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. 

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. 

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.

---

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.

We did a super speedy version of the GAPS intro diet in two weeks in October. Now we've been on the full GAPS diet for an additional month. I've had die-off symptoms pretty much this whole time -- mostly increased heart rate and a tickley sensation in my upper chest. But it seems like that's finally going away. I'm hoping that means that I've reached the end of getting rid of the bad guys and I'm moving into seeing some improvement with the help of the good guys. The girls, on the other hand, are convinced that the diet has led to increased acne. I'm hoping that's just a die-off symptom as well and that they'll soon have clearer skin. Here's to hopin' anyway. If their acne continues to worsen, I fear there'll be a mutiny and they'll go off the diet entirely. That wouldn't be the end of the world, but it's easier on me when we're all on the same diet page.

Although I miss bready stuff once in awhile, for the most part I think we've been appreciating all the healthy, fresh foods we've been getting. I've slowly been adding a few new dishes into our repertoire. As I refine them to a point where I like them, I try to post them here, though I notice I've mostly only been posting snacky/desserty things. Meals have mostly been the boring meat, veggie, veggie variety or something along those lines. I made BBQ ribs tonight for dinner. I found the recipe for the sauce on Journey to Food that Gives Life. We still miss having easy snacks on hand to eat. For the most part the quickie snacks are homemade yogurt (but Nathan is mostly staying off dairy, so that's out for him), panna cotta (no one likes the version without sour cream so again, this one's out for Nathan), fresh fruit, eggs, muffins (no one seems to like them after day one), and cookies (almond raisin or snickerdoodle so far). I miss the days of grabbing a box of cereal and milk and chowing down on an easy bowl of cereal or granola.

Since starting the GAPS diet I've watched a few videos from the GMO Summit and a few from the Gluten Summit. One of my struggles with the concept of a grain free diet is that people have been living on grains for thousands and thousands of years. Why is a no grain diet suddenly better for us? If Jesus ate bread, why shouldn't we? But according to some of the speakers I listened to, wheat today is very different than the wheat of 50 years ago. I'd like to hear more on how, exactly, it's different, and why we can't just go back to growing the old stuff again. If there's a version of wheat out there that didn't use to cause problems, then I would think there would be a market to start growing that grain again, even just as a niche sort of thing. According to one speaker, however, once your body has built up antibodies for any type of grain (most notably for the kind that's popularly grown today) there's no turning back. You can't even go back to the old kind of wheat. But then wouldn't we want to feed the old kind to our kids? And why, when people go to Europe, do they notice a difference when they eat the bread there? Doesn't that mean there's hope that we could eat wheat again? ... All of this to say that I'm left with more questions than answers. Suffice it to say that between GMOs screwing with things and altered genetics through nonGMO means have led to a poisoning of our food supply. And most people are shoving those poisons into their bodies at an alarming rate. That alone is enough to keep me on this diet (or something similar) for the foreseeable future.

The photos shown here are of various breakfasts over the last week or two. We always have one egg, plus something on the side, usually fruit (mostly because it's easy).

Top photo: fried egg, fresh banana and tangerine
Second photo: one egg omelette, half a kiwi fruit, and pumpkin pancakes with honey
Third photo: fried egg, fried bananas, homemade sour cream
Fourth photo: one egg omelette, cantaloupe and pomegranate seeds
Daily pills: Nathan has a few that he takes that the rest of us don't including zinc picolinate (but when I looked up the spelling just now I saw that it apparently is good for acne, so maybe I'll have the girls start taking it, too), L Theanine, and Lemon Balm. All of us take Bio-Kult probiotic, an Omega 3 pill with more EPA than DHA, fermented cod liver oil, and an additional probiotic called Optima by Nature's Way. 

These are mushrooms that I saw on my walk this morning.

We are experiencing a serious lack of snacks. The kids are feeling it. I'm feeling it. I tried some mango gummies (see link in the Thursday list of food) and some peanut butter cups (which I wrote down the ingredients for, but I'm not satisfied with them yet. So I'll have to work on this and post a recipe later). The main snack of choice for me and Anna is yogurt. Naomi goes with bananas. Nathan wants something more but doesn't seem to want anything that we already have readily available. :-P

I'm tempted to shell out $40 to get this heap of cookbooks from the Village Green Network.

I think snacks are generally grains. Grains hold up better than meat and veggies when they're not refrigerated. Cookies, cakes, granola bars, chips, pretzels, etc. You name it. If it's in the snack aisle it's mostly likely full of grains and/or full of sugars. There aren't a lot of veggies or meats in that aisle. (And if there are some there, they're full of extra junk that you really don't want to eat.) I think I need to start drying fruits and veggies and getting used to them as snacks. And I need to find ways to make and store food that the kids are willing to eat, but that don't require me getting up and cooking something every time they get hungry.

Here's the mostly-not-snacks we've been eating late. Lots of the same old same old.

Tuesday (Day 18)
Breakfast: broken record = one egg omelette (this time with onions and tomatoes) and slices of avocado
Lunch: another broken record = Indian style meat stuff for the kids. leftover asparagus frittata for me.
Dinner: yay! something new! I made a GAPS-style version of Naomi's favorite Mediterranean chicken dish with cauliflower rice. It wasn't as good as our usual version, but it was still kinda comforting to eat something from the olden days.

Wednesday (Day 19)
Breakfast: blah, blah, blah plus pancakes with peanut butter instead of almond butter and sunday bacon.
Lunch: blah, blah, blah and I went out to Restaurant 415 with my mom and had a salad and carrot curry soup. The soup was better than the salad.
Dinner: Borscht. I'd made borscht before since we started this diet, but all of the liquid was chicken broth and it was way too chickeny. We're all used to the way I usually make it with veggie broth, so the flavor was way off. This time around I made it with only a few cups of chicken broth and the rest was water with a veggie bouillon cube thrown in. It tasted just right. Anna's comment was, "Finally! Food that's not from the diet!"

Thursday (Day 20)
Breakfast: blah, blah, blah plus fried apples (Slice apples, fry them up on medium heat in lots of ghee, add cinnamon)
Lunch: blah, blah, blah and Mango Gummies for the kids (which Nathan said were horrible. Oh well.) and leftovers for me and Anna (who stayed home with a sore throat)
Dinner: salmon, asparagas, and chard.
Halloween Treats: Squash fudge (which no one seems to like but me), and peanut butter cups (which I didn't like the chocolate part of but like the peanut butter part of and nathan liked the chocolate part of but didn't like the peanut butter part. I need to keep working on that recipe. I used lots and lots of coconut butter, so I'll have to buy more before I do any more experimenting.)

Friday (Day 21) - We've finished 3 weeks on the diet.
Breakfast: blah blah blah, blah diddy blah plus bacon (which the girls didn't eat) and leftover homemade applesauce (only enough for the girls)
Lunch: Indian style meat stuff for Nathan. Yogurt, store bought apple sauce, and turkey slices for the girls. Yogurt and leftover roasted veggies for me.
Dinner: I want pizza. I need to look up lentils and GAPS and see if I can swing lentil soup. If not, I think I'll branch out and try one of the new recipes I've found via the library. If it's any good, I'll post the recipe.

I'm considering not keeping up our food diary, since it's a lot of the same stuff. (When you're making breakfast and lunch for four within 30 minutes, I don't really have the brain-bandwidth to mix things up too much.) So from here on out I think I'll focus on posting new recipes or links to sites with helpful info. If I find one of us has a reaction to something, I'll just have to use my brain to remember what it was we ate. (At this stage in my life I feel like I forget more than I remember. *sigh*)

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
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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. 

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.

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."

------------------------------------------------------------

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.