GAPS journey: Day 10 & 11 Intro

Stage: we are in stage 3! This makes a huge difference because we can make a meal or two out of something that is not a soup.  Although we still love the soups, and I find myself craving those above other things now.  Crazy cool.

What we ate: 
Day 10:

• Scrambled Eggs (in ghee) (1-2 each, increasing from just 1 per person the 2 days before) with zuchinni and squash boiled in salted chicken broth (veggies scooped out and eating with eggs, broth in mugs to drink).  Salt and Pepper to taste.
• Spaghetti Soup (at bottom of that post), and everyone else tried some of our first batch of 24 hour fermented homemade raw milk yogurt (instructions below).  I forgot to try some.  Tomorrow!
• Butternut squash and Peeled/diced/boiled apple as snacks (at different times of the day)
• Hamburger Soup (seriously, we eat this a lot and it really isn't getting old!)
• CHEAT (or failure...) ALERT!  Little man's 3rd birthday party is coming up this weekend, and we are compromising on our introduction phases for his party day.  We are experimenting with completely GAPS legal cakes, so we aren't falling off GAPS, just falling off intro in the moment.  Trying this one (LOVE THIS WEBSITE!!) and this one (must make modifications like honey instead of agave and coconut oil instead of whatever she lists and not using the icing recipe).  I must admit I ate more than 'tastes' of these...
• Chamomile tea before bed

Day 11:

• exact same breakfast as Day 10 above.  I don't care, we're all enjoying it! 
• Leftover spaghetti soup with 1-2 tsp SK
• ginger lemon tea with honey (this always wakes me up post-lunch/putting boys down for naps)
• Boys and I snacked on butternut squash with coconut oil and a drizzle of honey and some cooked apples with about 1 tbsp of our yogurt.  
• Round steak that was cooked all day in the crock pot just covered with water and 1 tsp salt.  That was cooked a couple days ago.  Today I cooked about 4-5 onions (medium-small) (i halved and kind of thinly sliced them) in coconut oil and ghee (sauteed for a few minutes, then covered and cooked for about 20 minutes, stirring every now and then).  Then I added some of the round steak and broke it up (it falls apart after being in the crock pot all day) and mixed it all together.  So basically, steak and onions.  We all LOVED it.  Also ate a simple broccoli soup.  Just put some frozen organic broccoli florets in a pot and put chicken broth in there, boiled and salted!  We all love that, too.  
• Confession: more of the carrot cake and cupcakes I made yesterday to see how they are the day after to see if I can make them the day before for little man's birthday.  

How we Felt: 
We are feeling SO good!  We have both noticed our boys' digestion improving!  Little man's behavior has drastically improved over the past week.  Hubs and I were talking about it last night and how he is being so much better with baby brother and is responding to correction and our talks so much better.  I know that anything good that comes out of us, including him, is the work of the Lord.  So I praise God for work He is doing in our little guy...who's not so little these days.  Anyway, it is very encouraging, and I don't know if it is simply his age and behavior changing or if the diet has anything to do with it, but it has corresponded so strongly with GAPS that we can't excuse it simply as his age.  It is God working in him, in his heart and also in his mind through this diet.  In the mind area, we are both thinking much more clearly, not getting tired as easily, feeling more motivated and able to think about and tackle all that needs to be done (not to say I don't have many moments still where I feel overwhelmed by all we have going on right now, even just outside of GAPS).  

The big point is this: we are feeling so much better physically and especially mentally, it seems completely silly to go back to eating some of the things we used to eat that, even though in the moment were enjoyable, wreaked havoc on our bodies and minds.  It is very easy to look back and see how much damage those foods did to us - not only in tiredness, weight gain or lack of loss, and harming our bodies for disease in the future, but also how much it was doing to us mentally.  And this is less than 2 weeks in.  I can't wait to see what we are like months from now!  

And if anyone is really worried about having dinner with us or eating out with us ever again, it will happen!  I promise :-).  


Recipes: 
Yogurt!  I simply bought some whole milk plain Stonyfield yogurt and used about 1 Tbsp of it per cup of milk.  Mix them together gently in a jar (I wouldn't do larger than a quart) and put a lid on it.  We put ours in our dehydrator set at 95*-ish for 24 hours.  I think you can do temperatures around 100 or 105, but I read that 95* (i think) is what Dr. NCM (author of GAPS) says you should do.  It turned out runnier than store bought (I have read that raw milk yogurt will always be much more runny), but the boys all enjoyed it!