Friday, February 23, 2018

Spicy Turkey Cabbage Wraps (recipe)

I've been reading Amy Myers' books The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection. Both good basic books on their respective subjects. Her "Myers Way" diet and lifestyle is very similar to Kharrazian's protocol except she allows sweet potatoes, shellfish, pork and all fruits.  And CHOCOLATE!!! She obviously didn't get the memo chocolate is a gluten cross-reactor. For anyone with weakened willpower for chocolate this could provide a justification for some bad behavior, but not me! Instead, I just lost all faith in her. Still, the books serve as refreshers on how to eat and how to live with an autoimmune disease, and specifically Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. For anyone newly diagnosed, this would be a life saver or at least set them on the right track.

Dr. Myers talks a lot about the failure of conventional medicine and gives all kinds of examples including her own personal story with Graves Disease and hyperthyroidism. Given only drastic options: poison, radiate, or surgically remove her thyroid, and desperate for relief with no other remedies in sight, she had her thyroid surgically removed. It is an atrocity how these conventional doctors are so eager to cut body parts out of us because they are too stupid or lazy to come up with better solutions. Having had my own close call with a butcher recently, I shiver at the thought.

Although I think both of these books are very good resources for newbies, I found them excessively repetitive. Every point she makes she repeats in every chapter, many times. One of the books I listened to it on tape in my car so perhaps this made the repeats more obvious. I kept yelling at the speakers, "YOU ALREADY SAID THAT A MILLION TIMES!" I fought the urge to fast forward with every repetition hoping I'd find new information but knowing I might miss it with each jump. I think if one were to remove all the repetition it would boil down to a very short book. And, she is a pill pusher. For every symptom, she has a corresponding drug that she promotes. Although she's all about removing toxins, she's failed to read the ingredients on her supplement bottles. She also doesn't address when her patients can't take drugs as so few profit-seeking doctors do.

BUT both books she has a whole chapter on recipes that comply with her diet regiment. Since I have recently added ground turkey and cabbage to my diet this one caught my eye. turkey is high in selenium which is a good, supportive nutrient. I've added my tweaks and notes in the recipe instructions below.

Spicy Turkey Cabbage Wraps

Ingredients:
8 intact cabbage leaves
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ginger root, minced
1 yellow onion, diced
10 stalks of asparagus
1/2 lb. ground turkey
1/8 teaspoon turmeric
juice of one large orange wedge (about 2 tablespoons)
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon chopped scallions

Fill a large pot half way with water, heat to boil.

In a large skillet, heat oil, saute garlic, ginger, and onion. Add asparagus and cook a few minutes. (I chopped the stalks into one inch pieces. I suppose I didn't have to do this and it might have been better in a wrap with long stalks, but I liked it better.) Add turkey, turmeric, and juice. When almost cooked completely, add basil and scallions. Cook until done.

When water in pot boils, add a few cabbage leaves at a time using tongs. I think to fill eight leaves it would spread the mix thin or make very small wraps. I'd be more inclined to use four and have more filling so it would suffice as a meal. Remove after 30 seconds I left in about 1 minute only because they didn't seem soft enough to roll. Fill with turkey mix, roll, serve. As the rolls sit, the leaves form around each other so they stay together making it somewhat easy to lift and eat.





She said it has a nice flavor and with those ingredients, I had high hopes. Maybe I've been eating too many herbs and spices, but it didn't seem to have much of a flavor at all. It wasn't bad. I think turkey is a bit flavorless anyway. The cabbage roll was messy even though it did stay together. I preferred eating the turkey mix without the cabbage roll, but I think I will experiment and place slices of cabbage IN the mix.

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