I took this photo yesterday. It towers over one of the Otterbox parking lots and will soon be towered over by the 5 level parking garage that Otterbox plans to build on that residential block. (Not one of Otterbox's better plans if you ask me.) 

Whew! The last two days were a blur. I thought Sunday was going to be a relaxing, kick back kind of day. I should know better by now. So while I can still piece it together, here's the foods we scarfed yesterday and today.

Sunday (Day 16) 

Breakfast: Squash pancakes with a little honey on top and camomile tea for everyone. 

Lunch: Leftovers. We had cabbage soup and celery root/leek soup to choose from. I went for the cabbage soup (no chunks of meat - that's a plus for me) and added some kimchi. It was pretty decent that way. 

Dinner: Roast chicken with roasted veggies (celery root, carrot, eggplant)

Dessert: Almond Raisin Cookies   ... and, of course, yogurt with honey whenever folks were peckish. 

Monday (Day 17)

Breakfast: one egg omelette with butter sauteed onions, camomile tea, homemade apple sauce

Lunch: kids - Italian style meat stuff. meg - yogurt with honey and a fried egg

Dinner: Roasted duck, chard cooked in ghee (sooooooooooooo yummy), and "french fried" celery root

Dessert: Made another batch of almond raisin cookies. 

OK, so here's the gross thing I did today. I was starting to feel some of the pre-diet symptoms that I had been hoping to get rid of. I know that I'm supposed to be consuming a fair bit of broth on this diet and that somehow it's all the stuff in the broth (gelatin and collagen and stuff like that) that heal the gut.  But because meat tastes so darn yucky to me, I don't eat much of it. And when I can eat a meal (like a yummy veggie frittata) that doesn't have meat in it, I do it. So yesterday I served soup for dinner and I got some broth into me that way. But today the kids had broth in their lunch, but I didn't have any in any of my meals. So I decided I had to get some broth into me to heal stuff so my pre-diet symptoms will go away. 

I had just made some chicken broth and was canning it for storage. As I poured the broth through a strainer (to keep out the bones) I poured one cup for me. I then got a large bowl of yogurt, added some honey, and had it sitting at the ready to cleanse my palate. I drank down the (unsalted) broth as fast as a college student downs a beer, then took a big bite of honey to wash out the taste. Unfortunately, I'm still having chicken burps which apparently aren't so easily covered over with yogurt. I expect great things tomorrow after my body has marinated in that cup of broth for a night. 

Today was our first full day on the Full GAPS Diet. Which means that as long as food is agreeing with us, we have a much wider variety of options to choose from than we had on the intro diet. So what do I cook today? Pretty much all the same kind of stuff I've been cooking for two weeks... with one notable exception.

Breakfast: I made a two egg omelette with half a medium sized onion for me. I don't know what the kids had. They were on their own. I put a sign up in the kitchen giving them breakfast suggestions. I'm guessing they all went for the yogurt because that's easiest... plus they love the homemade yogurt.
Lunch: Again, I have no idea what the kids ate. It's a Saturday, for heaven's sake! They're on their own. After my morning walk I came home and ate yogurt and had a very tall glass of homemade coconut milk. Then my stomach hurt for the next two hours and I didn't feel like eating anything else for lunch. I think I need to back off the coconut until it settles better in my stomach. Bummer!
Dinner: I made a Celery Root and Leek soup that my sister had recommended to me. It was good, though a teeny bit plain. So I spiced it up with some Kimchi. The kids were fine with it as it. The celery root was very potato like. I think I need to start using it more often.

And then we headed off to the Harvest Farm Corn Maze. We got there, parked, and were walking up to the ticket booth to pay when I saw the maze. Well, I thought I saw the maze. I saw the bridge that they usually put in the middle of the maze that someone stands on to help people who are lost. But all around it was only waist high (if that) corn stalk bits. So I asked the gal at the ticket booth if that was the maze and she confessed that snow last week (She said last week. I think she means two weeks ago.) squashed the maze. What a bummer! I wasn't about to have my teens try to get lost in a maze they could look right over the top of. So we turned around and headed for home.

To try and cheer everyone up, I suggested that we stop by Tasty Harmony and see if they had any cashew ice cream. I was hoping that might be a GAPS friendly treat we could try out.  So I popped in while Rob circled the block, since there's not really any parking out front. I talked with the chef (or baker? or owner?) and not only were they out of cashew ice cream, but all of their desserts had flour of some sort or other except for the bananas with caramel. But the caramel is made with agave since many of their customers are vegan. And agave is GAPS verboten. So we gave up on the Tasty Harmony idea and headed over to Beavers Market to pick up some bananas. Thankfully, though they had lots and lots of green bananas, they had a whole shelf full of bananas with black spots, which is the requirement in GAPS. (I have no clue why. Anyone else know? I'm all ears.) So I grabbed two bunches and split.

At home I made fried bananas with honey caramel and homemade sour cream. It was Delicious!!! (especially with the cream). We ate it while watching the first episode of Grimm (Season 3).

Here's how I made the dessert:

Ingredients

whipping cream (I can't get unpasteurized, so I look for pasteurized as opposed to ultra-pasteurized. Get as much whipping cream as you want to make sour cream. I used a pint.)
1 package yogurt starter
----
honey (between 1/2 cup and a cup)
1 stick butter
----
bananas
more butter

Directions

Sour Cream: Several hours before, mix the yogurt starter into your whipping cream and pour the cream into your yogurt maker. I didn't head my cream up first. I wonder if I should have because it came out pretty runny in the end. I let mine yogurtize for 24 hours, mostly because I get waiting for it to solidify. Since it never did, I suspect 9 hours would have been plenty of time.

Honey Caramel: Put butter and honey into a small sauce pan on medium low heat. Stir occasionally. I used a candy thermometer to watch that I didn't heat it too high. I tried to keep it at 240°F or below because I didn't want it to get too hard. Because we used it while it was still warm for cooking, it was nice and pourable. While we watched Grimm it hardened up to a chewy consistency, like a soft candy. I probably should have kept the temp a little lower.

Fried Bananas: I put 1/4 cup of butter into the pan, but it was almost entirely gone by the time I got to the last of the bananas. An important tip I learned is not to cut the bananas too thin. They just get ooey and gooey as they cook and before you know it they won't turn over because they're just a spot of mush in the butter. It's better to cut the banana in half crosswise (because it's going to break there anyway so you might as well just get it over with) then cut it in half lengthwise so it's a little skinnier. Then fry it up in the butter till it's golden or just starting to brown up a bit.

Fried Bananas with Caramel and Cream: After the bananas are slightly browned, pile them up on the plate, put a nice size dollop (or dribble) of sour cream off to the side, and then drizzle caramel over the top. Yum!

I think everyone went back to get more cream for their bananas, but I didn't see anyone go back for more caramel, which I take as a good sign. We're not craving the sugars so much as the contrast of the sour cream with the naturally sweet bananas.

This is the right amount of butter, but the bananas were cut up way too small. 

This is the right size for the bananas, but it took me so long to figure this out, that by this time the butter was all used up. I should have added more. 

This is the honey and butter early on. It's pretty much butter colored. 

And this is the honey and butter as it was starting to caramelize.

It's starting to get a nutty brown color now.

And here's a picture from my walk this morning because it has cows and I don't think I've posted a picture of cows yet on this website. Every website needs at least one cow picture. 

This is squash pancakes with lemon/honey yogurt on top.
I didn't serve this today, but I didn't have any other pictures to share, so I'm rolling with this. 

This was our last day of stage 6 (which didn't feel very much different from stage 5). We're now moving into the full diet, which we're celebrating with some Squash Fudge and Almond Raisin Cookies. (The cookies were verboten before today.)

Friday (Day 14) 
Breakfast: one egg omelette (I was told today that the omelettes are too greasy. I explained that that's how they're supposed to be. But I realized that the girls always get the first two omelettes that I make, so theirs are always the most buttery. By the time I make mine, a lot of the butter is gone. Perhaps I should reverse the order some time and see what I think of the buttery eggs.) I also tried to make the same banana pancakes as yesterday, but I threw two bananas in instead of one. The pancakes were so thin they basically fried up into teeny little ribbons of stuff that turned brown and brittle. The rest of the pancakes wouldn't flip at all and I ended up with blackened, scrambled pancake things. I knew the kids wouldn't eat them. I managed enough decent ones that the kids each got two medallion sized pancakes. The rest of the batter I poured into muffin cups and baked. They came out much better that way. Oh well.
Lunch: kids - curry meat stuff, yogurt. me - fried egg, yogurt
Dinner: Leg of Lamb roasted until it was 155 degrees on the inside... which wasn't enough for the fam. Rob ended up slicing the meat into bits and pan frying it up until it was done enough for people to eat. I didn't try any. Hunks of meat are still hard for me. On the side we had roasted celeriac, carrot, and garlic with thyme, salt and pepper. It was delicious and gone quickly. I commented that I should have doubled the amount of veggies and Rob said I should have tripled them. So at least I got something right today.

My other apparent failure for the day was sour cream. I got whipping cream but didn't heat it like I do for milk (when I'm making yogurt). I read through the Google-net and it didn't seem like that heating step was necessary. So I added the yogurt starter to the cream (which is supposed to work according to Natasha) and 5 hours later it doesn't look like it's doing diddly squat in the yogurt maker. :-P Oh well. Perhaps it'll be more like that cream that you pour over fried plantains. Unfortunately, plantains are verboten on the diet. *sigh* If you have suggestions for something that's GAPS friendly that would be good with runny sour cream poured over it, let me know.

Cabbage Soup

Today I made coconut milk. I did a lot of other stuff today too, like I picked up my "The House that Beer Built" t-shirt and bought a new handle for the upstairs toilet. I booked three December flights for Rob and made my first ever cabbage soup. But the thing I'm happiest about is the coconut milk. It's creamy and coconutty and milky and mmmmm. And it was ridiculously easy to make. All it took was some coconut flakes, warm water, and a blender.

Nothing really phenominal happened today diet-wise or health-wise. I got bit by some stinkin' bug all over my left shoulder and it's been itching like crazy. But I can't blame that on the diet... unless the diet has somehow made my left should really tasty. Otherwise we're just kind of in "moving forward" mode.

One highlight of my day was when the kids got home from school and Anna said, "Mom, I really like these lunches you're making for us. They taste really good and the food is always fresh."

This is the food I have set out for the kids' lunches. The thermos holds the curry flavored meat stuff. Then there's three containers of apple sauce. (I have three of everything, but it's not all shown here.) Then homemade yogurt. And each kid got two squash treats (although I found Naomi's still sitting on the counter after they left. I'd forgotten to put them in her lunch box. Oh well.) Anna also got some nut butter. She seems to be the only kid that likes to eat nut butter straight (like I do). 

Thursday (Day 13)
Breakfast: one egg omelette, banana pancakes with a dollop of honey, one breakfast sausage link, camomile tea.
Lunch: the kids had more "meat stuff" (This time it was a curry version.), homemade apple sauce (fuji apples) and yogurt. I made an onion and green pepper frittata for myself and had yogurt with honey for dessert.
Dinner: Cabbage Soup and the egg and squash bake from the What Can I Eat Now? 30 day introduction diet put out by Health, Home, and Happiness LLC. Everyone was pretty scared by the squash bake until they ate it. Then several family members took seconds. I wasn't quite as much of a fan. I think it would be better with a little yogurt or something to make it a bit more creamy.

Links for info on making your own coconut milk: The easy way using coconut flakes or the "fresh from the coconut" way in which you also get coconut oil and other stuff. I used a tea strainer to strain the coconut bits out from the coconut milk. It worked really well. There are no chunks or bits left in my milk. And the oils seem to have made it through OK.

"I can taste the healthiness." -- Nathan about the Lemon Gummies

With halloween coming up, I've been thinking about how we're going to approach the festival of sugar without actually eating any of those sugary treats. My sister sent me a link to Real Food RN with all sorts of Halloween treat ideas. I don't think they're GAPS specific, but I'm hoping to find a few I can easily modify. I also came across a pumpkin fudge recipe that I've modified to be GAPS friendly.

Tuesday (Day 11)
Breakfast: one egg omelette, squash pancakes with a dollop of lemon/honey yogurt, freshly made carrot juice
Lunch: the kids had more "meat stuff" and yogurt. I had leftovers of the taco meat from yesterday with guacamole heaped on top (to drown out the taste of the meat. I would have eaten just guacamole, but I knew that the taco meat would contain my only broth for the day, so I forced it down.)
Dinner: Pork cutlets; roasted carrots, beets, and fennel; and artichokes with butter.

Wednesday (Day 12) 
Breakfast: one egg omelette, one Applegate Naturals Chicken & Apple breakfast link, and a little Bubbies sauerkraut (I've been really bad about remembering to put probiotic veggies into our meals and I wanted a third thing for breakfast that wasn't just another protein deal, so I settled on this.)
Lunch: kids - "meat stuff" and yogurt. apple sauce also for nathan. (the girls didn't eat theirs yesterday so i'm guessing the meat and yogurt was enough for them.) me - finished up the guacamole and a squash muffin that I'd made a few days ago. Yogurt with honey for dessert.
Snack: Lemon Gummy Treats (I didn't use any colorings or oils. Just lemon juice, Great Lakes unflavored gelatin, and honey.) and Squash Fudge (I modified the recipe. I'll post my version soon.)
Dinner: Cajon Shrimp and "Grits" (which didn't go over super well)

I've had a bit of an itchy/runny nose. I thought my allergies were done (either because we'd had a frost or because of the diet), but I guess they're still around. Maybe by the time spring allergies come around, the diet will have healed my gut to the point where I'm allergy free. * crosses fingers *

While searching to find out whether certain things are GAPS allowed or not (I don't even remember any more what I was searching for) I came across the Kitchen Stewardship site which compares SCD, GAPS and one other diet (that I'd never heard of before).

One gallon of yogurt

I bought a gallon of whole milk at Vitamin Cottage for only $3 in the bargain section. So Tuesday night I made a gallon of yogurt. I have three empty jars in the above photo to stand in for the three jars that I'd sent to school with the kids. That's a LOT Of yogurt for only $3. Woot! And it's enabled us to finally get a bit ahead on the yogurt front. We've been pretty much eating all the yogurt that I make each day (which is about 4/7ths of a gallon. I dump in a half gallon and then a bit more.) I was even able to give some away to my mom. 

I came upon a Pumpkin Fudge recipe on the Conscious Cleanse website in a post entitled, Better than Your Mom's Pumpkin Pie. It has a few ingredients that aren't GAPS approved, so I made some modifications and thought I'd posted the GAPS-ified version here. Instead of using canned pumpkin, I boiled up some butternut squash I had on hand and then used a blender to mix it in with the rest of the ingredients. Apparently canned pumpkin is OK with the GAPS diet but not the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. But since I had squash on hand, and since Dr. Natasha likes freshly home made things so you know exactly how old they are and what ingredients are included, I figured I'd roll with the squash. I also replaced the sweeteners with honey. This stuff is addictively yummy.

Ingredients
1/2 cup squash/pumpkin, cooked until soft.
1/3 cup almond butter
1/4 cup honey
½-1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup melted coconut butter
3 TB. melted coconut oil
Sea salt to taste (I used about a 1/2 teaspoon.)

Directions
If your squash/pumpkin is already blended till smooth, then use a small bowl to mix all of the ingredients except the coconut. If you're started with a boiled hunk of squash, like I did, then throw everything into the blender (except the coconut). Melt the coconut butter and oil together on the stove, then mix everything together. Mush the concoction into a pan or into a small muffin tin. I froze mine, though putting the mixture into the fridge might work just as well. Once hardened, cut into bite size pieces (or pop the treats out of the muffin tin) to serve.

These melt in your mouth and if you're not careful, you might just eat them all before anyone else gets a chance to taste them. Yum!

My sister recently told me about Rocky Plains Meats, which is located in Erie/Dacono, but they also have an outlet in Loveland. I finally checked out the Loveland store today and picked up some cuts of meat. I picked out some pork cutlets, mostly because they were skinny and I thought they might thaw in time to be used for dinner tonight, but I had no idea how to cook them. So I buzzed about the internet in search of a recipe and wouldn't you know, every single pork cutlet recipe I could find included bread crumbs or flour, neither of which works on a grain free diet. I suppose I could have dredged them through almond or coconut flour, but instead I cooked them without coating them in anything. Here's what I did.

I used two fry pans, mostly because I didn't want the meat to get cold and I was frying up four slices of piggy. I heaped a whole lotta coconut oil into each fry pan. (If I had measured, it probably would have been about 1/4 cup coconut oil.) I used a medium heat and popped the slices in as soon as the coconut oil was melted and warmed up. I sprinkled salt, pepper, and Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute across the top of the meat. Then I let it cook for 3 or 4 minutes before turning it over and seasoning the other side. I'm guessing the meat cooked for another 4 or 5 minutes with a couple more flips as I checked to make sure I'd cooked the meat all the way through.

I transferred the meat to a plate, poured all the remaining herbs and coconut oil on top, and served it just like that. It was very easy and the family gave it rave reviews. (I also cooked up two sausages only because my husband didn't think the pork would be enough for the 5 of us. It cooked up larger than it had looked in the package, though, and we ended up with one sausage as leftovers. I think my husband only ate the other sausage because he felt bad that he'd asked for them. I think if I had eaten more meat, the sausages would have been needed, but since I'm a vegetarian struggling through a meat filled diet, I went with a small piece.)

I served the pork cutlets with roasted veggies. This picture is of the beats and carrots. I also had roasted fennel. Plus we had artichokes with butter to dip the leaves in. It was quite a feast. And for dessert, yogurt with homemade apple sauce (which you can see cooking on the stove in the top photo). 

Friday was my mom's birthday. On Saturday, we all got together at my sister's house to celebrate. Since my sister and her family are also doing the GAPS diet, the event wasn't as much of an ordeal as you might anticipate. But we were on stage 4 at that point and my sis and her family were still around 2 somewhere. ... And then she found out that the turkey she was going to boil didn't fit into her crock pot. So their family jumped up to roasted meats a little faster than they had anticipated.

And we had a feast! Roast turkey, nut stuffing (from the Internal Bliss cookbook, page 129), pureed squash, peas with ghee, cranberry sauce (OK, so juice was also a no-no at the stages we were at. But she used gelatin, which is really nutritious. So we justified it's use that way. ... and we had turkey, so it kinda had to be done.), carrots and broccoli. And for dessert we had acorn squash custard. (Naomi grumbled that the only thing our meal was missing was potatoes. She longs for the day when we end this diet only because she feels she can't live without potatoes.)

My nephew helped my mom blow out her birthday candle. 

It was nice to get together with other folks who were going through what we were. We shared how our bodies were adjusting, what our die-off symptoms were, etc. We probably sounded like a bunch of old biddies sharing all our ailments. But I guess the reason you share is so that you know you're not the only one going through it.

So here's what we ate Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Saturay (Day 8) 
Breakfast: Freshly juiced carrot/apple juice. (OK, I missed the fact that apple should have waited a stage or two.) One egg omelette (with onions cooked in ghee on the inside). Slices of avocado. Slices of smoked salmon. (Is smoked stuff allowed at this point? Hmmmm.)
Lunch: Meat "Stuff" (That's what we've begun to call the meat dish I make for the kids lunches. It's ground beef browned part way, then cooked with onions, whatever veggies I want to throw in, and whatever broth we have on hand. I add one can of tomato paste, salt and pepper, and maybe basil/oregano or chili. I think all I ate for lunch myself was some raw cashew butter (I'm a bit of an addict.) and yogurt with a bit of honey.
Dinner: The turkey dinner that I described above.
Dessert: Yogurt with honey.

Sunday (Day 9) 
Breakfast: Carrot/apple juice. One egg omelette (with onions cooked in ghee on the inside). Salmon slice.
Lunch: Frittatta (with peas, broccoli, and onions) and squash pancakes with lemon/honey yogurt on top.
Dinner: Roasted chicken, almond flour muffins, peas, and leftover nut stuffing.
Snacks and desserts all consisted of yogurt or nut butters. We're not very imaginative when it comes to snacks, I guess. We're sure looking forward to adding fruits to our diet.

Monday (Day 10) 
Breakfast: Omelette and avocado and half a leftover muffin each.
Lunch: Kids had yogurt, apple sauce, nut butter, and a little chicken in broth. I had homemade guacamole with honey yogurt for dessert.
Dinner: Tacos in cabbage leaf shells. (Ground beef simmered in broth with tomatoes from the garden, onions, garlic, and seasoning.) And chicken chili verde (tomatillos, onions, green tomatoes, garlic, roasted anaheim chili, chicken, broth, and some dollops of homemade yogurt) with cauliflower "rice."
Dessert: Yogurt, of course. I also made a batch of squash pumpkins at one point with lemon/honey yogurt sauce, but they didn't last long. I think I got two before they all disappeared. My poor son came up to get on 10 minutes after they were made and they were already gone.

As far as side-effects/die-off stuff... My stomach no longer feels like I have a bowling ball in it every time I eat and I'm not burping nearly as much. I'm not as fatigued. And I think I've gained back some of the weight that I lost (which is a mixed blessing, I suppose). But Sunday morning I woke up with a runny and itchy nose, as if my allergies had come back. I haven't had an itchy nose in about a month and during the first week of the GAPS diet one definite plus was that my nose ran less in general. Ditto for my son. His nose was still OK on Sunday, but this morning both of our noses were running. So something happened this weekend that set our allergies off. I'm hoping it was the walnuts and pecans in the stuffing. We ate it two days in a row, but we didn't eat any today, so we'll see how we're feeling tomorrow. If the allergy symptoms are still there, we're going to have to back a few other things out until we figure out what it was that set us off. My son also seems to have developed a tick in one eye. I don't know if that's stress related or food related. He doesn't usually have a tick.

I went for a walk around Sheldon Lake this morning. So I'll end with a shot of the gazebo on the lake with mist rising off the water. :-)

We're blazing through these stages. When I read other people's blogs they seem to spend at least a week, or close to it, on each stage. But I almost had an insurrection on my hands after a day in stage one, so we've quickened our pace. I also keep hoping that we'll get back to a point where my digestion is back to where it used to be, or maybe even better, and I can't see that happening without a bit more fiber in our diets - which doesn't really come until the fermented veggies of stage three. But I haven't started the fermented veggies yet because I think my die-off is of histamine making microbes and apparently you have to wait on the fermented veggies with those guys. :-P Stupid histamine making microbes.

I want to keep track of what we've been eating, but I kinda forgot to post the last two days. So here's the menus since the last time I wrote.

Wednesday (Day 5)
Breakfast: Cauliflower "Rice" and Poached Egg
Lunch: for the kids - Beef Stew with Veggies, for me - Fish Soup. And we all got a 6 oz. jar of homemade yogurt with a teaspoon of honey.
Snack: Yogurt and a bit of honey. Then more yogurt. And after dinner, more yogurt. There was a lot of yogurt eating going on on Wednesday.
Dinner: Duck soup with avocado.

Thursday (Day 6)
Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs (with lots of ghee) with slices of avocado.
Lunch: for the kids - Beef Stew with Veggies for 2 and Duck Soup for the 3rd, for me - Fish Soup. And we all got a 6 oz. jar of homemade yogurt with a teaspoon of honey.
Snack: Yogurt, scrambled eggs, raw cashew butter. (Everyone makes their own snacks. So I'm just trying to keep track of what foods went down in a snacky sort of way.)
Dinner: Frittata with peas and onions. Chicken reheated in ghee on the side for those that wanted it.

After dinner, Nathan and I watched the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I had cashew butter mixed with coconut butter (whole coconut flesh all creamed up). It's kind of a relief to have options of foods to snack on now. I think I lost the 5 pounds more because when you're sick of meat and everything that you're allowed to eat is meaty, you tend not to snack at all.

Friday (Day 7)
Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs (with lots of ghee) and a couple of squash pancakes.
Lunch: Nathan and Naomi had chili yet again. Anna made scrambled eggs for herself. I had fish soup.
Snack: yogurt, nut butters, coconut
Dinner: Roasted lemon pepper shrimp, peas in ghee, roasted brussel sprouts in coconut oil

My weight seems to have stabilized. After losing a pound a day, I've held steady for the past three days at 5 pounds under where I started. Given how dehydrated I feel these days, I'm sure a lot of that weight was just water. My heart no longer seems to be spazzmatic. I'm still burpy, but no nearly as bad as it was in the beginning of the week. I'm hoping that means the histamine making microbes are on their last legs. On Wednesday I woke up feeling somewhat light headed. That's another type of die off symptom. I guess it's stepping in where the burping is leaving off. I found myself growing fatigued quickly when I was helping out at the local middle school yesterday.

So to sum up: Since starting this diet my digestion has grown worse, my stomach feels yucky after eating, I'm burping a lot, I'm dizzy and I have way less energy. * eyeroll * I've read the testimonies. I know people wax eloquent about how great this diet is. But from everything I've read, the beginning just plain sucks. At the end of week one, we're still in the "this sucks" stage. I look forward to having happier reports over the next week. Stay tuned. 

On day one, I was gone all morning doing a city bike survey. I left this note for the kids so they'd know what they could eat (and for my husband, so he wouldn't try to feed them anything else). On Sunday I added a few changes in red to account for new foods I had cooked up. 

We started this diet last Friday evening, so it's hard to count the days since we started off-kilter, but we're essentially on our 4th day of the diet, which isn't very far in, though it feels like we've been doing this for ages. Clearly stage one was the worst. We were all sick of soup within the first day. I don't know how people do this who push on in stage one for weeks or months. Kudos to them. We simply couldn't do it. Since none of us have digestive issues (in the common sense of the term) I think it's OK that we moved quickly through that stage. Our goal is to take this diet on in hopes of healing allergies, mood swings, migraines, bloating, and acne. (I know. That's a wide range of stuff. But here's to hoping, all the same.) It's possible that we could achieve our goal just on the full diet. But we're doing this diet in tandem with my sister and she wanted to start at the beginning. And to be honest, it'll probably not only help our guts to heal better, but I think it will also give us a much grander appreciation of what we can eat by the time we've worked our way up to the full diet. ;-)

Today's Meals
Breakfast: Cauliflower "Rice" and Poached Egg
Lunch: for the kids - Beef Stew with Veggies, for me - Chicken Chili Verde. And we all got a 6 oz. jar of homemade yogurt with a teaspoon of honey.
Snack: GAPS Butternut Squash Pancakes
Dinner: Leftovers - chicken soup or fish soup and some more pancakes with salt (no syrup)

I found this really helpful SCD Legal/Illegal Foods List. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is similar to the GAPS diet, and the list give explanations about why some foods (like plantains) aren't ok (too starchy) but other similar foods (bananas) are (less starchy). Though it's not GAPS specific, it still helps to answer some questions.

For dinner we had leftovers. That got me to wondering if leftovers are OK. I know they aren't in some diets. But I feel bad about giving that much food to the pooches. So we ate them.

Here's a pic of the pancakes. They were OK, though they would have been better with syrup. :-} They were rather greasy with all that coconut oil, but that's how they're supposed to be. The fats will feed my brain... or so Dr. Natasha says.

When we first decided to go on a gluten free / casein free diet last July in hopes of finally curing my son of his constantly runny nose and bumpy red arms, I checked out every recipe book I could find in the library that might be of help. I also bought several from Amazon. I also did a lot of research online. Somewhere in the midst of all of my study, I came across mention of cauliflower "rice." So unfortunately, I can't give any credit to where the idea originally came from, but since the first time I made it, it's become a family favorite.

Though I've found recipes online, I don't get nearly as fancy as most of them when I'm cooking this dish. When I make it, I include three ingredients: ghee, cauliflower, and salt.

Step One: Melt a huge wallop of ghee in a fry pan. Because we're doing the GAPS diet, healthy fats are strongly encouraged, so I have no qualms about using a lot. But even when I made this dish before we were on the GAPS diet, I went heavy on the butter... mostly because I just love butter.

Ghee is clarified butter and it's approved for stage two of the GAPS intro diet, so that's what I used. I'm not one for getting all fancy about measuring stuff. So throw in as much ghee or butter as you feel comfortable using. You could also use coconut oil for a coconutty flavor. According to Dr. Natasha, cooking vegetable oils past a certain temperature do more harm than good. So stick to animal fats, butter/ghee, or coconut oil.

Melt the ghee/butter/whatever on medium heat.

Step Two: Grate the cauliflower using a grater or food processor with a grating disk. The goal is just to get little pieces of cauliflower. Don't feel like every single piece needs to pass through the grater. When I'm grating, it's normal to have little bitty florets pop off before I get them near the grater. That's fine, as long as they're small.  Throw the bitty bits of cauliflower in with the melted oil. Stir it around to spread the oil evening. Now you can move on to other things for a bit, stirring occasionally to make sure the cauliflower gets a little browned here and there, but nothing darker than that. 

You can see in the above photo I was also making homemade yogurt (see the milk in the pan to the right with the thermometer) and on the far right I was making poached eggs to go with our cauliflower "rice."

Step Three: I'm guessing the cooking takes between 5 - 10 minutes. I don't really pay attention since I'm dealing with other stuff at the same time. If there's a wee bit of browned up bits, that's just about where I like the "rice" to be. 

You can see the poaching eggs on the right in this next photo. Note the milk has been moved off to cool and the kids lunch is heating up in the center now so I can pack it away for them to take to school. 

Step Four: Sprinkle salt on top and serve.  You can eat this on its own or add it to any dish that you might consider putting with rice. It won't soak up sauces like rice does, but it still works surprisingly well in terms of getting along with the same kinds of foods. One of my girls told me this morning that she likes when the poached eggs are gooey enough to mix in the runny yolk with the "rice."

This morning I discovered a GAPS Diet FAQ! Woo hoo! There are times when the kids will ask, "But mom, will we be able to eat ______?" and I can't find it anywhere in the book. So I'll look online and sometimes I find an answer, but sometimes I don't. Hopefully this FAQ will help fill in some of the gaps. In fact, it's already answered a couple of questions. We were devastated to learn that black tea and cocoa are verboten in GAPS, but it turns out that's only in the intro diet (which is what we're in now). (I'm assuming black tea is OK once we're into the full diet because a mug of coffee a day is allowed.)

Today was a yogurt full day. The kids took a batch to school and I made another the moment they were out the door and that was mostly eaten by the time they all returned. (I ate some. Rob ate some. Then they came home like a swarm of locusts and had a bunch.) I'm not a yogurt fan, having OD'd on it in 10th grade. (Lunch every day was a container of Dannon yogurt and a piece of pita bread which I used to eat the yogurt with. My homeroom was also our lunch room in that school... which in my case meant I ate in the biology room - the same room where we dissected pigs. That may also have had some affect upon my lack of desire for yogurt.) But this homemade yogurt is so frickin' good that I've had to curb myself. We were going through the stuff so quickly that I finally went to the store and bought a second yogurt maker. I've got the new one running now and the old one is finally getting a chance to run through the dishwasher to get sanitized.

I should add that we're not adding fruit to our yogurt yet. We're still a few stages away from that. But I am putting a wee bit of honey in. Mmmmm!

I also put some beef stew in the kids lunch (as seen in the above photo). They all seemed to love it. In fact, lunch went much better than I had anticipated. And it's a bit easier packing everyone's lunch with what I know they're allowed to eat at this point (which is still fairly limited not only by our diet but by what I've made and have available within the diet). It's easier than running from room to room asking the kids what they'd like to eat that day. I'm sure as our choices widen out, I'll have to go back to running around finding out what everyone wants for lunch. But for now, it's the one time saver in an otherwise very time intensive program.

I've also gotten a chance to experience some die off symptoms. On the one hand that sucks. On the other it means that something's going right with the diet.

I feel like which symptoms you get is sort of a crap shoot. Nathan had a headache over the weekend as well as fatigue and dizziness. I, on the other hand, woke up at 4am this morning, and then couldn't go back to sleep because my heart was pounding. After looking through the FAQ (mentioned above), I've pieced together that it has something to do with some bad bacteria guys in my gut that produce histamines.  (Which kinda makes sense since one of the reasons I wanted to join Nathan in this diet is that I'm sick of allergies and having an itchy nose.) As the bad guys die off they release extra histamines. I don't know if it's a last ditch effort to freak me out into going back to my old diet or it's just something they like to do when they die, but it's making my heart go kalunk, kalunk way more than I'd like it to. I never was able to get back to sleep, so I ended up taking a nap later in the day and I've feeling a bit better since then... except for the burps.

I've been burping so much that when I walked the dogs this morning I deliberately picked a route where I wouldn't run into people. I was like a burp train chugging down back alleys and out to the ponds behind Lincoln Middle School. Someone in my tummy is having hissy fits about this new diet. (The photo on the left was taken near the ponds.)

I tried to make kefir yesterday that should have been done today, but I added the starter when the milk was too hot and inadvertently killed all the little good guys in there. So I ended up with rancid, coagulated milk instead of kefir. But I did find some at the store that seems to be GAPS-friendly. Redwood Hill Farm Plain Cultured Goat Milk Kefir is made without any sugars or thickeners. I'm hoping to try again to make my own kefir, but in the meantime, this is a great alternative. 

This morning I was despairing. Naomi had refused to eat dinner and Anna had said that she was just going to keep filling up on camomile tea until we were out of the soup phase of the diet. :-P I encouraged everyone to try to hang on just a little longer, but by lunch I gave in and moved us to stage 2, which allows for casseroles and stews. Though I had more fish soup for lunch, I made chili con carne for the rest of the fam. (That's kind of stew-ish, isn't it?) OK, so I probably cheated by using cumin and chili, but at least everyone ate!

Then for a little snack, later in the afternoon, I made cauliflower "rice" and a poached egg (which was a heavenly combination). OK, OK. So I guess I cheated again by not boiling the cauliflower, but I did use lots of ghee. :-}

I'm sure die hard GAPS fans are groaning in agony as they read this, but I figure the key is keeping to the GAPS theme as much as possible, while not starving my family.

I also made yogurt last night which has been entirely eaten up already. So we're on our second batch and I've started what I hope will turn into kefir by tomorrow some time.

For dinner we had chicken chili verde from the Joy of Cooking. I included homemade chicken broth and chicken from the bone, but I made it a wee bit too spicy. We had to use the yogurt to help cool it down.

Everyone ended up eating much better today than they did yesterday, so my worries about us all losing weight aren't as great any more.

The photo here is totally stolen off of Google, but it shows the same kind of yogurt machine that we're using. And while zipping around the internet looking for "can we eat this?" kind of help, I found this page from a GAPS Q&A session that's really helpful.

As I've been reading through Dr. Natasha's book on GAPS, I've tried to share, here and there, little details with my family about how the diet works, why I think we should try it, what it would look like, etc. I told the kids we wouldn't be eating any grains (which, with the exception of rice, we'd already kinda been doing ever since we tried a gluten free / casein free diet), but I kind forgot to mention that there'd be no potatoes either. As Naomi was stirring the chicken soup I made last night, she noticed the glaring lack of potato-eyness. It was at that moment that the lights flicked on and she realized, "Not just no grains, but no starches at all. And that means no potatoes!" I kind of expected a lot of whining at that point, but after about 5 minutes of withdrawal symptoms, she calmed down and seemed to do OK. She didn't like the cauliflower I added to the soup in place of potatoes, but she likes chicken soup in general so she was still alright with it all.

Butternut squash soup before it's blenderized.

Butternut squash soup after it's blenderized.

And that's kind of how it's been so far. The kids have a momentary hiccup as they realize a new aspect of the diet, then they realign their diet paradigm and move on. That said, I don't think anyone's too thrilled about the fish heads.

I'd love to try making this Fish Head Soup, but it calls for cream and we're not there yet in the diet. (I think we can do cream at some point. I know you can do butter and what's butter but beaten cream?) So instead I'm going to try Erin's fish soup recipe from Plan to Eat. (Ghee isn't listed as being a stage one ingredient... it's not supposed to come in until stage two. But I think I'm going to go for it and add some in. Our soups need something to jazz them up a little and ghee might help.)

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

So far I think everyone feels just plain hungry on this diet. I've had two different soups (chicken and butternut squash) available all day long and once the kids had a bowl of each, they were done. I've got the fish soup almost ready for tonight and a beef broth simmering for tomorrow, but the kids keep asking when they can have something other than soup. ... We've only been doing this for 24 hours at this point and already everyone's ready to move on to the next stage. One of my girls was asking me when we can have eggs. I told her that we were going to do egg drop soup tomorrow night and she said, "No, mom. Just plain eggs."

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So we had the fish soup for dinner and it appears to have been a hit. I was the only one that got seconds, but everyone said it was tasty.  I've got some salmon fillets that I didn't use so I threw all the fish bones and squooshy bits back into a pot with fresh water and I'll make more fish broth for a second round of fish soup. I would certainly prefer that to the cow soup we'll have on hand tomorrow.

Keeping enough soups available that everyone has something that tastes good to them has been the hardest part so far. For dinner they have to eat what's served. But for breakfast and lunch they can choose. Probably the biggest problem is me. The chickeny-ness of the chicken broth came through even in the butternut squash soup. The fish soup was better, but still I miss good old veggie broth. 

We decided to start the diet over a weekend just in case any of us experiences die off symptoms. We're hoping to be right as rain by Monday when school starts up again. My sister suggested that we start with Friday night's dinner. So when the kids came home from school today I told them they could eat anything they want until 5. It's their last hurrah (though really the last hurrah was when I let the girls eat through a half dozen donuts yesterday. We're not a donut eating family, but when one of my daughters found out that one of her classes was going to do "a donut a day" for a week and she wouldn't be able to participate, she begged to be able to do hers in advance. Why a class is doing a donut a day is beyond me.)

I boiled a whole chicken yesterday. The kids had some of the meat with dinner. I enjoyed my last meat free dinner in awhile. The broth and remaining meat are becoming tonight's dinner. The kids love homemade chicken soup, so starting with something familiar should get us off to a good start. I think the real problems are going to come around breakfast time. (I've already warned them that they'll be getting soup for breakfast. They seemed to take the news in stride. We'll see how the reality hits them.)

I also stopped by Whole Foods and asked if they had any fish bones. I'd much rather eat fish than mammal, so I'm hoping to have regular fish options available for myself. They didn't have bones, but they did have fish heads. (Which explains all the fish art.) Unfortunately not only are they frozen, but I've got today's chicken soup boiling in one of my soup pots (with yesterday's broth) and new broth being made (with the bones from yesterday's broth's chicken) in the other pot. And I only have two soup pots. So until I start working on crock pot soups (which I've never done before, so I'll probably have to find a recipe to follow on that for the first time) I'll have to wait till we actually eat up some of this soup before I can start in on the next one.

I'm hoping to make a butternut squash soup later tonight so that we can eat that for breakfast. We'll probably either have leftover chicken or butternut squash soup for lunch. And then the fish head soup will be for dinner. (I bought some salmon fillets to add to the soup, so we won't be eating the eyeballs. ... Unless, of course, the eyeballs liquify and melt into the broth. I don't really know what happens when you cook a fish head.)

So, there you have it, the beginnings of our foray into the GAPS diet.

As far as the fish heads go, all of the fish head art that's posted here is from from Inspire Fusion. There's even more photos there, so click through if you've enjoyed the fishiness. And for those that don't mind losing almost 5 minutes of their life to the Fish Heads song, here's an ancient video. (This song always makes me think of my college days. *sigh*)

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

In the morning,
Laughing happy fish heads,
In the evening,
Floating in the soup,

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

Ask a fish head,
Anything you want to,
They won't answer,
They can't talk

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

I took a fish head,
Out to see a movie,
Didn't have to pay 
To get it in

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

They cant play baseball,
They dont wear sweaters,
There not good dancers,
They dont play drums

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

Roly poly fish heads are never seen
Drinking cappucino in Italian resturants,
With oriental women, yeah

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum, (yum!)

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum,

Yea..