Back to the Garden: Low-Iodine Eating: Day 4 (Cooking with Juicer Pulp)

This is the fourth in a 21-day series showing how I kept a low-iodine diet in preparation for radioactive iodine treatment.

The Menus

Breakfast

Spicy Muffins (see recipe)
Coffee, black, no sugar
Morning meds (see Day 1)

Lunch

Sauteed Chicken and Peppers (see Day 3)
White Rice
Cranberry-Lime Seltzer
Apple
Afternoon meds (2:00) (see Day 1)

Dinner

Pork Chops
Asparagus
French Fries

Evening meds (see Day 1)

Snacks

Pecan halves, dried cranberries
Coffee, black, no sugar

The Recipes

Spicy Muffins

(Adapted from Juicer Pulp Sweet Bread, The Hillbilly Housewife)

Items marked * are adapted to suit a low-iodine diet.

1/2 c white sugar
1/4 c apple cider*
2 egg whites*
2 T vegetable oil
2 T honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 c whole wheat flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp non-iodized salt
1 1/2 cups pulp from juicing (See Day 1)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray, or line with paper cupcake liners; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, cider, egg whites, oil, honey, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and cloves.

In a large bowl, stir together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the sugar mixture, then the pulp from juicing. Stir with a wooden spoon until combined, but do not overmix.

Spoon the batter into the muffin tin. Bake for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Remove the bread from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

NOTES:

The Apple Cider: The original recipe uses milk. Since most of the pulp was apple pulp, I figured cider would work well. You can use any juice, or even water. NOTE: Non-dairy "milks" usually have soy in them, and may have dairy-based components, so these are not part of a low-iodine diet.

The Egg Whites: You can't have yolks, but you can have whites. So if the recipe calls for an egg (like this one did), substitute another white for the yolk you removed, and save the yolks for someone else in the family.

The Juicer Pulp: You can use whatever pulp you have. Mine usually has lots of apples, celery, and carrots, plus some other stuff. Depending on your juicer, you might have chunks that slipped by the grater, so I usually sift through the pulp with my (clean) fingers to pull out any large or hard pieces. Maybe you have a better way. I bought my juicer in the summer, and couldn't bear to throw away the pulp -- it seemed a shame to discard something that I would have eaten (although my eldest child remarked, "Mom, if you're going to squeeze out the juice and then save the apple pulp, why don't you just eat the whole apple?"). There are lots of recipes using juicer pulp, but beware! I think a lot of them are recipes someone invented but never tried, as I have made some awful ones. This one is not only foolproof, but it's very tasty. Experiment with your zucchini bread and carrot cake recipes to start, remembering that your juicer squeezes out most of the water (so you'll have to adjust your liquid), and a lot of the sugar is in the juice, so you'll have to check the sweetness of your product).

An Interesting Variation: Susanne at The Hillbilly Housewife suggests adding 1/2 c cocoa powder to the dry ingredients to create a moist, chocolate sweet bread or muffins. This sounds wonderful. You cannot have chocolate (because it contains milk products), but cocoa powder is allowable. I'll have to try that the next time.