Honey Thai, 1678 Burwood Hwy, Belgrave, 3160
(03) 9752 6244
Wonderful Thai restaurant. Been going here for years. The staff, Darren and Jasmene, have become like family, the place is a home away from home. Food is delicious, a good range, affordable and friendly service. They’re diversity friendly, can adapt to special diets. Lovely warm atmosphere and nice authentic decor. Groups catered for. Good parking and 1 min walk from Belgrave train station.

Phi Phi Vietnamese Restaurant, shop 6/21 Main St Upwey, 3158
(03) 97544808
The best Vietnamese food in the Dandenong Ranges. Lovely owners, Kim and Philip, are gentle, warm, friendly people. Service with a smile of a wonderful range of affordable, authentic traditional Vietnamese dishes. They’re diversity friendly and can adapt to special diets. The atmosphere is gentle and easy. Groups catered for. Good parking and 2 min walk from Upwey train station.

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Fine Dining Restaurants in Yarra-Dandenong Ranges

In those with salicylate intolerance, high levels commonly affect these people like cocaine might affect others and it’s not unusual to find those with salicylate intolerance diagnosed with ADHD or Bipolar, some of which may reduce when they go low salicylate.  The thing is, unlike gluten or dairy intolerance, salicylate intolerance is not well known and because those who are salicylate intolerant often crave the very thing their body can’t process (salicylate is a natural plant toxin most people can detox from) those with it often can’t stop themselves from eating and drinking things high in salicylates even though they get sicker and less able to function – Vegimite (yeast extracts), honey, stone fruits, berries and grapes in particular are 18 time the ‘high’ level of salicylates.

And because salicylate rich foods are high in antioxidants, when salicylate intolerant people feel sicker and sicker they can’t imagine that in THEIR case, these sources of antioxidants are actually overwhelming their body and pushing them into a systemic inflammatory state.

And of course because many salicylate intolerant people crave high levels of salicylates, they can be more susceptible to alcoholism when it comes to grape based alcohols – most wine, sherry, port and the like.  So I was one of those people, the offspring of three generations of alcoholic mothers and someone who decided after my own inability to stop drinking red wine, port, sherry, that I had ‘inherited the problem’.  With a diagnosis as salicylate intolerant I got more insight into my situation and lived low salicylate since my mid 20s.

I also live with Primary Immune Deficiency with autoimmune complications.  Translation – I don’t have the immunity to fight my bugs and my confused body then goes and fights itself, slowly damaging my organs.  I manage this chess game as best I can with immune boosters and being GF/CF, low salicylate, low sugar and when in trouble have to let medication do it’s ugly thing.

Then I was surprised to learn that with a low IgA and low IgG and low Vitamin D result and a bug that wouldn’t leave even after 7 courses of antibiotics that there was one thing I could do to at least raise my IgA – I could drink alcohol.  Not big amounts, but there were health articles showing people had raised their IgA levels using moderate alcohol intake.

Of course, I had to choose carefully.  I’m gluten intolerant, so gluten products were out, but Sake was going to be OK.  But was there anything else?  Well PEARS.  Pears are low in salicylates and they make wine and cider from it.  AND I wouldn’t crave it so could drink it without any control problem – YAY.  Could I even get organic Perry?

Well, after much internet hunting and phone calls, the answer was yes.  I found it at Carwyn Cellars in Thornbury (829A HIGH STREET, Thornbury, VIC 03 9484 1820) where the very lovely James was kind enough to ship me out three boxes of the stuff.  I’m drinking then only 1-2 glasses a night, enjoying them happily   I have to say their Organic Pear Wine is absolutely fabulous.  I definitely recommend it.

Warmly,

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

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Low salicylate Pear wine (Perry) for those unable to have grapes

Dandelion coffee smells like coffee and it’s brown roasted granules even look somewhat like ground coffee.  But it’s not a bean.  It’s made from the root of the dandelion plant.

The trick is to be able to tell real dandelions from ‘false dandelions’.  Just because it has a raggedy yellow daisy-like flower doesn’t make it a dandelion.  Cat’s Ear , which has a thick, fuzzy leaf, not a smooth flaccid type, and Hawkbeard which has stiff stems not the hollow ones of dandelions, are not true dandelions.

True dandelions have ground level leaves which are the texture of lettuce and have ‘teeth’ like edges – Dent de Lion – means ‘tooth of the lion’.  True dandelions have this and hollow straw-like stems (you can also chew the bitter stems for liver detox).

So making Dandelion Coffee from scratch works like this:

1) get a pitch fork and find the biggest dandelion plant you can… one that’s been growing for a year or more.  Dig its root out.  Plants 1-2 years old will have smaller roots, but plants 3-4 years old will have tap roots the size of your index finger and look like pale carrots!  The bigger and chunkier the root the better.

2) remove the leaves (you can eat these in a salad for cheap eats!)  and clean up the carrot-like tap root with a scrubbing brush (the more roots you collect and scrub the more economical on water and roasting).

3) chop the root into small chunks for drying in a sunny window.

4) after 3-4 days of drying take these chopped roots and put them on a tray next time you are cooking a roast so you can capitalise on the energy use.  Let them roast for 1-2 hrs.  You’ll find they start to smell like coffee!

5) remove the tray of roasted dandelion root and allow to cool.

6) toss the roasted dandelion root into a blender and grind into granules

7) store in a small jar just as you would coffee (keep in fridge for freshness if you like)

to make coffee with them, you are best making them like a pot of tea because you’ll have to strain out the granules (they don’t desolve like coffee does).

You can make dandelion coffee as black coffee, or you can put heated rice milk or, heated nut milk onto it in a tea pot, let it steep, then pour through a tea strainer into a cup.

Like any food or drink, don’t over do it.  Remember life itself is a varied diet

Enjoy.

Warmly,

Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Recipe Blog: (Dec) Roasted Dandelion Coffee

• A cauliflower (organic is generally more nutritious)
• A packet of cashews (salted or unsalted, your choice)
• Water to add.
• A steamer
• A blender

Here’s what you do.

• Chop up a cauliflower and put it in a steamer with the packet of cashews (yes, you’ll steam those too).
• Steam for 35 min.
• Remove from the steamer and put all into a blender whizzing it all for 1 min,
• add small amounts of water into the mix until mixture goes from porridge texture to soup texture.
• Add salt/pepper if you like
• Serve into bowls (with GF/CF toast if you like).

For those of you who are a fire danger you can use an electric steamer on a timer so it automatically turns itself back off and sounds a buzzer to tell you it’s all done.

If you don’t do steaming, you can boil the cauliflower and cashews instead but you lose much of the nutrients into the water that way.  Steaming is nutritionally better.

Enjoy,

Donna Williams *)

http://www.donnawilliams.net

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Recipe Blog: (Nov) Cauliflower and Cashew Soup

THE CHOPPING

1) Finely Chop an onion.

2) Chop pumpkin into cubes

3) Finely handful of coriander

THE STEAMING

4) STEAM the pumpkin  cubes for 30 min until softish

THE DRAINING

5) Drain the pumpkin

THE FRYING

5) Heat a small amount of oil in a wok ready for frying

6) Add the onion and fry it for 3 mins

7) Add a pinch of nutmeg (one of the only spices not high in salicylate)

7) Add 3 pinches of garlic salt

9) Add the steamed pumpkin and fry it for 3 mins

10) Add the chopped coriander

11) Use wooden spoons to toss all ingredients as they cook in the wok for a final 3 mins.

THE EATING

Serve and eat.

Yum.

You can serve this with buckwheat pasta, with corn pasta, or with brown rice

Enjoy,

Warmly,

Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Recipe of the month (Oct) : Coriander Pumpkin

Beans can be cooked from the can (if you don’t mind the phenols sprayed as disinfectant to the surface of canned foods).

Packets of dried beans can be emptied into a bowl, soaked for 24 hrs in a bowl of water whilst stored in the fridge (covered).

From there they can have to be COOKED.

They can be baked as Bean Casserole for 1.5 hrs (a later recipe).

Or

1) they can be boiled for 40 min then put through a blender to produce a bean ‘paste’.

2) That’s when you add things to the taste of them….like onions, garlic, mineral salts, herbs (parsley and corriander are low Salicylate).

3) You then roll the bean paste into balls

4) and then roll the balls in either gluten free corn flake crumbs or ‘bread crumbs’ made from brown rice.

Voila,

you have Beany Burgers which are ready to fry.

5) To fry them, use a small amount of oil in a frying pan and cook them just as you would any burger.

• For those with immune deficiency, just stick to the non-soy beans (soy reduces gut IgA)
• For those Salicylate intolerant, just avoid the red kidney beans
• For those who won’t eat veggies, only meats, bean paste is closest in taste and texture to minced meat and can be easily blended with it to increase the vitamins/minerals and roughable of veggies.
• For those living on a shoe string budget, dried beans when constituted are a very affordable meal.
• For those with allergy or food intolerance to pulses (beans) you could make other types of vegie burgers.

Enjoy.

Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Recipe of the month (Sept) : Beany Burgers

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Blender
• A small packet of raw unsalted cashews, pecans and/or hazelnuts (from health food store)
• Water
• Fine mesh sieve
• Jug to catch sieved nut milk
• Storage container for used nut-meal (can be stored for 4-7 days and reused another 3 times)

HOW TO DO IT:

• Put the raw nuts into the blender
• Cover them over with water (about 1-2 inches above the nuts)
• Blend until the water looks more like ‘milk’
• Sieve the contents into a jug, catching the nut-meal in a FINE mesh seive
• Collect the nutmeal into a container and seal it for later use.
• Your nut milk (you’ll probably have about 1 pint from this first round) is now ready to use.

LATER:

You can later re-use the nut-meal by:

• putting it back into the blender
• covering it with water
• blend it again
• sieve again
• save the nut-meal again
• etc.

USES:

You can use the milk:

• on cereal,
• in Dandelion Coffee (yum and good liver detox)
• in cooking

You can use the nut-meal:

• in stir fries
• in casserole style bakes
• in cakes and biscuit mixes

Enjoy.

Donna Williams *)

http://www.donnawilliams.net

Note: those with herpes viruses may require low Arginine levels. Nuts are high in Arginine so those with the cold sore or Epstein Barr type viruses for example, may require a Lysine supplement to avoid provoking herpes virus flare ups due to raised Arginine levels.

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Recipe of the month (August) home made nut milk

• Boil GF/CF pasta
• Drain
• Mix with GF/CF Coriander Pesto
• add a tin of drained tuna (optional)

voila!

To make Coriander Pesto

Blend:

• coriander
• cashews
• lemon juice
• oil
• garlic
• salt
• rice vinegar

Donna Williams *)

http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Recipe of the month (July) Coriander Pesto Pasta

This month a basic recipe for home made snack bars.

Those of you lucky enough to not be gluten intolerant, allergic to milk products, salicylate intolerant or unable to cope well with sugar may find my recipes pretty bizarre. But for those of you living with people who are GF/CF, low sugar, low salicylate, you may find them interesting.

I’m also an intuitive ‘cook’, need supervision cooking on open flames, have no idea of measurements, just feel my way, so expect rather ‘autie‘ recipes.

Here’s Donna’s basic snack bar recipe:

• GF/CF rice bubbles or GF/CF muesli or coconut (the coconut is moderate in salicylates)
• bind with pear concentrate or rice malt in a blender
  
• add crushed pecans (or hazelnuts/cashews, all low salicylate, or chopped dried apple/mango)
• sprinkle of nutmeg or tiny touch of vanilla (careful with vanilla as it’s high in salicylates)

• mix in blender
• spoon onto greased baking tray

• roll out/press with rolling pin or glass
  
• cut/press into bars
• bake for 15 min in a moderate oven
• allow to cool (crumbly until completely cooled)
  
• lift out with spatula
• store in air tight container for up to 3 weeks or freeze for several months.

Donna Williams *)

author, artist, composer, screenwriter

http://www.donnawilliams.net

http://www.auties.org

This item originally posted here:

Recipe of the month (June): Home made snack bars.