Almost paleo chili

Okay so this is not completely paleo, but it's GAPS-friendly if you're in advanced stages.  I added some sprouted red lentils to this recipe. I soaked and sprouted them myself.  You can omit that to make it paleo.

Please bear with me as I am once again not sure as far as the exact amounts of spices and such that I used. I always eye ball these things.

The veggies don't need to be perfect. If you want them chunky, then just cut them up in whatever shape or form you like, no need to dice them.  It's all good.

Ingredients:

1 pound grass-fed ground beef
Diced onion, half of the onion
A few cloves of garlic, smashed
1 tsp sea salt
1 TBSP cumin
1 TBSP all spice
1/2 TBSP cocoa powder
a cup of beef broth (I made it from beef bones)
1/2 cup of water or so
black pepper
Trader Joe's chipotle salsa, about 1/2 of the bottle or less if you don't like it too spicy*
Tomato paste (I used 3 ounces)
2 TBSP beef tallow (I made this one too) or coconut oil or any other good quality animal fat
I large green bell pepper, cut up/diced
1/2 cup of sprouted red lentils (optional)
1 medium zucchini, peeled and diced added at the end

Heat casserole and add the tallow.  Saute the onion and garlic, don't burn them!  Add the beef and brown it.  Add all the other ingredients and stir.  Come to a boil and then turn it down to simmer for about 90 minutes or so.  Make sure it's covered during this time.

*Trader Joe's Chipotle salsa says it's medium hot. It tastes mild to me though but maybe that's because I like spicy food. Anyway, just be careful with this if you're not a big fan of spicy.

Enjoy!

Paleo Coconut pineapple muffins

I realized I have a lot of coconut flour left and some leftover pineapple that has to be consumed ASAP.  This recipe is really easy, paleo and GAPS-friendly as well.

I need to add more pineapple next time!

1/4 cup sifted coconut flour
3 pastured eggs
1/4 tsp gluten-free vanilla
a dash of celtic salt
Bits and pieces of pineapple(I'm not sure how much I used, sorry)
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp melted Spectrum shortening or real butter if you can handle it.
2 tbsp raw honey

Mix eggs, honey, Spectrum shortening, salt and baking soda.  Then add the remaining ingredients. Make sure to remove clumps.  Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes. Makes about 6-7 muffins.

Note: I've made this with nuts and blueberries. Just substitute for the pineapple and add nuts, berries or whatever you want. Enjoy

Bison meatballs, fake noodles and omelet

can't have enough!

 

 

Zucchini's in season now so I had to figure out a way to incorporate it into our diet.  My daughter is not a fan so I cut the zucchini to make them look like noodles and sauteed it in coconut oil, garlic, onion, pepper, a little bit of *peanut butter(use almond butter to make it paleo).  She's always saying how she misses noodles, well here you go then! She ate them! 

The omelet is just pastured eggs, scrambled with sweet onions, also from the farmers market.

If you haven't tried bison yet, I think you should. It's really good and it's one of my favorites.  This is just something I put together at the last minute:

Once again, I'm eyeballing:

1/2 pound ground bison
dash of pepper, sea salt, organic garlic powder, some sage
About 2 Tbsp pureed peach(no skin)
1 tsp honey

Just mix it all together and form into small balls.  Bake at 350 degrees F til it's brown. 

*I make my own peanut butter.  I soak the peanuts for 12 hours in salty water. Rinse well and roast them at 350 degrees til crispy.  I get skinless peanuts.  After roasting, I process it with a little honey and unrefined coconut oil. 

Bone broth anyone?

Gut-healing broth

I can honestly say that I am now addicted to bone broth ever since starting on the GAPS diet.  My day feels like something is missing if I don't have any.  Thankfully my daughter feels the same and that makes me very happy!  When we first started on GAPS, she refused to touch broth at all.  Now she welcomes it everyday and I'm glad because I know it's been instrumental to our healing.

We are currently on stage 4 of GAPS now (can I hear a woot!?).  We started in March and I've decided that I will not rush things through. I think we'll stay on stage 4 for a few more months.

Anyway, back to the broth.  Simple and nourishing and a must have for every meal.

For this one pictured, I used grass-fed beef bones (I'm not sure what kind, it had a lot of marrow).

Water, sea salt, pepper, onions, garlic, a dash of apple cider vinegar.  Just throw them all in there. Simmer for 2 hours.

After the broth cools, I normally put them in zip-lock bag and then freeze them.  I use them for dishes or just drink them plain with our meals, or add egg or other veggies to it.

Beet Kvass

Another nourishing, lacto-fermented drink for you to try! 

Looks pretty doesn't it?

Ingredients:

2 quart glass container
2 organic beets, skinned and diced roughly
4 tsp sea salt

Put beets in the jar, add the salt then fill it up with filtered water all the way to the top.  Stir. Cover and let it ferment for 2 days. Some say 3 days will make it better, that's totally up to you.  After the alloted time, transfer kvass into another jar.  Add more water to the remaining beets and ferment again for 2 days.  The second batch will not be as potent as the first time but that's okay!

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Seed Crackers

I didn't have a chance to take a photo of this. They just went fast! So I suppose that means that it was good.  It's really easy to make.  I just eyeballed this recipe.  I believe I used a cup of soaked/dehydrated/ground  pumpkin seeds and 1 duck egg.   I pre-heated the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.   I baked til it browned on the sides.  I added some Celtic sea salt after I took it out of the oven.  Enjoy!  It's easy.  I promise to take a picture the next time I make it.

I just broke mine apart, no need to look perfect. I rather liked them looking quite rustic.

I've also made this recipe with pecan and walnut with great results.  I'll be continuing to tweak this recipe.

Grain-free chocolate muffin/cupcake

Nom, nom, nom

My daughter and I have been feasting on these! Very easy to make and it freezes well.  It melts in your mouth. The secret is in the egg whites.  I use 2 free-range eggs and then 2 egg whites. The muffins came out very fluffy inside but not gooey.

Ingredients:

1 cup peanut butter (or any other nut butter)
2 eggs
2 egg whites
1 very ripe banana
2 tbs chocolate powder(I used Hershey's)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp lemon
1/4 cup honey

Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix everything together. Add the lemon juice after everything's mixed.  Bake in a lined muffin pan for 20 minutes or til toothpick comes out clean.

Update on GAPS diet

A few weeks have gone by, we've been doing GAPS. DD and I are both still on stage 3. I kind of plan on staying here for a few months.  I was late in introducing fermented veggies.  I am just starting now.  I did give DD a bit of water kefir here and there and I had some too.  Somehow I felt the fermented veggies was more important. So we stay on stage 3 for a while, carry on with the fermented foods, then probably next week I'll start juicing.

Food has started to become very boring now. I just can't wait to be on the FULL GAPS diet, however I also don't want to rush things. Right now we live on soups and broths with plenty of meat and vegetables.  I've already introduced fruits, mainly bananas and avocados.  DD seems to be alright with dried apricots, dates and watermelon.  I seem to be having problems with watermelon so I backed off. 

This is our journey on GAPS, feel free to chime in.  One thing I recently learned is that DD (3 yr old) likes sauerkraut!   Who would have thought?

Fake Larabar balls

these didn't last long!

I can't think of a snazzy name for these so because they taste like Larabars I decided to call them  "Fake Larabar balls."  These are so easy to make and so delicious, you'll devour them all in one sitting!  

I always get raw nuts and soak and dehydrate them first, which could take a couple of days.  However,  if you just want to use regular nuts and not go through the lengthy process like I do, that's fine too.  If you're interested in the art of soaking nuts, here's how I do it:

Wash the nuts thoroughly.  You'll notice that bubbles will form. Rinse well.  Soak in cold water with a little bit of salt.  Soak for at least 12 hours.   After the allotted time, rinse well.  I dehydrate them after. I have a dehydrator, I leave them there for about 7 hours. You'll have to check, times may vary, depending on your machine and the type of nuts you're using.

Ingredients:

1 cup dried dates (I used Dole)
1 cup walnuts ( you can use any nuts you want)
1/2 cup shredded organic coconut *optional

Pulse dates in a food processor.  Set aside. Pulse the walnuts but not too much, you don't want to end up with walnut butter!

Mix them together and form into balls. Or if you want to make them look like Larabars, make them into bars.

Refrigerate until it sets.  For Larabar look-alike, wrap in plastic wrap individually, tape it and refrigerate until it sets.

I hope this is not too confusing! Enjoy!

Yuck, this whole week was a mess!

I'm glad this week is nearing to a close. My 3 year old and I have the worst cold and cough since Monday! I can deal with it but she doesn't tolerate cold and coughs well.  She is miserable! She barely slept at all which in turn kept me up as well.  Anyway, thank God she's feeling much better today. I was about to lose my mind with the constant crying!

I had planned on starting GAPS this week but because of our illness I've decided to postpone it.  I didn't want to add more misery to our misery lol.  I'm still feeling intimidated but I feel I have a better grasp of the diet now and I'm going to do my best to make this work.    I'm still feeling disorganized! I keep thinking about things I need to have and get ready ahead of time.  There's a lot!

I got my GAPS book

I received the nearly 400 page Gut and Psychology (revised edition) book late last week.  It's a hefty book!  I'm trying to read as much as I can before I start this diet for me and DD.  I want to get organized, I want to make sure I understand it clearly before we begin.   As I go through each chapter, I can already tell this is going to be so difficult. 

I'm more than halfway done with the book.  Right now I just feel so overwhelmed and wondering if I can really do this.  DD needs to do it too.  I could probably cope better because I'm an adult but she's only 3 and there's so many foods she has to avoid. So that means the list of foods on GAPS is even smaller.  I'm stressing out and we haven't even started!

Going to this GAPS means re-writing everything that I've been doing for the past 3 years of DD's life.  Not such an easy task.  I need some real brain-storming and good planning.

What we eat(Rotation Diet)

I've had quite a number of people asking me what we eat everyday, mainly for breakfast.  I'm sorry I'm just posting this now so late.  I'm making some drastic changes though so in a few weeks this may not even apply anymore.   DD and I are going to do GAPS.  See link if interested.

gapsdiet.com

Anyway, here are things we eat for breakfast on rotation: I'm not specifying what days we actually eat them.

Breakfast ideas:
Muffins made from nut butter or nut flours
Pancakes made from nut butter or nut flours
Fruit with malanga butter*
Fruit peanut butter or cashew butter
Chestnut flour muffins *I'm still experimenting with other recipes
Coconut pancakes
Coconut bread
Coconut muffins/cupcakes
Coconut yogurt (homemade)
Turkey bacon
Sunny Side up eggs/scrambled eggs
Poached eggs
Avocado or avocado with eggs or with turkey bacon
Malanga cookies (they're healthy) that I baked
Yam cookies

Occasionally:

Homemade hash browns
Sweet potato hashbrowns

Keep in mind that I mainly bake/cook sugar-free on top of everything else. If I think of something else I'll post :).  I hope this helps some of you.

*I purchased malanga butter, malanga flour and yam flour from Specialty Foods.  They don't have a website, just a phone number you call and they will send you a very detailed catalog of all the tuber flours they sell.  They sell baked goods, imitation nut butters, specialty oils, lipbalms and lotions that can be made according to your allergies.  They are all pricey items but worth it if you have plenty of allergies.

SuperBowl Sunday Beef Stew!

I love cold weather because I love soups and stews :).  Here's another hearty yet easy recipe.  It was just succulent and a perfect healthy meal for Superbowl Sunday!

*Ingredients:

Any cut of beef, preferably with bones, preferably grass-fed (this one is organic), this was a large cut.
1 tbsp ground pepper
1 tbsp sea salt
A cup of roughly chopped carrots
A cup of roughly chopped
a cup of Bok Choy
1/2 red onion(or white or whatever you have)
A few pieces of diced garlic
1/2 cup of chopped celery
Enough water to cover the entire thing

Put the meat to cook with the garlic, onion and celery. Cover the whole thing with water.  Set to cook in low.  In the morning when I woke up, I added the vegetables and let it cook for another hour or so, til they're tender.

Voila! Easy meal!

*I don't measure except when baking, sorry! I just love, love, love to eyeball!

If you have leftovers and you're tired of this meal, shred the beef and make it into Vaca Frita!  I'll post a photo and a recipe for that later.

Flaring up

Well for the past week I've been flaring up.  I had a bout of pneumonia in the beginning of January and I'm sure the antibiotics and the steroids messed up my stomach again.  I'm thinking of trying GAPS now.  For those of you not aware of it, here's a link for more information.  I tried doing SCD but when I started feeling better, I just started cheating and then I was back to where I started.  It was hard because the holidays came and the pressure to eat forbidden foods was so strong. I know, I know, I need to have a stronger resolve.  Well I'm desperate now so I've decided to do GAPS and probably my daughter who's 3 will be on it too.  She's been having some symptoms off on an again and it's really stressing me out.

GAPS
www.gapsdiet.com

SCD
http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/index.htm

If you are doing GAPS please comment.  Thanks!