GAPS Latkes?

I saw this recipe today and just may try it.  I tolerate spaghetti squash but have yet to find a way to serve it that I really love.  If I sub 1 Tblsp coconut flour for the recommended gluten-free flour, these latkes should be GAPS-legal.  I’d use schmalz or coconut oil for frying rather than olive oil, though.  We may have a new addition to our breakfast rotation soon…

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Menu, week of Jan 29

Intro menu…with a few tweaks.

Monday

• squash soup and baked chicken skin; fermented cider
• leftover soup
• turnip hash – turnips, banana squash, onions, and ground beef

Tuesday

• pumpkin soup and baked chicken skin; fermented cider
• lamb stew (carrots, cauliflower, banana squash, onions)
• honey-glazed wings (recipe will follow if it’s edible, heehee); steamed green beans

Wednesday

• pumpkin soup (with egg yolks stirred in – first meal with eggs in a week)
• leftover wings
• brown bag: leftover soup

Thursday

• eggs? (if tolerated); oranges; broth
• chicken & broccoli
• burgers; guacamole; cauliflower

Friday

• eggs; oranges; broth; chicken skin?
• turnip hash
• chicken soup

Saturday & Sunday

• leftover something (kids will be gone)

I’m too tired to do an in-depth budget analysis.  :)

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Day 3 of Intro Redux

Today was a busy, busy day.  I made chicken & biscuits for a friend in need today and had to shop for some ingredients first…so my GAPS preparations fell by the wayside, so to speak.  The good news: we each ingested at least 24 oz of bone broths.  The bad news: two kiddos presented with diarrhea this morning.  Since we are fighting some sort of virus right now, I assume the diarrhea is related to that and not anything we are eating (especially since none of these foods has ever caused a problem before now).  In fact, my daughter’s stools became more normal as the day went on and my son said his stomach was definitely feeling better as the day progressed.

We had baked chicken skins and soup made with pureed squash and bone broth for breakfast.  I used an interesting white pumpkin that looked more like a crookneck squash inside, and since I couldn’t peel it easily I just pureed the whole thing.  My son loved it.  My daughter, not so much.  So I reserved the white squash soup for my son for tomorrow’s breakfast and blended some butternut soup for my daughter.  We also had some cider (very fizzy cider!!) with our breakfast.  YUM.

We were gone this morning and did not pack snacks.  The kids each received a free tangelo at ONF and ate that for a snack.  I’m trying to hold off on citrus until our Azure order comes on Monday.  :)

For lunch, we had leftover beef stew.  I made applesauce again today for snack, with schmalz added for calories and a few blueberries on top.  That snack held us through a performance without any hunger pangs, so yay! :)

For supper…I had put some chicken drums into the slow cooker this morning, and they were ready to eat when we got home.  But I had not thought of what else to serve with them…and so…we ended up with steamed green beans, sauerkraut, and one special kalamata olive from the farmers’ market for sides.  I am not an olive fan, but these were cured by a family in California and sent to friends in Fayetteville, and I was curious.  :)  I bought 6 oz (for $4.50!  ouch!) and we are going to eat them sparingly.  Olives are allowed on Full GAPS, so as long as we seem to tolerate them I feel okay about adding them.  I’m still not a fan but they were way better than the canned ones.  :/

We had our probiotics today and finished our cod liver oil.  Hopefully our new order will come soon.  I’ll probably need to order more probiotics in the next few weeks, too.  :/

Tomorrow will be leftovers for breakfast and lunch; I’ll probably make applesauce for snack, and then I’ll have leftover soup for supper while the kids have extras of the chicken & biscuits I made for my friend.  I am trying to feel guilty about that but coming up empty.

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Day 2 of Intro Redux

Today went pretty well!  We started the day with a mug of fresh beef broth (I started cooking some soup bones in the slow cooker last night) and then had leftover butternut soup and baked chicken skin about an hour later for breakfast.  No midmorning snack as we made a quick trip to Walmart to price-match Aldi’s $0.99 pineapples (I snagged the last two! Yippee!) and $0.29 avocados…I think the busy morning kept our mind off of food.

We ate the leftover chicken soup from yesterday for our lunch, and I made applesauce again today for afternoon snack.  I topped the applesauce with some fresh blueberries (our splurge item today).  Then I got started on our soup for supper:

• 1 sweet onion, chopped and sauteed in 1/4 cup schmalz
• 3 carrots, sliced
• 2″ chunk ginger, peeled but left in a large chunk (so I could fish out later)
• 1/2 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 clove garlic, minced (I would have used more but that was the last we had)
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 stems fresh parsley, left whole (so I could fish out later)
• 1+ lbs slow-cooked beef and marrow
• 1 quart pureed pumpkin
• 2-3 qts beef stock
• 2 cups frozen shredded zucchini
• sea salt, to taste
• 1-2 Tblsp gelatin

I cooked the veggies until soft, then added the rest of the ingredients and brought to a boil.  Then I turned off the burner and let it sit for about an hour while I taught piano lessons.  It was DELISH when we sat down to eat it for supper.  :)

I took the kids to my parents’ house tonight so I could work on a project, and my mom served us frozen blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, bananas, and apples.  I could tell the bananas were not ripe enough to make it on the “ok” list for the Intro diet but we didn’t eat a whole lot of it.  So that was our “cheat” for today.

Tomorrow I’ll be making a double batch of breakfast stuff so we can just heat quickly Sunday morning.  Not sure what we’ll do for supper tomorrow, yet.  I’ve been toying with introducing eggs since I don’t think any of us have a problem with them.  We have enough soup for lunch tomorrow and Sunday, so I’ve got to come up with some supper ideas and then we’ll be through this week and I can write out a real menu.

We didn’t take any probiotics today.  Or cod liver oil.  I did order more cod liver oil so I feel that I accomplished something!  :)  Plus, we each managed to get almost a quart of broth into our systems today.  That’s a win.  But I noticed that some of the cider in the fridge from my first batch last month was moldy.  Fail.  I think that was the batch that I used questionable whey…will have to go back and read my old posts.  But we are going to try to drink that stuff up before any more could go bad.  :/

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Reintroducing ourselves… :)

Today was Day One of our second round of the GAPS Intro Diet.  I feel like I did a good job of choosing our first day and doing some prep work this time, and I am giving myself a few hearty pats on the back. :)  We were able to stay home all day and that helped a lot!

I had put 8 chicken drumsticks into the slow cooker last night with 2 bay leaves, one tablespoon apple cider vinegar, and about a pint of water.  That way we had plenty of freshly cooked meat to make our lunch soup with.  I also had several butternut squashes and pumpkins pre-cooked and ready to puree.

For breakfast, I put 1 lb of chicken skins into a 11″ x 14″ pan and set it in the oven.  Then I put a cooked butternut squash and a quart of broth into a large saucepan and set that in the oven.  I cut up another butternut squash and baked it along with the skins and soup.  When the skins were cooked, I pureed the butternut/broth mixture with about 1/2 cup schmalz and some sea salt.  I forgot to add the gelatin that I had planned to add, but it was still a fairly tasty soup.  We had that and the chicken skins and soup for breakfast, with the remaining cooked butternut squash set aside for another day.

We had some beet kvass before lunch and we took a probiotic capsule at the same time.  Then for lunch I made a soup using:

• one sweet onion, diced and sauteed in 1/2 cup schmalz
• 3 sliced carrots
• 1/2 of a diced butternut squash
• a clove of garlic
• 2 cups frozen shredded zucchini (and I relived our $0.25/lb glory days!)
• shredded chicken (8 drumsticks’ worth)
• 2 qts chicken stock
• 4 stems parsley (I fished these out after the soup was done cooking)
• sea salt to taste
• gelatin (about 1 tablespoon)

I would have put in more garlic but we are almost out!!  Otherwise, the soup was good.  We have enough for tomorrow’s lunch as well.  We had cod liver oil and butter oil with our lunch and are almost out of both.

For snack, I cooked 5 apples and one pear to make applesauce.  I mixed in 1/4 cup schmalz to help give us enough calories.

Then for supper, we had burgers, steamed cauliflower with schmalz drizzled on top, and the last of the lacto-fermented pickles.

I could have used some chocolate today, for sure.  And since we have very little in the way of fruit on hand, I felt very deprived in the snack department.  I sure could have used a spoonful of nut butter a few times during the day!  :)  But the schmalz helped with satiety and the kids seemed to be getting along just fine.  My energy level was fairly normal, and other than wanting some extra snacky stuff I made it just fine for our first day back on Intro.

The bones from the chicken drumsticks have been slow-cooking all day, and we’ll have plenty of fresh stock tomorrow.  I plan to cook some beef soup bones overnight so we can have a beef stew tomorrow.  Since our windows will not be put in this weekend, we may try to get down to the farmers’ market for some more squash and chicken feet on Saturday.  I am concerned that our squash and pumpkin stores may not last as long as I had planned and I’d sure like to snag a few more when I get the opportunity!

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I cooked a butternut squash this morning!

Are you surprised?  No?  I sure was when I opened up my oven tonight.

Thank goodness I found it before it got moldy!  heehee

I guess I’m going to have to start leaving notes for myself when I decide to be efficient and cook extra stuff while the oven is on.  :/

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A good GAPS recipe resource

This blog post has lots of recipes I’ll be checking out soon!

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Menu, week of Jan 22

We will be transitioning into the GAPS intro this week, as soon as our leftovers with beans and tomato sauce are all eaten up.  :)  It looks like Thursday will be the day.  I haven’t worked out our intro meals yet, so this is just a partial menu:

Monday

• baked eggs and chicken skin; broth
• leftover soup and muffins
• leftover chili

Tuesday

• baked eggs and chicken skin; broth
• leftover chili
• buffalo wings and broccoli

Wednesday

• baked eggs or pumpkin custard and chicken skin; broth
• leftover buffalo wings
• brown bag – soup? turkey rolls?

Thursday

• squash soup and chicken skin
• ?
• burgers and cauliflower

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

• TBD

Since we’re dropping the eggs for the first part of the Intro diet, we will probably rely on chicken skin plus a pureed veggie soup for breakfasts.  Then if I can manage a big pot of soup, we’ll be set for lunches; then just slow-cooked meat and veggies and we should be set for suppers.  Snacks…hmm.  I’ll have to go read through old posts to see what we did last time.  My book is still on loan so I’ll have to refer to the GAPS website as I plan our Intro menu.  I expect to be able to progress through each stage in just a few days, excepting the nuts and dairy.  We’ll see if my chronic hives disappear after a month with no dairy.  We will continue eating fruits during Intro, though we’ll mainly rely on homemade applesauce and baked peaches at first.  Frozen berries will be added in as we progress through the stages.

We’ll be getting serious about probiotics and cod  liver oil this week as well.  We’ve all been fighting mild colds (and thankfully they are mild) so we can definitely use an immune boost.  I might even get around to the detox baths this time through Intro.  :)

 

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Review – Elana’s Pantry Paleo Bread

I’ve tried several different GAPS-legal bread recipes but have not yet found one that we like enough to make regularly.  Most of the recipes I’ve tried do not hold together well.  I had nearly given up when I saw this recipe for Paleo Bread and decided to give it a whirl.

The only alterations I made were to substitute schmalz for the coconut oil and to leave out the flaxseed entirely.

The recipe makes one mini-loaf, filling the pan almost to the top.  As it bakes, it does puff up and look more “loaf”- like.  We did not try any fresh out of the oven since we had already brushed our teeth for bed.  Instead, we waited for the next afternoon.  The bread sliced very nicely and held together well, much better than the other breads I have tried.  I thought it could use a little extra salt but the kids liked it just fine.  We’ve really only eaten it as toast, but I think it would work well for a sandwich bread if it wasn’t going to be bumped around too much.  It would probably also make good French toast!

Verdict: A keeper!

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Review – Elana’s Pantry Carrot Cake

I’ve wanted to try a carrot cake for several weeks now.  The texture of carrot cake is pretty forgiving, and I thought that almond flour or coconut flour would probably substitute  for the wheat flour in conventional carrot cake without too much variance.  I hadn’t reworked my own recipe yet, so I thought I’d do a quick online search to see if I needed to reinvent the wheel.

I found this recipe from Elana’s Pantry and decided to go for it.  I planned my weekly menu, bought my groceries, and then proceeded to use all my carrots in a different recipe.  Oops.  Then I realized I didn’t have any raisins, either.  Oops again.  I decided to substitute shredded banana squash for the carrots since their texture is very similar.  Since I also altered a couple of other ingredients, I’ll list what I did:

• 3 cups blanched almond flour
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 5 eggs
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup coconut oil, melted
  
• 3 cups banana squash, shredded

I baked the cakes in two layer pans as directed.  The texture was great!  I think I could have done with a little less cinnamon & nutmeg but then maybe with the nuts and raisins it would balance out.  I did not use the recommended frosting, since it calls for arrowroot powder (GAPS no-no).  I made my own weird concoction of cream cheese, honey, sour cream, egg, and gelatin.  Not posting the recipe, sorry.  :)

Verdict:  A keeper!!  The kids liked it as well as I did, even without the raisins.

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