Whole Traditions Blog

Local, Grass Finished Lamb

2010-01-16T22:17:00.008-05:00

I got the last two of the four grass finished lambs that I had ordered on Thursday from Touchstone Farms, now Rappahannock Farms, LLC. Today, we ate a rack of the lamb ribs. My husband and I easily polished off the entire rack. After he finished the last rib, Todd asked "can we make another rack?" I offered to thaw one for tomorrow to which he replied "I mean now." This is still hands down the best lamb we've ever tasted.

I've tried pastured, grass fed lamb from various farmers in the area and while I've had some very good lamb from other wonderful local farmers, I still have a certain loyalty to Touchstone Farms. Not only is the lamb super tender and delicious, Touchstone Farms is the farm that got me started on ordering whole animals and over the fear of using all the different cuts from one animal. Now I routinely order, in addition to whole lambs, a half cow, a half hog, a turkey or two, and between 6 to 12 whole chickens at a time. And if I ever can find a local farmer that will sell it, I would order a whole goat.

Todd and I are pretty fanatical about eating organic, grass fed, and local. Buying directly from the farmer allows me to choose farmers that grow and handle the food properly and sustainably, from what fertilizers go into the soil to whether an animal is humanely butchered. Buying local minimizes my carbon footprint and gives support to small local family farms that ensure the continuation of sustainable farming and biodiversity. And with my buying habits of whole animals and CSA shares, I've become much more diverse in my cooking, to the great benefit of our palates. Easily in the midst of growing season, we would eat in one week several types of meats and a dozen or two different vegetables.

A few tips on buying and using meats and vegetables in bulk:

Keep a tab for at least a month on how much meat (in weight) and vegetables (in volume) you consume. Use your numbers to calculate how much meat you'll consume in a month, three months, six months, or a year. You should be able to determine from this whether your family will consume a quarter or half a cow, for example, in six months, or a year. For vegetables, calculate how much your family will consume on average in a week. You should be able to determine from this how large a CSA share to purchase.
Invest in an upright freezer, at least 13 to 14 cu ft that can store food at sub zero.
When you get a half or whole animal, sort the parts and stock different parts in different sections of the freezer.
If the CSA offers different pick up days, pick a day when you know you can handle or process the vegetables that day or the day or two after. Since CSA produce are often picked that day or the day before and are picked ripe and ready, you want to make sure you take advantage of it and use the produce soon after you pick it up.
Plan to make casseroles (like beef stew or braised meat dish) or soups towards the "end" of a CSA week. Often, we will throw the rest of what we haven't used up yet into a casserole or soup.
Many vegetables can be successfully frozen. Leafy greens that are normally cooked can be washed, dried, and frozen, or blanched prior to freezing. Tomatoes can be frozen as is and tossed into sauces and stews later or cooked down or processed into a sauce prior to freezing. Fermenting is also a great way to preserve your vegetables. I have many a jar of delicious fermented spicy fermented radish in my fridge from all the daikons and jalapenos I got over the summer.
Plan at least 2 to 4 days in advance for your meat dishes. Every night after dinner, I go "shopping" in my freezers (we have 2 separate upright freezers in addition to 2 fridges) and pull out something to thaw that we will eat in 2 to 4 days. I have the entire door of one of my fridges dedicated to defrosting. The meat goes into one or more of the bins in the door for defrosting, and the bin catches any leaks during defrosting and can easily be rinsed or washed. When I pull out something really big like a turkey, it goes into an empty veggy bin for defrosting.

Since we cook everything we eat and don't eat any pre-prepared or packaged foods, buying meat and produce in bulk really makes great economical sense. Once you get into a routine, you will find that you save not just in terms of the price of the food, but also in terms of time in sourcing and picking up the food.

I'm Not a Carnivore

2009-11-29T12:24:00.004-05:00

I talk about sourcing meats from local farms a lot and making liberal use of lard, ghee, and other animal fats in my cooking. So it's quite often that my friends or coworkers get the misconception that I eat a lot of meat. In reality, being on the GAPS diet, I would say that my diet from what I eat most to what I eat the least looks more like this: fats (lard, ghee, chicken fat, olive oil, coconut oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil), vegetables, eggs, meats, nuts, fruits. When I take a look at the amount of meat I actually eat, the reality is somewhere between 2 to 6 ounces per meal, which I feel is about as much as most omnivores eat.

When people first find out that I don't eat grains, sugars, or other complex carbohydrate foods, they wonder what I eat. After all, the majority of the standard American diet is comprised of grains and starchy foods. So how do I get full? Well, we eat lots and lots and LOTS of vegetables. I would say more than most vegetarians would eat, since vegetarians are able to subsidize their meals with grains, potatoes and yams, beans, and other starchy foods.

Out of curiosity, I made a list of all the vegetables we ate last week. As two adults, we consumed in the past week:
~ 1 lb baby bok choy
1 bunch bok choy
~1 lb mei qing choi
2 radishes
8 lbs carrots
8 lbs onions
3 bunches celery
1 bag spinach
couple bunches broccoli
2 heads cauliflower
6 tomatoes
1 cabbage
2 lbs delicata squash
10 sweet peppers
5 bulbs garlic
3 jalapeno peppers
2 bunches green onions
1 cucumber
1 bunch swiss chard
1 head butter lettuce
1 bunch red leaf lettuce

I may have missed some, but I would say that the bulk of my diet is definitely not made of meat!

Plugging Away on GAPS

2009-11-26T23:28:00.003-05:00

It's been a hard month. We've experienced die off on and off over the months, but this was a wave similar to what hit us at the beginning of GAPS intro and then again about 6 months after GAPS intro. Extreme fatigue, a general feeling of un-wellness and gloom and doom. We know something's happening for sure because just like the previous especially bad boughts of die off, we dropped weight drastically. Under a couple of weeks, Todd has dropped 6 lbs and myself, 4 lbs. On my 5'2" frame, it's significant.

Todd tells me this is something most girls would envy, but it's difficult for me. We've been terribly chemical sensitive, so other than Whole Foods, we've been purchasing everything online. Well actually, Whole Foods and the post office to drop off returns. I've been slowly replacing my wardrobe since purchasing clothes online can be a lot of trial and error, but discovered I've shrunk yet another pant size. I'm truly too tired to find more pants and run more return boxes to the post office. Some things will just have to fit loosely for awhile. And it's encouraging evidence of the revolution going on in our guts.

Die off is a bit exacerbated by the late fall/early winter weather. All the rain and short days mean less sun and no walks in the woods. Being outdoors and getting some sun always cheers me up. It gets easy to become mopey and self-pitying all cooped up.

Last week was the final week of our CSA. The final week was actually two weeks ago, but our CSA had extra produce so offered to extend for an extra week for those who were interested. I ordered a robust share for the extended week, glad to extend the season a bit longer before resigning to supermarket produce. I am so grateful to my CSA farmer for providing such quality produce that I now find the organic lettuce and squash at Whole Foods tasteless. I'm not putting down organic produce at Whole Foods as I am a loyal patron of the store. It's just that local produce grown with love just tastes so much better.

I have quite a bit of fermented and frozen produce stocked up in my fridge to help get through the winter:
5 gallon sized bags of frozen winter squash
4 gallon sized bags of frozen peeled, deseeded, halved tomatoes
3 jars lacto-fermented pickles
3 jars lacto-fermented eggplant
3 jars lacto-fermented radish
2 jars lacto-fermented baby bok choy
2 jars lacto-fermented stem medley (fibrous stems from chard and bok choy that I decided to ferment)
1/2 gallon sauerkraut

Although the sauerkraut is a ferment staple for us and I'm actually getting ready to make more. Okay, well, this blog was mostly a random ramble for me, but it feels good to get back to blogging. Hope to post again soon.

Raw Food Diet and Apple Cider Vinegar for Cats

2009-11-01T18:16:00.013-05:00

I feed my cats a BARF diet and have since the older cat, Keeley, got a urinary tract infection at 9 months, a few days after one of his vaccine boosters. At the time, we gave him the full 10-day course of antibiotics as recommended by our vet. Two days after we used up the antibiotics, Keeley's UTI came back in full force, worse than before. He was peeing droplets every three steps.

Since the conventional method didn't work, I went the alternative route. I switched him to a raw diet, and syringe fed him vitamin C, cranberry pills, and lots of water. Three days later, Keeley's UTI symptoms were gone. I tossed all of the kibble and canned cat food and went raw with Keeley for good.

When Mango came along a few months later, I was going to wait and switch him over slowly. However, he was very lethargic when we first got him, and I attributed it to the fact that the breeder had just taken him for his first booster shot a few days before. My gut told me to start him off on raw food right away.

Keeley and Mango are both Siberians, and Siberians take up to 3 years to reach full size. They are now respectively 4 and 3 years of age and as they grew, it became apparent the benefit that starting on a raw food diet at a younger age had on Mango. Keeley is much longer and appears larger, but when you pick him up, he's not as densely built. Mango looks much more round and short, but he is just as heavy and is very solidly built. Although Keeley's UTI went away, he tends to relapse when he is stressed. When I board the cats, I usually leave ester C with the boarding facility along with a supply of individually packaged raw food per day. Mango has never been sick a day in his life.

With Keeley's tendency for UTI's, he often had accidents outside of the litter box. If he happened to not drink enough or not eat enough and get enough liquids, I'd find a present next to the litter pan. I've tried everything over the years -- litter attractant, odor removers, Feliway, etc. I also scoop litter once or twice a day, making sure the pans are absolutely clean. Getting tired of cleaning up cat pee every few days, over the last year, I've tried many herbs and natural therapies -- saw palmetto, cat probiotics, D-mannose, cranberry exract, thuja, goldenseal, crouch grass, to name a few. Well, I finally found a solution that works: apple cider vinegar. I was browsing forums and alternative recommendations online for cat UTI one night after cleaning up the cat room floor, and found the recommendation to try raw apple cider vinegar. I know it's effect well for humans -- it's a fermented food, good for balancing the bodys PH, and helps with digestion. It certainly couldn't hurt.

It took three days after starting the cats on the ACV before Keeley's pee went from a small golf ball size in the litterpan to a grapefruit size. Keeley is now peeing in the litter pan like a champ. To think, all that time, effort, frustration, and money and the answer was sitting in my pantry all along.

Growing Watercress in an EarthBox

2009-09-17T20:57:00.007-04:00

The green beans I planted in May were so good, I started more plants in early August after I cleared out the old strawberry plants from my self watering planters. I have one self watering planter from gardeners.com and an EarthBox. However, the green beans in the EarthBox all died of rot. It didn't look like disease, so I felt the soil and realized that it was way too waterlogged. I don't remember what kind of soil mixture I used but I do remember that it was something I mixed myself the year before. Somehow, within a year's time, the soil had degraded to become heavy and waterlogged.

Rather than dumping out the soil into a landfill and buying more, I decided not to fight the wet conditions and plant some watercress. It wasn't until mid to late August that I got around to ordering watercress seeds, so the seeds went into the EarthBox some time at the end of August or beginning of September. I had no expectations since watercress is known to like specific conditions -- good sun but not too hot, cool roots and non-stagnant, running water. Nothing happened for a while. After about a full week, tiny little watercress sprouts started appearing all over the top of the soil. Watercress seeds are tiny and are supposed to be just pressed into the soil. I had scattered half of the seed packet all over the surface of the EarthBox soil so there were many sprouts very close together.

I went out every couple of days for the next week to thin out the sprouts. By the time they were two weeks old, they were about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches high and i had done the last thinning, leaving little baby plants about 4 inches apart. For the past week, they have been growing steadily. I expect that in another couple of weeks, I should have my first harvest. Hopefully I can have a couple of harvests before this year's first frost.

Fermented Eggplant (YUM!)

2009-09-12T10:09:00.009-04:00

We tasted the fermented eggplant yesterday and it was surprisingly delicious. I first got the idea to ferment eggplant from my coworker. He is originally from the Middle East, and remembers fondly how his grandmother used to make pickled vegetables. He mentioned one day to me that his grandmother used to make pickled eggplant and that it is very very good. I was very curious and I asked what his grandmother put in it. He couldn't tell me much other than that she put hot peppers in it.

A few weeks ago, we got two eggplants from the CSA. I had let a couple from the CSA go bad and given another away in previous weeks. We are still very gingerly introducing things on full GAPS and while I have stopped peeling some vegetables, I am still removing the seeds from everything. I know I'm probably being obsessive, but since eggplant is full of many tiny little seeds, I just didn't feel right eating it. But when I got these two eggplants, I remembered what my coworker said and decided to let little probiotic critters predigest the eggplant before we eat it.

I looked around on the web for pickled eggplant recipes for inspiration. I ended up adding to the eggplant some parsley, celery, chile powder, and a bunch of garlic. I also added a few spoonfuls of brine from my homemade kim chi and a tbsp of salt to get it going. The full recipe is at:

http://www.wholetraditions.com/recipes/124-fermented-eggplant

The eggplant started bubbling and fizzing immediately when I mixed in the salt and brine. After a few minutes, the vegetables had released a lot of liquid, so I packed it into a quart sized jar. It filled up the jar with about a couple of inches head room, which was helpful since the vegetables kept trying to push its way up as it fermented over the next few days.

The fermented eggplant tastes eggplanty with that decisively tart fermented flavor. The chile powder and garlic gives it a nice kick and I really like eating it with soup. It reminds me of eating Chinese pickles with congee as a child. Definitely comfort food.

Sauerkraut

2009-09-04T22:53:00.013-04:00

Today I packed the sauerkraut from the gallon jar into smaller jars to place in the fridge. Being on GAPS, we eat a lot of sauerkraut around here. When we started GAPS, we did full GAPS willy nilly and didn't really implement a lot of the things that I've come to now feel are mandatory on GAPS. We only did broth and fermented vegetables occasionally. When went back to do GAPS intro nine months ago, we started on sauerkraut juice and worked our way up to eating the sauerkraut itself. Ever since then, we've been having sauerkraut with every solid meal. We eat about two small meals during the day and a larger meal for dinner, with about a tablespoon or two of sauerkraut per meal. This amounts to a lot of sauerkraut.

My sauerkraut making method is something I fell into all on my own. Most recipes call for pounding the cabbage. However, I am way too lazy for that, and I like my sauerkraut really crunchy. I found that if you use fresh cabbage, and mix and scrunch them up with the salt and fermenting cultures and then let them sit for a bit, they release plenty of liquid. I also like to cut up the cabbage by hand, much like someone would cut up lettuce for shredded lettuce salad. The pieces stay very crunchy, even though I usually let the sauerkraut ferment for over a week at room temperature.

Here's my sauerkraut recipe:
http://www.wholetraditions.com/recipes/117-sauerkraut

The jar and pyrex that I use for weighing down the cabbage are listed here:
http://www.wholetraditions.com/what-sara-uses/9-fermentation-supplies

The only thing I've been doing differently lately is to use one extra medium cabbage or use two large cabbages instead of three medium. This fills up my gallon jar about 2/3 to 3/4 full, leaving enough headroom for the weight and for the liquid to rise as the ferment gets going. It yields about three packed quarts of sauerkraut. I also like to throw extra juice from a previous batch of sauerkraut on the top. This ensures that my sauerkraut stays submerged even if anaerobic activity causes it to rise, and everything stays mold free and crunchy. If I haven't mentioned this already, the crunch is very important to me! I also often forget my ferment or am too lazy to pack it away, so my sauerkraut ends up going for more like 8 to 10 days at room temperature.

I find myself making sauerkraut about once a month. I usually use at least one red cabbage. Red cabbage is crunchier, and using a red cabbage makes it easier to tell when the sauerkraut is done. You can see from the pictures that when I start the sauerkraut (last photo), you can easily distinguish the green cabbage from the red, but as it ferments, it turns into one homogenous bright purple/red/hot pink color (shade depends on how many red cabbages I use). The end product (first photo) is really attractive and appealing and makes a lovely adornment on the dinner plate.

Cucumbers Galore! and Making Lacto-fermented Pickles

2009-08-14T23:43:00.019-04:00

Our cucumber plants are now in full production and we can barely keep up with eating them. We pick about two to three cucumbers a day. We have a large cucumber salad every night made by tossing together peeled, deseeded and diced cucumbers, sauerkraut, tomatoes, olive oil, and salt. We are also adding cucumbers to our morning vegetable juice. Even then, we just can't keep up.

Last week, I went outside after skipping just one day of cucumber picking and noticed several large green cucumbers on the vines. I also picked two of the heirloom cucumbers. There were several more on the vines that looked like they would be ready in the next couple of days, so I decided to make pickles.

Since I haven't made pickles before, I looked on the web for some recipes. However, I couldn't find any recipes for real lacto-fermented pickles, so I adapted the recipes I found for dill pickles that are normally pickled in vinegar. I ended up with 4 quarts of cucumber spears packed into two quart sized and one half gallon sized jars. Here's what I added per quart:

Enough cucumber spears to fully pack the jar
2 cloves garlic, cut in half
1 large sprig dried dill
1 tbsp kefir whey
1 tbsp yogurt whey
couple tsps of sauerkraut juice
1 tbsp sea salt
Spring water to fill the jar

I shook up the jars really good, and then making sure all the cucumber was submerged, let them sit at room temperature for 3 days. I was really proud of myself because everything that went into the pickles except for the water and salt was sourced locally. Even the dill, which I got from the CSA a few weeks back and air dried to preserve it.

By the third day, the brine was cloudy and the jars were fizzing and bubbly with probiotic goodness. I put them in the fridge for two days before we tasted them. My husband and I each tried just a bite, since we are still introducing the fermented foods slowly and didn't want to cause too much die off. My husband's reaction was: "MMMMMM! Tastes like a pickle!" (He loves pickles.) I thought it tasted just like a pickle, but much milder. I haven't ever tasted a real lacto-fermented pickle before and this was sour but not with that harsh edgy sourness of the vinegar pickles. I missed the bold taste of conventional pickles a little bit, and I think next time I will try to add more garlic, salt, and dill to make it a bit more strong tasting.

Update: These pickles got better as they matured in the fridge. After the initial ferment, I would keep them in the fridge for three to four weeks before eating them. I no longer think I need extra salt or dill, although I'll probably add extra garlic.

Lemon Cucumbers

2009-08-05T11:09:00.004-04:00

In mid-May, I planted eight cucumber plants, eventually thinning them to four plants -- two heirloom lemon cucumber plants and two of the "normal" looking straight eight cucumber plants. I've never tasted a lemon cucumber before and was excited to grow something so I can taste it for the first time.

All four cucumber plants grew into giant monstrosities, but the hybrid straight eights had much larger leaves and set fruit a lot earlier. So I was harvesting the straight eights almost a whole week before the lemon cucumbers were ready.

The first thing I noticed about the lemon cucumbers were that they are pale greenish white and stay that way until they grow to full size, at which time they start to turn a beautiful golden yellow. About three weeks ago, I picked my first lemon cucumber, and it was a true beauty. I could not believe that something this perfect and beautiful was created by nature and planted by me, and furthermore, could not understand why by just the looks alone, this was not a more popular cucumber. Perhaps it lacks in taste?

That night, we cut up the lemon cucumber and had our first taste. It was absolutely delicious! It had all the flavor of a really good, fresh cucumber, but the best feature of all was its texture. It has the crispness of a really good apple.

Weeks later, I can now give a better comparison of the heirloom lemon cucumbers versus the straight eight cucumbers. While the straight eights are prone to becoming bitter when not watered regularly or with temperature fluxes, the lemon cucumbers have stayed flavorful and deliciously consistent despite dry soil conditions. The lemon cucumbers win hands down over the straight eights in crispness. The straight eights do produce a lot more cucumbers and the cucumbers are larger in volume so if volume is what you're looking for and you're not too picky about consistency, I guess you may pick the straight eight variety. But in my opinion, the lemon cucumbers are well worth it and I long for more land so I can put in several of these lovely heirlooms next year. It may catch up in production anyways, since after I picked two lemon cucumbers today, I noticed another 12 or so on the vines that look like they will be ready very soon!

Still Here!

2009-07-23T23:38:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to post a quick note to say I'm still alive and well. We had a nasty bought of die off recently and what with my crazy work schedule the last couple of weeks, I can barely keep my head up enough to get the GAPS cooking load done and get some sleep. Gee, and so many things I want to write about! I've got some nice sauerkraut pics coming up and will post it as soon as things ease up.

First CSA Pickup of the Season

2009-06-04T11:52:00.008-04:00

We just got our first CSA pickup from Potomac Vegetable Farms (PVF) yesterday. This is the second year we've signed up for a CSA with PVF, and we just love it. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and is a great way to create a relationship with a local farmer. You pay in advance for a produce subscription, and the farmer plans their growing season based on the number of subscriptions. You receive a share of freshly picked, in season produce weekly for anywhere from 8 to over 20 weeks during the summer and/or fall season. Some farms also offer shares of other products such as flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, and meats. It is a great way to eat local and in season. Also, supporting your local farmer ensures biodiversity, which is so lacking in the mega farms growing masses of corn and other monocrops which require extensive spraying of chemicals and fertilizer to generate a moderate yield.

We signed up for both a summer and a fall share, so our CSA will extend for 24 weeks (16 weeks of summer and 8 weeks of fall produce), from the beginning of June through early November. We live only ten minutes from PVF East so we pick up our share straight from the vienna farm location. Many farms will deliver to various drop sites in addition to pickup at their farm. If you live anywhere in the DC Metro or NoVA area, chances are good that there is a CSA farm or CSA drop site near you. I have compiled a list of local CSAs, listed by location and it can be viewed in the group pages of the Meetup Group that I co-organize.

As CSAs are becoming more and more popular, the shares are filling up very quickly as soon as reservations are open. PVF East usually fills up in a matter of days once registration opens up in February. And no wonder. You can't get any better quality than a CSA. The quality and freshness is akin to growing your own produce. Many CSA farmers use sustainable farming methods, enriching the land through natural means and will harvest the produce shares the day before, sometimes hours before the shares are distributed.

Our first CSA pickup of the season included: garlic scapes, sweet onion, Mei Qing Choy, kale, baby salad greens, oregano, basil, escarole, curly endive, lettuce, a wee cabbage, and a pint of strawberries.

For dinner last night, we had Polyface pork chops, sauteed Mei Qing Choy with garlic scapes and a large salad of fresh baby greens. Life has never been so good. :-)

Sprouting Seedlings and Strawberries

2009-05-27T23:46:00.007-04:00

Our strawberries are starting to ripen. We are getting about four ripe strawberries per day which seems piddly, but I thought it was understandable since I have only three planter's worth. However, I realized today that we are losing a lot of our harvest to birds and other critters. When we went to pick our strawberries today, three of the ripest berries had bite marks out of them. I also found a strawberry on top of my fence. It looks like something started to take off with it and dropped it. I'm not sure how many we've lost, but even a couple a day is too many, so I draped the bird netting over the strawberry plants that I've been planning to use for the goumi and lingonberries.

The bush beans, cucumbers, snow peas, and komatsuna that I planted two weeks ago have all sprouted. The frequent rains helped me a lot in keeping the seedlings moist, and the strong sun we've been getting in between the rains really helped the seedlings grow quite a bit.

I planted the snow peas an inch apart and I thinned them down to two to three inches apart a couple of days ago. The little pea sprouts were delicious in our dinner salad and a welcomed change of pace. I thinned the komatsuna tonight, and it looks like the slugs really like them, since they were full of holes. Nevertheless, the young seedlings were a tasty addition to our dinner salad.

The lingonberry plants arrived about two weeks ago, and they went into the ground in a patch that I had mixed well with peat moss. Longonberries like soil high in organic material and thrive in an acid soil. I have a large bag of pine mulch that I will be placing around the plants to help lower the PH.

The goumi plant arrived today from Burnt Ridge Nursery and I was pleasantly surprised. It is a lot taller than I expected and the packaging was innovative and efficient. The creeping raspberry plants were very very tiny and I felt vastly overpriced for the size. They do not look well, but I read that they are very easy to grow and thrive in just about any soil condition, so we shall see. We set the goumi and the creeping raspberries outside since I did not want them to get spoiled in a controlled temperature environment. Hopefully, we'll be free of die off this weekend so we can plant them!

GAPS/SCD Bread

2009-05-25T22:59:00.013-04:00

I made nut bread this weekend. We ran out over a week ago, and we've been too fatigued to get caught up. We're definitely having more good days than bad these days, but we had another wave of die off this past week. So I let a few things slip. Nut bread and apple sauce were a couple of things that we let go. We missed the bread sorely. When it's toasted and topped with apple sauce, it tastes like apple pie, so it is often the yummy ending to our dinners.

Mid-last week, a few days sans nut bread, I woke up in the middle of the night with a severe cramp in my left calf. This occurred once more within the next few days, and my calf was very sore whenever I was walking around. Muscle spasms like this are a sign of magnesium deficiency, and nuts are a wonderful natural whole food source of magnesium. My body was missing the bread too.

Even though the die off has not abated, I decided enough was enough. It is time to make the nut bread. My nut bread recipe is based on many of the GAPS and SCD bread recipes out there, except brazil nuts make up about half of the nuts in my recipe. Brazil nuts are a rich source of selenium, which is an antioxidant that prevents cellular damage from free radicals and help regulate thyroid function. Selenium deficiency is often associated with gastrointestinal disorders, so chances are good that someone with gut dysbiosis may have a selenium deficiency. Selenium also attracts and binds with mercury, which is an added benefit since Todd is still detoxing from the mercury in the amalgams that were removed a couple of years ago.

Here's my routine for making nut bread:

Preheat oven and line the bottom of two loaf pans with wax paper. Grease pans with lard.
Process almonds in food processor until it resembles a fine corn meal. Add brazil nuts and process until it turns into a thick nut paste. Remove a pyrex bowl's worth of nut paste.
Add eggs, melted ghee and lard, and salt. Blend until well mixed.
Add back the nut paste I set aside and eggs one at a time until all the nut paste is used up and the mixture is between cake batter and bread dough in consistency.
Scoop batter into the pans and bake.

The full recipe is on my recipe site under Almond Brazil Nut Bread.

After the loaves have completely cooled, I cut them into thirds and wrap each section in wax paper, plastic wrap, and then aluminum foil. One section is set aside in the fridge and the rest go into the deep freeze. The sections thaw quickly, so I take them out of the freezer when we finish the last piece of the current section. Todd and I share a slice a day, so each section lasts a few days. Nuts are very nutrient dense, and it doesn't take a whole lot for you to get the benefits of the vast array of nutrients in nuts. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride says that nuts and fruits should make up no more than 15% of your diet, and I know that nuts are especially high in energy, so it's further reasoning to ration our nut bread.

The whole cooking process takes about an hour and a half, but then there's cleanup of the food processor, cooling the bread, and packaging it to put away. It's a lengthy process, but it's worth it. Just one day after eating the bread, all pain in my calf is completely gone.

Early Home Grown Veggies

2009-04-28T19:35:00.007-04:00

I still haven't sown those seeds I meant to sow three weeks ago, and I feel a bit guilty at losing some of the precious early planting days, especially since the weather's been very mild. However, I've made good headway and I think I'm finally done planning where I will be putting what. The indoor grow light is all set up and I plan to do successive planting and starting certain transplant friendly veggies indoors.

Meanwhile, in the last three weeks, my strawberry plants have been taking on a lot of new green growth. The areas of brown leaves have been replaced with large strawberry plants. Yesterday, I noticed some white amongst the plants and I thought some paper or debris had fallen in the plants. This morning when I looked outside, there were many more white spots. My strawberry plants were growing flowers!
When I went outside, I was pleased to see that the lettuce I put in the EarthBox three weeks ago were getting quite big and yummy looking. I plan on harvesting some of the outer leaves and tasting them over the next few days. They are a butter-head variety and they've still got a little ways to go before they become large compact heads.

Making Broth for GAPS

2009-04-25T21:32:00.009-04:00

I made broth today. I make a large pot of broth every week in a 12 quart pot, using about half of it to make a week's worth of soup. This week I opted for chicken broth, after having gotten a fresh supply of chicken backs from Polyface.

Before GAPS, my husband and I were on the Nourishing Traditions/WAP diet, so broth has long been a ritual in our house. However, broth is even more emphasized on GAPS. Gelatin, found in the tendons and connective tissues of animals that is released when making broth, is a magical substance that helps heal and seal the gut, supporting the body's recovery from leaky gut and other issues associated with gut dysbiosis.

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's broth method differs a bit from the NT/WAP broth. The NT/WAP broth starts with mainly leftover bones from roasts and suggests a long simmer, up to a day or two to release all of the minerals. Dr. NCM recommends that you start with raw bones with meat, like a whole chicken, with a short simmer of about three hours. Why the huge difference? I think again here, the key is the gelatin.

Most experienced broth makers know that a well gelled broth, if left to cook too long, will lose the gelatin components. There's actually an ideal window of cooking time when the broth will gel strongly, and if it's cooked for too short a time, the connective tissues will not have had time to dissolve into the broth as gelatin; if it's cooked for too long a time, the gelatin is denatured and broken down by the heat.

Dr, NCM's broth methods it seems, optimizes the amount of gelatin that will be consumed. When I first started GAPS, it took a bit of trial and error before I arrived at the same conclusion as Dr. NCM on the ideal time frame for broth to get the largest amount of gelatin. And while beef bones will still have a lot of soft tissues connected to them, most of the chicken's tendons and gelatin components are removed with the chicken when it is deboned, accounting for why Dr. NCM recommends meat broth.

I like alternating between chicken, beef, and pork broth for a change of pace. The soup of the week is usually the same flavor as the broth of the week since I take the meat and connective tissues from making broth in making the soup. Here's my broth routine:

Fill 12 quart stock pot 4/5 full of raw meaty chicken, pork, or beef bones. For chicken, I use either a whole chicken plus necks and feet, or chicken backs plus some whole legs and thighs and feet. For pork, I use neck bones or backbones plus two feet. For beef, I use beef marrow and other miscellaneous bones plus two meaty soup bones.
If using feet, I clean them before adding them to the stock pot. Chicken feet need to be peeled completely and have the calluses or other icky looking dark parts cut off. If the outer layer of yellowish skin is especially stuck on the chicken feet, I boil some water to scald it for half a minute or so before peeling. Pig's feet I always scald and rescrape since they usually don't come completely scraped clean. Any excess hair and skin is removed before I add it to the stock pot.
Cover broth with spring water or filtered water, leaving about 2 to 3 inches at the top of the stock pot. Add 1 to 2 tbsps of salt to the water. Turn heat on medium and slowly bring to a boil. Since I often start off with semi-frozen bones, this can take up to an hour.
When it starts to boil, turn heat down to maintain a very slow simmer. I've found that broths where I manage to avoid a hard boil turn out the best in flavor. Skim the scum off the top of the broth with a spoon. The scum is formed as a by product of cooking proteins which is why you often don't get any scum if you start off with only bones from roasted chicken.
After skimming, I add my fresh or dry herbs. To chicken broth, I add a tbsp of black peppercorns. To beef broth, I add a couple of bay leaves and black peppercorns. To pork broth, I add a generous amount of peeled and sliced ginger.
Simmer broth for about two hours. Take out any meaty bones and debone the meat, returning the bones to the broth. I like to dice up my chicken and beef but tend to keep my pork in large chunks for making soup.
Add veggies like onions, celery, and/or carrots. We save trimmings from when we cut up onions and veggies for making other dishes in freezer bags and I usually dump a full ziplock bag size worth into the broth. Sometimes I'll add a fresh chopped carrot or stalk of celery.
Return broth to a simmer. This takes about 1/2 to 1 hour. After the broth returns to a simmer, simmer for an additional hour before turning off the heat. For beef broth, I sometimes let it go for two hours.
Let the broth cool for an hour or so. I then carefully pour the broth through the steamer basket of a second 12 quart stock pot. The steamer basket collects and strains all of the bones. Allow the broth to drip for about 1/2 hour.
This is the fun part! This is where I sort through the bones to separate the soft tissues from the bones and meat. I reserve the soft tissues in a large pyrex bowl and also any marrow I find. Sometimes, I'll have to pound the bone against a cutting board to get the marrow out. I discard the bones and also any spent meat that I find at this stage. When I go to make soup, I blend the soft tissues and marrow in a food processor before adding it to the soup.
I reserve about 10 to 15 cups of the broth for soup, straining the broth through a fine mesh strainer directly into an 8 quart stock pot. At this stage, the pot and any meat and tissues reserved for the soup can be placed into the fridge and saved until I'm ready to make the soup. Sometimes I store it up to two days in the fridge before getting to make the soup. The remaining broth is poured into 7 cup Pyrex containers, which I also strain through the fine mesh strainer in the process. I usually end up with 3 to 4 containers of broth after I set aside the broth for making soup. We drink soup or broth with every meal, so we normally consume roughly half of a Pyrex container of broth a day.

Broth making is a long process, but we have noticed a difference between our appetite and digestion when we miss broth or soup. We have successfully kept up with the broth and soups for the last few months. It's the one thing we will keep up with when other things fall apart during a spell of die off. Also after you've done it a few times, you learn to time it properly so you can maximize your time and do other things in between steps.

Spring Has Sprung! Time to Revive the Backyard Garden!

2009-04-10T20:42:00.008-04:00

All the cherry blossoms have been reminding me that I am late in my seedstarting. Last spring, I planted three planter's worth of strawberries and they will be ready for harvest this June. I also had an herb box outside and planted some cucumbers, beets, and mustard greens. The mustard greens did well, but I planted the cucumbers and beets too late in the season for them to mature before the first frost.

I have always loved gardening. I'm not one for ornamental plants; however, I love growing my own food. It makes me feel connected to the earth and always revives appreciation for the food we eat. Large agriculture businesses, mono-cropping, and feed lots have artificially reduced the price of food to a point where people do not think twice about throwing out food. For example, enough food is wasted on an average cruise that I'm sure is enough to feed a small village for a month. Although we have not participated in the conventional food chain in quite some time, growing some of my own produce instills new appreciation in me for the local farmers that grow my food. Growing food properly by building soil fertility and without chemicals take some nurturing and love.

In past years, I used self-watering planters and pots to grow tomatoes and various greens. Planting the strawberries last year brought forth this yearning that has been brewing inside me for some time. No longer was I happy with a few planter's worth of produce. I longed for more. Our backyard is small and mostly paved, but there was a strip about a foot wide along the entire length of the left side of the yard that continues a bit to the back yard door, forming an L shape. The right side has a ten inch by three and a half foot strip. It's not much, but it was still dirt.

So last fall, we dug out all the established ornamental plants. Well actually, we didn't really dig out the back ourselves. At the time, we were six months into full GAPS, and were experiencing regular die off. So after putting off the digging for over a month and not feeling our stamina get any better, we hired our handyman's assistant to dig it out.

A week ago, I ordered some seeds from Seeds of Change. I chose mostly heirloom varieties, also concentrating on varieties that may be cold hardy, slow to bolt, and quick to mature. We joined a CSA again this year, so I concentrated on vegetables we normally consume a lot of. My order consisted of: Oxheart Carrot, Celebration Celery, Oregon Giant Snow Pea, Tendergreen Bush Bean, Komatsuna Asian greens, Val D'Orge lettuce, and Red Deer Tongue lettuce.

Today, I went grocery shopping at Whole Foods and found that the store is already stocking herb plants and little seedlings. I couldn't resist, so I picked up a small pot each of thyme and mint, and a mini-pallet of six lettuce seedlings. Since it was fairly warm out, I went ahead and stuck the lettuce seedlings outside in my Earth Box that had housed the beets the year before. While I was at it, I also cleaned out the dead leaves from my strawberry plants, which are already beginning to show much new green growth. And so debuts my backyard garden this year. :-)

Woodland Creatures Like Grassfed Trash

2009-04-06T17:40:00.008-04:00

I took out the trash this morning. Even though we cook all our meals and snacks, we never have that much trash since we recycle conscientiously and keep two compost bins in our backyard where we toss all our green waste. However, the day after broth day, taking out the trash is a must. If left in the trash too long, the spent bones from making broth tend to ripen and the smell permeates the entire house pretty quickly.

It appears the local animals like the day after broth day as well. An hour after I set out the trash, I stepped outside my door to leave for work, and the bag had a couple of good sized holes in it and the chicken broth bones were strewn all over the grass. I rebagged the trash and cleaned up what I could and hoped the garbage truck would come before animals came for more pastured chicken bones.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Throwing out trash for us is always tricky. After animals ransacked our trash a few times, I started to take out the trash the morning it is collected rather than the night before. But it appears the neighborhood animals have caught on. They are quick to hone into what is good to eat. The record was the time I left for work ten minutes after I set out the trash and I caught a large crow pecking at bones already strewn about the bag. It appears that we have very high valued trash. I look up and down the street and my neighbors never seem to have this problem. After all, the animals know grassfed and pastured trash from conventional trash. ;-)

Salted Duck Eggs

2009-04-02T20:30:00.013-04:00

I tested the salted duck eggs today. I started them on 2/25 and normally they go for a month, but since February was a short month, and the eggs were especially large, I let them go for a few days longer.

Salted duck eggs are traditional Chinese fare, entirely versatile. It can be eaten by itself as an accompaniment to congee, or you can use it boiled and cut up in soups, or mixed raw with ground pork to make Chinese steamed pork pattie. A popular Filipino salad features hard boiled salted duck eggs mixed with ripe tomatoes and red onions. The yolk, which turns hard, is usually dark orange and deliciously oily, and is often used in pastries like moon cakes or put into zongzi, a Chinese dumpling like food made of glutinous/sticky rice stuffed with either a salty or sweet filling.

Making salted duck eggs is easy. You can see my recipe for salted duck eggs in my recipes collection. Basically you take fresh duck eggs and keep them submerged in brine water for a month. Voila. Then you cook them up whichever way the recipe calls for them.

Sourcing duck eggs isn't so easy. Some farmer's market vendors carry them, but since vendors that carry duck eggs are so few and far between and they are so highly prized amongst gourmet chefs, they are often out of stock. Whole Foods carries duck eggs along with other exotic eggs in the produce area, but I found them not so fresh; about half of them went rotten on me when I tried making salted duck eggs. They were well within the use by date, but they seemed old, even older than the batch of eggs that I ordered once that got lost in the mail for three weeks.

This time, I found a farmer in Virginia carrying pastured duck eggs that will ship to me. I try to eat as local as possible, but I was craving salted duck eggs and my steamed pork pattie, so I ordered two dozen. I spent almost two hours looking for a farm close by that had it in stock, and felt better at least knowing that it was being shipped within Virginia.

Once salted, the duck eggs can keep in the fridge for a few months. I usually just keep them in the brine and use them up after two months, although they get really really salty. The saltiness isn't harsh though if you use natural sea salt, and it lends great flavor especially if you're using it in cooking other dishes.

This batch of duck eggs turned out really good. Of course, I used them in the Chinese pork pattie recipe. The yolks are our favorite and the small bites embedded at the top of the pork pattie left us longing for more. I think next time, I will use two yolks instead.

Green Power

2009-03-30T17:41:00.005-04:00

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.

Die Off on GAPs

2009-03-26T23:02:00.006-04:00

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.

Buying meat in bulk

2009-03-18T19:42:00.015-04:00

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.

Cooking on GAPs/SCD

2009-03-16T13:17:00.009-04:00

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.

Welcome to my blog!

2009-03-14T19:43:00.002-04:00

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.