Plugging Away on GAPS

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.

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Fermented Eggplant (YUM!)

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.

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Sauerkraut

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.

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GAPS/SCD Bread

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.

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