This weekend

Unsure of the source of this. If it is yours, please let me know!

I wanted to give an update on this weekend. On Friday, I had to go back to the doctor. I've been sick since December 30 with back to back viral and bacterial infections. No surprise given my current gut health and all the other issues I've faced in the last three years.

One thing I was asked was if I drank enough water in the day. Well, I have no idea. I drink at least 1 liter of water a day, and then I supplement with other drinks. Orange juice, Tea, Milk, etc.  Instead of more medication,  I was given oral sublingual Vitamin D to take, as my body is doing what it needs to do, though it is very uncomfortable.

I found this image this weekend while looking into recipes to make to eat. And it's true. Water is SO important for our daily lives.

On Saturday, I slept until after noon. We decided  after I spent an hour making more Fruit Salad to make another Food Wishes recipe: Garlic Parm Hot Wings. I decided to add the side of Spiced Roasted Broccoli. I have never had either before, and I must say both are triple star for me, and definitely will want to do them again. For Chef John's recipe, we substituted Hazelnut Flour in equal amounts called for breadcrumbs, and we used drumsticks instead of wings. Honestly? I could not tell a difference. Were we to do it again for anyone nut allergic, we would simply leave that off of the recipe.  Both of these would work well for GAPS Stages 5 through the Full GAPS Diet, depending on whatever changes you want to make.

The children tried the chicken, and one child ate two drumsticks. One ate half of that, but ate a rather sizable bowl of broccoli. Both had some fruit salad as dessert and one insisted that my snack (Fruit salad) was his... how dare I eat his bowl. (how funny of him!)

In the mean time, I was really good at following my doctor's orders of every hour sublingual vitamin D. . . even during my Google+ Hangouts.

 For dinner, we had Chinese. I had my usual salad and some spring rolls. I know - not GAPS, but I'd been good all day long and I really needed some kind of comfort food. Our local Chinese Restaurant has rice wrappers and will alter their recipe for our needs (no onions, leeks or peppers) and use a dedicated wok and oil for only their spring rolls.  MOST restaurants do not do this, but will make theirs with a wheat based dough or fry it in recycled oil.




On Sunday, we had a repeat of fruit salad for breakfast. I decided that lunch should be rather easy, so we'd make some ground beef/lamb with gravy and mushrooms with a side of German Cucumber Salad and some carrots and peas boiled in beef bone broth.

German Cucumber Salad, J. Stahl's Recipe

• 4 Peeled Cucumbers, preferably organic
  (or two foot long EU Cucumbers)
• dill
• salt and pepper to taste
• mustard (we are still finishing our pantry stock of mustard)
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Milk Kefir

1. Peel your cucumbers and slice them thinly on a mandolin or either using your food processor's Mandolin Slicing attachment.
2.  Add your cucumbers to a glass dish, splash with a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. 
3. Mix well.
4. Add about a teaspoon of mustard  and mix well
5. Add about a cup of kefir and your dill, salt and pepper generously.
6. Mix well and taste the salad. If it is not balanced enough, add a little more mustard or kefir to taste. It should be a slightly thin yoghurt type sauce with a tangy punch. 
7. Place in the fridge for about an hour before serving. Enjoy!

 I used some of our older canned peas and carrots, which simply have salted water in them. I drained those and used about 4 cups of bone broth to boil them in for about 20 minutes, before I took them off the hob and added about 4TBS of milk kefir to the broth and stirred. This is of course not acceptable if you are keeping Kosher, as meat and dairy are not to be mixed.  You could however make a vegetable broth instead and use the kefir in that - or you could simply skip that step if you are having this side dish with a Fleischig meal.  Our guts sorely need the probiotics AND the healthy bone broth.

The gravy recipe that I used was bone broth mixed with leftover duck fat from our duck recipe last week. It says "5 Minute Gravy" - THEY LIED. I was reminded of my new favorite movie, Julie & Julia.


Which then reminded me of my new favorite book by Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

... I’d grown overconfident, so the fact that I’d never in my life  used a pastry blender or a rolling pin didn’t stop me from going right  ahead and whisking together some flour, sugar, and salt, cutting in  two sticks of butter, adding some water, and then kneading it all  together to form two disks that looked exactly like the picture on page  438, thank you very much. Then I wrapped my pâte brisée in plastic  and put it in the refrigerator while I combined my (slightly browning) apples with sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon, ginger, and salt.  A taste test proved I was on the right track.
“Assemble the pie,” commanded the directions.
No problem.
I dusted the counter with flour, placed the first pâte brisée on the  surface, took out my rolling pin, and began my slow break from sanity...
Rachel Held Evans: My “Biblical” Thanksgiving…


"It was only Gravy", I proceeded to tell myself, while it boiled away for over 30 minutes getting only slightly thicker than it was before. By the time the two cups of broth had boiled down and additional duck fat was added (YUM by the way!), I had been standing at the stove for an agonizing 40 minutes waiting on my broth to become "thick" like the recipe said it would. Again, they must not have taken into account what happens when you're the type of person who does not use gelatin (a pork by-product here) and can't find her agar-agar.  Oh well. Lesson learned. Next time I will be sure to include apple peels and boil my bone stock longer, and I'll have a more gel-like consistency when it comes time to repeat the recipe, no gelatin needed.



I have to admit I wanted to take photos of the kitchen to show the level of destruction we had in there, but I'm afraid it's a little too soon for the blog... what do you think? Leave a comment if you've not yet made the foray into GAPS and wonder what happens when you are baking and cooking your way through three meals daily in a small kitchen. I'll be more than happy to show you, as you've already seen how clean our kitchen can be. (hehe)


I wish you all a very happy and healthy Monday. xoxox

First GAPS-Foodie Post

Yesterday I was very pleased to find the Youtube Channel for the "Food Wishes" blog. Being the crazy foodie that I can tend to be, I watched about ten videos, added him to my subscriptions and decided I am going to sit down and cook tomorrow after going grocery shopping. See, our grocery stores and other shops are not open on Sunday. Amazon.de is open, but they don't deliver locally.

I imagined that I would be quite pleased with myself and that my children would be very excited about the wonderful new food choices on their plate. My inner Sheldon Cooper was very excited. It was as if I had received my very own life size Spock cardboard stand-up character.

Yes, I was that excited about trying some really yummy food. In my mind, my kids were not going to be running around like Sheldon Cooper on no sleep, trying to escape the grasp of Leonard Hofstaedter while in a children's ball pit.

My children had other ideas. While we have no ball pit, that's kind of the sounds I heard from the kitchen while my husband was trying to get them to sit and eat. "I want to eat on the floor by the couch!" - "I don't want to eat at all.." followed by "Catch me!"

That's all right though! My youngest ate half of his meat, half of his carrots, tried the bean casserole and peeked over at our servings of Brussels sprouts. My eldest took a couple bites of his meat, ate half of his carrots and only poked at his bean casserole. "Bleh! I'm finished!"

My husband on the other hand, OH MY WORD, that is one of the best duck recipes I have ever had, the absolute most wonderful Brussels sprouts I have ever had, some of the yummiest (would have been better with bone broth in it!) carrots, and an actually very delicious casserole I would not say no to having again.

Without further ado, I present our Food Porn of the night:

The Child's Portioned Plate

The Adult Plates - sorry, the Sprouts got a little burnt while I was distracted

Close up of the Adult Plate.

In the end, both adults had cleared their plates, and the children's plates will be wrapped up and eaten tomorrow.

What in the world did I cook? Well, I used my own recipe of carrots, which consists of putting water in a pot on medium heat, peeling and slicing five thick carrots, putting a heaping teaspoon of honey (your choice which kind!) in the pot of water, some salt and pepper and letting it boil until the carrots are JUST soft. Not crunchy, but not soggy - about like steamed carrots.

Below are the videos that gave me my inspiration for the rest of the meal, and the link to Chef John's blog posts on how to make these, if you are anything like me and need to have a printed copy for your cookbook!

Stove-Top Sous Vide Duck

Garlic & Blue Cheese Green Bean Almondine

Duck Fat Roasted Brussels Sprouts

The only changes I made to the Garlic & Blue Cheese Green Bean Almondine was that I am allergic to Blue Cheese - so I used Feta cheese. Since my husband was not keen on the sheep cheese variety, he chose a Balkan Cow's milk based feta. Also, I used smaller garlic knobs and since I am still sensitive to garlic, I used only two very small-small (smaller than the palm of my hand) organic ones.

The Sous Vide Duck was a little labor intensive, but now that we know what temperature our stove will go down to on low (150°F) ... we won't have to babysit it as much next time.

Hopefully next time I will take our sprouts out of the oven a little faster. While slightly burnt, they are a definite repeat in this household.

From the look of things, this would nicely fit into the FULL GAPS diet.

Happy GAPS-y eating out there!