GAPS-friendly Carrot Ginger Soup

Carrots are a staple in our home. We used to eat a fair amount raw or sliced up in different dishes, but since starting the GAPS diet I have been using carrots in some more unique ways...veggie juice, carrot puree, carrot ginger soup. I had never had carrot soup before but as I am trying to get more and more soups into our meal plan I have been experimenting with a lot of different ideas and this one sounded good. No recipes I found worked 100% for the GAPS diet so I created my own, keeping to the basic routine I have been doing for soups: saute some onions and garlic in coconut oil or other GAPS allowed fat (tonight it was leftover beef fat from our sausage - and can I say YUM!), add in the main veggie, add some chicken stock, simmer until done and then add in some salt and pepper. This is very simple and so far has given some really tasty results.

I think I mentioned in one of my posts that our third child was boycotting the soups our first week on the diet. He is still hit or miss, but overall he is eating much more of the soups I make. Tonight he said he loved the carrot ginger soup we had and I think he finished it all with a very good attitude. We had this soup with some salmon and then cucumber slices on the side. Here is the recipe:

Carrot Ginger Soup

Ingredients:

• 1/4 - 1/2 C coconut oil (we are using lots of fat right now to bulk up our calories)
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 4 Cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
• 1-2 inch chunk of ginger, finely chopped
• 2 lbs carrots
• 2 quarts chicken broth
• 2 tsp salt
• pepper

Heat up the oil in a large stock pot and then add the onions and saute for several minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and saute a couple of minutes more. Then add in the carrots and cook for another minute or two. Add the stock, bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat until carrots are soft. Add the salt and pepper and then puree with a hand held blender or in batches in a blender. 

The first time I made this I took half of the soup and pureed it in the vitamix with about 1 lb of chicken. I served it to for lunch with avocado slices and a few more pieces of chicken on the side. Then we had the rest as a side dish the next day. 

GAPS week one menu

Here we are - week one on the GAPS diet. I guess we are jumping in in some ways and also easing into it in some other ways. I completely altered most of our meals, but Nik and I attended a wedding our first official night so that was a lost cause for me. And then the kids had regular snacks at Sunday School today. I need to figure out something for them for that. But otherwise we are doing it and it is going okay. Erik is striking the soups I am making, but am praying he will come around because he used to LOVE soups - any kind of soup!

I am writing out all of our meal plans ahead of time and then logging what we end up actually eating on here so I can track it for future meal/snack ideas. This should give you a good idea of what we are eating/not eating.

Week One Meal Plan

Saturday:

• Breakfast: Fried apples with leftover beef muffins
• Lunch: Mushroom soup, shredded turnips and celery root fried in coconut oil (this was really good!)
• Dinner: Grass-fed beef hot dogs, carrot fries, cucumber slices (This was for the kids while I indulged at the wedding).
• Snacks - bananas, homemade lemon gummy candies

Sunday:

• Breakfast: Coconut milk/berry smoothie; handful of raw almonds (soaked and deyhdrated)
• Lunch: Mushroom soup, homemade lamb sausage (this was yummy!), leftover carrot fries
• Dinner: Salmon, large green salad, mashed butternut squash
• Snacks: apples, bananas; butternut squash with honey and coconut oil

Monday:

• Breakfast: Butternut squash with honey and coconut oil, bacon, sliced green peppers
• Lunch: Homemade chicken lunch meat, avocado mayo, lettuce for wrapping, tomatoes and carrots
• Roast chicken with onions, carrots & parsnips (I have since discovered parsnips are not gaps legal :( ), large salad with dressing made of olive oil and ACV, leftover Mushroom Soup
• Snacks: almonds, fruit leather, apples, blueberries fried in coconut oil

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: "Hashbrowns" made of celery root and turnips fried in leftover bacon fat, home made beef sausage, carrot sticks and hemp milk. Erik was extra hungry and had an egg afterward. NOTE: I am not doing eggs for any of our meals b/c this is something we have to limit for Joel right now.
• Lunch: Onion Broccoli Soup w/meatballs
• Dinner: Roast chicken leftovers
• Snacks: apples/bananas, almond flour "butter" cookies

Wednesday:

• Breakfast: Blueberry-banana coconut milk smoothie, macadamia nuts
• Lunch: Carrot Ginger soup with chicken, avocado slices on the side
• Dinner: Curry chicken w/green peppers and mashed cauliflower (So gooood!)
• Snacks: bananas, pureed butternut squash with coconut oil and raw honey

Thursday:

• Breakfast: Sausage, butternut squash puree with coconut oil and honey
• Lunch: Leftover carrot soup with hot dogs
• Dinner: Spaghetti w/zucchini noodles and a large, but plain salad
• Snacks: Green smoothie, Fried bananas, more bananas

Friday:

• Breakfast: Pumpkin pancakes
• Lunch: Broccoli soup w/white bean hummus and veggies
• Dinner: Round roast, salad, artichoke hearts
• Snack: Berry chia seed smoothie; fruit; nuts

GAPS - here we go

I have debated about this for about a year now - whether or not to put my family on the GAPS diet. If you have never heard of this, here is a link that explains the gist of it. I will dumb down the basics even more to say that it is a diet that restricts certain foods that irritate the gut with the goal to HEAL. It is a short term diet, meaning that it is not meant to be lifelong. However, you have to faithfully live on this diet for about 1 1/2 - 3 years in order for it to really work. No cheating allowed :).

Since we began our journey to healing several years ago, I feel that just about everything we have tried health-wise has been about improving our symptoms by removing foods form our diet and adding in healthier or more well tolerated alternatives. This has been so valuable and I have learned things that will forever affect how we eat. I don't envision us ever going back to the way we once ate. At the same time, I also feel that everything we have done has been about maintaining our current level of health without much hope that at some point Joel could go to a birthday party and have one cupcake and not throw up a couple of days later. Do I ever plan to regularly give him unhealthy refined cupcakes? NO! But do I want him to be able to tolerate wheat and dairy and be able to indulge on a rare occasssion? Yes!

The GAPS diet is really the first diet I have ever heard of that talks about healing the gut so that you can once again enjoy foods that your body cannot currently tolerate. Is it crazy? Yes! Is it incredibly restrictive? YES! Will people probably think we are more crazy that they even thought in the past. Probably. And will it cost us an arm and a leg? Yes - that too. But I cannot resist the hope of that simple word - healing. If it delivers and Joel's and my bodies are healed and we can visit friends for dinner without having to list a slew of no no foods, it will have been worth it. And if it doesn't deliver I don't see that much will be lost. And we will have gone on a family adventure together, weathered the good and tough times through it, learned greater levels of discipline, and probably gained at least some greater level of health.

I have debated over whether or not to do this diet for so many reasons: cost, what other people will think of us, and fears over whether I can do this right or not. But God has been challenging me to take more risks and to step out in faith. I believe He will heal my baby boy. He can do it supernaturally but that hasn't happened yet, so I am stepping out in faith that He might do it through the GAPS diet.

So, we are starting to ease into the GAPS and will do the full diet until the summer. Then my plan is to do the intro diet, which is the really tough part where you go through an shorter more intense elimination diet. I plan to at least attempt to keep logs of our meal plans, recipes, etc. I don't want to do anything crazy like this if it can't possibly benefit someone else. So if you are interested in the diet stay tuned and you can get a bird's eye view through us!

The Best Cookbook Ever!!!

Do you have a go-to cookbook? I have had several through the years that I have enjoyed, but a few weeks ago I ordered and received a cookbook that seriously rocks my world unlike any other! I am so in love, I cannot even begin to tell you....okay, I guess I will tell you :)! But first the backstory:

Almost exactly 3 years ago I went to see a nutritionist. She gave me the cookbook The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook to aid me in my dietary goals. I have enjoyed this book thoroughly through the years as well as their blog. The authors, Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, are a couple with 5 kiddos. They both have nutrition degrees from Bastyr University. And they work together so beautifully to come up with amazing recipes that are both delicious and healthy! On their blog (and also found in their new cookbook) is my favorite recipe which I talked about on here before. 

Through the years, my eating habits have continued to evolve. Though most of the information that has led to the changes I have made did not come directly through the Nourishing Meals website, I feel that their philosophy of eating now probably captures mine better than any other diet, cookbook or website. I have known for a while that they were coming out with a new cookbook, and when it came out it took everything in me not to jump and buy it right away. I didn't have the money to buy it at the time and thought I would wait patiently to get it for Christmas. But finally I couldn't wait any longer and I bought it!

In the short few weeks I have had the Nourishing Meals Cookbook I have made several recipes. And every single one is amazing!! Among them are:

• Mini Quiches with a Sweet Potato Crust (dairy free w/option to add cheese)
• Coconut Banana Breakfast Cake
• Breakfast Potatoes
• Sourdough Teff Bread (I will admit I am still working on this recipe - I think I am messing something up :) )
• Coconut Flour Biscuits
• Asian Chicken Salad
• Lean, Mean and Green Rice Salad
• Sloppy Joes
• Slow Cooked Beef Stew
• Chicken Pot Pies (w/Coconut Flour Biscuits for the grain-free option; pictured below - sorry the pics from my phone did not turn out well)
• Dairy-Free Macaroni and Cheese
• Avocado Mayonnaise
• Deep Dish Apple Pie filling (I didn't have time to make the crust, but the filling was yummy!)
• Chocolate Walnut Brownies (I used carob instead of chocolate and they were so great!)

Here are some of the things that I love about this book:

• It is whole food's based. No junk, and it includes plenty of veggies!
• They take a really healthy balance on grains. I have struggled between different views on grains and phytic acid. They address this issue in their book and recommend soaking to decrease phytic acid, as well as advise eating some meals grain-free, but they also recognize the benefits of phytic acid. They do offer several grain free recipes for those avoiding grains. 
• Speaking of their grain free recipes - they have a few recipes using coconut flour (and some with almond flour, but I don't use almonds much because I don't digest them well). And seriously they are so superior to any other recipes I have used for coconut-flour products. Wow! I use coconut flour quite a bit and I am thrilled to have some higher quality recipes.
• I feel they have a great balance between meat-based recipes and vegan/vegetarian recipes. They also emphasize eating pastured meats, which is great! I often feel torn between grain-free Paleo, the Weston A. Price philosophy of eating, and also raw vegan as I enjoy aspects of all of these diets. I feel that this cookbook includes the things I love about each of them and has recipes that fit into each category.
• Important for our family - all of their recipes are GF and dairy free (though a few include optional dairy additions). 
• They have a section on preserved foods which excites me because I am trying make more fermented vegetables. 
• They have a very large section full of healthy desserts! I am especially anxious to try their mint chip ice cream. 

Well I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the gist. If you are trying to live out healthy eating with your family, I really cannot recommend this cookbook enough. There are over 300 recipes, tons of helpful information on eating healthy and general nutrition and it includes some beautiful pictures of their recipes. Really my only complaint about this book is that I don't have enough time to make all the things I want to!

If you are interested, you can purchase it here on Amazon!

My Favorite Summer Meal, Plus Black Bean and Mango Salad Recipe

As the summer weather will be quickly passing us by, I am trying to enjoy the food of summer as much as possible while I still can! What can beat (food-wise) all of the wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables, the fresh salmon, and more. Speaking of salmon, I really can't think of a better summer meal than one including fresh, wild Alaskan salmon. I feel so good after I eat it. During the summer we eat it once a week, though we try to eat it regularly throughout the year as well. Trader Joe's has really good prices on frozen salmon and that is where we usually get it in seasons other than summer, but it doesn't nearly taste as amazing as the good stuff we can get in summer.

Last night we had what is probably my all-time favorite summer meal. Fresh wild salmon, rice and a black bean and mango salad. Yummy! Please excuse my photos as I am still a newbie to photography, but hopefully from them you can get the gist. You might notice we are eating white rice instead of brown. I am still looking into this more, but one of the diets I am very interested in (The Perfect Health Diet) advocates for white rice over brown because it has a lower natural toxicity level. Because my kids love white rice that is what we have been eating lately. I personally prefer brown but I am going to be buying the book for this diet and reading more on what they have to say on the topic. What I really like about the Perfect Health Diet is that it is a Paleo-style diet but also maintains that we have a need for some "safe" starches. They allow for white rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes and tapioca. I am not adhering to this diet completely, and I know for sure I don't agree with every element of it, but it has been helpful as a guide as we have sought to decrease our grains/starches yet not eliminate them completely.

Alrighty, now that I have successfully taken a major side track off of my subject, back to our meal from last night. Here is my black bean salad recipe. I have made many different variations on it through the past couple of years. You can do it with corn, avocado or any variety of veggie and or fruit you like. This also makes a great side dish for a potluck!


Black Bean and Mango Salad

• ~2 C black beans (or 1 can)
• ~2 C cut up mango 
• 1/2 C diced yellow pepper
• 1/8-1/4 C chopped green onion
• 1/4 C chopped cilantro
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar (we have citrus issues, but you could use lemon or lime juice instead)
• salt to taste
• Optional: 1 avocado cubed (sometimes I do this instead of the yellow pepper)

Mix up all of the ingredients and serve!

A Tale of Two Pancakes

Like many families, ours has a tradition of making weekend pancakes. I think we have been doing this for about 9 years now. We started with your typical Bisquick recipe, then moved onto homemade soaked whole wheat pancakes and waffles. When we went gluten free I searched the internet for a recipe I could use and came across this fabulous, and easy, recipe. We use buckwheat for it and I will write the our modified recipe below. These pancakes were such a hit in our house, and so easy and inexpensive, that we ended up making them twice a week...or should I say my husband Nik made them :). Yay for hubbies that cook!

Now that we are trying to do a little less grains we are only making the buckwheat pancakes once a week and once a week I am making coconut flour pancakes. I searched the web for good recipes and have now tried two. The first ones ended up way too dry but the second recipe yielded really great pancakes. Check out the original recipe here. I will write my slightly modified recipe below. 

While the buckwheat pancakes are the bigger hit with the kids, they do enjoy the coconut flour ones too. The coconut flour pancakes are quite a bit more expensive to make (how do you beat the price of cheap whole grains?!) but they are my personal favorites. They are super high in protein because of all the eggs, and I can give them to our baby who we have been keeping off of grains.

So if you are looking for a new pancake recipe, give one of these a try and let me know what you think! As usual, all of these are gluten, dairy and sugar free!

Blender Buckwheat Pancakes (Serves our family of 6) - from Sue Gregg's recipe, link above

Stage 1

• 3 C buttermilk or cultured dairy alternative (we use coconut or rice milk and include 2 Tbsp of pomegranate juice in the 3 C to sour)
• 4 Tbsp coconut or olive oil
• 2 C raw buckwheat groats

Blend the above 3 ingredients on high for 3-5 minutes. We have a vitamix so blending for about 1-2 minutes seems to be sufficient for us. Let sit overnight.

• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Stir the above 3 leavening ingredients in a small bowl.

Stage 2

• 2 eggs
• 4 Tbsp ground flax seeds

Add eggs and flax to the blender and blend on high for 1-3 minutes. Again, for us with the vitamix 1 minute is usually enough. Then add the leavenings you you mixed together the night before and blend just enough to incorporate thoroughly. Cook in waffle iron or griddle for pancakes. 

Coconut Flour Pancakes (makes about 2 dozen) - slightly modified from cheeseslave recipe, link above

• 8 eggs
• 4 Tbsp ground flax seeds
• 3/4 C water
• 3/4 C coconut oil, melted
• 3/4 C coconut milk
• 6 tsp honey
• 4 tsp salt
• 3/4 C coconut flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix eggs, flax seeds, water, coconut oil, coconut milk, honey and salt. Mix coconut flour and baking powder and coconut flour separately then add to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. Batter will be very thick. Spoon batter onto heated and oiled skillet to cook. 

Our Cloth Diaper Journey

Prior to having children I Never, and I mean NEVER thought I would use cloth diapers. I started my first baby on disposables without even a second thought about it. She was a month or two old when a friend shared with me that she would be using cloth diapers for her soon-to-be-due son. Honestly, I thought she was crazy! Who uses cloth diapers?! But the more she told me about these diapers she had found the more intrigued I became.

She was going to be using Fuzzi Bunz, a very popular brand of what are called pocket diapers. These diapers have a wonderful soft fleece lining on the inside that absorb quickly and dry to the touch, making them more comparable to a disposable. They have pockets in which you place a triple layered terry cloth insert. They can hold quite a bit. And in theory the cleaning is supposed to be quite simple. I am not sure why, but my friend hooked me and I started researching right away and by the time my daughter was 6 months old she was a Fuzzi Bunz wearer.

My love for these diapers was very short lived as I right away came across problems. Feel free to ask me if you are interested in hearing more, but the short of it is that these diapers don't absorb the way they are supposed to if you have a build up of detergent on them, so you don't want to use to much detergent. But if you don't use enough detergent they don't get clean. Absorbency issues and stink issues were a common problem for me. I am extremely stubborn and wanted to make them work so I stuck with them, troubleshooting the entire time, through 3 children. I had seasons with each of the kids where life was just a little too tough to be washing dirty diapers all the time and I resorted to disposables. But for the majority of each child's time in diapers we used the Fuzzi Bunz. We saved a ton of money and more than that I loved knowing they we weren't adding too much to the land fill and that my baby had something quality touching his tooshy, but I wouldn't say I was ever completely happy with this particular diaper.

Because we had such a rough first year with our fourth child James, I put him in disposables. I tried to find a natural diaper (not sure how great they really were though). We even tried to do cloth for a little bit but it was short lived. But since I finished pumping I started thinking of going back to cloth. I had some new Fuzzi Bunz I purchased on sale before James was born, as well as some used ones from a friend. I gave them a wash to get them ready but the same absorbency issues arose and I decided, no more Fuzzi Bunz! I can't believe I stuck them out so long. I had heard a ton about simple prefolds and different covers. I hated to make a change with just a year of diapering to go, but I decided to give them a try. And thankfully the expense is a whole lot less than Fuzzi Bunz so I was less worried about wasting money (though I will have to sell my Fuzzi Bunz to recoup some of what I spent on them). So here is what I am using now:

• Cloth-eez prefold diapers from Green Mountain Diapers
• Thirsties Duo Wrap which I purchased from Amazon
• Rockin' Green detergent for soft water 

So far I love these diapers. They are inexpensive and easy to use and wash, and I don't have to worry about the absorbency problems I had with the Fuzzi Bunz. I can reuse the covers as they easily wipe clean. The main pro that the Fuzzi Bunz had over these is that they dry to the touch, which decreases chance of rashes. But as long as I change James frequently enough I am hoping this won't be an issue. 

If I were to know what I know now from the very start, I would probably do the same prefolds with a wool cover. Wool is a great material plus it has self-cleaning benefits. But there seemed to be a bit of a learning curve to wool covers and I didn't feel like it was worth it being so close to being done with diapers. But if you are earlier on in the venture and are considering cloth diapers I highly recommend checking wool covers out!

I will keep you posted on how it goes with our new diapers. I am just a couple of weeks in so stink issues could still definitely arise, but hopefully they will work for us this year. My kids were all potty trained by age 2 so I do hope that James will only be in diapers one more year. Which brings me to one last plug - if you are truly interested in being environmentally conscious, you might want to consider potty training your kids at an early age (for those of you with kids :) ). No matter what diapering choice you make, the quicker you potty train the less impact your diapering will have on the environment (because even with cloth diapers you are still using up extra water and energy to wash them). I will write a post about our potty training experiences, but I am convinced the most children are fully capable of learning to use the toilet earlier and quicker than we give them credit for.