Cabbage Soup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One gallon of yogurt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My nephew helped my mom blow out her birthday candle. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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