Today is My Birthday

     Today is my birthday.  My husband bought me a treadmill (he got a sweet deal!).  So this morning I was walking on my treadmill and thinking about my childhood.  I have a very interesting story; a journey filled with many bumps, pains and sorrows.  I like to share my story with people because no one ever expects it.  To most I am a good "Christian girl" so I must have come from a good "Christian home".  While I would definitely thank God and my mother for a Christian upbringing, I would not call my childhood necessarily good.  Even though I have many happy and sweet memories, I have many unpleasant memories as well.

  As I was thinking about all of this I wished I could use my story to glorify God.  I wanted specific events and memories I could point to and say, "And then God did this amazing thing!"  As I flipped through bad memories in my mind, searching for redemption, grace or miraculous things to point people to God I suddenly saw an image of a pretty flower.  The flower was not really anything special or super beautiful.  It was beautiful, but what made it special was that it existed amid garbage and ugliness.  It seemed to glow because of it's surroundings, and it had a clear bubble type thing protecting it.  And then I felt God speak to my heart, in answer to my searching, "You."  "Me?" I thought.  Redemption, grace and miraculous was me?  Then I saw my childhood in a different light.  I saw a protective bubble around me and felt that God had placed my mother (and a few others) in my life and protected, guided and loved me.  I wish I could share some amazing and beautiful story of  my dad's redemption, or share how grace and love made my family whole, but I can not.  I can, however, share myself, the flower God has created and redeemed and loved, right out of the muck and mire, pain and sorrow.

     To this God I pledge  my life in service.  To this Savior I offer all of myself.  To this Friend I promise to trust and obey.  

Mock Stroganoff (GAPS style)

     I just made this.  I loved it so much I rushed to my computer to post this recipe.  Of course I did not use an actual recipe.  I did reference an Eggplant Stroganoff recipe to see if I could actually call what I made a stroganoff.  I think I can get away with it!

MOCK Stroganoff (GAPS Style)

Things you will need:

cast iron pan

1 pound ground beef

1 large to medium size onion, diced

1 large to medium size eggplant, diced in small slices, almost like small noodles

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 cup yogurt or yogurt cheese

Directions:

1. Place beef, onion, eggplant, garlic, salt and pepper into the cast iron pan and cook on high for about 10 minutes (or until beef is cooked).

2. Turn off heat, and let cool for a few minutes.  Add yogurt to pan and mix well.

3. Serve.

     Okay, so there are not any mushrooms in this, so I may not actually get away with calling it a stroganoff, but it was SO GOOD!  And mushrooms are expensive, and a lot of people do not even like them, so that works.  We normally do not allot for beef in our budget, but ended up with some this month, and I am so excited because I can make recipes like this!

     Did I mention I love beef?

Three Ingredient Soup

     Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooup!  My life seems to revolve around soup.  Soup pops up everywhere, and in just about every conversation I have, it seems.  A friend calls to cancel a play date because of sick kids- I naturally ask if I can bring her some chicken soup.  I plan a day in town, I grab a quart of soup I have stashed for just such an occasion.  In fact, the first thing I usually do in the kitchen is check in on my soup reserves.  I eat a lot of soup.  To be honest, I am getting kind of bored of it.

"At home I have big vats of cabbage soup I make to slim down." 

-Jilly Cooper

     I try fancy recipes to get me out of the slumps, but to no avail.  I just do not really want to drink my food anymore, and the more ingredients the more complicated and for some reason the less I like the flavor.  So, I came up with this simple recipe.  This is a winning soup.  I can not really tell you why I like it so much, or why I prefer it to any other, but it just works so well.  So here it is, Three Ingredient Soup

Three Ingredient Soup

Things you will need:

whole chicken

4 cloves of garlic, minced

peeled and shredded carrots (about 2 to 3 pounds)

soup pot

salt and pepper

water

(okay, so technically there are six ingredients if you count the salt, pepper and water)

Directions:

1. Place whole chicken in soup pot and cover with water.  Add salt and pepper and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for an hour and a half or until the internal temperature reaches 170 degrees.

2. Remove the chicken from the soup pot.  Cut open to cool more quickly, slicing down the middle of the breast.

3. Add shredded carrots and minced garlic to soup pot and bring to a boil.

4. While waiting for the soup pot to come back to a boil, remove the chicken from the bone.  (I usually am hungry by this point and I eat the chicken skin and things you would not want to bite into in your soup.)  Cut the meat up into bite size pieces and set aside.  (Save the bones for bone broth.)

5. Let soup boil for 15 to 20 minutes, then remove from heat and mix in chicken.  Stir and serve.

"Birthday Soup is good to eat, but not as good as Birthday Cake." -Else Holmelund Minarik, Little Bear     

GAPS Ice Cream Sandwiches

     I have lots of recipes to share, and no time to share them.  Time is flying by here at the Goshert house!  Aaron has just turned eleven and more birthdays are on the way, Summer must be around the corner.

     Aaron requested ice cream sandwiches instead of a cake.  I racked my brain for a while trying to come up with something that would work.  He can not have dairy or almonds right now (he is seeing a special chiropractor for an additional heath issue right now) so that limited me a bit more.  In the past I have made home made frozen yogurt in our ice cream maker.  

     I had narrowed down the cookie part of the ice cream sandwich down to four recipes.  I wanted to try them all before hand, in case they did not turn out.  That did not happen.  Nine o'clock the night of Aaron's birthday I end up choosing the cookie recipe based on what ingredients I actually had.  My coconut oil supply had been depleted because of all the frying I did for Aaron's birthday dinner.  I had a half cup of coconut oil left.

     I ended up going with "GAPS Date Cookies" because I happened to have some dates on hand (a gift from a wonderful friend).  See the recipe here.  I did change a few things, out of necessity, but the cookies did not turn out better for it, so I would stick with the original recipe.  The cookie was very much like a short bread.  Not too sweet, and a great texture.

     Next comes the ice cream, and actually this was the easy part.  Frozen bananas and a little, fifteen dollar, kitchen toy.  (It was 75% off, and since my Cuisinart food processor bowl and lid broke and I have not been able to replace them, my husband bought me this cute little "toy" to pitch in where the Cuisinart had left a void.  It is trying it's best, but having a hard time.  Good thing it is so cute.)

Now that Summer is nearly here I buy even MORE bananas.  People actually question my sanity in the check out line.  We also hear quite frequently, "Do you guys have pet monkeys?"  To which we smile and nod and say, "Yes, four of them.  They are adorable, and love bananas, not to mention bananas are cheaper and healthier than candy bars..."  I digress.  Anyway, when the bananas get really ripe, we peel them, lay them out on a cutting board, and place them in the freezer.  After a day or two I put all the frozen bananas into a freezer bag, and put them in the deep freeze.  This makes banana smoothies and banana ice cream a snap to make.

     I did not plan on posting about this, so I did not take many pictures, but here is the final product.  I had to put some ice cream in a glass cup so I could put the candles in something.

     Here is the recipe break down for you, everything in one place.  So handy!  Speaking of handy, I have started using my iPad (another wonderful gift from a wonderful friend) as a cook book.  I tried a few apps first, but most of them would not work on my iPad because it is older, but that ended up working out fine because I just look up recipes on the web and book mark them.  Of course I can not edit the recipes (which you all know of my compulsion to do so) but since I change them every time anyway, it keeps me looking at the original, which helps my success rate a bit more.  Plus I have a good memory.  Anyway, back to why it is so much easier, rather than just writing it down, I now have a file folder over flowing with recipes.  This is a great resource, except me, the organizing queen can not find a way to organize them!  It started a few months ago, I just stopped looking for the recipes in the folder and started using the iPad to find the original recipes on line.  Now I just bookmark them and they are easy to find.

GAPS Ice Cream Sandwiches

Things you will need:
6 frozen bananas (a banana for each person)
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 and 1/2 cups of coconut flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used home made, another gift from a wonderful friend!)
1 egg (but it turned out pretty crumbly, so I think 2 would be better)
10 pureed dates
1/8 cup honey (optional)
baking stone or cookie sheet
parchment paper
blender, food processor or a Black and Decker Lean Mean Prep Machine
stand mixer and a few other bowls
platter of some sorts
ice cream scoop

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Pull out frozen bananas to thaw a bit.

3. Line baking stone or cookie sheet with parchment paper.

4. Remove the pits from the dates and puree the dates in a blender or food processor.

5. Add egg, coconut oil and vanilla extract to the dates and puree until smooth.

6. In the stand mixer (or a separate bowl) mix the coconut flour, and salt together.  Dump the wet ingredients in and mix.  This was the tricky part for me.  The "mixture" seemed really crumbly to me.  I added some honey and used my hands to get the ingredients to stick together.

7. With your hands make flat round cookies, the size of your hand.  Place on a cookie sheet or baking stone lined with parchment paper.  Make two "cookies" for each person, so you have enough to make an actual ice cream sandwich.

8. Place the cookie sheet or baking stone into the oven for 20 minutes.

9. Remove from oven and let cool.  I ended up having to put mine in the freezer because I was out of time.  Make sure they are not hot, or the ice cream will melt.

10. While cookies are cooling, take the bananas you pulled out previously and chop them into smaller pieces and place in a blender or food processor.  If you are using the handy dandy Black and Decker Lean Mean Prep Machine, you do not have to cut the bananas.  The texture should be like soft served ice cream.

11. Lay the cookies out.  On half of the cookies place a scoop of banana ice cream, then place another cookie on top of the ice cream.  Carefully smash the cookie down.  I also used the ice cream scoop to smash the ice cream down a bit.

     There you have it!  Easy peasy, eh?

Katie's Paper Treats

     I love to make things with paper.  I enjoy making cards, decoupaging and scrap-booking, mostly.  Recently I started having fun designing things on the computer.  Although I do not have any fancy computer software, I still have a lot of fun.  The other day I was inspired by a note pad I found at Target.

     I know it only cost a dollar, but every dollar adds up when I am in those few "money saving" isles when you first walk in the doors of Target.  After ten minutes I have fifteen $1 items, and I am spending more money than I intended to.  In all actuality, I probably would have bought this note pad anyway, except that I had five at home already, and I was trying to be good.  So I quick snapped a picture for future inspiration, and practiced some self control.

     Today I stumbled upon the picture and decided to try to design one similar.  I know I normally post things about GAPS and healthy living on this blog, but being the pink pioneer girl is not limited to just food.  So, here is my notepad!

       
     Ta da!  Here it is for printing.

     When I print my own list pads I like to print twenty or so pages, cute them to the same size, and use a binder clip to keep them all together.  The nice thing about using a binder clip is if you have multiple lists you can rearrange them in a different order, or pull a fresh one out, and place it on top, with out losing track of them.  It works really well when you are planning a trip or something that takes multiple lists.

     If you want to print some the best way to go about it is to copy the picture and paste it in a word document.  You will probably need to re-size the picture to the document page.  If you want to make it even lighter, you can set your printer setting to "fast draft".

Manic Monday- Acorn Squash Mash Up

     It is Monday, and I am playing catch up.  Mondays are always like that around here, it seems.  I try to take it easy on Sundays, spending time with the kids, relaxing, reading my Bible.  I do not make the kids do their chores on Sundays, either.  So, I am never really surprised that Monday is kind of a crazy day.  I do not mind the crazy so much, but I do end up scrambling to put food on the table.

     Today, for lunch, I took a cast iron skillet of bones  and drippings (from a roasted chicken) I had tossed in the fridge (so I did not waste the bones, but I did not have time to do anything with them at the time) and put a cup of water in it and heated it on the stove.  I poured the flavorful liquid into another cast iron skillet, and cooked some diced up onions on high.  When the onions were cooked, I scooped out the flesh of an acorn squash I had left over in the fridge into the skillet.  I mashed it along with the liquid and onions with a potato masher.  I let it get hot, and stirred it.  It smelled like Thanksgiving Day!  And it tasted like it too.  I had to share the recipe.

     When you are cooking through out the week, it is not a bad idea to cook extra every now and then, so you have some left over for days like Manic Monday.  I cook acorn squash whole, in the oven.  I place five or six in a large roast pan for an hour and a half at 350 degrees.  If I have one left over, I put it in the fridge for just an occasion like today.

     Keeping extras of chopped vegetables can come in handy too.  If you have the time, everything is already dirty form chopping for the meal.  Chop up an extra onion and put it in the fridge.  I have my daughter peel a two pound bag of carrots every day.  Some days we do not eat carrots (though, usually the kids eat them for snacks), but I always have carrots ready to throw into a dish.

     You can never have too many vegetables ready to go.  In the past I have even come home from the store and chopped up every vegetable I have, so it was ready to go in the fridge.  This takes a lot of time, but can save you time when you need it.  Food for thought.

 Acorn Squash Mash Up

Things you need:
medium sized skillet
1 large acorn squash, cooked
half of onion
1 cup chicken broth, or half a cup of chicken drippings from a chicken roast

Directions:
1. Heat broth or chicken drippings in skillet with onion, until onion is tender.
2. Scoop out flesh of acorn squash and mash in skillet with onion and broth.
3. Stir frequently, until hot.
4. Serve.

Stage 3- Avocado!

     Things are getting really exciting now.  It has been forty days of Stage 1 and 2, for me.  Part of me is shocked it has been so long, and part of me feels like I have been doing this forever.  (Or as my six year old would say, "A thousand years.")  It really feels good to be moving along now.  Again, it is tempting to jump right in, but from experience I know that slow is best.

STAGE 3
Everything from Stage 1
-Homemade meat or fish broth
-Homemade soup
-Meat and vegetables that have been boiled and cooked thoroughly
-Homemade yogurt or kefir (in soups and broth, if tolerated)
-Juice from your homemade sauerkraut, fermented vegetables or vegetable medley
-Ginger tea with a little honey

Everything from Stage 2
-Raw organic egg yolks and soft boiled eggs
-Roasts made with meats and vegetables
-Fermented Fish or Gravlax
-Homemade ghee

Add ripe avocado
Start by mashing it into soups, starting from 1 teaspoon and gradually increasing.

Add nut pancakes
Start with one pancake a day and gradually increasing. (See below for recipe.)

Try eggs scrambled with plenty of ghee, goose fat or duck fat.
You can eat it with avocado (if tolerated) and cooked vegetables, as well.

Add actual sauerkraut or fermented vegetables.
Start with a small amount and gradually increase to 1 tablespoon of sauerkraut or fermented vegetables per meal.

Katie's Nut Pancakes

Things you will need:
Cast Iron Skillet
Metal Spatula
Food processor
Big bowl and spoon or Stand mixer
2 cups raw nuts, pre-soaked (at least 24 hours) and drained 
4 eggs
1 small acorn squash, cooked well, so flesh is nice and tender, blended or mashed
1/2 cup honey
Ghee or animal fat

Directions:

1. Place skillet over medium/low heat and allow to get hot while you mix your ingredients.

2. In a food processor, process nuts until they look like almond meal and start sticking, like almond butter.  Place nuts in a bowl.

3. Add eggs, squash and honey to nuts and mix.

4. Add a small amount of fat to pan, and pour 1/4 cup of batter on to skillet.

5. Next comes the tricky part...when do you flip them?  Every stove and pan is different, it seems, and I can not give you an exact amount of time.  I can describe a ready to flip pancake, though.  The edges should look a bit firm, like they will not break apart when  you try to flip it.  Also, look for a few bubbles (too many, and you are probably burning the pancake).  Another trick is to slightly lift the pancake to see if it is burning.  Try not to do this too much, though.

     You really do not want to eat burnt pancakes, so be prepared to cook them slower and longer than you may want to.  I still have not completely mastered this.  I know that the batter should be more runny than not, and the pan should be medium to low heat, and do not ever leave the kitchen.  I am a terrible long distance cook, and will leave the kitchen for just a second and come back to burned pancakes.  Nut pancakes take a lot of patience.  At this point, though, they are well worth it!  Make a big batch and freeze them.  Then you can throw them in the toaster whenever you want a snack.

     Another trick, for the days where I just am out of patience, is to use the oven.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Take a cake pan or glass baking dish and place it in the oven with a few table spoons of ghee or fat.  When the fat has melted, pull the dish out and smear the fat all around.  Pour the batter into the dish, and bake until it is firm in the middle.