Our dessert of the week has been flourless chocolate cake. I've made it several times and when I got sick of making it the girls found the recipe and started making it. But the problem with the cake is that it goes best with whipped cream, which means an extra step. So I decided I wanted custard instead. It would be creamy all in its own right so I wouldn't have to make any extra whipped cream for it. But when I looked for a recipe, I couldn't find one that used cream instead of milk. (I'm eventually going to get around to finding a raw milk supply. But until then, we're doing cream but not milk so we avoid most of the casein.) And I didn't want a recipe that called for only part of an egg. That always leaves you with the problem of what to do with what's left of the egg. So I just made my own recipe up. It turned out pretty tasty.

Ingredients

6 eggs

1/2 cup honey

1 cup whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

nutmeg (optional)

Directions
1. Put some water in the kettle and set it to start heating up.
2. Whip 6 eggs. Add honey and cream and mix well. (Many custard recipes require heating the milk first. I didn't use milk and I didn't want to spend time heating the cream. ... So I didn't.)
3. Sprinkled nutmeg on top. (I liked the nutmeg. So did Rob. The kids, on the other hand, were nutmeg adverse. Dorks.)
4. Pour into separate ramekins. I used 5 ramekins since there are 5 of us in the family. A couple of the custards puffed up just over the rim, but they all nestled down inside as they cooled.
5. Set the ramekins inside another container (I used a brownie pan.) and pour the hot water into the outer container. This just helps the custard heat evenly.
6. Cook for 20 minutes or until the custard just starts to brown up a teeny tad. I let the custard cool before we ate it.

I've seen many flourless chocolate cake recipes. This one typifies the most basic recipe that you'll find online - lots of chocolate, lots of butter, and lots of eggs. Given that butter and eggs are an important part of the GAPS diet, this recipe is a GAPS dessert dream. Using honey instead of sugar, using unsweetened chocolate (which contains no sugar or milk), and using raw cocoa powder, keeps this recipe GAPS-OK. (Speaking of no sugar... did you know that 95% of sugar beets are GMOs? I tend to think of corn and soy as being the big GMO crops. But according to Green America, "Monsanto’s GM sugar beets make up 95 percent of the US crop, having been planted year after year despite a US District Court injunction against planting...." Ouch.)

This cake is very rich and goes well with a raspberry honey sauce and/or whipped cream. (Don't bother with adding sweetener to the cream. It's tasty all by itself.) I found this recipe on Detoxinista. She uses a springform pan and finds that the recipe makes an 8 inch cake. I wouldn't know. I knew from the first that her version of the recipe wouldn't last 5 minutes in our house. So I doubled it. It's the doubled recipe that I've posted below. I used it to make a 9 inch cake the first time, but it was still a big gooey in the center. So the second time around I made 6 cupcakes plus a 9 inch cake.

Ingredients
8 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
6 whole eggs
1 cup butter or coconut oil
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup honey

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375F, and grease an 8″ spring-form pan generously with coconut oil or butter. Melt the baking chocolate and butter together, stirring frequently so it doesn't scorch. Combine the melted chocolate/butter with the cocoa powder, honey, and eggs. Pour the batter into the greased pan. Bake at 350F for 25 minutes or so, until the center looks firm. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes so the cake sets before serving. If you want a thinner cake, either cut this recipe in half (or click on the Detoxinista link above so you don't have to do the math) or use part of this recipe to make the cake and part to make some cupcakes. This is especially handy when you're making the cake for later, but the kids are going to want to snack a bit now. So they get the cupcakes "now" and the cake stays whole till it's time to be served.



Sugar note:
Genetically modified cane sugar is still in development, so for now, cane sugar is still GMO free. The GAPS diet calls for honey as the only sweetener (Some folks include stevia.) so we're not doing cane sugar right now. But if you're looking into sugars and want something GMO free, avoid beet sugar. 

I've never liked the taste or texture of meat. My mom says that when I was an infant and she would feed me meat baby food, I'd spit it out. But I've always liked the veggies. I'm mostly a vegetarian these days, though there have always been a few meats that I like. Bacon is one of those. (As long as it's well cooked and crispy.) Liverwurst is another. I've only eaten it rarely, but as part of our diet I've tried it out again. Liver is a nutrient dense food, full of vitamin A, D and several of the Bs.

But to eat liverwurst, one must have a proper cracker. And being on a grain free diet meant most store bought crackers are verboten. So I found a grain-free recipe that I really like. This recipe is from the Mother Necessity cookbook by Cristin Fergus. What I really like about this cookbook is that it gives gluten free recipes using alternative grains, but it also gives recipes that use nut flours, which means I can use the cookbook now while we're grain free, but I might be able to branch out and try some of the other recipes if when we start adding GMO-free grains back into our diet.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. (Lower if you want to dehydrate your crackers rather than cook them. Mother Necessity says to spread the batter in a dehydrator. If you choose to do likewise, you can obviously ignore the preheating directions.) 

Ingredients

2 cups of almond flour (Mother Necessity calls for 2 cups of pre-soaked almonds)

2 tablespoons of butter or ghee (or maybe coconut oil?)
3/4 teaspoon salt
water
additions: sessame seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.

Directions
Throw ingredients in a blender or food processor. (I have a Ninja.) Start with 1/3 cup water. If you want to make individual crackers by hand, then this might be all you need. But if you want to spread the dough easily on a cookie sheet, you might want to add more water. (It really doesn't matter how much water you add because you're just going to end up cooking the water out of them later.)

I used a silicone sheet to spread the batter on. Parchment paper also works. Just lay it on top of a cookie sheet and spread the batter on top. You can make your crackers super thin or a bit thicker if you want a bit more toothiness. Cooking time will vary accordingly. A good rule of thumb is to check on your crackers after about 10 minutes. (I've also cooked these simply by putting them into the oven right after finishing another baking project. I then turned the oven off, but it was still hot and cooked the crackers as it cooled down.)

I love the batter for these crackers. I find myself eating scoopfulls before I manage to get the cookie sheet in the oven.

You can break the cracker  sheet down into individual crackers either by breaking pieces off by hand or by using a knife or pizza cutter.

Add-ons: If you'd like to have more texture or flavor on your cracker, sprinkle flax seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, or whatever sounds yummy to you on top of your cracker base. Or if you want to get really jiggy with it, stir your add-ons into the batter before spreading onto the cookie sheet.

After trying out a little apple in my cabbage soup, I decided to see how apple would work in a carrot soup. I didn't follow a recipe, which means I didn't measure a single thing. But here's an approximation of what I did.

Ingredients
A heap o' carrots
An onion
A couple of apples
Homemade chicken broth (or whatever kind of broth you have on hand)
Salt
Pepper
Curry powder
1 can of coconut milk (without guar gum)
1 cup whipping cream (because the soup needed some more healthy fat)

Directions
1. I set a pot on the stove with about 2 cups of water in it. That gave the carrots something to start simmering in as I cut them up and tossed them in. I probably diced up 10 or so carrots. I pureed up the soup later so I didn't worry about the size of the chunks. Chop up the onion and add that as well.
2. Add 3 cups(ish) of broth. The water should cover the carrots and onions entirely. Cook for about 20 minutes before adding in the apples.
3. Once the carrots are soft, run the soup through a blender or use an immersion blender wand thingy. (That's the technical name for it.) Blend until every last carrot has been blenderized.
4. Add the coconut milk and whipping cream. Add salt, pepper and curry powder to taste. (I used probably 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of curry. My chicken broth doesn't have any salt in it. If you're adding broth with salt, then you might not need to add any.)
5. I added a couple of apple slices just to make the soup look pretty. The girls were eating pomegranates and I was tempted to add some seeds for color, but ended up leaving them out... mostly because the girls are very possessive of their pomegranates.

I found this recipe in Detox for Health by Nicola Graimes, which I picked up from our local library. The fact that it includes an apple intrigued me. So when I had a hankering for cabbage soup this past week, I pulled the recipe out and gave it a try. I loved it! The kids liked it, but said they wished it had chicken or sausage in it. (I'll have a meat option for the kids next time I make this.)

I had photocopied the recipe to try it out later. When I went to make the recipe I found that some of the directions were cut off when I made the copy. So I'll just kinda munge those parts. It still came out tasty in the end. :-)

Ingredients
1 small turnip (I left this out only because I didn't have a turnip in the house.)
2 carrots
3 T. olive oil (I used butter. You're not supposed to cook olive oil on the GAPS diet.)
1 large onion, sliced
2 celery sticks, sliced
1 white cabbage, about 1 1/2 pounds shredded (675g)
1.2 litres / 2 pints / 5 cups vegetable stock (I used homemade chicken broth.)
1 sharp eating apple, cored, peeled and chopped (I didn't bother peeling mine. Waste of time and nutrients in my opinion.)
2 bay leaves
5 ml / 1 tsp chopped fresh parsley (Also didn't use this. Didn't have it in the house.)
10 ml / 2 tsp pickled cucumber juice  or lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
fresh herbs, to garnish

Directions
1. Cut the turnips and carrots into matchstick strips. (Or just chop them up into rounds like I did.) Heat the butter in a large pan and fry the turnips, carrots, onion and celery for 10 minutes.

2. Coarsely shred the cabbage and add to the pan. Pour in the chicken broth, add the chopped apple, bay leaves, and chopped parsley. Bring to a boil. Cover and let simmer for 40 minutes or until the veggies are tender.

3. Remove and discard the bay leaves. (Or leave them in for the person who "wins" them in their bowl of soup to throw them into the compost.) Stir in the pickle or lemon juice. Add pepper and fresh herbs. (I also added salt. My chicken broth didn't have any salt in it.)

4. Next time I'll add chopped sausage or chicken and the dish really needed more broth than it came with in this recipe. I'd say another 2 or 3 cups wouldn't hurt. 

We started on the GAPS diet almost 2 months ago. The first two weeks were hard, mostly because our food choices were limited on the introductory diet. But we sped through it very quickly. (We don't have digestive issues, so I didn't feel like that should be a big part of our diet timeline.) The full diet has been much easier in terms of variety, although snacks continue to be an issue. (See my "Snack Aside" below.)

Homemade Yogurt

The first week was not only hard because of the limited food options, but also because "die off symptoms" were fairly intense. I'm not generally a meat eater, but because meat is such a big part of this diet, I tried to step into the diet full on. My stomach was not a happy camper. I don't know if that's a die off sort of thing or a not-ready-for-meat sort of thing, but it was yucky. Then I had a relatively symptom free week followed by an entire month of die off symptoms. I had started taking a second probiotic and I suspect that might have played a role, though I mostly felt symptoms after eating yogurt, so perhaps it was the microbes in the yogurt that was wreaking havoc, but I experienced an elevated heart rate and mild panic attacks. I knew that I could scale back on the probiotics and not experience the die-off symptoms as strongly, but I'm more of a "push through" kind of person than a "back off" kind of person. I did back off a little bit during the week when a group I'm a part of met with the superintendent of schools for our school district. I figured that was stressful enough in its own right. But for the most part, I went full bore. And I think it's paying off.

I'm done with kicking out the bad guys and now I'm focusing on building up the good guys. And so far I've seen two positive results. For several years now, when I drink red wine, I've experienced pretty severe jaw pain. (You can read more about this phenom at LiveStrong.com.) But on Thanksgiving we had red wine (Dry red or white wine is OK on the GAPS diet.) and my jaw didn't hurt. At all. Not even once. Woot! That was my first victory.

Big box of almond flour via Amazon

My second victory rolled into town yesterday. Every morning I eat breakfast with the kids. I shoo them off to school, walk the dogs for an hour, then come home and enjoy a yogurt, or two, or... sometimes three when I'm really, really enjoying them. After lunch, I might have another yogurt as a treat. By the time dinner rolls around, I rarely have any more yogurt only because I've eaten everything that I made the night before. But if there's yogurt still available, then I eat it. (Yes, I make yogurt pretty much every night. At least, I have so far.)

I've eaten the yogurt in large part because I've craved it. I've had cravings for years now. I've noticed that even when my stomach is full, my mouth still tells me that it's hungry. (That my mouth is hungry. My mouth really could care less how my stomach feels.) So I'll have eaten and be full, but I still crave just a little something chewy (carmel), or something bready, or something crunchy. More often than not I'm craving a particular taste or texture. And sometimes I'd even eat whatever I could find trying to meet that craving, without ever really satisfying it.

This craving has even continued into our diet. I've craved yogurt. I would finish one and jump up to grab another. I should add that it's not just yogurt I'm eating, but still warm yogurt (so much better than the cold stuff!) with warm honey at the bottom. It's tart and sweet and so utterly delicious. It's incredible. And I've been eating a lot of it. Some days it was all I could think about. I craved it. ... Until yesterday, when I didn't.

Boom. It was just like that. I still ate yogurt yesterday, because it was habit. But I didn't crave it any more. Today I've had yogurt once. It was good, but because I hadn't been craving it, it wasn't as satisfying as it had been. And the craving for yogurt hasn't been replaced by a craving for something else. It's like the craving machine has just turned off. It's gone. It's weird. I kinda miss it.

So this is my second woo hoo! for the diet. I can now drink red wine. And I'm no longer dominated by cravings for food that my stomach is too full to eat. (I'm hoping this means that I start losing a few pounds since I'm eating less. Things look good so far, but I'd be really excited if I could lose another 7 pounds or so.)  It's about time I started seeing some positives. Hopefully the kids will start reporting in with some positives of their own soon.

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Almond Raisin Cookies

Snack Aside
There are a few things that have worked well for snacks. By "snack" I'm referring to things that are easy to grab and eat without much (if any) prep work. That doesn't include the time it takes to make the snack and set it aside for later. So something like a turkey stick counts as a snack because you just grab it and eat it. Crepes, soup leftovers, even carrot sticks don't count (unless the carrot sticks are cut up in advance and waiting in the fridge) because they take a few steps before you can stuff them in your mouth.

Here's what we've settled into as our regular snacks to have on hand.
1. Homemade yogurt with honey. (This is my personal favorite.)
2. Chocolate mousse (I gave up on making other flavors. All the kids wanted to eat is the chocolate.) I make a triple batch at night and it's almost always eaten up by the next evening. (This is a dairy free treat as well. Though Nathan occasionally has some cheese, we're still trying to avoid dairy in general.)
3. Shelton's Original Turkey Smoked Snack Sticks. This has becomes Nathan's favorite grab-and-go food. Vitamin Cottage carries them. The other varieties by Shelton's have ingredients that aren't GAPS kosher, but the original turkey seems to be OK.
4. Almond Raisin Cookies. I think Nathan has had so many of these that he's pretty much OD'd on them.
5. Pomegranates, apples and bananas. And occasionally dried grapes straight off the food dehydrator.

That's pretty much it. We've tried other things and some have had their week or two of fame, but it's these five that we seem to be gravitating around.