March 1, 2013
Shepherd’s pie {GAPS}
Shepherd’s pie is something that the whole family loves and has enjoyed many different ways; we’ve never done the same recipe twice!
The basic idea is to brown some ground meat in meat stock. Mix in with a vegetable (green beans, peas, zucchini, broccoli, etc.,.) in a casserole dish. Smooth some faux-tatoes on top. Add a little ghee and cook!
Below are some pictures of our past variations:
Browning the meat
Mixing in the green beans
Faux-tatoes (processed with cilantro giving it the green color) for the top!
Yummy ghee for added richness 😀
Faux-tatoes, peas, and chicken
Zucchini, yellow squash, and ground beef
Delicious pie right out of the oven and ready to be enjoyed!
February 23, 2013
Stuffed Peppers
(This is Mom posting because the girls are out on a date with their dad :)) Tonight we had something we’ve never had before and we LOVED it. That’s a great side benefit of this diet–we’re forced to try new things and expand our palates and cooking abilities! Jordan found a wonderful recipe then tweaked it to fit what we happened to have on hand.
The filling was
a pound of “cal blend” frozen veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots) chopped up in the food processor
2 egg whites (we add raw egg yolk to our soups so we have a lot of whites to use up!)
a 6 oz can of tomato paste
1 tsp grey celtic sea salt
1/4 c fresh cilantro
2 pounds ground beef
I was glad I had found nice big red peppers at the farmer’s market yesterday because they worked perfectly in the crock pot. After stuffing them with the mixture, we put some stock in the bottom of the pot, cooked them on high for an hour and then low for another 4. It smelled like pizza in the kitchen and everyone loved the special meal!
February 22, 2013
Green Bean Casserole {GAPS}
I was scared that when we entered GAPS I would have to give up some favorites. Instead I’m just finding new ways to make my favorites even better!
I love green bean casserole. I had made a simple version with “cream of cauliflower” soup (cauliflower florets cooked in crock pot or boiled in pan of stock and then blended with a hand blender) and beans, but I really missed the crunchy topping. So when I made the hash browns I knew that was just what I needed to top it off!
February 21, 2013
The best spaghetti sauce {GAPS}
Tonight we had “spaghetti”, but in our opinion there was no reason for the squash since the sauce was so good! Mom put 2 pounds of organic ground beef (raw, broken up) in a crock pot then covered it with a concoction whipped up in the Vitamix: about 2 cups gelatinous meat stock, some onion, oregano from the garden, and a couple little cans of organic tomato paste. After it had simmered on low for 4-6 hours, she pressed some garlic cloves in it and we ate about an hour later.
Enjoyed with organic avocado and sour cream with live cultures (are you noticing a pattern with how we enjoy our food?)
February 16, 2013
Filled Burgers {GAPS}
As promised, here is the GAPS burger recipe! These aren’t just burgers…
They’re filled burgers! The herbed tomato paste reminded us of ketchup.
These are especially child-friendly because the messy “ketchup” is inside – not all over the child’s face and fingers and… 😉
Just three ingredients:
ground beef (turkey won’t hold together)
tomato paste (we used about 3/4 of this can for 2 lbs of beef)
fresh herbs (sage and rosemary from the yard – we used the pictured amount for 2 lbs of beef)
Chop the herbs and mix into the tomato paste.
Form the beef into patties a little smaller than your palm. Put a little of the tomato/herb paste into the middle of one, and top with a second, pressing the edges together to enclose the filling.
Bethany found that forming the bottom patty into a sort of bowl helped keep the filling in. Experiment to figure out what works for you!
Bring the stock to a boil, reduce to med-low. Lower hamburger in with a spatula. The stock should come at least half-way up the burgers. Cover, and cook for 7 minutes. Flip burgers and cook covered another 7 minutes.
Enjoy!
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February 13, 2013
Mashed Faux-tatoes {GAPS}
Potatoes, being so starchy, are not allowed in any form at any stage of the GAPS diet. This is quite the disappointment for certain members of our family. However, there are alternatives that actually appease them. One of these is mashed faux-tatoes – a dish that we enjoyed well before the GAPS diet, in fact. Mixed with real potatoes, no one even guesses the secret ingredient (that offers extra nutrients). Even without real potatoes, the faux variety is pretty convincing.
The recipe is simple:
Boil a head of cauliflower without the stalks in stock.*
Put in food processor. (save stock for a soup base)
Blend to desired consistency.
*If not on the GAPS diet, you can steam it, which makes the finished product thicker. Then again, boiling in stock gives it a wonderful flavor…
The “butter” on top of the “potatoes” is actually ghee straight out of the fridge!
A future post will feature that burger in the background. Yes! A GAPS-legal burger!
February 7, 2013
The end of the beginning {GAPS}
Well, our first week on the GAPS diet ends today. After having soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for seven days, everyone’s favorite is Creamy Cauliflower Meatball soup (well, actually, any kind of meatball soup)!
It’s so easy!
Ingredients:
1-2 heads cauliflower
garlic to taste
Stock (we like chicken)
1-2 lbs. ground meat (we like turkey)
To be GAPS legal, be sure to cut off all of the fibrous cauliflower stems. Put in pot with peeled garlic cloves and cover with stock. Boil until soft, then puree with an immersion blender.
Now for the meatballs. You can simply pinch off small pieces of ground meat (think bite size for children), or neatly roll them into balls. Bethany (age 13) makes the best, perfect meatballs! Drop them into the soup base, which should be kept at a gentle boil (med heat). The meat will be cooked through after about 15 minutes.
Obviously this can be made more interesting by seasoning the meat and soup base. Right now we’re just keeping it simple with the four legal ingredients. Meatballs can be added to just about any soup base, but we found that they blow apart in the crockpot on high – which still leaves you with a tasty ground meat crumble soup!
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February 3, 2013
Mom’s turn to post! {GAPS}
Here’s what we’re allowed to eat right now…basically boiled meat and soup, with ginger, mint, or chamomile tea between meals. So far we have just the youngest rejecting the food, and he’s vomited a few times, probably due to low blood sugar. Right now he’s chosen to just have chamomile tea with a little honey while his brother eats enough soup for the both of them! Hoping he’ll join our team soon and dig in to the good stuff that will nourish and heal him…
We get most of our food from azurestandard.com or the farmer’s markets, but I had to visit our local Sprouts grocery store because I ran out of the perishables so quickly. Everything we get is organic now (except wild caught fish and lamb bones from New Zealand, a place that’s GMO free and has millions of sheep feeding on lush green grass). I wish I’d have been brave enough to snap a picture of the check-out conveyer belt–so many veggies! There was lots of broccoli, celery for stocks (can’t eat that yet), garlic, 8 squashes, 3 cauliflowers, 12 bags of baby carrots (the organic were only .88 for some reason, and I probably should have gotten more since they’re a wonderful convenience item for snacks and soups! A good starch to keep their bodies going so we have them boiling on the stove each day, sometimes with pieces of ginger in the water.) Those are all the veggies we can have right now, plus lots of meat and stock from our extra freezer. (Onions too, but I got a 40# bag of those from Azure this week!)
This highly restricted diet has become a spiritual quest as well. I’ve been studying about fasting from both a Christian and nutritional perspective and have learned so much about how fasts (and partial fasts) can help us both spiritually and physically. I thought 40 days would be a good goal for our commitment to the GAPS diet intro since that was such a significant number in the Bible (ie Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness before starting His ministry) so that puts us at just about a week for each phase if all goes well. We also hope to make each Sabbath dinner special with candles, flowers, special dishes, place cards with encouraging Scripture verses, etc. (Sabbath goes from sundown Saturday through daylight hours on Sunday.)
Daniel’s ground beef and onion soup was a hit as was the aromatic centerpiece made of mint from the garden. We’ve been using it often to make mint tea–yum! The carrots are there to try to tempt Joshua to eat…no such luck; just tea for him again.
Sundays will be leftover/crock pot days to try to minimize work–there’s 2 kinds of soup, the 3 boiled veggies we’re allowed (to eat straight or add to soup), ginger for tea in between meals, and stock going from yesterday that will be strained later. I think there was squash going in another crock pot on another counter–we consider that “dessert”, not vegetable, even though we eat it with salt. Can’t wait for Ghee on Stage 2 to put on that!
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February 2, 2013
Soup’s on! {GAPS}
Day two on the GAPS diet, and Daniel’s still smiling about soup! It’s a good thing, because soup is just about the only thing we eat right now. Yep, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Involving children in food preparation really helps them to be willing to try new foods. Daniel (7) made our soup for dinner tonight.
At times, it was a tearful experience — but only because he was peeling onions! Tears were minimized by chopping the onion chunks in the food processor rather than out in the open on a cutting board (picture below). He worked bravely through the tears, and proudly presented a wonderful meal this evening.
January 31, 2013
And so it begins {GAPS}
8 years ago under the direction of nutritionist Kim Schuette, Mom (also named Kim) went on the Page Diet Plan (basically meat and vegetables), which helped a lot with her chronic pain and adrenal fatigue. We were also introduced to the intriguing book Nourishing Traditions, and the whole family moved toward eating more whole and organic foods.
Since then, we have been on a journey searching for mental, emotional, and physical wholeness. Over the years we have slowly cut out certain foods and increased our consumption of others. For example, I (Jordan, age 20) have been gluten-free for a year now, and the family has had very limited grains. We’ve also added things like green smoothies, sourdough bread, and fermented foods like chutney and sauerkraut.
beef and chicken stock simmering for 24-36 hours
After hearing about the GAPS diet for a few years, we met a family of 11 whose life had been restored by it. Mom realized this could be a way to fast, detoxify, and take our health to the next level. We children live under the shadow of our grandfathers’ heart disease, father’s melanoma, and mother’s Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The youngest two were adopted and had been exposed to meth in utero (who knows what their genetic background entails).
I will be recording our experiences here. You can expect to see recipe reviews, original recipe tutorials, ideas for making the GAPS diet (and healthy food in general) palatable and fun for children, and whatever else I can come up with.
Jordan
riahjoy
Creative Nourishment 