Avleglemono soup, grain free, GAPS stage 2 friendly

My recipe is approximate but....

I had a small leftover chicken breast, more would've been nice but anyway...

3 C. chicken broth (I used 1c bone broth 2 c store bought)
chicken, shredded
1 carrot, diced
handful parsley, diced
s&p to taste
pinch of oregano
2 eggs
1 lemon


cook everything but the eggs and lemon until carrots are soft.
In a bowl, mix the eggs and lemon (like lemony scrambled eggs pre-scramble). Spoon in a little soup, stir, and slowly continue to temper it and not actually scramble the egg. Add egg-lemon-broth back into soup. Stir, turn off heat, eat.

Yes, rice adds another amazing layer, but it really isn't bad without the rice. Oh and maybe no oregano? GAPS is kinda quirky with herbs and spices. But I know parsley is allowed.

kim chi or not...

So perhaps I'll get bad bacteria. I did once in a batch of beer, so it happens.
But right now I'm making kim chi. It's good to get fermented foods, especially on GAPS.

Did I mention I don't like kim chi? Why am I making it?!?!

I remember about 15 years ago I had amoebic dysentery (the rare but deadly kind) after going to Mexico. A roommate brought home a vat of kim chi "caue no one in the school cafeteria wanted it". Having been able to keep rice gruel down and that's it, I opened the fridge to smell... an un-covered vat of kim chi.

I've been warned of the smell even when it is fermenting, it will permeate the home.

Thank God my husband won't be home Monday.

shoddy photo of my kimchi

But hey I'm willing to try homemade kimchi. if all else fails, it gave me something to do while waiting for my bone broth to cook, which also smells awful.

I'm suprised the kids aren't complaining.

So I just mixed the "paste" and I could use it as paint thinner or nasal spray. I coughed and sniffed and my eyes watered. And I LOVE spice and have found few foods to be "too spicy". But the scent of the paste is....shockingly spicy. My nose is still numb.

So I followed this recipe except I spaced and salted the carrots the last half hour. I also didn't use green onion.

http://minimalistbaker.com/easy-vegan-kimchi/

faux pho

I have a friend from Southern China who makes THE BEST Pho. Really. It's delicious. But somewhere along the way I lost the recipe, and she is traveling so...

I needed pho.

I'm on GAPS intro diet and it's soooo boring, so I decided to "cheat" with a few subtle spices but aside from that I'm "in compliance".

Really, the pho should be slow cooked and I added the seasonings at the end because I wanted to save my broth for non-pho purposes, but really you'd use a star anise, some fennel seeds, cinnamon stick, knub of ginger, some garlic cloves....


anyways...

I chopped 1 yellow onion, 2 cl. garlic, a celery stalk and carrot (diced) and sautéed in very scant olive oil. I added salt and pepper.

I used a bone-in chicken breast and 3 drumsticks and added it to the veg.

I added hmm....8 cups water?  and a bay leaf.

oh and I added a chopped parsnip cause I can eat parsnip.

Cook until meat begins to fall off.

Take meat off bone, set aside, strain out veggies.

(here's where you put the half the broth in your to-be-pho bowl, and the rest with the chicken bones and a little more water and cook the heck out of it....just google bone broth for a recipe.)

to the pho broth, add some spinach. (the broth should include some of your saved veggies and chicken meat). Add a few splashes of lime. If you want to cheat, add cilantro - I was out of cilantro. Add a grind (on a microplane) of ginger, and a few fennel seeds and a pinch of chinese 5 spice.
Add a slice of jalapeño if you want to "cheat" and need the heat. Sadly I only put one slice in as a cheat and couldn't taste it.

But nonetheless it was edible.

(t.m.i. disclaimer) Adventures in Gruesome Gut Land and GAPS diet

Disclaimer: "TMI" or "too much information" will be disclosed here, all about my guts. Fun times! So if you're more here to see recipes and KEEP an APPETITE I do suggest reading one of my other posts!

****************************** not for the faint of heart. ***************


*************still here? Ok then.....****

So let's backtrack 3 weeks. I went and weighed myself, dammit, 139 pounds. Not obese by any standards, and I'm also not all about being super thin, and it still puts me in the healthy BMI but...I just looked and felt unhealthy. I could be 139 pounds and healthy, but I didn't look or feel it. I looked 4 months pregnant and felt worse than that. Lots of bloat and fatigue and none of my pants fit. My shirts accentuated a beer-belly look I had going on.

Fast forward to a week ago.

****here comes the icky part.*****


Full disclosure here... I woke up and went poop and...the toilet bowl was bright red, like a super-heavy-period-day but....more blood. Lots of blood.

Now, when I have gluten I get a little blood, like a drop or two or three. And related to this, I am apparently not allergic to a single damned food, and don't have celiacs according to a blood test...however, to test positive for celiacs you must have been con suing wheat for at least 6 weeks. Given that whenever I eat wheat I get drips of blood and a vicious leg rash that itches so bad I end up inadvertently with a skin infection, its no wonder I'm "supposedly" not "celiac". Who'd want to have blood when whey wipe their bum, and a skin infection, for 6 weeks just to "prove" you have celiac? Not me.

So anyway back to the bloody bowels in the bowl thing. I thought ok calm down, its ok. So I have breakfast and stuff and....it happens again. Uh oh. Then it tapers off into regular old diarrhea. I start feeling realllllly tired and skip on church and rest on the couch all day which is impossible for me. The next morning I wake up and everything is ok down there. Phew! But I'm still a little tired so my husband goes to run errands and....you guessed it. I bleed a ton into the toilet again, twice in a few minutes. So we head to urgent care. Why not the ER you may ask? Cause that costs $500 and urgent care is $20. Both have doctors and labs and X-rays.

So I wait for three flipping hours to see the doctor. My gas is rotten. Farts never smell good but it is a smell I can't even explain except a skunk, who died in a port potty on a hot day, would smell better. No joke. I've smelled some rank things and this took the cake. Even when not farting, I just smelled. I bathed and bathed and just reeked. This was to my advantage though, as no one sat next to me in the waiting room. However, I was tempted to ask the triage nurse, "why have I been here three hours? Is everyone else worse off? I flipping have anal Ebola here, folks, and I smell worse than death."

Anyway I get admitted and have a CBC blood test and come out ok  aside from my mild anemia but that's normal for me and besides, I'm pooping out blood, I'm gonna be anemic. I have an X-ray. I get sent home with no diagnosis or medication, just "liquid diet for a day, bring back your stool sample asap".

It's day 4, no stool results yet. No diagnosis. But I am finally (knock on wood) done losing blood! The X-ray showed I was full of sh*t. Really. But umm...that's been fixed. But when I geek out and look up the radiology encyclopedia, I have textbook-perfect "thumb printing" typical of colitis. Colitis makes you poop blood. My grandma has it. So I'm pretty sure that's part of my issue.

So I go and see an herbalist and get put on the GAPS diet.

I can't eat much since my stomach has shrunk over the past week for obvious reason, but I am perpetually STARVING. Sure, I will eat a handful of steamed carrots and a slice of turkey and be all OMG I'm so full I could burst, but then half an hour later I'm famished. But being that I can only have broth with boiled meat, well-cooked bland carrots, spinach, squash.... I'm hungry. Besides I can't eat every half hour because my tummy isn't ready for that.

So today I'm going to try and make bone broth. I've had lots of regular old broth and stock, now it's time to make my own.

I guess you detox and get cranky and tired and poopy on GAPS at first. And you get cravings.

Most people crave sugar. Me? No. But starches? Yes.

I guess it shows that I do eat kind of healthy (even before GAPS) because instead of the typical cravings for pastries and pasta and candy... I am craving...
butter chicken, hummus, and salsa. Yep, those are solo my cravings. I want them NOW!

Well, off to go boil some chicken and bones for a zillion hours!

golden milk

I went to  a restaurant yesterday, one I hadn't been to in years.

As some of you may know, I have severe issues with gluten. I took the celiac blood test, but if you haven't recently ingested gluten, it will say "negative" to celiac's even if you do indeed have it. To sugar coat my issues....since you can't take blood tests in the restroom, I didn't eat gluten before the test. But I know I have either very bad gluten intolerance or celaic's.

Anyways...

Years ago, I was less sensitive. I could even act as if my gluten-free living was a fad diet and splurge and eat a small cookie or a bite or two of pizza or cake and survive. I enjoyed Chinese food (containing soy sauce which has wheat) and beer and all that.

Nope. Not anymore. Even cross contamination can get to me.

So I went to a Mexican restaurant and got a salad. Salads can easily be made gluten-safe.

My salad had rice, beans, pork, corn chips, lettuce, pico de gallo, creamy cilantro dressing, sour cream. Safe right?

Yeah, sure, if I ate only the pico de gallo, sour cream, lettuce. They had a sign inside about gluten allergies and possibly cross-contamination, and advised to obviously not eat the wheat tortilla.

So my salad also came in a wheat tortilla showed at the bottom which I didn't see.

The salad dressing, beans, pork, rice all had gluten. Really? I have never added wheat flour to any of those ingredients. So much for the "fresh, healthy, from scratch simple ingredients" mantra they tote.

So....

I'm counting down the moments until I live in the bathroom. I googled the gluten-free menu as I began to eat my salad. I ate probably 4 bites of meat mixed with rice and beans, then went on over to the lettuce smothered in dressing when I read it...gluten. everywhere. I then peered down to see the wheat tortilla at the bottom. The tiny corn chips which have wheat, microscopically scattered in every bite.

My friend suggested Golden Tea. She has my same -uh- issues and says it isn't a cure but lessons the blow (pun intended).

So here's my recipe!  You can use other "milk" if you can't have cow's milk, coconut milk leads well to the taste and I bet almond would too. (But did you know how much water goes into almond trees? Something like 25 gallons of water ends up producing one nut. Well one nut, some leaves and bark and stuff but you get the idea).

Ok now that I've scared you away from almonds (but they are so tasty!)...

GOLDEN MILK

1 c. milk
1/2 tea turmeric powder
1/8 tea coconut oil
1/4 tea cinnamon
1/2 tea honey 
grind of pepper (helps absorption)
1/8 tea ginger powder or tiny bit more fresh ginger
cayenne (optional)
dash cardomon powder or one cardamon pod

Surprisingly, turmeric works well taste wise. I always think of spicy curry with turmeric but it's ginger cousin means it can be sweet or savory. I imagine the cayenne (optional) would make it savory and add a boost of the medicinal glory of capsacin. But I wanted sweet. It reminds me of Chai, really. Minus the tea.

Anyway, put everything in a blender (but if using a cardamon pod, don't blend it, leave it out till cooking).

Blend till, well, blended and a little frothy. Pour into a saucepan  (add cardamon pod if doing pods) and cook over low to medium (depending on your burner) until the milk comes to a gentle and frothy scald but not a burning scald or boil.

Pour into a cup, let cool a bit (unless you like super hot burn your tongue stuff) and enjoy.

It is supposed to help with inflammation per Ayurvedic medicine practice.

Bistro meal- fish in cream sauce, beet and sweet salad

One of my favorite meals - and a power-punch of vitamins and super foods to boost - is my beet and sweet salad or beet and sweet stackers. Today I paired them with fish.

First the Beet and Sweet recipe...

2-3 beets, peeled and sliced about 1/2' thick

drizzle olive oil

pinch salt and pepper
pinch thyme

drizzle of balsamic vinegar

1 sweet potato, peeled and sliced about 1/2" thick

drizzle olive oil

pinch salt and pepper
pinch of smoked paprika

6-12 oz spinach, more if you are feeding more than 2.
drizzle olive oil
your favorite vinaigrette dressing- my favorite is Trader Joes tuscan vinaigrette.
handful crumbled feta

preheat oven to 425.

Add beets, lined up in one layer, on tin foil in a cooking tray or sheet over tin foil for 30-45 min until tender....

meanwhile prep the sweet potato. They only need to cook 10-20 mins.

Check beets and sweet potatoes as they cook as they can get finicky- they go from crunchy-uncooked, to soft but firm and cooked, to potato chip crispy very quick. You want soft but firm riiiiight before potato chip.

Cool the veggies a bit.

Saute spinach in olive oil until wilted. Plate. Add beets and sweet potatoes (they look kinda neat in stacks but it is up to you). Drizzle on the vinaigrette- not as much as you would a salad, just some dribbles for flavor. Add feta.

Rice
Yup. Make rice. Whatever rice you like. Really, a wild rice mix would be awesome but I had jasmine on hand. Follow the directions of the rice to cook it.

the recipes...fish, beet/sweet, rice.

Fish in mustard cream sauce

(sauce optional)

Fish of your choice. I used 4 filets of tilapia. Any white fish would work well.
Old Bay seasoning, or, lemon pepper seasoning, whatever you like. See the photo to know "how much" but I went right to the limit of almost too much for my taste.
salt and pepper to taste (depending on how salty your seasoning is)
olive oil to coat a pan, and lining the pan in foil is advised but not necessary
1 lemon - half in slices (place atop fish), the other half squeezed over fish before or after cooking, before is best.

Cook at 425 10-20 min (start checking at 10) till cooked thorough and flaky but not like jerky :)

Sauce...
Enough cream to coat a saucepan. Maybe 1/2 cup?
(you can use milk and a dollop of sour cream in a pinch)
salt and pepper
teaspoon of your favorite mustard (mine is Trader Joes garlic aioli mustard)
pinch dill

warm in a pan, whisking until blended and warm - don't let it boil'curdle/scald.

pour over fish or serve on the side.


THESE RECIPES ARE GLUTEN FREE AND NUT/PEANUT FREE. CAN BE GRAIN FREE (NO RICE) OR DAIRY FREE (NO CREAM SAUCE, NO FETA IF YOU CANT HAVE FETA)