Note: if you're a "Crohnie" or UC patient or parent of an autistic kid who came for the recipe, feel free to skip ahead to the recipe. (Although I'm guessing most kids won't be too into lox.)

Likewise, if you're a self-involved tool equally disinterested in understanding the suffering of others and broadening your body of knowledge, feel free to skip ahead. Although be warned: just because you don't have IBD now doesn't mean you or someone you love won't someday, especially if you keep on eating your crapass, Corporo-Fascist-approved Standard American Die-Yet? Incidence of IBD on the rise in Westernized countries.

No, really, go ahead: blow off the back story. We'll be here via the Google when your insides have turned into raw hamburger. Hopefully, it won't be too late! Toodles!

Okay.

For the rest of you...

THE BACK STORY

Readers come here from all kinds of search strings, but one that comes up a lot is "Specific Carbohydrate Diet" + ("you name it").

Most likely this is because the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is notoriously difficult to follow. The list of legals and illegals only makes sense up to a point: Why navy beans and not kidney beans? Why provolone and not mozzarella? Why honey and not maple syrup?

I noticed. And while we're at it, what the hell's up with you hippies and your homemade yogurt?

Bottom line is this: the SCD is predicated on the thesis that undigested matter lingering too long in the gut provides a 24-hour feeding station for irritating intestinal bacteria. The more bacteria, the more mucous (yum!), the less the gut is capable of doing its (you'll pardon the pun) duty; also, the more irritation, the more abrasion, again, leading to a reduction in functional capacity. Not to mention the garden of attendant earthly delights like diarrhea (regular, explosive and bloody varieties), extreme fever and underweight, energy loss, body aches, pain and...wait for it...puppy-killing farts.

Or, in the words of the wise and eloquent Seth Barrows,

The SCD combats bacterial and yeast overgrowth by restricting the energy they require to live while keeping the host well fed.

But no one really knows why it works, just that, in many cases, it does work.

Unfortunately, in many cases it doesn't, but no one knows why on that count, either, it could be user error, as the SCD is notoriously difficult to follow. Even when you start to get what you can and can't eat; even when you're well enough to eat the full range of allowable foods (in the beginning, when you're really sick, many "legals" are verboten), there's hella prep involved in eating legal.

So there's no getting around it: following the SCD is a pain in the ass.

For those of us who've found relief, however, not following it is an even bigger pain in the ass. I fell off the wagon shortly after meeting The BF (not his fault! not his fault!), and have been on and off in the three years since. (I was in Fanatical Adherence mode for the two years prior.) I started to get another scare just before Thanksgiving, and had an epiphany much like I did when I felt the bronchitis coming on for a third time and quit smoking on the spot, in mid-pack: 20 years, and I'm still smoke-free.

Of course, it is MUCH harder to stay on a diet than to quit a substance entirely, because hey, you gotta eat. And not only is it difficult to steer clear of the temptation all dieters are faced with, there are literally hidden evils in everything. Every. Thing.

So we eat mainly non-processed food. Nothing canned, bottled, boxed or to-go. No convenience foods. Which makes life...inconvenient.

There's another downside to this: food gets scary-boring. I mean DEADLY boring. Because it's so much work finding and making food, one's intake on the SCD gets numbingly repetitive. Honestly, if I could have any luxury, when I can have any luxury, the first one I want it a private chef to come in three times per week and cook me stuff. (And for my chef friends out there, now you know that the thing I love most is being asked over for a tasty, SCD-legal dinner!)

One trick I've learned to apply from the other part of my nerdy life is batch-processing. Make a tub of yogurt and then figure out the 17 different ways you can use it. Find a recipe that freezes well in portions and make a shitload of it. Four dozen cookies, six loaves of "bread" (which you then turn half of into toasts).

So the following recipe is what you do with some of the homemade goat's milk yogurt it takes you 26 hours to make. It's fecking hawesome, as Shane Nickerson speaking in a bad British accent might say, and it made my night.

Also, for you normies, you can have it on real bread toasts, if you like. But the cuke makes it lighter and less caloric, in case you care about stuff like that.

THE RECIPE

Serves 1 hungry-ass SCD-er as a meal, or several dainty types as hors d'oeuvres

1 cucumber, sliced into 1/4" rounds
1 cup DRIPPED SCD-legal goat's milk yogurt*
1/2 cup chopped scallion
a few tablespoons capers
4 oz SCD-legal smoked salmon**

Spread rounds with dripped goat "cheese".
Press sprinkling of scallions on each round.
Press a few capers (to taste) on each round.
Layer with generous swath of salmon.
Eat your damn face off!

*Can substitute SCD-legal cow's milk yogurt, although not as tasty
**Check package, even if brand you used last time was legal; I think suppliers change for brands, and many add sugar

This is very tasty with a Virgin or Bloody Mary. Vodka, fortunately, is 100% legal on the SCD.

Um...in moderation, of course.

xxx
c

Image by chocolate monster mel via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. And no, that recipe is totally illegal. Looks good, though!

Other SCD-legal recipes on communicatrix-dot-com: