Two more things to note. I was experiencing bloating after eating some foods before starting this “diet” and I am not experiencing that. Also, my ankles would sometimes be swollen. No sign of swollen ankles in the last three weeks.

I am stayed fed, and when I'm hungry, I eat. On the other hand, today my husband admitted he is starving most of the time on this diet. He says he goes to bed hungry, he wakes up starving, he's hungry throughout the day and he feels exhausted. He works hard and is one of those people who can pretty much eat what he wants and stays at the same weight, although he has grown a belly in the past few years. We are going to work at getting him fed better. I began looking into GAPS specifically FOR him to try to heal his ulcerative colitis, so we need to make more of an effort to keep him fed.

He tends to grab for meat when he's hungry, and he's having to work at eating cooked vegetables. He really prefers his vegetables raw. We definitely need to work at keeping him satisfied so he isn't tempted to cheat.

I have been tired today. I didn't sleep well last night, I went to bed hungry, and I usually cannot get to sleep if I'm hungry. There wasn't really anything to grab quickly to eat, and I didn't feel like cooking so I grabbed a handful of walnuts [affiliate link]. That helped, but I still had trouble sleeping. I was also up at least six times during the night to go pee. I am not sure what that was about.

One of my milkers has a milk stone. I heard back from my goat mentor and apparently these “peas” can have a “tail” attached inside the wall of the udder. The milk stone is basically a piece of calcium. She gave me the solution to the problem, which involved a tiny steel crochet hook… I'll spare you the details. We were unable to solve the problem, but I was able to milk her out a bit on that side to provide some relief to her fullness. Thankfully she has a very capacious udder and the fullness is nowhere near feeling tight. I will make another attempt at detaching the “pea” tomorrow morning. In the meantime, it is causing me some stress.

Since I didn't sleep well, and woke up famished at 4am, I went back to bed around 5am after eating zucchini scrambled eggs which I shared with dh. He's been very receptive to all the different dishes I am coming up with. After all, his retort if we complain about what he cooks is, “Food is food! Just eat it!”  😉  I slept until 9. Thank goodness I'm off work most of this week. I couldn't think of, didn't want to spend the time finding/making something to eat, so I went out essentially on an empty stomach about 9:45, which is never good for me to get into a stressful situation on an empty stomach. I felt very drained after the failed attempts to detach the “pea”.

Once we got back in, I made another meal for dh and I. This time I sauteed cabbage, breaded some pork chops with almond flour [affiliate link] and egg (didn't work so well), served with a tiny little glass bowl of Bubbies sauerkraut.

Speaking of sauerkraut, I put up another batch of sauerkraut, this time Latin American sauerkraut, Cortido. The ingredients are cabbage, carrots, onion, salt, red pepper flakes and oregano. I am not using whey to ferment, although Nourishing Traditions does call for whey in most (all?) of its fermentation recipes. From left to right: Cortido Sauerkraut, Sauerkraut and fermented radishes. I am sure this desire to start more fermented foods is largely due to my having been off work this week. Although it might be that I'm feeling better. *crosses fingers*

I went back to bed around 1:30pm and stayed there until 4:30, even though I had to get up twice to handle an issue at my job.

We milked at 5:15. I had already decided to give my milker a break from any more “surgery” until tomorrow morning, but I did milk her out on the side that is okay, and managed with the help of the crochet hook to relieve the pressure on the other side. Basically the hook is inserted into the teat canal, which is not difficult at all, this pushes the stone/pea back up into the canal so that I can squeeze the teat and get some milk to come out. It is cumbersome, as I have to hold the crochet hook just so, inserted just a few millimeters, and milk at the top of the teat. This girl's teats are about as big around as a pencil, and about one inch long. So there is not a lot of room to work.

Hubby put chicken thighs in the oven for dinner, and after we came in I heated up some frozen green peas, sauteed fresh mushrooms, and made a salad.

I used what was leftover of the Avocado Mayo Dressing. I was thrilled to see it kept it's lovely green color. I assumed it would darken somewhat, even though I did put apple cider vinegar in it. It tasted less tangy and less garlic-y. I guess it mellowed out overnight. I was very pleased with dinner.

YS stopped at Costco and I asked him to pick up some avocados and mushrooms. He mentioned cherries, and I thought they sounded delicious. I have been limiting my fruit intake to just the Clementine Cuties, and I think the cherries were too sweet as I found myself having some cravings tonight.

I had an avocado, and then a bunch more cherries. Gosh, I hope cherries are full GAPS.

I guess that's it for today. Thanks for reading and I love comments so if you feel so inclined, let me know you stopped by! 🙂