Green Power

We signed up for Dominion Green Power today. By signing up for green power, Dominion will purchase RECs (renewable energy certificates) on our behalf from providers of various renewable energy. The certificates verify that the renewable energy we purchase is generated and delivered to the regional electric grid. Renewable energy is electricity produced from environmentally clean and friendly, naturally replenishing sources including solar, wind, geothermal, water, and biomass.

We signed up for five "blocks" per month, with each block representing about 133 kWh of renewable energy. This means after a year, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to removing one car from the road for a year.

Even if your electric company does not offer green power, you can purchase RECs from other companies to offset the energy you are using in your home with renewable energy that is generated and transmitted to the regional electric grid. The Green Power Network provides a list of companies providing retail REC products. You can subscribe to a monthly plan, or choose to buy a lump sum amount and pick choose your product by the type of renewable resource.

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Die Off on GAPs

I just noticed that I haven't blogged in over a week. It's hard to blog when you have die off. Actually it's hard to feed your cats too. Or take a bath. Or heat up dinner. Things you normally do everyday become hard.

Die off symptoms appear when your body is detoxifying and when bad microbes, bacteria or yeasts are being killed. The GAPs diet is designed to balance out gut dysbiosis by removing all foods that the bad microbes feed on, and use good bacteria and yeasts in the form of fermented foods and probiotic supplements to kill off the bad bacteria and yeasts. Also, certain facets of the GAPs diet like avoiding stress and environmental chemicals, eating only foods the body can handle, and supporting it with lots of minerals and nutrients via bone broths and vegetable juices can trigger the detoxification of old toxins and bad substances it may have stored up over the years.

Die off symptoms can manifest as every illness imaginable. Just Google die off symptoms and you'll get pages of articles and blogs describing die off symptoms. No need to rehash it here. Bee has a good article on her site about die off symptoms.

We've had die off on and off ever since starting GAPs almost 11 months ago. In the beginning, it was a week of die off followed by a few days of feeling pretty good. Ever since starting the intro diet, it's been more like a week of die off followed by one day of feeling good. Continuous die off is hard. Some days you can barely muster up the energy to dress yourself. You feel like you are depressed and have the flu at the same time. Except it's not exactly depression or the flu. You just feel not quite right and really fatigued and achy all over, but you don't have the flu and it doesn't pass like the flu. And you drag yourself around and don't want to do anything like someone who was depressed but you're not really exactly depressed. And you become endowed with super hero senses in terms of smell and hearing. The least bit of noise bothers you. Your neighbor at the office annoys you when he shakes his leg cause you can hear the rattling. Your coworker that you've eaten lunch with for two years suddenly gives you a headache because you can smell the fabric softener on his clothes. Some days, you find that even though you have an English degree, your vocabulary has been diminished by 75%, leaving you with the eloquence of a stuttering fool and the spelling capacity of a grade school student.

Yet, I still feel we are on the right track. The other day, I happened on some blogs from cancer patients on the Gerson Therapy. Well, if I thought GAPs die off was bad, it is mild compared to what these people were going through. The laws of the universe are not all clear, but it seems that many people embracing natural holistic therapies encounter die off at some time or other. I feel in my heart we are well on our way to healing. 

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Buying meat in bulk

I got my half a hog from Polyface today. Now my freezer is gloriously stocked with about 70 to 80 lbs of pastured pork. Buying this pig makes me feel happy, not only because pastured pork is so delicious or that it came from a happy pig that was allowed to roam. It's also because it came from a sustainable local farmer, and in buying from Polyface, I'm playing my part in reducing man's carbon footprint and rebuilding and enhancing the land.

Polyface pigs are no doubt happy pigs. During the summer and fall, they are allowed to roam in savannah pastures. At times, they are let into the woods to forage for roots and fallen nuts. However, they also play an integral part in the farm in cycling waste and building it into rich compost to be returned to the land. They are given corn in a shed where the cows lounge that contain wood chips, sawdust, and old hay and as the pigs root and look for the corn, they turn and aerate this bedding into a fertile compost pile.

We started buying meat straight from local farmers about three years ago. It was unfamiliar territory and took some time getting used to in the beginning. Instead of walking into a grocery store at anytime, I had to plan ahead and place my orders a week or two in advance. I also had to plan my work day around picking up the food, which often was at a local drop location with a very specific window of time for picking up. It didn't seem worth it in concept. I was already buying organic free range meats from Whole Foods and Trader Joes. This seemed much more inconvenient and how much better can the quality be?

After the first few orders, I was hooked. The meat tasted much more like meat should taste. The beef was beefier; the pork porkier, and the chicken was full of flavor, unlike the birds in grocery stores that have a dull chicken taste with almost a tofu-like texture. Eventually, we got to the point we couldn' t bear to eat meat from a grocery store. The best way I could describe it was that the grocery store meat, even the "free range" organic stuff tasted dead. I started looking for local sustainable farmers for everything we buy regularly.

That was our entry into buying bulk meat. My husband loves lamb, and I was buying many racks of lamb ribs and packages of arm and shoulder chops at the time from Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Lamb was about the only meat item at the grocery store we were buying anymore, since we were sourcing all our beef, pork, and chicken cuts straight from local farmers. I looked around, and finally found a lamb farmer that truly pasture their animals that was local -- Touchstone Farms. And they even offered delivery. The minimum order was 1/2 lamb. I placed the order, and the lamb was expected to arrive in a couple of months.

What will we do with a half lamb? My fridge freezer wasn't very big and it was already packed to the gills to ensure that we were well stocked with pastured meat and didn't have to eat grocery store meat. Plus we had gone to a raw food diet for my cats and their raw meat mixes also contributed to the crowded conditions in the freezer. My husband and I decided to get an upright freezer. Three weeks before the lamb arrived, a moderately sized 16.7 cu ft freezer was delivered and placed in our basement. I couldn't wait to fill it up with the lamb!

To my surprise, when the lamb arrived, it didn't even take up one shelf of the new freezer. A whole lamb weighs in around 35 to 50 lbs, and half of that really isn't that much meat. After breaking into buying meat in bulk with the lamb, we ventured into buying a split half cow. Quickly that grew into a half cow and a half hog at a time, and another freezer, a 20.6 cu ft to store it all.

As for the lamb, it was the best lamb my husband and I both have ever tasted. We quickly placed another order for a whole lamb, and then after that, two lambs. The best time to slaughter pastured lamb is in the fall, after they've fattened up over the summer over green grass and forage. We got our lambs this year in October and November, and unfortunately, we have only one rack of ribs left from the two lambs. I just put in our order for this fall, this time, ordering four lambs to ensure we have some for the entire year.

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Cooking on GAPs/SCD

So my husband and I have been on the GAPs/SCD diet now for over 10 months. The hardest part of this diet, besides the detoxing and die off, is that we have to COOK EVERYTHING from scratch. Yes, you will see recommendations for eating out and tips and tricks for products to buy on SCD reference sites and forums, but if you want to make sure you don't eat anything illegal on the diet, then you make everything from scratch. Truth is, prepackaged products don't have to include all ingredients; if it's under a certain percentage, it can be omitted. In terms of eating out, we had a hard enough time finding restaurants to eat at when we were just hardcore WAP/traditional foodists; it's impossible on GAPs.

We went back a few months ago to do the introduction protocol of the diet, and it is even more demanding. No spices. No cheese. No nuts at all in the very beginning, and then you can start to add "bread" made from ground nuts. No raw veggies in the very beginning, and then you can start with avocado, then cucumbers. Most veggies need to be cooked at least 1/2 hour, to a mush. Lots of fermented foods.

When we were only on the traditional foods diet, I thought we cooked most of our meals. Now that we really have to cook all our meals, I realize how much we were kidding ourselves. There's no more rice crackers, easy hunk of cheese or handful of roasted nuts. No quick trip to Chipotle or grabbing a salad at Whole Foods. I work full time, so I am gone anywhere from 9 to 11 hours a day. When most everything you eat has to be cooked and you have to make it yourself, you suddenly find yourself spending most of your time at home cooking. I'm not even the only one doing the cooking. My husband went from not knowing how long it takes to boil an egg, to knowing all the different ways you can cut just about every vegetable you can imagine. To maximize time and be as efficient as possible, he even read knife skill books and now tells me that I'm not holding my knife right.

The first month of the intro diet was especially challenging. There were times we were up until 3:00am straining broth. Or making chicken soup for the week. Or cleaning up the kitchen. Or making sauerkraut. But we quickly learned to become more efficient and also have learned to cook in bulk. Since last week was a very busy week at work for me, we spent this weekend catching up and also building up some reserves for this week. So on Saturday and Sunday, we cooked and made:

• 8 quarts beef broth
  
• 3 quarts unseasoned taco meat
  
• 6 quarts vegetable beef soup
  
• 4 meatloaves
  
• 3 lb gizzards
  
• 2 lb ghee
  
• 2 loaves almond/brazil nut bread
  
• 6 quarts saag (Indian version of something much like creamed spinach)
  
• 1 1/2 quarts cauliflower hash

This should last us most of this week and some of the items will last part way into next week.

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Welcome to my blog!

I'm an avid web reader. I don't watch TV or read newspapers, so the web is how I stay connected to the world. I love reading blogs. Blogs are so raw, so real. I've admired bloggers for so long, but never thought I would have the time to work on one. But after spending all day cooking up GAPs intro friendly foods (more on that later), my husband wanted some recreation. He's a geek through and through and loves to program and highlight programming books for fun. So he offered to set up a blog for me. And I'm like sure, why not? Well, an hour later, here we are. :-)

Looking forward to publishing some fun blogs. Bear with me, as I'm a blog noob.

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