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  • Chicken Soup My Dear Husband’s GAPS Legal Version

    Dh's Chicken Soup

    My hubby makes some killer chicken stock. He makes some great soups, too. Here is one recipe of his:

    • 4 cups chicken stock
    • 1 half previously cooked chicken breast, diced
    • 2 carrots, sliced
    • 1/2 cup celery
    • 1/2 cup onion
    • 1/2 chopped zucchini squash (optional)
    • 1 cup chopped cabbage
    • 3 cloves [affiliate link] garlic, diced
    • 2 Tablespoons chicken grease, or butter

    Optional ingredients which may not be GAPS friendly: 2-3 drops Worcestershire sauce, 1/8 teaspooon herbs (marjoram, thyme, basil, parsley [affiliate link]).

    Melt the chicken grease or butter into a pot, add garlic, onions [affiliate link] and celery. Saute until onion turns translucent. Add broth, add all other ingredients. Add herbs at the very end. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

     

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    Recipe: Chicken Soup Dh’s Version
    Author: 
    Recipe type: Soup
    Prep time: 
    Cook time: 
    Total time: 
     
    My hubby makes some killer chicken stock. He makes some great soups, too. Here is one recipe of his
    Ingredients
    • 4 cups chicken stock
    • 1 half previously cooked chicken breast, diced
    • 2 carrots, sliced
    • ½ cup celery
    • ½ cup onion
    • ½ chopped zucchini squash (optional)
    • 1 cup chopped cabbage
    • 3 cloves garlic, diced
    • 2 Tablespoons chicken grease, or butter
    Instructions
    1. Melt the chicken grease or butter into a pot, add garlic, onions and celery.
    2. Saute until onion turns translucent.
    3. Add broth, add all other ingredients.
    4. Add herbs at the very end.
    5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
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    Looking for more soup recipes? Winter Soups is A Best of Community Cookbook which contains 52 soup recipes, one for each week of the year! Click here to get yours!

    Winter Soups Community Cookbook

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  • Day 21

    I was up pretty late last night, after I finally got off the computer I took my “detox” bath. I didn’t get into bed until after 1am. I used baking soda [affiliate link] last night. I used Epsom salts for several nights in a row, then vinegar and last night the baking soda. I am really loving these baths. I make sure to take something with me to read, I have a light set up over the tub since the bathroom is very dim over there. Then I just turn out the bathroom light and it’s very cozy. I would use candles, but I don’t like breathing what they put into the air, especially if they have any scent to them.

    Today I had leftovers from yesterday. I slept until around 8am and then laid in bed for another hour talking on the phone with my mom. A luxury I have been unable to indulge in the last 8 or so years. However, since my back has stopped stiffening up, I can do things like that now. I was still tired, I guess, but didn’t want to sleep any longer so called my mom to talk for a while to wake myself up. For many years I was a night owl. When we moved out to the country that all changed because I had to be to work by 7am. I had to leave at 5:30am to get there by 7am, so about three years ago I changed my hours to start at 6am and now the drive is only one hour. There is a marked difference in the amount of traffic from 6am to 7am.

    On Wednesday, I went to Joann’s, looking for some brown yarn to match the sweater my hubby bought me. I was hoping to knit some pockets and attach them to the sweater. It is a lovely brown, one of the long sweaters. Also no belt, so I thought I might just knit a belt too. I must have been there close to an hour, walking through the aisles, looking closely at every shade of brown. I ended up leaving the store empty handed, but the most incredible thing was my feet didn’t hurt! I went to a grocery store once I got into town, and then I went to Walmart and walked around that big store, picking up a couple of last minute gifts for my family. My feet still didn’t start hurting! This is nearly like a miracle to me.

    I don’t know if I have mentioned this yet, but I had noticed a couple of months ago when I get up in the middle of the night I moaned and groaned from the aching of my body and my feet hurting. I thought to myself how awful it must sound, like I’m an 80 year old woman, and I wondered if I could remember to stop moaning and groaning. Anyway, since I’m no longer in pain from *sleeping* and my feet aren’t super sensitive when I walk on them, I am not moaning when I wake up at night.

    My feet were so bad for a while, after the Taebo incident, that I had to wear shoes any time I put my feet on the floor. Even during the middle of the night to get up to pee!

    Let’s see, food for the day. I ate leftover standing rib roast. I ate it cold, it was rare and tasted sublimely, decadently delicious. I had a leftover piece of classic drop biscuit, it was good even dried out a little bit. I had an avocado. Trying to remember what else. I did indulge in taking a nap today.

    For dinner I tried to make Elana Amsterdam’s Salmon Dill Burgers from her book The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. I don’t like dill, and don’t care for lemon zest, two ingredients called for in the recipe. I have tried over the years to add ingredients that I don’t like to recipes, and end up not liking the recipes, so I usually leave them out. My patties didn’t stay formed in 1/4″ inch chunks, so I will probably process the ingredients together if I try them again. Along with the salmon chunks, I had what was left of the Faux-tatoes and the Butternut Squash Puree. I also had about a tablespoon of Bubbies sauerkraut.

    I think I’ll take an Epsom salts bath tonight. I finished reading Dr. Campbell-McBride’s and Baden’s Gut and Psychology Syndrome and GAPS Guide, and am now reading The Hot Flash Club. I ordered Crazy Aunt Purl’s second book Home Is Where the Wine Is: Making the Most of What You’ve Got One Stitch (and Cocktail!) at a Time on Tuesday, hopefully it will get here on Monday. I didn’t know she had a sequel! I also loved her first book Crazy Aunt Purl’s Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split.

    I am beginning to drink Bubbies sauerkraut juice, and eat a mouthful or two each day of sauerkraut.

    I finally got around to starting a batch of sauerkraut. I did a pretty big head and it’s only going to make about one quart! This is a half gallon jar. I don’t know why but my cabbage never gets juicy enough to cover the cabbage so today I boiled some water, let it cool and added some salt, and poured in about half a cup so the cabbage would be covered nicely. It has to sit out for several days, and it is pretty cold in my house, so maybe even 5 or 6 days unless I can find someplace a little warmer. Maybe I’ll think about putting it in the cupboard above the stove. I think I’ll ask my hubby to pick up another couple of heads and maybe I’ll also get another quart started, and also a batch of Cortido.

    sauerkraut

    Well, I guess that is all for today.

    GAPS DIET JOURNEY is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON.COM. GAPS DIET JOURNEY is an affiliate for several companies and may be compensated through advertising and marketing channels. Therefore, this post may contain affiliate links.

  • Dress For Success

    I hear how you should dress how you want to feel, not how you feel. But what if you don’t have enough energy to “dress for success”. Thankfully I work at a company that is pretty laid back about our attire.

    When I started volunteering there back in 2000, I was a stay at home mom on welfare, and I went through a program that was helping me to get back into the workforce. I was given a voucher to go to Ross Dress for Less, and if I remember correctly it was for $300. I had to spend it all in one shopping trip. I could have gone to Kmart, but I chose Ross because I had found they had more quality items for less. So I spent about four or five hours there shopping. I hate shopping. I detest it.

    But I did it because I am also thrifty and there is no way I was going to waste any of that $300.

    As a result, I dressed very nicely, in nice office clothing for about the first three years. Then I started getting real tired, and plus I outgrew all my nice outfits.

    I just recently donated a lot of them to Goodwill. I had no hopes that I would ever get back into them. That sure sets up some weird conflicts inside me. There is a part of me that hopes I was right, that I would never lose weight again, so I won’t lose any weight while doing GAPS. But that’s stupid.

    And it’s not like I have money to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe, besides I hate shopping!! I have a Ross Dress for Less gift card with about $60 on it, and I have had it for over a year.

    I hope if I am able to get back more energy that I am able to dress more nicely for work. That is another thing that has just gone by the wayside. I have never been one to wear much makeup and I just throw my hair up in a twisted bun or braid it, and I rarely wear jewelry. I just don’t have the energy to put into looking any nicer than I do just naturally.

    Well, I will let you know if this changes for me.

    GAPS DIET JOURNEY is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON.COM. GAPS DIET JOURNEY is an affiliate for several companies and may be compensated through advertising and marketing channels. Therefore, this post may contain affiliate links.

  • Day 20 – Merry Christmas!

    Merry Christmas!! I have stayed on the diet in the past few days, it just became too busy for me to do an update. As it was I got less sleep each night as the week went on. By Thursday night I was pretty exhausted.

    My family agreed to forego the traditional meal that we usually have on holidays, which always include turkey or ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade potato rolls, sweet potatoes, pumpkin [affiliate link] pie and cranberry sauce.

    Not too much there that’s GAPS-friendly.

    Since I had the blessing of my family to do something altogether different, here is what I decided on:

    GAPS Christmas Dinner

    GAPS Christmas Dinner

    My dh bought the standing rib roast on sale,  $3.59 a pound (not organic). He said everyone was snatching them up, so he thought he would get one, too. It was the one of the most delicious pieces of meat I’ve tasted in years.

    The Butternut Squash Puree is Pioneer Woman’s. I have been making it for a couple of years. I usually add the maple syrup called for in the recipe, but this time I didn’t add any sweetener. It was delicious. Of course I haven’t had any sweeteners/sugar for the last 20 days, so my tastes have probably adjusted to where the natural sweetness is plenty.

    I’ve been making a salad dressing of 1/4 cup cold pressed olive oil, then I dump in red wine vinegar until the cup measures 1/3, then I put in a crushed clove of garlic. Delicious. We just went with iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomato and avocado.

    I usually put mayonnaise in deviled eggs [affiliate link], but we only had commercial brand mayo, don’t have oils on hand to make homemade. So I looked at the recipe I linked to, but ended up mixing about 1 tablespoon melted butter into 8 egg yolks, a squirt of brown mustard, some salt. They were gobbled up, so I guess they were a hit.

    The faux-tatoes turned out great. I usually add in an 8 ounce container of cream cheese, but since I’m off dairy (well except for butter) I just put in about 1/4 cup butter (1 and 1/2 large heads of cauliflower) and hit the pot of steamed cauliflower with the stick blender.

    I have been having second thoughts about putting ES on Intro. I think it would cause too much die off for him. I am going to talk to dh again and see if we can come up with a plan. I am not sure if I’ll be doing Intro for these days that I planned. I’m just not sure what to do.

    I was so delighted when ES was filling up his plate and he got this HUGE helping of *cauliflower* (the faux-tatoes) and usually I’d just cringe. He thought they were potatoes, and was disappointed that I didn’t make more than I had. I asked him if he tried the butternut squash and he tasted some on the spoon and ended up taking the spoon and getting a few tablespoons for himself. I hope he ate it, as I consider it to be like gold.

    All in all I’m very happy with our first GAPS holiday meal. I’m very thankful that my family is game to try this. I think it helped that most of what I made we’ve already had before. The standing rib roast, we’ve never had one before, and it was a huge hit. I was pigging out on it.

    I actually overate and haven’t done that since I started this.

    I had better go. It’s nearly midnight, and I still want to take my bath. Hubby got me some pretty pajamas that I’m going to wear tonight.

    Oh, and I felt decidedly happier today. I don’t know if it is just because it was Christmas Day, or if I’m feeling better.

    Merry Christmas!

    GAPS DIET JOURNEY is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON.COM. GAPS DIET JOURNEY is an affiliate for several companies and may be compensated through advertising and marketing channels. Therefore, this post may contain affiliate links.

  • An Analogy for GAPS

    My mom is so close to doing GAPS, but I don’t know if she would ever embark on it because she is determined and committed to staying on a very low fat diet. She is already off grains, sugars, starchy vegetables, and probably most dairy products. But she uses margarine, and artificial sweeteners.

    She is experiencing similar symptoms to mine, mainly being tired, worn out and depressed much of the time.

    One of my sisters found a naturopathic doctor who consults by phone, and my mom has bought a bottle of something from him that is supposed to help her thyroid.

    And she’s pretty excited about it, and hope it works for her, so maybe I can try it.

    So I was thinking of an analogy.

    Let’s say you’ve got a car with engine problems. It’s running rough, big puffs of black smoke are coming out of it.

    So you decide to give it a wax job. That doesn’t work, so you get the seats re-upholstered with leather. That doesn’t work either, so next you replace the windshield.

    When the core of the problem is the gut, you have to address the gut issues. Otherwise you’re just going to throw money at the problem and waste it.

    I am wondering if what I’m doing is going to help at all, since I’m not doing organic foods.

    UPDATE: 12-28-09. I talked to my mom about GAPS last week, I think on Tuesday the 22nd. She was interested! But mostly for our uncle that lives with her and her husband. So I ordered the books and she got them today. She was naming off all the people in our family who suffer from asthma, depression, all kinds of “GAPS” problems. My mom was worried about having to give up her one staple bread food item, buckwheat pancakes. Buckwheat is on the non-approved list. Oops! Well, I hope she is able to read the books, I know she will learn from them. I recommended she read the GAPS Guide first. This is wonderful!

    GAPS DIET JOURNEY is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON.COM. GAPS DIET JOURNEY is an affiliate for several companies and may be compensated through advertising and marketing channels. Therefore, this post may contain affiliate links.

  • Symptoms of Low Thyroid That I Experience

    From various sites I’ve collected all the symptoms of low thyroid. I’ll highlight the ones I experience.

    1. muscles stiff in morning, need to limber up
    2. fail to feel rested, even after sleeping long hours
    3. feel “creaky” after sitting still for some time
    4. heart seems to miss beats or “flip-flops”
    5. nauseated in morning
    6. start slow in morning, gain speed in afternoon
    7. motion sickness when traveling
    8. dizzy in morning or when moving up and down
    9. cold hands or feet
    10. hair scanty, dry, brittle, dull, lusterless, lifeless
    11. hair loss from outer third of eyebrow
    12. flaky, dry, rough skin
    13. sleeplessness, restlessness, sleep disturbances
    14. poor short term memory, forgetfulness
    15. impaired cognitive function (brain fog)
    16. poor response to exercising
    17. hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)
    18. high cholesterol, cholesterol deposits on eyelids
    19. constipation, less than one bowel movement daily
    20. “go to pieces” easily, cry easily
    21. dislike working under pressure, dislike being watched
    22. low libido
    23. gain weight easily, fail to lose on diets
    24. difficulty concentrating, easily distracted
    25. yellowish tint to skin on hands or feet
    26. cracks in bottom of heels
    27. clogged sinuses
    28. low pulse rate
    29. low body temperature, especially at bed rest
    30. recurrent infections
    31. headaches
    32. puffiness of face or eyes
    33. swelling of hands or ankles
    34. irritability, mood swings
    35. multiple food allergies/sensitivities
    36. lumpy breasts, cystic breasts
    37. menstrual irregularity, excess flow, PMS
    38. these worse at night: coughing, hoarseness, muscle cramps
    39. slowed speech and a hoarse, breaking voice (Deepening of the voice can also be noticed)
    40. hives
    41. increased sensitivity to heat and cold
    42. sluggish reflexes
    43. dry puffy skin, especially on the face, and hair loss, especially thinning of the outer third of the eyebrows
    44. depression (especially in the elderly)
    45. anemia caused by impaired intestinal iron and folate absorption or B12 deficiency from pernicious anemia
    46. slowed metabolism
    47. fatigue
    48. anxiety/panic attacks
    49. Choking sensation or difficulty swallowing
    50. shortness of breath with a shallow and slow respiratory pattern.
    51. muscle cramps and joint pain
    52. brittle fingernails
    53. osteoporosis
    54. paleness
    55. irritability
    56. yellowing of the skin due to impaired conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A
    57. abnormal menstrual cycles
    58. impaired kidney function
    59. thin, fragile or absent cuticles
    60. infertility or difficulty becoming pregnant
    61. elevated serum cholesterol
    62. acute psychosis
    63. poor muscle tone

    GAPS DIET JOURNEY is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON.COM. GAPS DIET JOURNEY is an affiliate for several companies and may be compensated through advertising and marketing channels. Therefore, this post may contain affiliate links.