GAPS journey: Day 3 & 4 Intro

(Yes, this is a week late!  I am going to combine our first week days to catch up!)

Day 3...ah, that was a Monday, but it actually went pretty well! Praise God! However, I was going back and forth between thinking 'I am crazy, absolutely crazy, for trying something like this...why are we doing this?!' and feeling so motivated and committed. 

Sweet hubby is helping me stay focused on not giving into my severe Starbucks longings.  I am crazy, but I think about it so often!  I think on day 3 we were still feeling cravings and wanting to eat other stuff, but at least for me, the cravings were a little bit less (just a little!). Now on to the details:


We decided to move into Stage 2 (yep, only on day 3!).  We kind of felt like we were going to go crazy and the boys needed more than I could get in them with just the soup (probably because I just didn't have enough on hand, but that's a preparation mistake).  So we decided to go ahead and do 1 raw egg yolk per person for this day.  Raw egg yolk is healing to the gut and is so packed with wonderful nutrition.  Make sure you get eggs from a great source...pastured (truly out on pasture, eating bugs and grass, playing in sunshine, getting exercise) and also make sure that they are not fed chicken feed that is made with GMO items like corn and soy.  Just ask the farmer!  We get ours at the best farm ever.

What we ate:
Day 3:

•  Leftover blended zucchini/squash soup with raw EGG YOLK!  
• Eggplant soup with some salted boiled chicken
• What I called "Spaghetti Soup" (recipe at bottom) so as to entice little mister 3 yr old to eat it when he was kind of getting tired of hearing 'come eat your soup' AGAIN. 
• The boys downed a ton of cold (I can't handle eating soups cold but they both LOVED this cold) butternut squash soup (recipe at bottom) for an afternoon snack.  They had tried it a few days before warm, and neither of them cared for it too much, although they both love butternut squash.  So, either their taste buds were already changing, they were desperately hungry, or they liked it better cold.  No matter what, I was excited!

Day 4:

• Leftover squash soup and eggplant soup with raw egg yolk and some chicken
• the beloved Hamburger Soup 
• This Chicken Cauliflower Cilantro Soup (we added some diced red bell pepper we had on hand as well)
• I made the carrot mousse cake from GAPS guide.  We all enjoyed this a lot (maybe because I used about 5 tbsp of honey?!) and it was a lifesaver that day for us all about to go crazy.  I know the coconut wasn't intro legal, but it really helped us get over a big hill in this stage. 

How we felt:
We were feeling well - nourished with the food, handling eating soups for every meal better than we had imagined.  The boys were handling it well, too!  I was still thinking about coffee a LOT and how much I would thoroughly enjoy a good mocha or iced caramel machiatto...We still were feeling some die-off and who knows what the boys were feeling!  I think overall we started to feel a little better about this whole thing once we got to add egg yolks in to the soup.  We have all handled the egg yolk well - it's been very nice knowing the boys (and us, too) are getting the nutrition of the egg yolks.  At this point, I was still feeling kind of off and on about this whole thing, but I was still very committed to it.  

Recipes:  
Spaghetti soup Recipe:  saute 1 chopped onion and brown 1 lb ground beef in fat and enough chicken broth to make moist.  Add remaining 1 quart of chicken broth and about 3/4-1 cup of pureed/strained tomatoes (in glass jars at many stores), bring to a boil.  Add 1/2 of a spaghetti squash (or you could do the whole thing if you want) that has been baked in the oven and shredded out.  Simmer until squash is desired tenderness, add 1-2 chopped zucchini and simmer until cooked.  I added salt, basil, oregano, thyme, and parsley and finished it off with a few cloves of chopped garlic.  We all really enjoy this!  I think it would be great with just salt if you want to avoid herbs at this stage of intro, or you could just do 1 herb to simplify it.  


  Butternut Squash soup Recipe:  I can't remember where I found this recipe and what I omitted to make it suitable for intro, so here's what I did.  1/2 c onion, 3/4 c carrot, diced and cooked in coconut oil.  Add 3 c chicken stock, about 1 small/medium or 1/2 large butternut squash (I slice mine in half, scoop out seeds, bake cut side down in a 9x13 dish with 1 inch of water for about 45 min+, depending on size, then just scoop out the squash into the soup pot!), and salt and pepper to taste.  Then just puree it - either in blender in batches or I used my stick blender (but I put mine in a mixing bowl to puree because my stick blender will scratch my enameled pots).  It was pretty good, and the littles LOVED it.