Notes from GAPSlandia

Week 1-

- Waaahhh! Whu..? Why? How? Who? Huh?

Where's my brain? Why can't I think or string together words to form a ... word thing?

Why is my kitchen covered in grease? All the time?

When am I supposed to have time to do anything except food prep? Taking 1/2 an hour out to go pick up my farm eggs threw me into a panic. I don't have time for this! I need to be home peeling squash and starting broth cooking.

Soup. Endless soup. Hooray for the garlic that goes in every bowl. At least there's some flavor there.

How am I supposed to get everything done? And then do the schooling, the laundry, the shopping, the.... it's too much. I'm exhausted. I need to go lie down.

Boiled meat is gross.

I miss wine. And cheese. And chocolate.


Week 2-

Aaaaaah - who drove a spike through my head? Is this what die-off feels like? Because if I have to feel like this much longer, I'll pick the die option.

I worry that the nightly sauna my bathroom has with the detox bath for 4 people routine is damaging the finish on my cabinets.

We got to have stuffed bell peppers. Didn't realize they couldn't be green, so had to wait for them to ripen. It was a race between ripen or mold. Mold only won on one. I forgot to put water in the bottom of the pan, so the peppers came out a bit crisp. Oh, it feels so cheaty to eat food with crunch, but we relished the cheat.

My son now has the title of garlic boy. We go through so much garlic (and it only took me a week to figure this out) that it's much more convenient and tidier to peel at least 2 heads at a time and store them in a glass jar in the refrigerator. It's my son's job to cut the hard end off (practice those knife skills!) and peel them. He has to do this about every other day.

I'm so tired of thinking about food. I have to be constantly thinking at least 3 meals ahead to stay on top of shopping, defrosting, prepping, and cooking. Nothing is quick and easy. It might be easy to throw everything into a crock pot, but it's at least 4 hours from being done.

If one more person asks me a question that starts with "When can we have..", I'll smack them!

We talk about poop a lot.

Avocados are my new best friend.

Week 3-

More cheats. I'm sneaking in 1/2 bottle of Kombucha per day. I've let it ferment for almost a month, so I'm pretty sure there's not residual sugar in there. It tastes pretty much like drinking apple cider vinegar, but it's a change, so it's delicious.

Figured out that the cheap butternut squash from Trader Joe's is cheap because it's not organic. And I thought that was OK, but apparently it's not. So I've been carefully fixing all this squash soup and pancakes with pesticide squash. Crap. And what do I do with the rest of the squash that I've carefully stock-piled?

My inner 3 year old looked at a bowl of soup and had a tantrum. No soup, no soup!

My husband got asked at work if he had cancer. I bought him a new belt.

My son gets excited about carrot juice. My new juicer has a very high toy factor.

Week 4-

The flu hits. My daughter says, "I thought it would be impossible to get sick on this diet!" Apparently not. We're knocked on our butts for a week and regress to lots of soups. Many because I don't have the energy to make anything more ambitious. Plus chewing sound like too much effort.

My kitchen is always a disaster zone. I can barely make room on the counter to work.

I've taken to keeping a giant Tupperware bowl on the counter for all the kitchen scraps. It's lots easier than using the dainty bin we have. Giant squash shells and chunky beef bones fit in there more conveniently, plus I don't have to buy bags to go in it.

My farm box started up. Trying a new vendor was not a good plan. It's 85% fruit. Uh, yeah, can't have that. In my last box I got lots of apples, pears, and tangerines, parsnips (not GAPS legal), leeks, and kale. I'm giving away the tangerines and parsnips, making apple/pear sauce with the rest of the fruit, leaving me with a really pricey bunch of kale and 3 leeks.

I made a chicken salad with kimchi, sauerkraut, and avocado. People eating normal food probably think this sounds weird and/or repulsive. We loved it. My daughter was thrilled to have something to take to school that didn't involve a thermos.

Applesauce made it onto the menu this week. I served us each about 2 Tbsp. It was so sweet, it was like eating a candy bar. I'm almost afraid to put fruit back on the menu. Will we revert to being sugar fiends?

If you wonder where I've gone or what I'm up to these days, hopefully this answers your questions. Off to the store to buy more veggies!