One of our new favorites is gumbo. None of us like okra on its own. But in gumbo, it's actually quite good. I really like Whole Foods frozen okra. It has a very fresh taste. 

And peppers are a must. I made this once and didn't have any peppers on hand. It just wasn't the same. 

INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons oil (I've used olive oil or butter.)
1 onion, diced
1 cup diced bell peppers
½ cup diced celery
4 tablespoons coconut flour
1 six ounce can tomato paste
1 teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne
6 garlic cloves, minced or sliced
Salt and pepper
1 can diced ripe tomato or 1 cup fresh
6 ounces andouille sausage, in 1-inch-thick slices
6 cups broth (Bone broth is best. Any kind will do.)
2 cups chopped okra (Whole Foods carries excellent frozen okra.)
1 bag shrimp. I've used both large and small. Use what you have.

PREPARATION

1. In a soup pot, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, bell pepper and celery and cook briskly, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 8 minutes.

2. Sprinkle in coconut flour and stir to combine. Continue cooking for about 5 minutes, stirring.

3. Add tomato paste, paprika, cayenne and garlic. Cook for 1 minute, stirring well, then add diced tomato and andouille sausage and cook for about 2 minutes.

4. Season mixture generously with salt and pepper. Stir in broth and reduce heat to medium. With a wooden spoon, scrape bottom of pot to dissolve any browned bits. Simmer for about 25 minutes, until gumbo base thickens somewhat. Taste and adjust salt. (You may prepare gumbo base up to this point several hours ahead; bring it back to a brisk simmer before continuing.)

5. Add okra and let cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add shrimp and cook for 2 minutes more.

6. Serve with rice.

Modified from a New York Times recipe. 

I've found recipes online for leg of lamb that included mint jelly. But I don't have any mint jelly and I'm not interested in buying any. So I made my own version of lamb with mint. It was a huge hit with the family. The onions were sweet and caramelized and the lamb was tender and flavorful.

Ingredients
2 onions
1 leg of lamb
1/4 - 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup honey
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 cup homemade broth
salt and pepper

Directions
Slice the onions into rings or strips and layer on the bottom of the crock pot. Set the leg of lamb on top of the onions. Pour broth and honey over the lamb. Chop or rip the mint leaves a little and lay across the top of the lamb. Sprinkle garlic, salt and pepper over the lamb. Cook on the lowest setting for 8 - 9 hours. 

"One of the most delicious things I've ever eaten!" 

- Lusia after I had dropped some granola off at her house. You could tell she was a bit skeptical when I first told her what it was. But when she called me later, she said she was having a hard time stopping herself from eating it. 

When we first went gluten free, I started eating Udi's gluten-free granola for breakfast. I had never been a huge granola fan before that, but I found Udi's granola addictively yummy. Then we changed over to a GAPS diet which doesn't allow for any grains at all. Granola was out... until recently when I discovered PaleoKrunch - Grainless Granola by Steve's PaleoGoods. We tried the Apple Pie version and fell in love. But at $7 for a 7.5 oz. bag, it really did a number on our food budget. So I decided that I had to learn to make something similar at home. I fiddled around with the recipe until I finally settled upon the following. Feel free to adjust adding more of less of your favorite nuts or seeds.

Ingredients
2 cup Almond flour/meal
1 1/2 cup Dried coconut flakes (unsweetened)
1 cup Walnuts
1/2 cup Pecans
1/2 cup Honey
1/2 cup Coconut oil
2 teaspoon Powdered cinnamon
1/2 - 1 teaspoon Ginger
1/2 - 1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 - 1 teaspoon Cloves
1/2 - 3/4 c. Raw sunflower seeds
1/2 - 3/4 c. Raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup Almond slivers
1/2 cup Raw cashews
1 cup Dried apple slices


Directions
1. In a food processor, blend the almond flour, coconut, walnut and pecans until you have a course powder.
2. Add the honey, coconut oil, and spices and blend until the dough starts to form a ball.
3. Add the sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almond slivers, cashews and apple slices and blend for about one minute more until these ingredients have been added in and somewhat chopped up. The apple slices don't always blend in very well. You may want to chop them into smaller bits before adding.
4. Spread the mixture onto a cookie sheet and cook for about 30 minutes at 250 degrees. The finished product should be lightly browned on the bottom. I often stir the mixture a few times while it's cooking (in which case I don't always get that browned bottom).
5. Let the cooked granola cool and then break it up into smaller chunks.
6. Once the granola is entirely cooled, store it in a glass container.

My husband likes to eat the granola over his yogurt. I prefer it in a bowl with lots of raw milk over it. You can adjust the recipe to better suit your tastes. Enjoy!

Viola and Pansy - our new chicks

Well, we've (mostly) stuck it out for 6 months now. We still eat a primarily GAPS diet, though I haven't made soup nearly often enough lately, and we've started to include some sprouted oats, rice, and potatoes on occasion (mostly because grains and starches are cheap and our budget couldn't afford being GAPS-only any more).

On the whole, I have nothing but good things to say for the diet. Although we had started a gluten free - casein free diet in July, and that had a noticeably positive effect on my son, it wasn't until we'd been on the GAPS diet for probably 4 months or so that I really started to see the positive effects with my daughters. (I should note that when we started GAPS we ended the casein free part of our previous diet. GAPS allows for many yummy dairy products, which I think is a huge boon over the Paleo diet.)

I think our improvements have been most notable when we have a minor lapse. (It follows that old adage that you don't know what you've got until it's gone.) We must have eaten something last week (we think it might have been the Pad Thai that I bought for the family only because we had an incredibly long track meet to attend and Pad Thai was the only at-least-its-gluten-free item available) that effected us all negatively. First one of my daughters came up to me and complained that something was wrong because her acne was back. (More on that in a moment.) Then my son said that he was experiencing some of his over-thinking-things problems. Then the kids started to have spats that ended up in one kid or the other stomping off. It was a clear sign that something was amiss.

Resting in the car on the way home

But the fact that it was so clear that something was wrong just acts as proof to me that the diet has been helping us. The kids used to have fights all the time. They used to have horrible acne. The kids had regular headaches and the girls would come home from school early on occasion with migraines. My son had trouble sleeping, trouble controlling his temper, and issues with depression and over thinking problems. But our trip to Boise for spring break made me suddenly realize that the whole tenor of our relationships as a family had changed.

When we travel, we've had to put our son in the front seat and I'd sit in the back with the girls. That kept the three of them from fighting non-stop during the trip. Tempers would often still run high and by the end of our "vacation" I'd be in serous need of a vacation. But this time I went to put my stuff in the back seat like I usually do and the kids told me, "No mom. Nathan's going to sit in the back this time." And he did! And they had all talked it out between them before hand and come to that agreement!! And they did fine during the whole trip and there wasn't any arguing!!!  It was phenomenal and a huge indicator to me that the diet wasn't just helping Nathan, but it was helping the girls as well.

Then came the pad thai and the slipping a little back into our old problems. One of the incentives I had used with the girls to get them to try this diet with us was that I thought it might put a stop to both their headaches and their acne. After a few months on the diet they whined that the diet wasn't really helping with either. So when Naomi came out and told me that something was wrong, her acne was back, I said, "Oh! So you mean it had gone away?!" Immediately she realized that the diet had helped keep her skin clear and she hadn't even really realized or acknowledged that until that moment. Naomi also had a headache this past weekend. And she and her brother had a fight just last night.

Pretty drink from cafe in Nampa, ID

I've got to say that when we slipped back into our old problems, they still didn't reach the scale or scope that they had reached before we started the diet. It's still clear to me that the diet has helped, even when we've messed up. I imagine it like a bottle that used to be full of dirty water. The diet has helped us get to a point where the water is slowly filtering. We're not all the way cleaned up yet, and any dirty inputs still put us right back to looking yucky, but we're clearing back up faster and over time growing gradually cleaner and cleaner as we stick to the diet. It's been incentive enough to keep us all going on this diet despite the difficulty in having enough snacks on hand for munching. (That has been, hands down, the kids biggest struggle. What we eat isn't a problem. But having quick and easy "grab and go" food on hand requires work on my part (or theirs) and has been hard to fit into our daily routines.)

I haven't talked about my own improvements lately. One of my hopes had been that the diet would help to free me from spring and autumn seasonal allergies. And I can tell it's working. It's still like that bottle of water analogy where I'm still on the dirty side. But I know that I'm cleaner than I was because the symptoms, while still there, are manageable now. Before I'd wake up and within a minute my nose would itch and run so badly that it didn't matter how tired I was, I'd have to get up and blow my nose for almost an hour straight until the Zyrtec would kick in. But now I get up, my nose itches a little, I might blow it once or twice, and then it's over. I might sneeze a couple of times a day compared to the several times an hour I've experienced in the past. And my nose itches a bit, but then it goes away. So I'm certainly not out of the woods, but I can at least see the meadow through the trees. 

Almond cookies that I made for the kids on Valentines day.

We're almost at the 5 month point on the GAPS diet. We've all gotten quite used to what we can eat, what we can't, and we've found decent alternatives for a lot of the things we miss. But...

But the diet, as we've been doing it, at least, is far too expensive. I suppose I could do it cheaper if I spent all day, every day, cooking (and washing dishes). But I don't want to spend my life doing nothing but cooking. As it stands right now it takes me about 30 minutes to get everyone's breakfast made. (It helps that the girls are completely maxed out on eggs and prefer fresh fruit. Fruit has been the quickest, easiest snack we've found. It takes another 20 minutes or so to put the kids' lunches together plus another 15 - 20 minutes to make my own lunch. And I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour making dinner. And that doesn't include making snacks for the kids (which has been the hardest part of all. I'm not spending a whole lot more time making regular meals. But snacks go so quickly that keeping the house stocked takes a lot of time. Which is where we've turned to store bought alternatives. Which is partly why our expenses are high.)

Let me first introduce you to some store bought snacks that have been lifesavers for us on this diet.

Shelton's Original Turkey Smoke Snack Sticks: These are the only sticks by Shelton's without sugar added. And they're the only meat stick/jerky that I've found (at our local grocer) that doesn't have added sugar or grain.
MMLocal Pear (not apple) Sauce: This has been a huge helper in the school lunch and quick breakfast/snack realm.
Go Raw cookies: Chocolate is the kids favorite and Masala Chai is mine. I need to learn to make these at home. They're made from very simple ingredients.
PaleoKrunch Bars: The kids like the original and the espresso. They also have pumpkin, bacon, and other flavors. But man are they pricey. This is another one I should learn how to make. (Oh! And check this out. I just found that someone posted their own recipe online. I'll have to check this out.) PaleoKrunch also has granola. The Apple Pie is the only one we've tried, but it was devoured incredibly quickly.

These items have made the diet easier to accomplish while at the same time shooting our food budget to the moon. (Nuts, nut flours, and nut butters, meat, and lots of fresh veggies aren't particularly cheap either.)

So, even though I had hoped to make it at least to the 6 month mark for the GAPS diet, we're going to start making a transition to a more Weston Price-ish diet. I bought some red skinned potatoes and brown rice at the store today. I'm going to slowly ease us into eating starches again. And I'm going to start learning all about sprouting.

Grains are what make eating affordable. We're going to continue to avoid gluten, but I feel like we need to mix some cheaper foods into our diet so that we can financially afford to keep eating, and I'm hoping that by introducing a few grains, I'll have a wider variety of easy to make snack options available to us as well as a few more options that I can purchase at the store.

The other thing that I've decided to change is the amount of probiotic pills that we take. I've been giving everyone two a day and I've been varying the brand in hopes of getting the widest variety of good bugs that we can get. But I haven't really noticed any significant change in myself or my daughters due to the pills. So for the three of us, we're going to rely more upon fermented veggies (like Bubbie's Sauerkraut and Wildbrine's Red Beet & Cabbage Sauerkraut Salad when we can find it). I'm going to keep my son on the probiotics because he's the one that's had the most tummy issues, so I don't want to back off on the probiotics just yet.

This change in our diet is going to be reflected in my blog. The recipes may start to contain some potatoes, rice, quinoa, etc. I'm going to be learning all about sprouting and cooking with sprouted grains, so I'll try to share what I learn. And, of course, I'll be letting you know how the change in our diet affects how we feel, physically and emotionally. 

We've been enjoying the peanut butter cookie recipe I found recently, but I felt like it was time to spread our wings again and try something new. So I made up a chocolate cookie recipe that can be eaten with or without the peanut butter cookies (depending on if you're looking for a Reeses affect or not). I decided to leave coconut flour out of this recipe since I'm starting to think coconut flour is not my tummy's best friend.

Ingredients
2 1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda

Directions
Mix ingredients together and drop by rounded tablespoons onto a cookie tray. Cook for 7 minutes at 350F.

Chocolate cookies go well with a side of peanut butter cookies

Why does the most nutritious part of the animal have to be the organ meats? Really?

I tried making liver paté yesterday. I know it's good for us. My mom used to serve liver and onions at least once a month and it didn't kill me so I figured I should provide the same nutrition to my kids. I pulled out Sally Fallon's cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, followed the directions, grabbed a spoon and took a nibble, ... only to want to puke it all up immediately. It was horrible!

Here's what I emailed to my sister (who has been feeding liver paté to her family and they actually eat it, so she must be doing something right):

i just made chicken liver pate using the recipe in the book. i must not have added enough wine. i assume the wine is so that you’re too drunk to care about the flavor.  i just took one small nibble of the pate after blending it up and almost barfed.
ack!

Whole Foods has a liverwurst that I like the flavor of. I think I'll have to stick to that. In the meantime, I have a container of chicken liver paté in the fridge that I need to use up. My sis recommended mixing it into meatballs. I'm hoping meatloaf will work. *sigh*

On a happier note, the girls have had far fewer headaches than they used to have before we started this diet. They still have occasional, embarrassing acne, though. We had hoped the diet would clear that up. So far, no dice. And Nathan has been a much more cheerful kid than he was this time last year... or this time the year before that... or even this time the year before that. I feel like I'm getting my son back.