Cookie Dough Balls (Raw, Paleo)

Recently we took Mario to a more homeopathic doctor to help us see if there was anything else we could do to help his remaining symptoms from leaky gut.  If you remember, before we started our dietary journey, Mario was dealing with eczema, hives, repetitive tics, and chronic diarrhea.  Much of that has cleared up, but there are still some nagging symptoms.  He has some very mild skin issues and chronic tummy pain.  We wanted to see if there were any foods that we needed to eliminate and also see how we were doing regarding healing his gut.

The results were kind of defeating.  His gut is still definitely leaky, as evidenced by this list of foods that is causing distress in his body:

Now this definitely doesn’t mean that he is allergic to all of these foods, although there are some, like casein (the protein found in milk) that his body just goes crazy with.  We are definitely eliminating that, although all he was eating at the time of this test was cheddar cheese.  Eggs and peanuts are also things that have consistently shown up as high problem areas on previous tests, so we are eliminating those as well.   As for the rest, our doctor’s advice was to rotate foods and do our best.

I am trying not to be discouraged.  We really have come a long way as he is completely tic-free and hasn’t had any hives in years.  But we still have a long way to go.

Necessity being the mother of invention…..I threw together this snack on the fly and it turned out great!

Raw Cookie Dough Balls

1 cup raw cashews

1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds

2 TBSP raisins

1 TBSP honey

2 TBSP Enjoy Life mini chips

Start by turning your cashews into cashew butter using a food processor.  It takes awhile and mine turned into more of a ball of dough than an actual butter.  For this reason, I’m not sure if jarred cashew butter would work with this recipe.

Add the pumpkin seeds, raisins, and honey to the cashew butter/dough.  I pureed it all until it was nearly all smooth.  Take the “dough” out of the food processor and add in the mini chips.  Roll into balls and enjoy.  Keep refrigerated.