to my tea, and that's like doing the creamer slash sweetener in my tea. And that way I'm getting significantly less sugar. I feel like I'm getting that cocoa treat, but it is, uh, so much better for me than it would be otherwise.

Alysia Thomas: Yum. I have never tried that. I'm totally gonna have to try that. That sounds so good.

Stacy Griffin: I love cocoa tea with the lakanto. It's like my favorite thing in the whole world. I take Bengal spice, I steep it, and then I add just like a heaping teaspoon of the Lakanto hot cocoa.

Alysia Thomas: And I can see, um. My peppermint tea being really good with cocoa. That sounds delicious. I might try that tonight. 'cause it is a, it is a cocoa and herbal tea kind of night tonight in Minnesota. I'm in short sleeves, but I'm like, bur we're supposed to get six to 10 inches of snow this week. Wow. So I love, love me some winter drinks and some holiday drinks. I am the drink girl I have for um.

Church occasions and for family occasions and parties, I have made mocktails and sparkly water infusions and, and mixtures. And most of the time, I've gotta be honest, most of the time they're not healthy. And that's, I'm just gonna be straight up honest about that guys. Most of the time they're not.

They're made with soda and they are made with syrups. Um, what I do love is that. You can get. Now we live in a world where you can now get sodas and syrups made with sweeteners that aren't going to mess up your gut health and aren't going to spike your sugar. They, or spike like your, your blood sugar levels.

But the, be aware they're not cheap. Right? And you have to really be good at reading your, your labels this time of year. Um, they're not cheap, but you can get them for, it's a treat. Remember, it's a treat we're not doing this year round. This is a special occasion. It's a treat. So, um, and you can use, you don't have to, you could just use sparkling water, right?

Alysia Thomas: And you can infuse it with fruit. Um, the cranberry and. Lime is, I love lime to use in drinks. It kind of, it goes so well with so many things. A little shot of citrus, just maybe something a little herbal like, like a branch of rosemary even just gives something a totally different depth of flavor. So, and, and there's fun.

Alysia Thomas: There's fun flavor combinations. You can, and you kind of find those out like blueberry and mint, who I, blueberry mint is so good together. I like to also add a little lemon to that. But anyway. Drinks can be really fun. You do have to put more work into 'em. They might be a little more expensive if you're gonna try and do 'em in the healthy way, which we encourage.

Um, but that is a really fun way to bring a beautiful, um, festive, um, pop of color and something fun to your table. So I don't know that I could pick a favorite drink. I, I. I've been pretty dairy free. I love, I love my chocolate, my hot chocolate, but I've been pretty dairy free for a lot of years now and I, so I can't do those pre-made mixes, which is okay 'cause they're all full of sugar.

But I have found that the Starbucks, uh, cocoa is less, is lower in sugar and it is very dark. So I am a milk chocolate girl. I love dark chocolate too, but not, it's not like milk chocolate, but. I can enjoy a cup of Starbucks hot cocoa and feel like I am getting a little bit of a treat. It's, it's so, there's, there's options for us.

Um, and I'm also not gonna tell you don't have one drink, because sometimes you just want that one glass of eggnog that you just have to have a glass of eggnog every season. And I am that girl. I will be buying my dairy free eggnog, and I will be really angry at anybody who drinks it because it's mine and I get it once a year.

So drink your regular eggnog and leave my dairy free eggnog alone. I'm calling out all of my kids out right now and my husband. So anyway, um, that's, that's what I love for drinks, for, um, food. We have several that we really love.

Alysia Thomas: Um, Cowboy Caviar is a big hit at our house. The, the trick is you gotta get some tortilla chips that aren't gonna be, um. Standard tortilla chips, although they are the most delicious with cowboy caviar, are not the best choice. There are grain-free options now that are actually quite delicious, and the cowboy caviar has enough flavor in it that you're not gonna miss a corn chip. Okay, but it's all, it's beans, it's avocado, it's tomatoes, it's peppers, it's onions, like, it's this, it's almost like pico de gallo with, with black beans and avocado in it kind of, it's delicious and it's healthy and so, and it's, it's a little bit, a little something fresh maybe if you've been eating really heavy or rich foods. So that's one that we love.

Um, we also do marinated vegetables. This was a recipe my husband's family has had for years and. It's literally just vegetables, a whole bunch of kinds of vegetables, all in a bowl, in a marinade of olive oil and vinegar, and it sits there overnight and it the next day. It's delicious. I don't know, I, it's not hard. It's not hard to do. It's delicious and everybody appreciates having vegetables. Everybody appreciates it except the kids, I guess they don't really. But when I go places, no matter what the occasion is, I am always so appreciative when there are vegetable choices, because I know I can eat vegetables. So there's that.

Alysia Thomas: But the, the one that I'm gonna share, my favorite that I made and I took some pictures, um, of, is we, it's marinated shrimp and my mother-in-law, um, it's her recipe. She, um. Would sometimes cater wedding receptions and things like this. And this was one of the most popular recipes. And it's just marinated shrimp.

And the recipe, I'll, I'll throw it on the, I'll throw it on the, um, transcripts, the show notes, the blog. I'll, I'll share it 'cause it's a good recipe and it's super easy. Um, and you just marinate it overnight and then you put 'em on little toothpicks with a, with a red grape. Um. I put it on a half of a head of red cabbage, uh, purple cabbage, I guess, on a bed of beautiful green kale.

Alysia Thomas: And it is colorful and it is delicious. And it's protein, it's veggies, it's fruits. Like, it's all this, it's, it's such a festive dish. It is a little bit more labor intensive to put all the shrimp on, on, um, appetizers. But if you want like the wow factor, this one will give it. It's, it's good. Fun ideas that we've come up with.

Stacy Griffin: First of all, there are a lot of sprinkles at the holidays, so some ideas you can take freeze dried fruit or coconut flakes or nuts, pistachios, again, crush them up and use them to sprinkle on whatever you need to have. Sprinkles for rainbow salads and slaws will look like Christmas confetti, fruit garlands as edible decor.

Um, spice citrus simmer pots for natural holiday scent cookie painting with fruit juice paints for kids, um, can be a lot of fun. There's lots of things that you can do so that you don't have to give up all of the fun things that you would normally be doing at the holidays and honestly.

Alysia Thomas: This stuff, guys, just Google it. You'll find so many amazing things, so many amazing accounts online of people that do this because that's what they love to do. I, I don't have that see most of the time, but there, I mean, there are so many good recipes that are being shared for free, that are healthy, that are beautiful, that are gonna be, you know, pleasing to the eye and good for your body.

Yeah, and that's the big thing. We can still be festive. We can be creative, but what's beautiful is that our bodies will feel good afterwards and we won't be crashing unnecessarily during the holiday. Alright, before we close, we wanna feature someone special. Our friend Annie Toro Lopez, who brings so much heart and tradition to the holiday table.

Becky Miller: Can you tell us what your favorite holiday food is that's safe for you to eat now that you have celiac? Like what's your favorite thing to make?

Annie Toro Lopez: Oh, well, it's probably really, really weird, but I love, I ha, I do different versions of it and my family, let me just say too, like I'm the only one in my family who really likes it. So, um, but I do a cranberry relish. That's in a red jello, so it's like cranberries and I, I like pistachios and I use crushed pineapple. And so it's like re it's, it's kind of retro. It's a jello salad. Um oh, and celery chopped celery. So it's really retro. It's a pretty old fashioned salad, and you can do like a layer of cream cheese if you want.

So like you can whip in like cream cheese with the jello. Um, now I ate that. Then for breakfast for the next like three days, it's, I love. I know it sounds sort of weird, but it's like give it a try. Um, if you're in, I don't like super sweet things, but like I've seen it done with marshmallows. I like miniature marshmallows. I've never done that 'cause it's just not my thing. But if you like that, like if you want a really sweet layer, that's kind of nice and the marshmallows will just float.

Ideally you put it in like, I like to, I like, I usually do it in a, a round bowl. I used to have a million, I used to have jello molds. Right? Remember the old jello molds? Like, like the little star on top? Yeah. I love those. So I don't have that anymore, but um, I just put it in a round bowl and it's really pretty when you take it out and it's got the green, it's red and green, and then the, and the, um, crushed pineapples, just like really good texture.

I love that. I know that's crazy, but. Um, I bought a package of, um, plain gelatin. I got like a bit, it's a, you know, and I got bovine, I got grass fed, bovine. And then we bought, uh, pomegranates, pure pomegranates so we can use, and Poms is really, really, really powerful.

So I, I wouldn't use little goes a long way, world goes a long way. Like I wouldn't use it necessarily straight up because it will take over the flavor will just take over the salad, but it, but, um, it's a beautiful red, it's such a deep red that it can handle being, um, uh, diluted and still keep that beautiful color.

Annie Toro Lopez: So follow the directions for the gelatin. On the packet and just use, it'll tell you to use apple juice or whatever, but, um, you, you know, just use the pomegranate juice. Or you could use like, I love cranberry raspberry juice. I like the juices though, not the cranberry drinks. It says cocktail or drink.

That means it's like got sugar and that kind of thing in it. Where if it's a hundred percent juice, it's literally like cranberry juice sweetened with raspberry juice. And usually apple juice. But always read labels, right? Always read labels. Don't, don't trust me. Don't trust anyone. You know? Always, always read labels.

Um, but yeah, the gelatin, um, that's what I'm doing this year. 'cause I didn't wanna get the, you know, the packaged, I wanted to do it a little less sweet. I just don't, like, we're not, we don't, I don't like real sweet things, so. Um, but it's, oh, it's so good. Yeah. The celery, celery, pistachios. Oh, and pomegranate.

Pomegranate pips. If you like pomegranate, I put those in there too, but I like, I like the crunch. Some people don't, but I like it. I sprinkle a little bit of sugar. I use, uh, the, like the. Less processed sugar. You could use coconut sugar would, would be really nice. But I do sprinkle the cran. I chop up the cranberries roughly like not, and then um, just put a little bit of sugar on them, 'cause they are, they are tart. And with the pomegranate juice, I'm thinking it's gonna need, 'cause pomegranate has a little, little heart bite too.

Stacy Griffin: I am, I'm curious. So that cranberry salad sounds amazing. Sounds amazing.

Annie Toro Lopez: It's so good. It's, it's different too, like it's not just like cranberry, you know? It's not just like cranberry sauce or you know, cranberry, you know what I mean?

Like it's sort of a different Yeah, it's, it's different. And I think that that would be a big hit with my family. So I think I'm probably gonna try that. But as far as savory dishes, just outta curiosity, is your, what's your favorite savory dish? We do. So we're super, super traditional. My, my daughter is very traditional, so we're not really allowed to go too far outside of a certain parameter.

I tried a couple of times, I've tried to introduce other things and we are it, this is what we have. So our, our Christmas menu for as long as I can remember, like I've never, I'm very. Fortunate, I, I, I feel very blessed that I have, don't ever remember Christmas not having prime rib that is our Christmas meat. And so we've tried different things, um, over the years to, we've tried like. Searing it, it up front, and then you shut off the oven and you leave it in the oven. And that's usually pretty perfect. I mean, if you, you know, you could put it as hot, as hot as. Um, I do have a, I do have a prime rib recipe in here. I know, um, it's my mom's recipe. I put my mom's prime rib recipe in my book. There's a lot of my mom's recipes in here. Um, but you put it in and you shut off the oven and, and then it, it really, that. You really get that perfect end to end pink, which is what that's awesome want. Yeah.

Annie Toro Lopez: And then there's, um, him, my daughter. My daughter likes green bean casserole. My husband makes the, uh, the, um, that recipes in my book too. My husband makes the, uh, onion straws, the real thin ones. So he makes those and he has to make 'em a head and he has to make a whole bunch of them. 'cause we just eat them as they come out. We just, they're so good. And that is like we use, so he uses tapioca flour for that instead, you know.

Um, otherwise it's, it's a really simple recipe. It's, it's, it's very simple ingredients. Um, but the trick is with any kind of onion ring. Onion straw like that is to soak it ahead of time in buttermilk, at least an hour longer is fine, but slice your onions and then you can make your own buttermilk. You can just, if you don't have buttermilk, 'cause you know, you know, just have buttermilk on hand.

You can make your own. So just add, splash about it of maybe a, let's see. For, I would say for, I don't, I don't measure this, but I'm thinking for four cups of milk, I would say probably about a teaspoon of either lemon juice or you can use white vinegar if that's all you have, or apple cider vinegar is my first choice.

For the, because it's a nice flavor. So soak your onions in that. And then, um, my husband does this, and then he makes the, the, it's tapioca flour and salt and pepper and paprika. And you can put a little bit of garlic salt, garlic salt, burn, or not garlic salt, garlic powder. Don't use garlic salt. Um, garlic powder can burn a little bit sometimes, so don't be heavy handed with that. Um. And onion powder. And so just mix that and then take them from your, uh, buttermilk and put them into the, and I just sort of shake 'em around and get 'em coated. And then they need to go in oil that's 350.

Annie Toro Lopez: And remember, when you take them out, when they're golden brown, don't overcook them because they'll, the, the onion straws, especially sometimes the onion inside can cook, overcook. So you wanna be careful not to overcook them. And they're gonna be, if you put 'em on the top of your green bean casserole, they're gonna cook again, and then, and then they disappear for a while as fast as they come out. So you just have to plan on that for a while. And then, and then, um, they, and remember to let your oil come back to 350 before you put in your next batch, because when you drop in a batch, it lowers the temperature of the oil, so let your oil come back. Um, and then we use, um, usually, usually use a combination of oils. Honestly, it depends on what I have on hand. Um, avocado oil is nice because it takes high heat and it doesn't add flavor.

Uh, although I have to say like, you know, there are a lot of advocates for, um. For using, using lard and using, you know, meat, beef tallow, um, if again, if you, if you are not, if you consume meat. So thank you so much for having me back. It really means so much to me and I, I, I know this is a really special, special time and a special episode, and so it really means a lot, um, to be included and I, I appreciate it very much.

Stacy Griffin: We are very happy...

Annie Toro Lopez: Happy holidays. Happy holidays to you...

Stacy Griffin: You as well.

Annie Toro Lopez: And to your listeners. Yes, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday and take care of yourself. Um, give yourself love. You're always there for yourself, and you could always give yourself that love. So make sure you're, you're taking time for you.

Alysia Thomas: The holidays are full of color, but the best colors come from nature. So fill your table with red from cranberries and green, from herbs purple from winter fruit and gold from roasted veggies,

Becky Miller: And your body will thank you. Your holiday will sparkle and you'll feel like you're actually part of the celebration instead of being sidelined by flare.

Stacy Griffin: From all of us at Autoimmune Adventures, here's to a colorful and joy-filled flare free holiday season. Enjoy the light out there, and remember, you are worthy of the joy that you hopefully are experiencing this season. Disease does not define your life. You do.

HELPFUL LINKS:

Annie Toro Lopez Cookbooks:

Simply Gluten-Free: Real Ingredients for Everyday Life - https://amzn.to/4ruvMWZ

Huerfano's Happy Heart: Favorite Green Chile Recipes and More - https://amzn.to/444CAk0

Some of Our Favorite Cold Weather Drinks

Lakanto Drinking Chocolate Sweetened with Monk Fruit - https://amzn.to/3KDBAg2

Great just as tea, or delicious with a spoonful of hot cocoa:

Celestial Seasoning Bengal Spice Herbal Tea - https://amzn.to/48fSBGd

Stash Maple Apple Cider Herbal Tea - https://amzn.to/4rAd3Jv

Bigelow Mint Medley Tea - https://amzn.to/48fSBGd

Celestial Seasoning Fireside Vanilla Spice - https://amzn.to/4rxj09V

*The links above will not cost you extra to use, but as an Amazon affiliate, we may receive compensation for qualifying purchases.