Homemade Yogurt Is Rocking Our World

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.