Day 2 GAPS Intro

We are still on stage 1 here.
Master 11 chose not to eat very much at all yesterday and still had digestive issues. This morning though he had his meat balls for breakfast with me and we are about to have cauliflower soup with chicken. He is also enjoying the ginger tea with raw honey. Emotionally he is very up and down but feeling quite positive about the diet, just wishing he could eat more variety.

I am feeling a little better, my head ache is easing and I started at the gym today. We are also going out for the afternoon after we fill up on soup and I have a beef pot roast in the other slow cooker for dinner so when we get home I am hoping dinner will be close to ready.

This afternoon I will be reading the GAPS book at the skate park while the boys burn off some energy then we are going for a rainforest walk with the dogs.

GAPS Intro Day 1

We filled our chest freezer yesterday with lovely organic beef and chicken. I bought a side of beef and 4 chickens, we picked them up last night and when we got home I put a chicken into one slow cooker for chicken stock and filled another with beef bones to make bone broth.

The chicken stock was ready last night and I left the bone broth simmering all night and will keep it going for 48 hours, then I will strain it off and make a second batch of bone broth from the same bones. The only thing I have added to these are salt and pepper and a dash of apple cider vinegar.

Breakfast this morning was rissoles- meat balls made of 2kg of beef mince mixed with salt and pepper and  a finely diced onion, some garlic and a grated carrot. I cooked them in a pan half filled with simmering bone broth into the broth I also added 3 sliced carrots, cloves of garlic and 3 onions. Once all the rissoles were cooked the remaining broth and veggies were blended up into a sauce.

We have also had cups of the bone broth 

and added some juice from the cultured ginger carrots. 

It was ok - we are struggling with the fattiness of the stocks and the meatballs we normally eat what I thought was a healthy diet using lean meats. I am also struggling with the fattiness of the cooking utensils when I am trying to clean them and worried about my septic system- That might be my next research project.

Its almost lunch time here, I have a pounding headache and have just finished kitchen work for the morning, I was planning on making broccoli and chicken soup for lunch but we both feel a bit sick and there are leftover meat balls and bone broth bubbling away so we have decided we will continue with them for now if we are hungry and have soup for dinner. 

Minimising Chemical Exposure

I am very chemically sensitive as is my mother and I am seeing the same in Mr 11.

I avoid perfumes at all costs as soon as I scent one I need to leave the area as so many make me quite ill, the cleaning aisle in the supermarket is also out of bounds for me and I am using more and more products I make myself. 

There are lots of great articles online and many recipes, I don't have any favorites but rely heavily on bi carb soda, vinegar, soap and sunshine. One site I often visit is Frugal and Thriving  and they have 7 good reasons to use home made products as well as some great recipes.

Menu Planning Week 1 GAPS Intro

Bone Broth -  I will have one 6 L slow cooker making bone broth all the time, That way we will always have it hot and ready when ever we need it.

Beef Stock or Chicken Stock in another 6L slow cooker.

Breakfast - A different one each day to keep things more interesting. Meat balls ( mince, salt and pepper), steak, chicken or rissoles ( mince, S&P, onion, garlic and grated carrot or zucchini) All cooked by simmering in bone broth and stock.

Lunch - Soups. Once again variety will be key here with all soups made on bone broth.
Broccoli and Beef- broccoli, beef, leek, celery
Pumpkin Soup - garlic, onion and pumpkin
Chicken Veg Soup- chicken, onion, garlic, celery, carrot , swede
Carrot - onion, garlic, ginger, carrot
Cauliflower and Beef Soup - Cauliflower, onion and garlic blended till smooth and cook beef meatballs in the simmering soup
Ginger Pumpkin- onion, ginger, garlic and pumpkin

Dinner- More of our breakfast meals and soups but served in different ways -
Shredded beef, blended veggies to be a sauce served over zucchini pasta ( made with a veggie peeler)
Chicken and cauliflower rice
Onion soup with meatballs
Beef strips with onion, carrot and zucchini- all well cooked in bone broth

Snacks
Cups of broth
meatballs
soup
well cooked salted carrot sticks
boiled eggs

Getting Started

Menu Planning for Week 1- 2  Intro - we need a good variety of foods, Master 11 and I will soon tire of the same breakfast and snacks every day so I have been looking online at what other people have done.

Inspiration gathered at at many places on a google led stroll through the internet, some highlights-

The Nourishing Gourmet shares some inspiration in her post  12 Tips and Recipes for stage 1 of GAPS Intro

There are also a few supporting recipe books available out there as ebooks- I find I don't really use ebooks so I am not going to get them at this stage, I am however considering The GAPS GUIDE by Baden Laskov- his blog is well worth reading as well.

From Trina Holden's blog, her family have taken what they need from this family and use it to maintain their health  Why and How to Start GAPS

 The GAPS diet is a grain-free diet that focuses on easy-to-digest meats, broths, and veggies in an effort to ‘heal and seal’ the intestines. GAPS stands for ‘Gut and Physcology Syndrome” and is based on the book by the same name by Natasha Campbell-McBride and has been used to effectively heal Autism, ADD, ADHD, Depression, Schizophrenia, Chrone’s Disease, Candida, and more.

We do the diet as a gentle cleanse for the whole family. You may be interested in the diet if you have digestive issues, allergies, or grain, gluten or milk intolerances. The great news about GAPS is that you don’t have to be on it forever–once you’ve healed and sealed your gut, you can enjoy foods that you were previously allergic to!

This is what I am most excited about with GAPS, I really want healing for my family, I don't want us to have live a lesser life than we have the potential for and I dont want to have restricted eating regimes for life. I am actually hoping it will work a few miracles for us - Master 11 first and foremost, he needs to be able to eat and that is what really prompted me to keep looking for answers and now I have found GAPS I am hoping for healing in lots of areas- for Master 11 I want him to be more resilient, to feel better about himself, I am hoping it will aid his focus and concentration and improve his teeth and help him be an all round happier and healthier beautiful boy. For my fit and healthy gorgeous Master 15 who has no obvious needs for GAPS I want him to see that it is entirely possible to take control of your own health and that our amazing bodies can heal, in fact it is our responsibility to do so, him mum has taken a back seat with her own health but once Master 11 got sick her inner mama bear reared and did what she should have done for herself years ago- Why do mums put themselves last? For myself, I have been unwell for years - undergone so many tests to tell me I am well or I might have chronic fatigue or I might have a blood borne virus they don't know yet. I need to heal my poor digestive system that has not been right for more years than I can remember, I want my skin and hair to regain suppleness and shine, my skin is so dry and papery now. To increase my energy and focus would be a huge blessing as would weight loss and gaining back some of the strength I once had.

This is what we will be eating Stage 1 - 2 - 3

We live out of town and have been carless for almost 5 weeks so I need to be well prepared as I don't know how fast we will get through each stage and I dont know how long until I get my car back.

Organic Beef Bone Broth
Organic Beef Stock
Free Range Chicken Stock
Free Range Chicken Bone Broth

Organic Beef mince, steaks and osso bucco and liver
Free Range Chicken meat

Veggies onions, garlic, carrots, swede, pumpkin, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, celery

Pepper and Himalayan salt

Ferments- sauerkraut, ginger carrots ( grated)  We already use, tolerate well and enjoy sauerkraut and kim chi and milk kefir and water kefir I am still researching if we need to go back to reintroduce them or if we can just maintain our usage- I am hoping for answers in Dr Natasha's book when it arrives.

Water
Ginger tea with raw honey.
Peppermint tea.

Stage 2 - Once we are ok with this stage, we will move into stage 2 and  I will add in eggs (poached or boiled)  and if we have eliminated the kefirs I will add them. We will also add fish and fish stock, casseroles and stews and ghee.

Stage 3 - When we are ready to move onto stage 3 we will be continuing on with all we have been having but adding our fermented veggies if we have only been having the juice so far. Also in this stage we will be starting our GAPS supplements, I will be adding ripe avocado, fried and scrambled eggs

The Waiting

I have researched and researched and I think I am now ok to start, I absolutely know I need something to work, we need healing on so many levels, things are pretty difficult around here right now.

I have ordered the book and the supplements and a side of organic beef. I have also orgered 4 free range chickens and the best milk I can find. I have made cultured ginger carrot, sauerkraut and garlic ginger carrot sticks so we will have our cultured vegies ready to go. I am going to make asparagus as well just looking for the recipe I like the most.

Hopefully the book arrives this week so I can get stuck into it, I have also ordered Sandor Katz's Art of Fermentation.

Todays agenda is clean out the freezers  to fit 100kg beef in- OMG that is so much meat lol we are not generally big meat eaters.The meat will be ready on Tuesday or Wednesday so I will bring it home and get some bone broth on that night and the meat stock as well I suppose. I might make a menu for the week as well just to try to make it as smooth as possible.

Our Bodies Need Fat

More about this at Natural Cures 

It is so hard to understand things that I have been taught the opposite of all my life and even harder to try and make others understand. My best argument is the system we have now is not working and I need to try and find a better solution.