Finally nailed it.

In my last post I wrote about discovering that Alton was suffering from IBS and not from Allergies.

Great success since then narrowing down what is causing his IBS. We were rocking out on the low FODMAP diet but he was still having spikes in behavior, GI problems and twitching/fidgety behavior. Clearly we were on target. We just hadn't hut the bulls eye yet.

As usual, back to the internet. I went over all the periods of problems, cross checked the diet and found that all the spikes were following fruit consumption. We checked the FODMAP categories and found that the F (fructose) category composed all of the problem foods. We decided to try adding the other categories in one at a time to see if maybe he was only reacting to some things and not all. With that approach we tried lactose. With fingers crossed we gave Alton full strength milk. He drank it, made a disgusted face and declared "that's icky".

In spite of his dislike of bovine nutrition he had no problems. We pushed on. Each food group was fine. We narrowed it down to fructose. So, with a bit of research and a few pages of printed science (for understanding) and lists for guidelines, we pressed on.

Here is where an amazing thing happened. We went the first full week with zero problems. No potty troubles. No rashes. No sores. No headaches. No throwing things, defiant behavior, failures to nap due to fidgety anxious behavior... The list goes on and on.
Once again we had to go through the cupboards. Time for purging the offending food... Again. I swear I have given away so much food that I could be considered a food pantry these last two years.

As Costco shoppers we have giant bags of raisins, but clusters, spices and more...now all finding a new home. I could complain about how I spent the entire summer canning produce to prepare for a corn-allergy winter and how we can't eat a single thing I canned now but I would rather have my son's health.

So, I have 2 bushels of peaches, 2 of apples, dozens of jars of pasta sauce, chilli, soups, sauces and jams all ready for gifting. If it didn't have fruit in it, it had honey. If the honey wasn't there garlic and onions were.

Now, in a string of events seemed planned to train me to be on a special diets version of Chopped, I can whip up a pretty fancy meal with any ingredients on short notice. I have a set group of foods to avoid and real confidence in the future.

It is amazing.
Grateful grateful grateful

Now, could someone please tell me how I am going to survive coking without garlic and onions forever? Now that is a challenge.

Chefs...open your baskets!

Not An Allergy?

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I wanted to say what I am grateful for this year. It has been a challenging two years and we have learned so very much about a great many things. Firstly, we can pretty much officially say that Alton does NOT have a corn allergy, a milk allergy, a KD-9 allergy or any allergy whatsoever.

I say again, NO ALLERGIES for our son.

What? So what about the past two years? What about all those symptoms? Doctors? "Confirmed diagnosis"?

So, the western medicine system is a joke. Don't get me wrong, it does a lot for many people. It also doesn't know all it thinks it knows. I have come to realize that western medicine is like a teenager. It thinks it knows everything. (Rolls its eyes as I write that)

When Alton first became sick he had just had his 2 month TDap vaccine and a second set of antibiotics and antifungals to treat the thrush that wouldn't go away. Within a few hours of his vaccines he started screaming and pretty much didn't stop for 8 months. No kidding. It was awful. He screamed, writhed, sweated profusely, had reflux and developed mucous stools. He started getting hives all over his body soon after, eczema and worst of all, discoid eczema. Those suckers are massive boils that just look like torture.

We started seeing our doctor first, then were sent out to specialists. Convinced that it was a GI issue (because of the mucous in his stool and reflux) we asked to see a GI specialist. We headed to the Wilmington UNC Children's hospital. That doctor said children can't have a problem like that and told us to just switch to Alimentum formula. Check out the ingredients. NASTY

Our son got worse so I decided to do a massive elimination diet in myself and continue breastfeeding exclusively. I kept detailed notes of food intake and his reactions. Pretty soon we had a pattern. Gluten went immediately along with dairy and soy. Huge strides of progress.  This is my first Thanksgiving note- without my son I would have never know I was severely gluten intolerant. Non-Celiac gluten intolerance is what was causing so many problems for me. Thanks to my son the vertigo, migraines, double vision, hair loss, Raynaud's, anxiety, asthma and peripheral neuropathy were gone.

We pressed on and found allergists because the GI doc swore we were dealing with an allergy. Local allergist said he may have food allergies but couldn't get positive results, go see a specialist. We headed to UNC in Chapel Hill. Those doctors, as learned as they were, acted like jerks. They were absurdly late, dismissive and unhelpful. They told us to treat his skin by scrubbing it and to move on. We saw the GI doctor there and he said we had no GI issues but he would do an endoscopy anyway since we did have reflux and mucous issues.

Scope revealed that there was reflux and eosinophils present. Yet he did nothing.
We headed to Duke University.

Same story. At least they were respectful and helpful. ...and on time to appointments which was a 3 hour improvement over UNC. The allergist was thorough and felt strongly that it was a GI issue. The GI doc said it was an allergy.

NO PROGRESS FROM ANYONE. We pressed on at home. Eventually we had this massive list of food "allergies" and had prescriptions for benadryl and EpiPens. We were using the benadryl daily to manage his hives and wheezing. Our list of foods grew and grew until we were not only treating the obscene list of corn products with strict avoidance but also 21 other foods that were known problems for him. It was insanity. Thank goodness for the Paleo diet and all of its simplicity.

I had subscribed to a few Paleo sites on my newsfeeds and an article came up about FODMAPs. I clicked. Life changed.

So, long story short. We have spent the past two weeks eating a low FODMAP diet and the change in our son is astounding. Normal healthy bathroom events instead of the 2 plus years of diarrhea. What doctor thinks that is normal? Anyway..... No more rashes, no hives, no wheezing, no pain, no bloating no reflux....an NO MEDICINE!!! So our son never had allergies, he has Irritable Bowel Syndrome. His vaccine reaction (inconsolable crying) mixed with the loss of his gut health made for a terrible stage for problems. Considering we have IBS in my family (probably due to gluten intolerance being undiagnosed) it makes sense. Australia is leading the research and I am grateful for their publications and easy to understand dietary information.

What do we have in return after two years in the dietary trenches? A simple list of foods to avoid and HOPE. We have so much hope. Apparently you can manage IBS and make progress towards healing the gut. I sure hope so. We will always be gluten free around here now. We hope to stay clean eaters and know what we now know about the food industry and real nutrition, I think that is realistic.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving here is my list.
This year, I am thankful for my son for making me a better parent, a more patient parent and a better cook. I have had to do a ton of work, research, effort and learn so many new skills that I would have never done without all this dietary drama. I now know how my body functions best, how to cook a meal from scratch and all about where my food originates. I have formed community bonds with my farmers, grocers and friends that are life long. I have met people with more compassion for their needs thanks to understanding my son's needs.
Most of all I am grateful for my son. He takes a probiotic pill without complaining, never complained that his medicines were unflavored, compounded bitter formulas. He never complained about his sore bottom, itchy body, and all the other pains. He just soldiered on and kept a smile on his face. He loves food and never complained that we are different things than him when we were out of the house. My child is a saint. My husband as well. Thanks to him all of this time and effort was possible. He adapted quickly to every bit of research, appointment during his chaotic schedule and nights of sitting up with our sick son. He did it all while managing to get to work on time so he could save the world. So much love there.

Happy Thanksgiving. We are going to enjoy our local heritage turkey without fear of the unknown.

Preserving Book Reviews

I certainly never thought I would be writing book review for fun once my collegiate days were over. Yet, here I am willingly. There is no gun to my head, no deadline, no grades to make.
Yet, here I am.
What is wrong with me?

Well, don't answer that. You may need an oxygen tank when you run out of air.

Here goes nothing!
I have been on a bit of a journey with home preservation since discovering my son's food allergies/intolerances. His list of verboten foods is long so let's just say that making it myself is easier than memorizing 22 foods and their chemical derivitives. At that point, processed food becomes a luxury item and a nightmare to find. As a point of note, when I can for allergy purposes, I always list EVERY ingredient because as the allergy list grows, I need to make sure that something I made safely a few months ago is not deadly now. I didn't know that celery and carrots were off limits for my son. Guess what flavored my stocks? Yeah, good thing I labeled everything!

Along the way I have had to do a bit of searching for the right preservation books. I started with the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Weck Jars vs. Mason Jars

Weck vs. Mason: WWIII?

I have been doing research into canning....there isn't a lot out there. Americans love Jarden Home Brands (Kerr, Ball) and Europeans love their brands. All of them work. The questions boil down to this:

1: Access to ready supplies
2: Cost per unit
3: Ease of use
4: Personal preserving preference (I love alliteration)


So why even look outside the tried and true American mason jar? Well, the lids used to have BPA and since we decided that to save money and make our winters easier we would preserve as much as we could, we needed something scalable and reliably safe. I don't like the idea of hormone disruptors in my carefully made food. According to JHB:

They began production/release of their BPA-free lids in January 2013. To identify a BPA-free box (they are not marking it on their boxes, according to the company spokesman), look for a production code printed/stamped on each box that is One Letter Followed by 10-11 Numbers. On Ball boxes, you’ll find the code next to the flag on the bottom of the box. On Kerr boxes, you’ll find the code on the back of the box, above the text. It won’t be a particular code, but only BPA-free boxes will have these (or any) codes like this stamped on them.

For a visual identification guide check out this page:

BPA aside, I know the world well enough to know that even if they removed BPA it had to be replaced with something. What did they use? Good question. One blogger wrote that they were corny, another that they had other hormone disrupting chemicals, just not BPA. So what to do? Look elsewhere. I looked around and found Weck jars.

Weck jars are made in Germany and are the Bundesrepublik's original mason jar. Instead of a screw band to hold the lid down, they offer a rubber gasket and glass lid secured by two clips. Once sealed, the clips can be removed. When opened, the rubber gasket can be set aside and the lid sits on nicely to make a great refrigerator lid. Optional are plastic lids for easier cold storage. They are also a very durable glass so you can bake in them. There is a great YouTube video of a man making a cake in one then preserving it.

For processing, the sizes are more flexible. Instead of a dozen sizes, there are nearly 30. Everything from carafes the fish tank sized behemoths. The option to have any size and shape desired is wonderful. I found that carafes are great for storing almond milk, syrups and juices. The 1L wide mouth size make great peach preserves. The tulip shaped containers in the small size are wonderful for jellies and the large size for soups and stocks.

Cost: Well, that goes two ways. They are more expensive per unit but they seem to hold up better, look better, have the kitsch factor and most importantly...no parts need to be replaced. The rubber gasket is infinitely reusable. The mason jars call for a new lid each time and the bands rust with washing.

This is a little shape sample. Tons of shapes and sizes. 

Additional cost factors: Sourcing them. If you buy them locally you have to have a Cost Plus/World Market and you will pay a premium per. You can also find them at Williams Sonoma. Same problem applies...expensive per unit. Amazon, like with mason jars, does not offer any deals. Best way to purchase them is online. WeckJars.com is the US distributer. They have wonderful customer service and your jars arrive lickety-spit fast. They do not send you an email that they are shipping...they just arrive. From my experience there is just one nice lady in an office that fields all calls and processes orders. Having said that, she is fast! I was surprised to receive a phone call apologizing for the the weather causing her mail not to be picked up that day which would delay my order. You certainly won't get that from Jarden Home Brands. Afterall, the company is so large that they used a marketing company to pick a name that sounded the most friendly...Jarden...like the french word for garden. It's all marketing.  Different tools are required. You will need a jar lifter made just for Weck. Not a huge expense but something to remember for batch canning. You will not need a magnetic lid lifter, a constant replacement of lids, a band tightener or any other special items.

Price comparison: This is the jar I used for making sliced peaches. The Weck 742- a 1/2 Liter open mouth, straight sided jar. It is fabulous. No issues filling and you can make the peaches stack beautifully with little effort.

742 - 1/2 L Mold Jar - $18.40
Includes: 6 Jars, 6 glass lids, 6 rings & 12 clamps
Height: 4 1/8" Opening: 3 7/8" Volume: 19.6 fl oz

Ball® 16oz Wide Mouth Pint Jars are about .47/Liter

Set of 12 for $12.99. 

Obviously the cost of Mason jars is much better per unit. $12.99/12=$1.08 per jar

The Weck Jars are $18.40/6=$3.06 per jar

Additionally, you have to add shipping costs for the Weck. 

Additional products offered from Weck: The electric water bath.

This beauty is my favorite thing in the whole wide world (domestically). My kitchen is nice but it is not huge. I also don't have a ton of stove space thanks to an overhead microwave. Canning was always cramped and took way longer than the time I had available to do it. Solution? Electric canner. This beauty lets me sterilize and process jars wherever I have access to an outlet. The cord wraps away nicely and it has an optional juice maker to sit on top.  I did not buy the one with the tap in front (no longer available) but I wish I had. It is the little things. For the price, it was a splurge but thankfully it has gotten every penny's worth of use this year alone.

Another slight hiccup in switching brands: the language barrier.

You have to be creative to find Weck recipes and help. It is a German company but the Dutch seem to have the majority of information online. If you use the Google translate there are lots of fun recipes online for things we would never think of like pine cone juices. There is a serious darth of information in English for using their equipment and for recipes.

Overall review?

1: Access to ready supplies- Ball wins for sure. Anyone every heard of Wal-Mart?

2: Cost per unit- Again, Wal-Mart? Ball

This is my storage are so far this summer.
A few more months to go! It has a nice mix
of the two brands. Preservationists will cringe at my stacked
jars. I know. I need to move the rest of my cameras
out of the way so I can properly store them. 
The bands are loosened so not to ruin the seal.
That is another win for Weck, no problems there. 
(NEVER STACK JARS)

3: Ease of use- Actually Weck wins. Great seals that are visible to check. No rusting bands and have their own storage lids once opened.

4: Personal preserving preference- Weck. They look good, feel good and leave me confident in their health. I don't worry that the BPA has been replaced with something equally disturbing.

Having written all of that, what do I use the most? Mason jars. (sheds a little tear)

One of the great parts of canning is sharing. I don't like giving away money and Weck jars are an investment. I tend to make my personal supply of foods in Weck and a few in Mason jars for gifts. The problem with that is making sure there is a nice supply handy. So, when I got the opportunity to make huge amounts of something, I need the jars fast and I need lots of them. I head to the store and buy flats of mason jars. In the future, I would love to keep investing in Weck. Someday I will also rule the world and my cats will clean their own cat boxes.

As for the lid chemical problem? I just have to take my time and switch my collection over or invest in the alternative lids, mixed reviews aside.

In the end, my canning closet is filled with a mix of the two. I prefer the Weck but I can afford the Mason jars. I use the Weck canner the most of anything and it works with both brands. That seems to get the gold star above all products in my home. 

Allergen free vacation planning

Going on any trip requires planning. Having multiple food allergies and a gluten intolerance takes NASA level planning.

My sweetie and I flew to Montreal to kick off fall with some leaf-looking and a little peace and quiet. We met up with my parents there and had a culinary delight day after day with a little extra effort. Montreal is quite wonderful in the fall. You aren't yet freezing to death and you are not surrounded by tourists. No lines for tables or events, no crazy prices set to pad the lean months.

When planning for our trip we had to get creative about how we were going to stick to both our very petite budget and  our diet. Our son is severely corn allergic and milk allergic. I am gluten intolerant. I nurse him so that means I am temporarily allergic to corn and milk as well. To save the stress of playing twenty questions at every restaurant after reading a dozen menus just to find one that seemed even semi safe, we booked a hotel with a mini fridge and a microwave oven. We checked that it was in walking distance to the grocery and started putting plans in place. Add to the mix the language. Now my husband, the dapper lad that he is, speaks a little French leftover from his school days. I butcher the language like only an American can. If we were in Italy I would be good to go....this is no Francophile momma. 

First step: How to get our breakfast made without having to cook on a pan or pack oils.

To solve this we bought one of the microwave omelette makers. Totally cheesy but effective. 2-3 eggs whipped up in a bowl with our packed salt and pepper, nuked for 2 minutes and served. We also found safe turkey at the grocery so we planned for making egg omelettes with turkey and spinach. The spinach came from the salad mix we bought for lunches. 

As a optional breakfast, I pre packed baggies with gluten free oatmeal, corn free brown sugar and microwave directions. These also make a nice midnight snack and meal for the day of a flight. 

Total cost: $4 for the omelette maker, $8 for the eggs, $5 for the turkey. =$17 for breakfast for 3 for a week on vacation.

Lunch:

For lunch we relied on packed safe snack foods and the local grocery store. The best part of being in a foreign country that is French leaning is the marvelous foods. Our grocery store had pate, soups, individual olive oil packets, etc. We loaded up on delicious meat spreads, soups and drinks. It was a bit pricier than making lunch at home but still less expensive than eating out every day and dealing with the stress. I packed containers for taking food to go. I have a slight confession: there are many hiding places in my house for Bento containers. I am obsessed with them. If I put them all together I would see how many I have and not be able to justify a single future purchase. In all honesty though, (and an attempt to justify hoarding) they all serve different purposes. Some are the Indian style metal containers which don't get dishwashered, are only good for cold foods and can't be heated. Some are the Japanese style which are precious, can be microwaved but are not liquid safe. Additionally I have Japanese soup containers which are also great for berries and roll ups. ...but I digress. See my problem? I love those things.

Dinner: We only planned a few dinners in because I feel strongly that half of visiting a foreign place is eating. Seriously. If you aren't going to eat the local flavors, why bother? That is the proof of heritage for a people. You can see their manners, culture, customs, history and social movements all on your plate. For Montreal, it is an experience. We went to the store and enjoyed the French appreciation of offal and the cuts of meats that Paleo people can only dream of. The local no fuss grocer had chicken hearts, livers and other parts mixed right in with all the others. To make this corn allergy momma happy, none of the packages had cornstarch packaging to sop up the liquids. The beef selection included tongue, tail, etc. It was beautiful to see rabbit cheaper than chicken. Actually, we were surprised that chicken was the most expensive. When we thought about it, it isn't exactly ideal chicken raising climates in Canada. 

Once out, we ate gluten free with no problems. Corn free was a bit easier because the American reliance on fake ingredients was minimized. The only issue we had was that sauces were often thickened with cornstarch to reduce the gluten in restaurants. 

Overall- this vacation set me at ease. I was frightened of taking my son out of our area. Next time I will pack more snack foods and also rely less on hotel dinners. Finding a cut of meat is easier than feared. Breakfasts were a good cost savings and so were lunches. 

Spiced Apples with Turkey

It is apple season and I wanted to expand my apple cooking techniques beyond the pie and crumble. I can bake apples, eat apples and make apple sauce but can I cook with apples? I did a little digging around and testing out cook times and came up with a fabulous fall main dish. I love a good pork chop and learned recently that you can do just about anything with turkey that you can with pork. Turns out turkey is kind of a chameleon in the kitchen. Not as dry as the Thanksgiving bird once it is sliced into manageable pieces for cooking. 

I find that the variety of apple that you eat or cook with matters.  For cooking and baking I enjoy the Golden Delicious variety. For eating, the Granny Smith or Crisps. This past week our farmer's market started selling apples. We bought a ton of them. This next week I will be buying bushels of them. Why so many? Well, my son's allergy to corn makes his apple picking preferences pretty particular. The grocery store apples can be up to a year old. (Ewww gross. No, I am not even kidding, look it up.) Worse than that, apples, along with other fruits and veggies are sprayed with a corn based wax. We learned this the hard way. I am sure that is the only way I ever learn things.  Peeling apples certainly helps but I would rather have apples that are fresh, grown THIS year and support my community. 

Ingredients: 

• 3 Golden Delicious apples- peeled, chopped
• 4 Turkey breast slices or pork chops
• 1 tbl olive oil
• 1/2 tbl garlic powder
• 1/2 tbl ginger powder
• 1/2 tbl cumin
• 1/4 tsp coriander 
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• pinch salt
• pinch pepper

Cook:

In a saute pan heat the olive oil. Peel, core and slice the apples and cook for 2 minutes in the pan over medium heat. In a small bowl prep all of the dry spices together. Add the turkey or chops into the pan and let sit for 2-3 minutes so they form a nice crust. Add the spices to the apples and mix around to ensure even coating. Flip the turkey and cook another 3-4 minutes on the other side. Once the pink is gone you are all done. 

With Thanksgiving coming up I am really working on making a list of recipes that feel like the holidays. Last year was our major elimination diet year and we had not yet found the Paleo and Primal community. We ended up making enchiladas thinking it was safe for our son. That was about when we figured out that his issue was corn. Oops. Corn tortillas were a really bad idea. (Corn allergy) This year we will be enjoying a primal feast. I have mastered the art of cooking real food. Okay, so maybe not mastered but I am certainly on my way. 

Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus

Prosciutto wrapped asparagus make the most wonderful presentation item and serve equally well as a snack or side dish. I saw an episode on Food Network with Trisha Yearwood where she took what could have been a really nice and simple meat wrapped veg recipe and transformed it into a processed food nightmare. It seems today that making food that is simple and clean is a lost art. Even so called "Pioneer" women can't make something from scratch. There is a mass produced box package product in every single dish. I might have buried my history lessons way out past Terlingua but I am pretty sure that our pioneering ancestors did not use a box of Bisquick around the campfire. Can you imagine these "chefs" trying to actually survive as chefs 100 years ago? That would be hilarious.

Primal side effect: excellent compost.

I would be willing to get my cable back if they had a Primal or Paleo food show. The best part would be trying to find commercials to fill in between segments. I can just see people rolling theirs eyes as the announcer comes on to say that this show was brought to you buy Kraft Singles. That would be a facepalm moment for sure. In my fantasy land, I would be competing against Nom Nom Paleo in an Iron Chef competition with Alton Brown explaining the science of sous vide. This is also the same fantasy land where I can properly do a sous vide preparation. My kitchen skills have improved in the past year but I don't know if I am up to that standard just yet. 

Make a little oily garlic bath and let the asparagus get friendly. 

Speaking of cooking skills.....if someone would have told me that I would need to know how to cook this well in order to eat I would have laughed at them. I thought I knew how to cook before our massive diet overhaul. Turns out I cooked like an American. That is to say, I bought a box of chemically altered, mass produced garbage and plopped it into a pan/microwave/pot and heated it. That is not cooking. That is reheating. Thanks to our primal lifestyle, I can really cook. I spend so much time in my kitchen now and I love it. I truly wouldn't have it any other way. I wish my husband had a bit more time to cook but he is super busy with work so I am just grateful that I get to stay at home and make him awesome meals. I pretty much get to mess around in the kitchen all day and use my family as (willing) test subjects. That is pretty sweet. 

Wrap up the deliciousness with a layer of pork. 

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of asparagus, cleaned and trimmed
• 1 package of prosciutto or bacon
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tbl olive oil
• salt and pepper

Prep:

Preheat oven to 400F. Trim the ends of the asparagus. This could mean a little or a lot depending on how woody the stalks are. I like to snap the ends off but you can make a clean cut for presentation or speed.

Take a baking sheet out and cover in foil. Lay the cleaned stalks out and place the garlic, salt and pepper over them with a touch of olive oil. Not too much since the prosciutto will make a bit of grease. Once mixed, wrap groups of 3 or 4 stalks with a piece of the meat and set back on the tray. If you use bacon, turn the asparagus over once in the middle of cooking. 

Pop into the oven for 15 minutes. You don't want soggy, limp asparagus so if they are thin, cook a little less time. 

Curried Carrot Coconut Soup

A soup is a great way to change up your weekly meal plans, make a simple meal that is great as a side or main and a great way to get your kids to eat plenty of vegetables. I love the simply delicious flavors in curries but I tended to stay away thinking that they would be spicy. It took this soup to convince me that curries are a very good thing. I usually make this with a whole roasted chicken so my husband can pull it apart and drop the chicken in his soup. I like mine with cauliflower tortillas to dip in it. My son loves it any way he can get it. He is a soup connoisseur. This recipe is dairy free and quick to make so it is a regular on our menu. This serves 4 and can be expanded by adding more stock and carrots. 

Since my son was recently diagnosed with corn and milk allergies, we are really careful to scrutinize the labels on his products. When shopping for a coconut milk, make sure that your product only lists a few key ingredients. Ours had coconut, water, guar gum. As far as we have found, only one company makes a coconut milk with no stabilizer thickener (guar gum) and that is Trader Joes. Since I don't have one near me, the Taste of Thai milk is our best bet. The guar gum is 8x more powerful than cornstarch as a thickener yet isn't made of that nasty allergen. 

Ingredients:

• 6 carrots
• 1/2 white or yellow onion
• 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 tbl curry seasoning
• 1 pinch sea salt
• 1 can of coconut milk

Cook:

Cut up your onion and carrots into chunks. They don't need to be too fine since you will be boiling and blending later.

In a dutch oven saute the onion in a little oil or grease while you cut up your carrots. Add the salt and carrots and cook for 5 minutes on medium/low. Let them get a little soft and golden. Add the curry powder, stir. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Boil about 8-10 minutes. You will stop cooking it once the carrots can be smashed against the side of the pot easily. At this point. Take it off the heat and use either an immersion blender or pour into a blender. Blend until smooth and add the coconut milk. That is it. 

Could it be any easier? Didn't think so. I recently tried adding a green bell pepper into the mix and was pleased with the results.