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.  

Switch it Up Saturday- What's In the Fridge?

     So many things change when you start eating healthier.  When I dieted after my third pregnancy I learned that if I did not want to eat something, I better not have it in the house.  If I had to drive a few miles to go get something I should not be eating, then I was less likely to eat it.

     This is my refrigerator at the moment.  The Walmart grocery bag has chicken legs I bought at a marked down price *fist pump*.  The purple lidded container is full of peeled carrots (my eight year old's daily task- we eat a lot of carrots).  The yellow carton of eggs is from our chickens; the other carton is organic from the store.  On the bottom shelf, in the back, are two half gallon jars of chicken bone broth.  In the refrigerator drawers we have cabbage and carrots (winter staples).  In the door I have wine, yogurt, butter, organic steak sauce (my husband brought this home, it is unopened), organic ketchup (my husbands), fish oil (orange flavor), organic mustard, filtered water, cold coffee, and beer.

     This does not phase me.  I did not even realize my refrigerator contents had changed all that much, until my mother came to live with me for six months.  She was really surprised at the lack of food in my refrigerator.  So surprised, in fact, that she web cam-ed her sister, and made a point to show her my refrigerator.

     When you eat unprocessed foods, you can not have too much on hand at once, or you risk some things spoiling.  My refrigerator looked a lot like this one, before I started GAPS.

     I believe the refrigerator I grew up with looked similar to this, as well.  When I went looking for pictures of refrigerators I was shocked.  I had forgotten how mine use to look.  Now, I want to stop a second to let you all know that I do not go into peoples houses and judge them by the contents of their refrigerator.  And I would also like to add that it is not what you eat every once in a while, but what you eat all the time that matters.  Processed foods have long shelf lives, compared to unprocessed foods.  

     In the summer my refrigerator looks a lot like this one.

     I have all kinds of things from my garden I pack in there.  I have to be careful I do not forget about things, or they will go bad.  I use my freezer a lot for storing vegetables for the winter.  I do can, a bit.  Canning is technically processing food.  When you can at home you avoid preservatives generally found in canned foods.  I do buy organic canned tomato products.  A fresh from the garden tomato is a better choice, but not always an option, especially up here in the North.  

     What kinds of foods we eat is a choice we all make for ourselves and maybe our families.  There is so much information out there telling us what is good, and what is "bad".  I get really overwhelmed by this.  I have found a rule of thumb that helps me navigate the information available out there.  How natural is it?  

     God created this world, and I have found that the more simple, natural, whole the food is, the better my family feels.  Again, it is not what you eat once in awhile, but what you eat all the time that is going to affect you.

     Another important thing I want to mention is switching from a traditional American diet, to a unprocessed/whole food diet.  You may not do well.  Back when I was dieting after my third kid, I started to switch all our grains to whole grains.  I was on a roll, pasta, bread, cereal, you name it, if they made it whole grain, I switched over.  Unfortunately, this did not have the desired affect.  Our guts were just not able to hand the whole grains after years of not ever eating them.  This is when I first realized that my son (at the time one year old) and my husband had a gluten allergy.  The whole grain was very hard to digest for them.

     Instead of switching from a traditional American diet right into a more whole food diet, I would suggest Paleo, at least for a little bit.  Paleo is a no grain, whole food diet.  Many people who have health issues have found relief from the diet.  Or, I would suggest taking it slow, switching a few foods at a time.  Most of all I would highly recommend GAPS, especially if you have digestive problems of any form.

     Whatever you end up eating, remember that you are what you eat.  

Whatever Wednesdays- "Apple Stuff"

     Quite often it will be close to bed time and I will suddenly realize I do not have a clue as to what I will be making for breakfast the next morning.  At times like these I often turn to my freezer.  On this particular day I found a bag of peeled and cored apple sections! 

     I live across the street from a while apple orchard.  They are everywhere up here.  (Thank you, Johnny Appleseed?)  This particular year (2013) was a great apple harvest.  I had so many apples.  I dehydrated them in thin slices and the kids ate them like raisins.  I made quarts and quarts of apple sauce.  Due to the time consuming aspect of making the apples ready for apple pies I only put a few bags of peeled, cored and sectioned apples away in  my freezer.  And then promptly forgot about them.  I was worried they would not taste very good due to the fact they were a year and a half old, but although they were rubbery when I defrosted them, the kids really liked them.

Apple Stuff

Things you will need:

9x13 baking dish

butter or animal fat (to grease the dish)

about 5 to 6 cups of apples, peeled and cored, cut into quarters or sections

4 cups of almonds, ground into a meal like consistency

3 eggs

1/2 cup of coconut milk, yogurt or raw milk (your choice)

1/2 cup of honey or maple syrup (and a bit extra for drizzling)

about 1 or 2 teaspoons of cinnamon

Directions:

1. Place the butter or animal fat in the 9x13 baking dish and place in the oven.

2. When the butter or animal fat has melted, pull the baking dish out of the oven and smear the butter or animal fat around the dish.

3. Pour the apples into the baking dish.  (Since I used frozen apples, I defrosted them first, in the refrigerator, and then dumped them into a colander in the sink and let any liquid strain out.)

4. Sprinkle with cinnamon and drizzle with honey (to your personal taste).

5. In a stand mixer or a big bowl combine almond meal, eggs, milk or yogurt, honey or maple syrup and cinnamon.

6. Pour mixture over apples.  This may be more like spread, depending on your measurements and whether you used honey or maple syrup or yogurt verses milk.  It will be sticky, and may be hard to spread if it is too thick.  Just add more of any of the liquid ingredients, if this is the case.

7. Place in the oven at 375 degrees for an hour, and then check to see if the top is done in the middle.  If it is not, cook for another half hour.

     Sorry I do not have a finished picture for you.  I forgot to take one, and the kids loved it and gobbled it down.  I ended up making it four days in a row.  I had to start it cooking at 6:30 am so it was ready by 8 am, for breakfast.  You could cook it the day before and eat it at room temperature or cold.

     I love it when I have success at just throwing things together that I happen to have on hand.  It does not always come out this well!

Apple picking is so awesome!  It is hard to get me out of the tree.

Stage 2- Yes! Egg Yolks!

     I hate cooked egg yolks.  There is a little tidbit about Katie; something you never cared to know, but now you do.  Lucky you.  The other tidbit I will give you is I LOVE RAW EGG YOLKS!  Seriously!  My husband is the master egg maker, and he makes me sunny side up eggs that really make me feel sunshiny!  (That must be a word, because my chrome dictionary said so.)

     The key to this next stage, Stage 2, is to remember to take it slow.  The second time my family and I did Intro I forgot this important fact, far to often.  It is so tempting to jump in with both feet.  My brain has a mental list going of "allowed foods", and on to the list I plunk "egg yolks".  But, really, I am just trying them on for size, one foot at a time.  In the beginning I use to think that was in case we were allergic or something.  Now I realize that our guts are fragile things right now.  Mentally picture your gut before you started Intro (or for those of you who have not started Intro, think of your gut right now).  If you have read any of Dr. Campbell-McBride's book Gut And Psychology Syndrome Diet, you may be imagining a very damaged, leaky gut, over grown with bad bacteria.  If you have completed Stage 1, there is some level of healing, though it is not complete.  Your "leaky gut" may have sealed up, but your villi are still weak and in need of healing.

I am using this picture, even though I am not talking about Celiac Disease, because Celiac Disease is not the only reason for damaged villi, it is one of many.  I thought the picture was appropriate for my purposes.

 It takes a lot of time for your villi, the little nutrient absorbing "fingers", to heal.

 Adding a  lot of a new food can kind of freak out your digestive system, as a whole.  Proceeding through the stages slowly is key.  Believe me, a woman who has experienced this twice before, if you go too fast, you end up taking more time in the long run.  If you over do it, you have to step back and basically pause your progress for a few days, until you are able to try again.  This is one of the main reasons my kids took six months to make it through Intro, and not six weeks.

     Another thing to remember, as you progress on to the next stage, is not to forsake your healing foods: broth, probiotics and good fats.  These three things are key to helping your gut regenerate the villi and quickly get your gut back to a healthy state.  The more of those three things you can consume, the more quickly you will heal.  In fact, for those of you who are not on GAPS Diet, but maybe are just reading this out of curiosity, those three things: broth, probiotics and good fats, are key to a healthy gut which leads to a healthy immune system.  Back in November my kids started getting sick, constantly.  I realized I had started to forsake the broth.  I made soup every few days, but they were not drinking plain broth anymore.  Since I started Intro, I have been making my kids drink a cup of broth every morning before breakfast (most days).  They have not gotten sick since (except for the three year old, she has gotten a few colds, but no one else has gotten it from her)!

     So....here is the Stage 2 list of allowed foods.  Proceed slowly, remembering your goal is total gut healing.

STAGE 2

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

Add raw organic egg yolks.
First try one egg yolk in one bowl of soup.  Then, if you handle that well, continue adding them to each bowl of soup.  When you think you are handling them just fine, make yourself a soft boiled egg (YUM).  (Soft boiled egg "how to" below.)  If that goes over well, then you can eat as many soft boiled eggs a day as you want.  And if you are like me, this will be a sweet and welcome change!

Add roasts made with meats and vegetables.
Dr. Campbell-McBride actually calls these "casseroles".  This was quite confusing to me at first.  To me, a casserole has pasta and cheese in it, or maybe rice and tuna; but never water.  What this stage allows for is meat and vegetables cooked in water, in the oven.  A tried and true way of mine to do this is as follows:
1. Place whole chicken (or any other piece of meat, but chicken is the best, in my opinion) in a large baking dish, deep enough to submerge the chicken in water.
2. Fill with water and add a generous amount of salt and crushed pepper, along with any fresh herbs (I love rosemary).
3. Cook, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 1 hour.
4. Remove from oven, add thinly sliced zucchini to the dish, pushing them down into what is now broth, around the chicken.  
5. Cover with foil and cook for an additional thirty minutes to an hour, checking the temperature of the chicken to determine if it is fully cooked.

Introduce fermented fish or Gravlax.
If you want to....me, I do not.  I have entertained the idea a few times, but the more I look into it the more unnecessary it seems.  I am sure the added probiotics would be great, but I have a few reasons I do not add this step in.
1. Gravlax you can buy has sugar in it.  Gravlax I could make.....

Well, let us just say I do not think I will be able to bury any fish in the ground any time soon.
2. Fish is something I am able to eat on Stage 1.  The only difference is I can have a different flavor or way of eating it.
3. I can not get local fish very easily, or inexpensively, and to buy it already fermented or packaged seems to go against the main goals of the diet, eating natural, unprocessed foods.
For those three reasons I choose to ignore this step, and it has not seemed to cause any ill affect.  But, if you are looking for something different and exciting, feel free to try it.  Just beware of extra ingredients if you are purchasing it from the store.

Introduce homemade ghee.
Ghee is pretty good.  Introduce it a teaspoon at a time.  The biggest temptation I have is not eating the milk fat that kind of crisps up.  I went looking for a recipe to share and only found ones that call for making it on the stove.  I have never made it on the stove, but see everydaymaven.com for the recipe.  I might have to try it this way, it looks easy.  When I make it, I make it in the oven.

GHEE
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Place butter in baking dish.
3. Let butter melt for 90 minutes.  The milk solids will rise to the top and then sink to the bottom (or do one or the other).  
4. Remove from oven and strain.
Beware of white  liquid.  I have "cooked" the butter for the allotted time, and still not been able to strain it.  Worrying that I would ruin the whole thing, I have removed it all, and placed the whole thing (dish and all) into the fridge.  When it cooled, I have plopped it out of the dish, upside down, and wiped off the white liquid (milk solids?).  Maybe I did something wrong, but it ended up working alright.

SOFT BOILED EGG
1. Heat a small pan of water on the stove.
2. When water is boiling place eggs in pan, lowering them down in the water with a spoon.
3. Set timer for six minutes (seven minutes if you are doing more than five eggs).
4. When timer goes off, remove eggs and place in a bowl.  Run cold water over the eggs to stop the cooking.
5. Peel the top half to one inch off the top of the egg and then, using a small spoon, scoop out the egg and place it in a bowl.  Immediately break open the egg, making sure the yolk is burst, so it will not cook.
The last two steps need to be done quickly, so insure the egg yolk does not cook.  If you can time it right, your egg whites will be fully cooked and your egg yolk will be nice and runny.  If you find that six minutes is a bit long, or maybe not enough, adjust the time in thirty second increments.

No Time For Soup- GAPS!

This makes me smile.

   
     For the last two weeks I have been under an extreme amount of stress- a three year project coming to completion. With all my time being spent on painting, rearranging, unpacking and cleaning, when was I supposed to cook and eat?  I simply had no time to make soup.  Looking back over the two weeks I am amazed I ate anything at all, and if it was not for my die hard commitment to stay on Intro until I completed it, I would have stopped and gone back to eating what was in the house, or what I could get to the house with a phone call.

     This lead me to think about ways I fail.  No one sets out to fail.  No one makes a plan and includes, "and then quit completely, and admit failure".  We all plan to succeed at whatever we start out to do.  Our goals are optimistic and maybe even lofty.  Anyone who sets goals for themselves is shooting for the stars, not planning to quit and admit defeat.  So what separates the finishers from the quitters?  Why am I still on Intro, instead of eating a Jimmy John's sandwich.  Here are five reasons not to quit.

Five Reasons Not To Quit

1. Remember why you started.  Why did you start in the first place?  What has changed, except your temptations and resolve?  Do you still want your goal?  I started GAPS because I want to heal my gut.  I started GAPS because I believe this is the path that God wants me on.  I am doing Intro because it is a healthy choice for my body.  Nothing has changed, I still want to finish this diet, and I still believe I can do it.

2. It is hard, but you are strong.  What you are going through is tough; it is hard.  The fact is, though, you are strong.  You are capable.  You can do it.  Period.  I did not quit because I told myself I could do it.

3. This is not forever.  It is going to end.  Life will go on.  Whatever you are facing will not last forever.  Endurance and perseverance will pay off.  Hang in there.

4. You want that reward.  I have promised  myself a trip to see my best friend if I see this diet to the end.  This reward is twofold.  First, I want the reward, and I am able to fight off temptation a little bit better because I have a trump card in my back pocket (i.e. seeing my best friend trumps eating a pumpkin pancake).  Second, because I have told my best friend that I get to drop everything and come see her if I can stick to this diet, I now have a level of accountability as well, and the reward is for her too (not that I think so highly of myself that I would consider her seeing me as a reward for her, but I know that she wants me to come see her, thus it is good for her too).

5. You are believing a lie.  This is the biggest reason not to quit.  What ever is tempting you to quit has a lie that goes with it.  For example, I am tempted to eat the mashed potatoes I just made my kids.  Why?  Because I told myself that there is nothing else to eat that is easy, or ready.  That is the lie.  I have broth and broccoli, and I can quickly boil the broccoli and have "soup".  I just need to think out of the box, and remember the other four reasons not to quit.

     I did a lot of thinking outside the box these past two weeks.  Not having soup on hand did not throw off my progress on Intro.  Over the course of the two weeks I used broccoli, cauliflower and green beans in a similar fashion.  After cooking a whole chicken in a crock pot, I took the broth and boiled my vegetable of choice in it.  I used salt and pepper, and it was delicious.  It was actually a nice break from soup.  If I had to pick one, I actually preferred the one vegetable cooked in broth to a melody in soup.  With the green beans I added garlic.  It was so good!

     It all paid off.  I am now on Stage 3!  If I had given in to temptations and lies I would be starting over, now that the stress is over, on Stage 1 again.  That is what I have to remember, and hang on to when temptations come at me.  WILL POWER!

Day Seven- Little Miss Grumpy

     I did not post yesterday because I was a grump!  I was sick of soup.  I was sick of being hungry.  I was sick of my kids, house, life...pretty much everything.  I think some of the problem was die off.  Die off is a hard thing to figure out, though.  No one really knows what is going on inside their guts.  So many people go to doctors and have tests run and still can not figure out what is going on in their body.  This really is no different.  I only hope that it is temporary.  I only hope that it is die off, and maybe a bit of stress, and it will go away.

     Today was stacking up to be more of the same.  I could not let that happen.  I had to think out side the box.  Chicken was on sale, which was awesome.  So my husband brought home six!  I put one in the crock-pot right away this morning.  I drank my broth at breakfast time, and had some coffee.  I tried to force down the last cup full of soup (from a few days ago) I had, and could not do it.  The previous day's soup I had made did not turn out well.  Miserable fail!  I had some frozen shredded zucchini.  I had planned on defrosting it, and straining out as much water as I could.  I forgot; in a hurry I dumped the whole gallon bag into the soup.  As it began to cook I could not stand the smell of it.  I served it to the whole family at dinner.  They liked it alright.  The one bowl I ate was okay, but there were zucchini seeds (apparently this was from a very large zucchini) in it.  Back to this morning, and not eating anything but broth....by 1:00 the chicken in the crock-pot was done.  I devoured two leg quarters and drank a big mug full of broth.  It was really good.  I planned on feeding the kids the soup for lunch and again for dinner.  They like it, so that works great!  For dinner I just can not bring myself to eat the soup from yesterday.  I also can not bring myself to make any more soup.  Then I get an idea.  If I am sick of soup, maybe I do not have to make soup, exactly.  I take the broth from the crock-pot and put it in a pan.  I fill the pan with broccoli and cauliflower florets and cook it on low until tender.  For dinner I ate more chicken, a bowl full of broccoli and cauliflower and a big mug of brother.  It was so delicious and wonderful!  I can do this!  Thinking outside the box!

Day Five- What Can I Eat Again?

     I have had a few questions about what exactly one is allowed to eat on the first stage.  This is actually a pretty easy question to answer, because gapsdiet.com has everything listed for you.  The harder part is actually implementing this stage.

     Here is a detailed list of what can be eaten on Stage 1 (my condensed version and interpretation from gapsdiet.com) :

Homemade meat or fish broth
Chicken broth (very gentle on the stomach)
Natural unprocessed salt
Black peppercorns
Meats and Fish
Soft tissues from the bones
Bone marrow
Warm meat or fish broth as a drink
Fat in the broth and off the bones

Homemade soup (with your homemade meat or fish broth).
Vegetables cooked in broth: onions, carrots, broccoli, leeks, cauliflower, zucchini, most squash
(avoid very fibrous vegetables- such as all varieties of cabbage and celery, beans and legumes, artichokes, peas, brussels sprouts)
All particularly fibrous parts of vegetables need to be removed, such as skin and seeds on pumpkins and squashes, stalk of broccoli and cauliflower and any other parts that look too fibrous.
Garlic
Boiled meat, fish and other soft tissues off the bones

Probiotic foods.
Homemade yogurt or kefir (if tolerated)
Juice from your homemade sauerkraut, fermented vegetables or vegetable medley

Ginger tea with a little honey between meals.
Fresh ginger root (grated, in tea)
Honey (in small amounts in tea)

     The real key to this stage is resetting the gut.  It is damaged, and needs to have extreme measures taken, but ones that will be gentle and gradual.  I really suggest you journal through the entire Introduction Diet, but if nothing else, at least the first stage.  Everything is new, your body is going to be going through changes (for healing) and with all the work to do in the kitchen, your brain is going to have a hard time remembering when you did what, and what vegetables you have tried.

     When my whole family first started GAPS in 2011 we kept a "Poop Journal".  It was getting really hard to track all three kids' bowel movements, cook all day, and stay sane.  My husband printed this picture out, taped it to the front of a spiral notebook and I would draw lines on the pages to separate each person.  Kind of like this but by hand:

     I would write the day number as I went, but I did this one in excel, so used the handy "fill" tool.  The blank boxes under names is where I would write each person name.  Under their name, beside the date I would write a number representing the bowel moment they had (if they had one, multiple numbers were written in if they had more than one).

     Enter Bristol Stool Chart.  If you think about it, this journal could be really disgusting.  And at first, it really was.  All manner of descriptive words were used to help my husband and I pin point what was going on in our children's guts (there, now you know why I am not afraid to talk about poop).  My kids coined the phrase, "Mommy, I pooped," but it was not said so nicely back then.  It was more of a, "Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooped!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  (I like to text it to my mother when I am feeling feisty.)

     My husband saved the day.  Just when I thought I could not take writing the description of my son's poop one more time, he found this handy chart!

     In the beginning I had three copies of this chart; one in each bathroom and one taped inside the cover of the poop journal.  We quickly memorized them though.  The only real problem with the chart that we had was my husband and my inability to agree on just what number a poop was, or what a poop actually meant by "soft" or "fluffy".  But I will not gross you out with the details.  THANK YOU, LORD, that part of the diet is over.  We are officially on to "if you have a bad poop go find mom and tell her" stage.  It is wonderful.  Now the only time I hear, "Mommyyyyyyyyyyy, I pooooooped!!!!!!!!!!!" is from the toddler.

     Back to what one can eat on Stage 1.  (What, you're not hungry any more?)  When we started trying new things, I added a notes column at the end.  I would write down what we tried, if we tried anything new, so that it was easy to back track if someone had a bad poop.  Apparently Dr. McBride says you can react to food up to three days.  This through us off a bit, until I realized it.  Someone would have a bad poop and I would think back over the day, and maybe even yesterday and could not figure it out.  But when I took into account two more days back, it started making a bit more sense.  I think this is another reason Dr. McBride suggests two day minimum spent on each stage.

     Another thing to remember, it could very well be impossible to track your whole family if you allow some to move on with out the others.  We chose to hold everyone back until everyone was ready to move on.  It just made sense.  First, it would be horrible for the ones not doing well to have to watch those who were doing better eat something they could not, and second, it would be very difficult to keep it all straight.  This was hard to do, at times, but looking back, I would not have done it differently.

     Well, this is day five for me, and looking over that list was a bit of a refresher.  I thought I knew what I could eat....oops.  The oven cooked chicken might not be a good idea.  The crispy, delicious skin is probably not doing me any favors right now.  Bummer.

     Which leads me to my final thought for today, taking short cuts.  There were a couple of times, on our GAPS journey, that we could not figure out what was causing us problems.  Several times we would ponder and ponder why we were stuck on Stage 1, still (the second time we went through Intro we were on Stage 1 for 6 months).  Looking back I wish I would have known the things I know now; I think it would have saved us a lot of time on Stage 1.  Not doing our research about something may have saved time in the beginning, but it added time to the end.

     One of those things was salt.  We used a lot of salt, it was our only real seasoning.  We thought salt was salt.  We assumed buying pure salt, with no caking agents would be enough.  After all, it does not get any more organic than pure salt.  This was not our first hiccup on the road to recovery, but it was a huge one.  Like I always did when we felt stuck in a rut, I would open up my Gut And Psychology Syndrome Diet book and start reading again.  My husband would read over my shoulder and give his interpretation on it.  We would discuss it, quite intensely sometimes, and come to a conclusion, and make a change.  On one of these occasions I happened to catch something on salt.  This led my husband to get is mad awesome google-ing skills on.  At the end of it all, we decided that we thought the salt was giving us problems.  We switched to natural sea salt, and it made a huge difference.

     I wish I could say that was it, and we moved on after that, but I can not.  There were many more of these hiccups that kept us on Stage 1 a lot longer than I think we really needed to be.  For example, probiotic (or fermented foods).  It never occurred to me to cool the soup down to a temperature in range of supporting the good bacteria's life.  All that yogurt and sauerkraut juice wasted.  What was I thinking.

     Just those to hiccups alone could have saved us months.  But that is the story of my life, learning how not to do things.  Hopefully this information can help someone else not take six months on Intro.  I can hope, anyway.