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Highlights from the second year of Gutsy By Nature and a GIVEAWAY!

gutsy by nature second year

I can’t believe it, but Gutsy By Nature is TWO YEARS old today and I want to celebrate completing my second year of blogging with you – my loyal readers – by sharing some of my favorite recipes and by offering you a chance to win a special gift as a token of my appreciation for all you have done to inspire and keep me focused on the goal of being the healthiest and happiest me I can be! You have stuck with me through ups and downs of living with Crohn’s disease this year, including a difficult bout with a drug resistant clostridium difficile infection and gave me the strength to share the highly personal story of how I eventually defeated it with a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). You encouraged me when I posted that I would never be a “paleo success story” and supported my paleo manifesto about what this all means to me.

Ready Set AIP - Your on ramp to the Autoimmune Protocol lifestyle

These personal posts were all healing for me and I hope inspirational to some of you as well. I will continue to write them, but my first love is still going to be the food! I created numerous new recipes of which I am extremely proud this past year, including one for bacon, mushroom, and liver pâté that is not only nutrient dense but also totally delicious and some moist and juicy paleo autoimmune protocol (AIP) friendly meatballs that will fool even your Italian grandmother. But the big trends this past year could be summed up into two categories: recipes that utilize my favorite new kitchen gadget, the Instant Pot, and recipes featuring my favorite new gluten free ingredient, cassava flour.

Instant Pot – Cooking under pressure!


The Instant Pot is actually a multi-function cooker but my favorite way to use it is as a pressure cooker. It is especially great for quick cooking roasts that would normally take much of the day and preparing juicy braises. Here are three of my favorites…

Turkey and Gravy

turkey and gravy pressure cooker

Spiced Cranberry Pot Roast

spiced cranberry pot roast

Corned Beef and Cabbage

corned beef and cabbage

 

New horizons in grain free baking: Cassava Flour

I was introduced to cassava flour this year and am totally hooked. It can be subbed one-for-one for wheat flour in most recipes and makes an incredible baked good. I recommend the flour from Otto’s Naturalclick here to learn more about them and what makes this product different than tapioca starch. Here are three of my favorites, all of them not only gluten free but also grain free, dairy free, and 100% AIP friendly…

Gingersnaps

AIP Ginger Snaps

Strawberry Shortcake

strawberry shortcake

Peach Cobbler

peach cobbler

Thank you Gutsy By Nature readers – A giveaway!

As a token of my appreciation for sticking with me through the ups and downs of Gutsy By Nature’s second year, I am giving you a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon that you can use toward an Instant Pot, some Otto’s Natural Cassava Flour, or whatever that happens to be on your wish list! All you have to do is write a comment on this blog post and then verify your entry with this Rafflecopter widget. You can also earn extra entries by signing up for my newsletter, visiting my Facebook page, and following me on other social media.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

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48 replies on “Highlights from the second year of Gutsy By Nature and a GIVEAWAY!”

I am so thankful you started this blog! We’ve used many of your recipes since starting the AIP last summer. Happy two years!

Congrats on reaching two years! Your blog was one of the first I came across when I started my transition to a paleo lifestyle, and has been incredibly helpful as I have been discussing with my doctor about following an AIP lifestyle! Thank you for the amazing recipes and information- my favorite summer recipe is one from your blog, the strawberry shortcake recipe. It is one of my favorites and since you posted it I’ve made it several times. 🙂 I can’t wait to see what else you’ll come up with and share!

Congrats on two years! I’ve really felt inspired reading about your journey! I plan on making the pot roast soon!

I discovered your blog doing a search for egg free pancakes! I found the sweet potato pancakes and they were oh so delicious! Thank you!

Absolutely love the fish and chips. Love recipes recreating those old comfort foods in a healthy allergen friendly way.

I absolutely adored your strawberry shortcake recipe. I cannot wait to see what recipes and posts you come up with over the next few years.

Love love looooove all your amazing recipes, but I most especially appreciate your willingness to share such personal parts of your journey with us. Keep being awesome 🙂

Your “Powerhouse on a Plate” Pate! Got me through the winter. Looking forward to it again soon. The Corned Beef and Cabbage was helpful also!

Congratulations on two fabulous years! I very much enjoy your blog and new recipes. I’m so glad I found a great sweet potato fry technique here. I also really need to try your meatball recipe–all-meat meatballs are just too dense, and I need to find a recipe to impress the half-Italian guy I’m seeing. Will definitely give them a shot! 🙂

I’ve made your butternut squash and broccoli roasted chicken almost weekly, substituting whatever veggies I have. I taught a few people to make it, and they all love it too!

Congrats on two years! I don’t know how to thank you for the guidance that you have given me over the last 8 months through your post and recipes! I never thought any of my meals would ever be tasty again but you have proven that they can be delicious and nutritious! Thank you!

I haven’t really seen your recipes before, but I’m very excite to explore the Instant Pot recipes so I can get more use out of it!

The spiced cranberry pot roast sounds amazing. I make pot roast a lot during the winter months and this sounds like a nice change from the usual.

I enjoyed the blog post about Crohn’s disease. I have a close friend with that and I liked finding out more about it since she doesn’t really care to talk much about it.

I think I might have put down my wrong Twitter name — it should be JENNAI
Hope it is not too late to correct

I actually just stumbled onto your blog. I’m excited to get some new recipes to try out. I’m in my 3rd year of law school so transitioning back to being mom again. I resolved to focus on school and not worry about what we were eating. I’m thrilled to start thinking about what we are eating again!

I’ve been sloppy Paleo for years now, but just was handed a Crohn’s diagnosis last week by the GI doc who helped me beat a GI cancer two years ago. I found your blog googling for Crohn’s/Paleo. So, so glad to be able to sit down today and begin mining from someone who’s gone before me; I was just in despair at having to research the best way to tackle yet another disease :-(. Congratulations to you for having achieved some success in getting your Crohn’s under control, and thanks so much for sharing what you’re learning along the way.

Oops – and I can’t wait to try a cassava flour recipe, any one of them, as I’ve not tried one before!

My favorite recipe is the ginger snaps. Ginger snaps were always (past gluten-eating life) my absolute favorite cookie. Sadly, I gave them up along with so many other foods that my taste buds liked and the rest of my body did not! Your recipe served as one more encouragement in my quest to discover . . . or rather to RE-DISCOVER food that is not only delis but healthy! Thank you for sharing this yummy recipe.

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