MmmmMeatloaf...

We made a delicious meatloaf last night that the kids are still raving about. They are actually begging me to please make it again tonight! Now, again, it's just meatloaf. We haven't had it for a long while. Usually meatloaf has bread in it and topped with a ketchup mixture. Bread and ketchup is out so we made up a recipe that we really liked.

I took about 4 pounds of hamburger, grated 2 large carrots, chopped half of a large onion, 5 eggs, about 1 1/2 TBSP cilantro, 1 1/2 TBSP parsley, a couple large pinches Celtic sea salt, minced 4 cloves garlic and mixed well. For the top I took 1 can Muir Glen (organic) tomato paste, added about 4 TBSP chopped tomato, added garlic powder, oregano, basil and a bit of salt and smoothed it on top of the meatloaf. I baked it at 375 for about an hour and watched them gobble it up. We served it with steamed cabbage and green beans with olive oil poured on it. The topping was good and the cilantro, parsley and garlic really added good flavor to the meatloaf.

It made two large loaf pans. I would personally have loved a large, baked potato with it but that is out for now. We continue to see good results from this diet. The little girls' legs are getting so smooth and my older girls' arms are still smooth. My oldest continues to be free of stomach aches. My son with health problems has grown since starting this diet! My husband loves the diet and wants us to continue on. He feels better and is very satisfied with the meals. I am so glad. I am missing toast with peanut butter and rhubarb jam, raisin bran and enchiladas with sour cream.

Too bad...

I just discovered from another blog that our yogurt maker doesn't keep a temp of 110 degrees and that isn't OK when you make yogurt on this diet. It probably isn't OK for anyone because higher than 110 degrees and the culture is no good so what is the purpose of eating it. I guess it's like eating most of the food on the Standard American Diet, it just fills you. We have to get a dimmer switch for that outlet and dim the switch some to get the maker to keep between 100-110 degrees. Our other yogurt maker gets the yogurt up to 118 degrees. Wow! I just didn't know. All these weeks and we probably weren't getting much benefit from the yogurt. What a lot of work for nothing! It's all a learning process.

Snack...a good beginning

Raw almonds raisins, celery, and natural peanut butter with only salt added. This has become a common snack around here. A handful of almonds and raisins or add apples or celery and peanut butter and you have a very nutritious snack that doesn't include crackers or cookies. When anyone asks, "What can I do to change my eating habits?", I usually say that changing snacks is the first step we did. We quit eating the crackers, cookies or bread and replaced it with fruit or nuts. It is the smallest and easiest meal to begin with if you are planning to overhaul your eating habits. Then I would look at breakfast. Breakfast and snacks are the two meals that I see tend to be the most unhealthy. As we have discovered with most of us having a Candida (yeast) problem, breads, grains and sugar keep the problems going by feeding the bad bacteria in your gut until it is out of control and causing trouble. I have to add also that we have discovered Candida overgrowth can affect your whole well-being. It can cause digestive problems, other bacteria to grow too much, your insulin balance to be off because you crave sugar and bread stuff when you have Candida taking control.

We continue on the full-GAPS diet and enjoy more variety. We had a birthday party where most of us did "cheat" and eat a hot dog on a bun and then we had graduations yesterday where everyone had one sandwich. Eating a small thing didn't seem to affect anyone but I know if they eat too much somewhere they could get sick. Technically, we should not have done that. According to the GAPs protocol it interferes with healing. I am looking at healing the gut for everyone but also know that this process has already improved our digestive health and have seen such immediate results with all three girls who had eczema having cleared up.

Full Gaps Diet

We are officially of the intro diet and on the full-GAPs Diet again. We had been on it a few weeks before the intro. Salads with tuna, black olives, tomatoes and avocados, almonds for snacks, raw fruit and veggies. My kids are so happy to have bananas in their yogurt, watermelon and cantaloupe for snacks! I have been increasing the amount of juicing we are doing. In the morning we have been having a carrot, apple, beet concoction (liver cleansing) and in the evening we had cabbage, apple, celery (kidney cleansing). My 6 year old likes the evening juice and wanted more. I was surprised at how sweet it tasted and I liked it very well too. Juicing is an excellent way to get a lot of nutrients without having to eat a lot of things. Juicing on an empty stomach also is a great way to absorb a lot of nutrients. I've recently heard radio ads and have read this in several books that 90% of multi-vitamins that you take over-the-counter do not get absorbed. So, for every $100 you spend, $90 is down the toilet. Most multi-vitamins are made out of synthetic materials and your body doesn't recognize them for what they are intended to be for you. Herbals are really the best as they are taken from the whole plant and juicing is another way to get vitamins and essential minerals in their whole form. Happy eating!

Simple things...

OK, so having a hamburger and veggies isn't too thrilling but all my life I have looked for things that have lots of flavor. I loved the green Doritos with the burst of spiciness they gave. I love even more to dip them in baked beans (not homemade) because of the wonderful flavor. I love mayo, ketchup, honey mustard, salt, seasoning salt, sauces that have great flavor. Since changing around the way we eat, we don't use condiments (unless homemade and I haven't gotten around to that yet) and I have to find ways to eat my food that will give them some flavor or I will cheat big time on this. The first time I eat something outside the diet I will be lost forever I fear. So, today I fried up some hamburger and added onion to the pan. I boiled some Broccoli Normandy from Sam's Club. They added yellow carrots to the mix now. It makes it look nice. I salted and peppered the hamburger added the onions and sliced avocado on top. Perfect taste sensation! I added some olive oil to the veggies after cooking and salted lightly. Just the right combination to help me feel satisfied. I only have 5 kids home today and one is a baby so she didn't eat this but 2 of the other kids followed what I did and liked it. Change is good our doctor is always saying.

Day 10 and 11

Day 11
Lemon juice in water
Carrot, apple, cabbage and asparagus juice (freshly juiced)
Breakfast: fried eggs and yogurt with honey.
Lunch: Steak soup made from beef broth, onion, garlic, salt, green beans, carrots and peas. It was tasty and I am not too thrilled with eating soup anymore. Only had one complaint from the youngest and that was the carrots. We added lettuce, cucumber and avocado salad. We are officially all the way on Stage 5!

Supper will be a stew made from the same broth but adding broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and cabbage.
Snack tonight will be raw apple. (Stage 6)

We are nearing the end of the intro diet.
Day 10 of the intro diet

Breakfast: hard boiled egg and yogurt with honey
Lunch: Another stir fry (I love them) I made three of them. I don't cook Isaac's food in teflon coated pans so his had to be in stainless steel. I have this great wok fry pan but it is coated. I'll have to look for one that isn't but for now I will use this one. I started with chicken. (This was a bit challenging to find)
Let me stray a little bit here: The ideal food for the GAPS Diet is organic and pasture-fed animals. This is a huge challenge for a family with 10 people so while I buy organic as much as I can, I do compromise on this. I was looking for chicken breasts in the store yesterday so we could come home and cut it right up and cook it. I only have frozen whole chickens and didn't plan on making chicken stir fry so decided to buy some. Well, Wal-mart only sells chicken with a 12 percent solution added. This solution contains chicken broth. Any company can add broth to their food and not label what is in the broth. This is a huge problem for me. I now buy different tuna because the cheap, regular tuna has broth in it. It probably has MSG. Huge problem for our one son and huge problem because I just don't want to eat MSG. I went to the grocery store in town and again ran into the same problem but they did have chicken breasts that said no preservatives, no additives, all-natural. You can check this out for truth by looking at the sodium content. The chicken I bought had 45 mg of sodium and the chicken with solution added had 200 mg of sodium. I find this wrong because at first glance the chicken says "All natural" and it just isn't true. Who wants this stuff in their chicken anyway. If mass numbers of people called these companies would they stop???? I just don't know.

OK, I stir fried the chicken in a bit of ghee and then added minced garlic and onions (lots of them to one of the pans). One pan ended up being chicken, onion, mushroom, zucchini, carrots and green beans. The one for our son in the stainless steel pan had everything plus asparagus but all cooked in cold-pressed coconut oil. The other one had chicken, carrots and green beans with a smidgen of onion and zucchini. It was a huge hit and we had a bowl leftover for Dad's lunch and everyone got 2nds and some got thirds. We used a lot of veggies for it and about 4 pounds of chicken breasts.

For "supper" we had steamed apples and peas and yogurt. One child put the apples on high thinking someone else would come watch it. The other child didn't realize I said to cook this and they ended up scorched. They all ate this with honey anyway and I guess all turned out well. I was trying to plant strawberries before dark.

Chicken stir fry with snow peas, carrots, onion, mushroom

This would be wonderful on rice or noodles but alas, it's not allowed. It was delicious. I just could have eated 4 times this. This is from Friday. I got my camera card to work.