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Thursday, February 9, 2012

For the Love of Dishes- GAPS Update # 1

As I write this, my dishwasher is running for the third time today. The THIRD time. And that's been pretty much normal since I started on GAPS. I'm enjoying it though! It's a good feeling to be eating only real, homemade food. I joked to Thad today that I was pretending that we're living in the 1700s and I'm having to make everything. It really has been fun experimenting in the kitchen. Right now I've got several things fermenting on the counter- pickles, sauerkraut, yogurt, and kombucha, and I've also got bone broth cooking in the crock pot. I let my kombucha SCOBYs die when we moved, and I've been growing a new one. It's taken longer than I thought it would, but I finally have a real SCOBY in my jar! I'm hoping this batch or the next one will be drinkable. This week I've also made coconut milk, coconut flour, and several batches of yogurt, and that's not even counting all the breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks.


I tried a new salmon patty recipe today, and they were absolutely AMAZING. I modified the recipe a little, adding onion and garlic and leaving out the lemon pepper. Then I whipped up a little dipping sauce from yogurt, dill, dijon mustard, and lemon juice. They were seriously the most delicious salmon patties I've ever tasted. I gave Tristan a little piece of one as I was cooking them, and he just couldn't get enough. He kept asking for bite after bite, so I finally just sat him up in the highchair where he devoured two whole patties. Hayden even liked them! I had to bribe her with the promise of mac'n'cheese to get her to try one, but after she tried it she liked it! Then she even ate another half of a patty along with her macaroni- amazing!


I've finally got a good lead on some raw milk, for only $6 a gallon! I'm really excited about that possibility. I've been wanting to get raw milk for a couple of years now, and it just hasn't been realistic for us. The farms have either been too far away, or the milk was too expensive. But this farm is fairly close to our house, and I've got a friend who wants to get milk too. We figure if we take turns we'd each only have to go out to the farm about once a month.


Like I said in my last post, I am seeing some improvements already! The bone broth seems to help tremendously with my allergies. My digestion is improving- or was until I had hot sauce on Sunday during the super bowl. (Note to self- just because something is GAPS-legal does not necessarily mean that your body will be happy to digest it.) It took me a couple of days to recover from that. It was a little discouraging, but all just a part of the learning process. And I am super proud of myself that I didn't have a single bite of the gorgeous spread of food that was at our house during the game. Willpower FTW!


One of the main things I've been hoping to see is an improvement in my mood/hormone issues. I'm pretty sure I started to see that happen, because about a week ago I felt really, really good. I just felt so calm and peaceful-more peaceful than I can remember feeling in a long time. And then my ovulation time rolled around. Ugh. I don't know what it is about the ovulation hormones, but they make me feel like an absolute crazy person. I literally feel like I'm not even myself. I feel so anxious, and the tiniest irritation can send me over the edge- even things like people touching me or the tv being too loud. Sometimes it makes me feel panicky, or like I just need to go into a rage! Yesterday was pretty bad- it was all I could do just to hold it together. I did feel a little better after a good cry, but not a lot. It's just so frustrating because it's all the opposite of the real me. I'm normally a calm, somewhat patient, reasonable person- just not when these hormones are coursing through my body. I know it's not just my mind playing tricks on me, because I have physical symptoms too. For the past two days I've had off and on dizziness, nausea, and a racing heartbeat. Does anyone know what that's all about? I think even just understand the process of what's making me feel this way would make me feel a little better about it. I'm hoping GAPS will help alleviate these issues and then I won't even have to worry about it.



So that's my GAPS update for the week. I'll leave you with a list of things I've learned:


*You can never have too many mason jars.
*Don't look too closely at what comes out of the can of salmon- just look at the tv or something until you've stirred it all together. And make sure you crush all the little spine bones before you go to fry the patties. Yum. (Seriously though, they were delicious.)
*Don't put a jar of half frozen broth into an already hot pan of water. It will break.
*2 whole coconuts can produce about 2 quarts of milk, and only less than 2 cups of flour.
*It's not a good idea to lose the blade to your food processor right before you start GAPS.
*Homemade bone broth makes for an amazing chicken soup, with a beautiful layer of fat on top after it's been in the fridge for a couple of hours.
*My dishwasher deserves a hug. Because I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for my dishwasher.

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