GAPS {Stage 2 Information} Notes, Recipes, and Ideas

I know it's been a while since I posted Stage 1 information and the first post on Stage 2, but I wanted to go ahead and finish the Stage 2 information by posting notes, recipes, and ideas.  This will not be as long as Stage 1's post like this, as with each stage you build on the previous stage and it gets easier in regards to meal planning and ideas.  

Here's my first post on Stage 2.  


Here are my posts for Stage 1. (Part 1) (Part 2)

Now on to my Stage 2 thoughts...


Notes: 

• Stick to anything Stage 1, but add fresh herbs like parsley, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, basil, and oregano.  I know there are more to try adding, but those are my favorites.  We also added cinnamon in when making squash bars.   
• You want to include a probiotic food with every meal - homemade 24 hr yogurt, sauerkraut juice.  You build on the amounts you ended stage 1 with and gradually increase (increase in small amounts and do the increases every few days as tolerated).   
• You can move more into meals made up of meats and vegetables with broth on the side.  Broth is still incredibly essential at this point and should be had with every single meal.  We stuck mainly to soups still because we prefer that over drinking broth separately.  
• You can make stewed recipes like the ones on my recipe tab under stage 2.  You can also do something like this with ground beef or beef stew meat (look more under ideas below).  
• Overall, this is very simple and similar to stage 1, but adding in raw egg yolks ( in soups) then soft boiled eggs, fresh herbs (I also used dried in soups), and ghee.  Add ghee into soups. 

Recipes: 

• All Recipes under Stage 1 and Stage 2 in my Recipes tab.  
• Recipes and Ideas in my Stage 1 post, but add an herb you like, egg yolk, soft boiled egg, and ghee as appropriate.  
• Squash bars .  These aren't super sweet or tasty, but they are pleasant, and it is wonderful to have a baked texture.  Our boys LOVED them for snacks, which definitely helped me keep them satisfied!
• Beef Casserole: This makes meals so wonderful for a change from soup.  Gently brown ground beef in fat like tallow or lard and enough broth to keep moist.  Once cooked, salt to taste.  You can then layer in a baking dish with vegetables of your choice.  Zucchini, peas and onions, tomatoes, celery root, carrots... anything that sounds good with beef to you.  Then simply top with well steamed or boiled cauliflower that has been pureed (I use my stick blender or you can use a blender or food processor), and you can even mix in more animal fat or ghee, once you know you handle it well.  Bake in the oven around 325 or 350 until the vegetables are cooked, usually about 20-30 minutes.  You can customize this to use anything you like!   My husband and our boys enjoyed this meal so very much after days of just soups.  You can also add raw egg yolk into it on your plate and mix it all together to make it sort of creamy! 
• I am not listing all possible recipes like I did with Stage 1, because this stage is so similar to Stage 1, and so all my other ideas are on the Stage 1 posts :-). 

Ideas:

• Build on all meat and vegetable ideas from Stage 1. 
• Other Ideas (to hopefully make life more exciting): 
• Sauces: (these don't have amounts because you can just make it to taste.  Use less or more broth depending on how thick you want it to be.)
• Tomato Basil Sauce: Simmer some chicken or beef broth with tomato paste or puree and lots of fresh basil leaves.  Salt to taste, then puree to make a yummy tomato basil sauce.  Add ghee if tolerated for such a yummy treat.  
• Lemon Basil Sauce: Simmer some chicken broth with fresh basil leaves.  You could also add crushed garlic!  Salt to taste, add lemon juice to taste.  Puree and pour over chicken or fish. 
• Rosemary Garlic Sauce: Simmer broth of choice with a stalk of fresh rosemary.  Remove stalk of rosemary, add crushed garlic, cover and turn heat off.  After about 5-10 minutes (to let the garlic sit), salt to taste, puree if desired to get the garlic blended in (not necessary) and pour over beef or chicken. 
• Thyme Sauce: Simmer broth of choice with sprigs of fresh thyme (or strips leaves from stems).  Can add garlic to this as well.  Remove sprigs (or if you just used the leaves, leave them in) and puree if desired.  I think this would be great also with some lemon juice in it.  Again, only necessary if you want to get the leaves of thyme and pieces of garlic blended really well.  Pour over meat.
• Onion Gravy: Simmer broth of choice with sliced or chopped onions (can also gently saute onions in tallow or lard or chicken fat first and then simmer with broth) until onions are very soft.  Can add garlic.  Puree well, and salt and pepper to taste.  Pour over meat. Can add onions to any of the above sauces to make them thicker like a gravy, but only if you like onion flavor with those sauces.  :-) 
• Mushroom Gravy: Simmer broth with mushrooms, salt to taste, and serve over meat and veggies that go well with mushrooms.  Could also make the onion gravy and then simmer mushrooms in that and serve.  mmmmm.  
• Vegetables
• Mashed Cauliflower!:  Boil or steam cauliflower well.  Puree well.  You can add broth and animal fat of your choice to taste.  Salt to taste.  Salt is important with this!  Once ghee is well tolerated, add that for super yumminess!  
• Wish I had more...basically just well steamed or boiled veggies, but you can do that with one of the above sauces as you like.  Just make sure you have broth with your meals!  Vegetables with fat and salt are great snacks as well.  
• Vegetable soups still :-).  But I do love those!  Especially topped with homemade yogurt if able.  (all my vegetable soup ideas here with the Stage 1, part 2 post)
• Eggs: Soft boiled eggs, and we added hard boiled eggs once we knew we tolerated all egg in soup well.  This helped us a lot with hunger and snacks, but make sure you are doing well with eggs before adding hard boiled in.  Hard boiled eggs are not a recommended part of Stage 2 per GAPS protocol, BUT added them in after doing well with eggs in soups.  Stage 3 introduces scrambled eggs, so we felt it would work for us to add in hard boiled eggs kind of 'in between' Stage 2 and 3.  Here's my personal favorite way to hard boil eggs. 

I hope that helps somewhat and gives ideas.  It's always helpful to hear other people's ideas to build your own ideas off of! 

Again, keep in mind we moved through intro easily and fairly quickly.  So you will have to make modifications if you aren't tolerating certain foods well.  But I still hope this helps in some way.  If nothing else, I know it will help our family, as I know at some point in the future we will go back and do intro again for further healing and detoxification.