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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Cucumbers Galore! and Making Lacto-fermented Pickles

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.

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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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