stage 3/4/5 update: crash & burn

Crash by Images by John 'K', on Flickr

This is a bit of a long story; the summary is I had a major adrenal crash, likely due to too much detoxing, and thus temporarily ceased GAPS. Up until the crash, I was enjoying the food just fine, and my deterioration was gradual and didn't seem extreme, so I just puttered my way through stages 3, 4 and 5 until BOOM!

stage 3 food

Stage 3 adds avocados, pancakes made from nut butter, eggs & squash, scrambled eggs and fermented vegetables.

I added avocado with enthusiasm, as it's a favorite.

I will write another post about prepping nut butters and meals later, but I wasn't crazy about the pancakes overall and only did them a few times.

I was quite pleased to add the fermented veggies as opposed to just the juice.

I didn't care about scrambled eggs. I was so incredibly enthusiastic about soft-boiled eggs! I haven't had them since childhood, and was just loving the heck out of them. I have my method perfected, so the white is cooked entirely through, just the outside of the yolk is slightly cooked, and the rest is completely yummy. So I wasn't very interested in scrambled eggs, nor the GAPS-pancakes as I just wanted soft-boiled eggs.

My other fond childhood food that came back was yogurt & honey. As an adult, I mix plain yogurt with fruit and usually a bit of sugar-free DaVinci syrup of one flavor or another. The DaVinci syrups, being entirely chemical and having no food value whatsoever are completely illegal on GAPS. And at this stage, fruit remains illegal too. But just a cup of plain yogurt, mixed with a tablespoon of raw honey, is utterly scrumptious. Maybe a lot of this is due to the whole childhood memory thing, but this became my go-to snack in stage 3.

I enjoyed a pumpkin custard a great deal during this stage also.

Stage 3 recipes will be posted shortly.

crockpot carnitas

uruapan carnitas by goodiesfirst, on Flickr

During stage 4, I had carnitas, sliced avocado and sauerkraut for dinner.

This recipe does most of the cooking in the crockpot, but you do have to broil a bit at the end to get that characteristic crunchiness.

basic good steak

2006-04-12-19-04-41zoomed by WmJR, on Flickr

Like most of you, given the high price of pastured meats, we tend to eat a lot of cheap cuts around here. Still, once in a blue moon, I splurge and get a good steak, especially if I run across a sale. To me, a really good steak is a strip steak, a club steak, a delmonico, a ribeye, a T-bone or a filet mignon. I buy one when we're relatively flush and stick it in the freezer. Then when Steve is tired or had a particularly bad day, I can spoil him a little. And spoil me too!

Having spent more than we can afford, I'm very picky about making sure it's cooked to absolute perfection.

beef broth

Beef Broth by joana hard, on Flickr

The primary nutrition in bone broths or stocks are due to:

1. cartilage, which contains collagen and breaks down to gelatin (and thus the amino acids glycine and proline)
2. minerals, especially calcium, phosphorous and magnesium
3. marrow - with healthy fat containing vitamins A, D3, K2 and the fatty acid CLA)

Grass-fed bones are certainly better than CAFO bones, but I think this difference is much lesser than with meat. In general, I am quite happy buying non-organic bones. If the animal had bones, it has minerals. If it could stand up (a requirement in order to slaughter for food), it has collagen in it's joints. The only serious downside to CAFO bones is that the marrow will have significantly less vitamins A, D3, K2 and the fatty acid CLA. However, since I cook little bone-containing beef cuts and have to buy bones, I usually buy CAFO bones, figuring I get a lot of those nutrients from other foods in my diet.

types of bones that can be bought

marrow bones

These bones have the most marrow; they are shank bones. Marrow can be eaten prior to using the bones for broth as a nutritious and gourmet dish, or allowed to disintegrate in the broth to add more nutrition there.