Six months on GAPS

I've just about hit the six month mark on GAPS, so I've decided it's time for an update.  Here are my impressions:

It's not hard

I was already a decent cook, I was already eating whole foods, I was already eating gluten free.  Switching to GAPs does not have to be painful. 

It's not deprivation

I've eaten more desserts on GAPs then I ever would on a regular basis - and certainly.  Culinary-wise, these have been the best six months of my life.  I even find myself wondering what all the fuss is about Christmas, Easter etc. on GAPs.  The 'traditional' meal is roast meat and veg - skipping the stuffing and potatoes in exchange for good health is no difficulty.  GAPS desserts are often far better than their sugar and wheat laden counterparts.  Even wine and spirits are permissible.  Most good quality cooking is largely GAPS compliant anyway - ok, you can't have the pasta or potatoes, but is that really so hard?

I liked doing Intro more than once..but I didn't follow Intro to a T

I never ate a nut butter pancake, I still haven't made a ferment, but I did eat Stage 1 - 3 soups for about a week each month.  Cycling through a loose version of intro every month felt right for me.  (Versus trying to struggle through all eight phases in one go.)  I used this approach because I always had mad cravings for rich food before my period.  These subsided significantly on GAPS, but, on doctor's orders, I still listen to what my body wants and vary my diet over the month.  I also found I was too tempted to whip through the Intro in days.

I'm glad I didn't start with the Intro

Easing yourself in by eating GAPs for a few weeks first makes a lot of sense.  I did this because I was skeptical, but I think I may have given up had I tried to jump right into intro with probiotics.  NB - I didn't start routinely taking probiotics until I had the diet down.  This meant I had a tiny amount of die off when I went on GAPS, a bit more on Intro, and a bit more when I started probiotics....this die off was bad enough, I'm glad I didn't have the full experience.

It goes beyond health and diet

It got me thinking about food, the handling and treatment of animals, the environment, my environment, and all those subjects that we sometimes avoid because they are unpleasant.  It got me feeling better in my own skin, not just because I'm healthier, but because I'm now confident that listening to what my body wants is the key to eating properly.  I appreciate food and I'm not living in constant misery over my weight. 

As a caveat, I say this having strayed from the diet numerous times.  Months 1, 3 and 4, I was very strict.  (Month 2 was December, so I ate far too much cheese and some chocolate etc. etc.)  But I was finding toward the end of month 4, I was having energy problems.  I was enticed by stories on other blogs about boosting energy by eating carbs.  But I had only been on the diet for six months, and I found that eating carbs pushed me back into the world of severe arthritis pain and thyroid symptoms.  Ultimately, I'm finding that a few gluten free carbs here and there (no more than once a week, and preferably only twice a month) keeps my energy problems at bay while avoiding excessive damage and autoimmune issues.  But I think that the first strict month and going back through Intro regularly are what make this work.  That's my plan for the six months to come.

Storebought sauerkraut

I've never worked up the courage to try and make my own ferments.  In fact, the only fermented food I've had on GAPS is organic kefir, bought commercially, which is contrary to doctor's orders.  Kefir was easy and accessible for me, but I've decided to go off dairy because of other health reasons.

I was soured on sauerkraut from my German great-grandmother's recipe, which my mother would make on occasion as comfort food.  It involved cabbage, sausages, onions and applesauce in a crock pot, no fermenting.  Others may enjoy this combination but I found it vomitose.

Grocery shopping this weekend, I looked around for a GAPS friendly commercial sauerkraut, before I try my hand and making my own.  I happened across one called Kiihne, made in Germany, ingredients are white cabbage and salt.  It's quite good, nice and sour tasting, very finely chopped, so it has a nice texture.  For Ontario readers, I found this at a No Frills store for about $3.

This is my fermenting plan if I ever get the nerve and/or a food processor:

1. Cucumbers (for pickles!)
2. Turnips (for lebanese dishes)
3. Tomato salsa
4. Red cabbage (pretty sauerkraut)
5. Misc. veggies - cauliflower, carrots, jalapenos

Ps.  If you know of a great storebought ferment, leave a message, let me know!

GAPS pantry meals

GAPS is all about using food to nourish, so I get that pantry meals are kind of counter to the goal. However, I do occasionally forget to grocery shop and find myself with no veg and a freezer full of frozen meat that needs 6h to thaw before it can become a meal.   Here are a few ideas for when you're starving and didn't think ahead.  [Update:  I will add to these from time to time if I discover a new pantry recipe.]

Nicoise-inspired tuna

Combine can of tuna, capers, black olives, sundried tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic in a pan and stir fry.  Plate over steamed spinach.  [Pre-GAPS I would have made this with pasta.]

Tomato Soup

Simmer jar of passata or tomatoes with a can of coconut milk (and some chicken broth, if you have it defrosted).  Add oregano, garlic powder, sea salt, etc.


Marinated Vegetable and Lentil Salad

Chop olives, mushrooms, capers, marinated artichokes, marinated peppers etc.  Fry in oil and garlic.  Combine with cooked lentils.  Can be served as a salad or hot meal.

Update - Lentils Puttanesca

Echoes the recipe above, but I achingly miss pasta puttanesca on GAPS.  My solution is this!  Puttanesca is certainly a pantry sauce...

Spring and Summer GAPS Recipes

This will be my first summer on GAPS so I'm a little daunted by the concept of eating most things cooked, warm, whatever.  I'll continually update this post with good summer recipes, until I get around to organizing my posts in the links above.

Asian Style Chicken Salad - No Lettuce

Slice mushrooms, snow peas, bell peppers and/or carrots, cooked chicken breast (in my case, from a roasted chicken), onion, ginger, garlic.  Put in a small pot, add honey, fish sauce, bacon fat, salt and heat through.  Can be eaten right away or put in the fridge for a salad the next day.  (You may want to strain it if you do this.)

Thai Style Arugala Beef Salad

Arugala has a spicy nutty flavour that, to my surprise, blended nicely with the other thai flavours.

1. Prep a bed of arugala on a plate.  Top with some chopped mint.
2. Fry/roast/grill a thin slice of beef.  Add a squeeze of lime on the beef.
3. Fry mushrooms, onions and any other veg in copious amounts of garlic, some dried chilli, and some fat.  (I used chicken fat.)
4. Add some cashews and thai fish sauce to veg to taste.  (Cashews marry nicely with the nuttiness of the arugala.)
5. Top arugala with beef and veg. Add a dash of lime and thai fish sauce.  Chill and serve cold.  (It gets cold pretty quickly anyway.)

Elegant GAPS Brunch

This is almost an intro brunch, except for the cheese, I guess.

Top a bed of scrambled eggs with a layer of Swiss cheese, a small grilled salmon fillet and chopped fresh parsley and chives.

Alternately, top a bed of parsley with sunnyside up eggs, flake the salmon on top, and garnish with cheese.

Meal planning ad nauseum

In an effort to eat local, organic, GAPS, frugally, sustainably....is that it?  think so.  Anyway in an effort to do all that I've started this year to do a quarterly meal plan.  What I do, is plan out a month's worth of recipes, no repeats, for the particular season, using mainly veggies that are in season for that time of year.  I repeat that monthly plan three times, and then make another one for the next season.  This is why I'm temporarily fed up with meal planning.  So I will use this post to remind myself why I do it.

In general:

• Theoretically, this lets me shop farmers markets and order organic meat in advance so I don't have to forage for it every week.
• Realistically, it's a guideline, so that when I'm short of ideas I can just sub in a few recipes if I feel like it, grab my standard grocery list for that week and go. 
• Ensures that you vary your flavors over the course of the month.  It's easy to get into a rut of roasted meat and buttered veggies on GAPS.  This makes sure I'm mixing up the flavours by eating thai, korean, middle eastern etc.  Laced with broth if possible. :)

When you're cooking for one:

• The usual trade off here would be the convenience of planning ahead versus the battle over foods that family members like or dislike.  I just have to come up with 30 recipes that look good to me.  
• I only have to come up with 30 recipes.  Lunch is always last night's leftovers. I don't have to plan for four people's lunch bag the next day.
• A typical package or bunch or unit size for produce is often too much for one person, e.g. bunch of spinach, pack of mushrooms.  If I'm using something like that, I can plan two meals (which is actually four meals) for that week containing that ingredient.
• It lets me plan to eat according to my menstrual cycle.  I generally eat lightly at some points and more heavily at others.

Enough meal planning!

Normally I love the weekly ritual of planning meals and making my shopping list. I look for one-pot type recipes, or search for recipes that include the main and the side, or try to complement the main with the side. Normally I just need five to seven recipes each week because I cook a 2 portion dinner at night and then pack up the second portion for lunch the next day.

But I had a busy Saturday and I wasn't in the mood to meal plan before I went grocery shopping. I just wanted to go out and get it done!  This is a bad plan even if you're living on premade frozen food, but it turns out it's relatively easy on GAPS, probably because the choices are so limited. Here was my strategy:

1. Arrive at store unprepared, with no mental list and no paper list
2. Cruise the meat and fish section and select 5 protein sources (I picked up an organic chicken, which counts as at least three dinners for one person, ground beef, rainbow trout and salmon)
3. Walk through the veggie aisle and select 5 main veggies (for me today, this was kale, cucumbers, snow peas, cauliflower, zuchini)
4. Now that you know what your main veggies are, go back through the veggie aisle and pick up accoutrements for flavor and color (I needed onion, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, bell peppers, tomato and mint)
5. Pick up the standard stuff you buy every week - eggs, kefir, whatever.

I should mention that this works so well because I'm lucky enough to live in a city with a great local chain of markets that focus entirely on real, fresh food.  They actually defeat the standard "shop the edges of the grocery store" rule because the centre of the store is about five aisles of produce.  And the produce always looks great.  How often does kale just leap off the shelf at you?

So with this, I've come up with the following meals for the week

• zuchini mushroom lasagne with broth based tomato sauce
• mashed cauliflower with roast chicken legs
• trout with kale and orange pepper poacked in chicken broth
• chicken breasts stir fried with red and green pepper and mushrooms
• minted cucumber salad with grilled salmon and grilled yellow pepper

Not bad for an ten minute dash through the store! 

My next post will talk about my other strategy for meal planning.  And it will explain why I did NOT feel like doing it today.