Making your own ghee or clarified butter

Following the GAPS protocol for eating means eating more fat than you would typically eat and also forms of fat you may not be familiar with or routinely eating.

One of those forms of fat is ghee. I first learned about ghee from cooking Indian cuisine. I love Indian food and go through periods of obsession with cooking various Indian dishes or learning how to make certain Indian staples. Ghee is one of those staples in Indian cooking and it is easy to make on your own at home. All you really need is a pound of unsalted, and preferably grass-fed butter and either a thick-bottomed saucepan or baking dish. Do not use a non-stick pan for this. You can use either a stainless steel pan or glass or ceramic baking dish.

You can make your ghee either on the stovetop in a pan or in the oven in a baking dish.
I have made it on the stovetop before with a gas stove and now an electric stove.
Simply put the entire pound of butter in the pan and turn on the heat on the lowest possible setting. You can start the heat on medium until the butter completely melts, then turn it down to "warm" or "low."

The butter will first melt down into a liquid or butter fat. It will then begin to turn foamy on top. Skim the foam off the top with a spoon and discard it in the trash or a separate container.

The butter oil will turn a translucent golden-yellow color. You will see a brown crust beginning to collect on the bottom of the pan as the ghee continues to cook. These are the milk solids browning and it is the part of ghee that gives the characteristic nutty-flavor. You don't want this browned component added to your ghee. 

Once the ghee fully cooks, leave the browns on the bottom and pour the golden-yellow liquid fat into a clean glass jar. You will need a pint-size jar to store the ghee. You can use a fine-sieve or cheesecloth over a strainer to pour the ghee through into the jar.

The ghee has been cooked to remove all the milk solids so only the pure milk-fat is left in the finished product. Because the solids have been removed, ghee with not spoil easily and you can leave it out at room temperature for several weeks. This makes it convenient to use for sauteing vegetables or meats. The other benefit of ghee is that it has a higher smoke point than regular butter with the milk solids having been removed. You could use it for stir-frying, drizzling over cooked veggies or meats, sauteing or even frying. It imparts a rich, nutty flavor to the foods cooked with it and if you use good quality organic and grass-fed butter, it also provides more vitamins such as vitamin A and a better Omega-3 profile than conventional butter.

With GAPS meals, add about a tablespoon to any bowl of broth or soup for additional healthy fats in your diet. You can begin adding ghee to your meals on Stage 1 or 2 and it is one of the first oils to begin adding to your meals, before coconut oil and olive oil. I started adding ghee to my bowls of soup this past Tuesday. It makes the soup taste extra creamy and rich. Super delicious. :)

Savory Shamrock Soup (with a pot of gold included)

So today I was at my sister's-in-law house and we were planning to go shopping to look at baby clothes. And just so no one assumes the wrong thing, I am not expecting any baby. I was shopping for a friend's baby. :)

Anyway, I was getting hungrier by the minute (famished really) and we had not left yet. Thankfully, I live right around the corner so I headed over there to make myself a quick bowl of soup. I didn't have any made up already BUT I did have the chicken broth in the refrig and chopped veggies in the freezer. I created this new soup recipe because I wanted something different from what I had been eating and I am getting quite tired of carrots, cauliflower, and yellow squash. I decided to make a green soup and while I was at it, I decided it would be a St. Patrick's theme soup with the festivities less than a week away. I really wish I had taken pictures, but my camera was not available. It looked quite festive for St. Paddy's day with the colors of green, white, and gold as it simmered in the pan.

Here is what I did for the soup:

I put about 2 cups of broth in a saucepan. I added some of my frozen, chopped zucchini, some fresh chopped broccoli florets, about 1/4 of thinly sliced onion, two minced garlic cloves and some sea salt.
I let all the veggies cook in the broth then I decided to go ahead and add an egg yolk to the warm broth. I know it is supposed to be for stage 2 and I planned to start stage 2 tomorrow but I was soooo hungry and needed something filling and quick so I figured jumping half a day ahead wouldn't hurt. :)
I let the egg yolk kind of poach in the broth then I dished it up into a bowl and tried it out. It was really quite good. The combination of veggies was flavorful and satisfying and the egg yolk gave it some extra creaminess and flavor. I also added a bit of fresh avocado toward the end to make it more filling and rich.

2 cups bone broth (chicken, beef, or turkey)
1/2 cup chopped zucchini
1/3-1/2 cup chopped broccoli florets
1/4 onion thinly sliced
2-3 cloves garlic minced
1 egg yolk added toward the end of cooking (pure delicious gold)
Sea salt to taste
Sliced avocado for garnish

Makes 1-2 servings of soup.

Depending on what stage of GAPS you are on, you could adapt it for your needs. Either leave out the avocado or egg yolk to make it compatible with Stage 1, Stage 2, or Stage 3.

Maybe if you tell your kids it will give them super-powers like the Irish, they will be eager to eat it too. ;)

Short-cuts to preparing GAPS meals

Hello to all my fellow GAPS-groupies!

So a brief update on my GAPS journey; there has been a slight delay in my start date. I failed to get enough bone broth made up ahead of time so now I am taking an extra day to make my broth before I *officially* begin. I say, better to have the needed components at hand than be stressing yourself out needlessly just to start on time. And let's be honest. It's pretty much an impossibility to do GAPS without bone broth ready to start chugging all day long. Ahem.

But just because I haven't *officially* started doesn't mean I don't have anything to update with or helpful tips to share with you all.

So today I am sharing one of my tips I have started off doing this past week to be well established in my GAPS routine before I even start.

This past weekend, I spent over an hour on Saturday de-junking my pantry and kitchen cabinets to take out ALL the GAPS "unfriendly" food so I am not tempted by it or give into chowing down on a dark chocolate bar in a moment of weakness after a 12+ hour shift at the hospital with stress cravings through the roof and nothing but bone broth, baked chicken, and cooked broccoli to eat for the evening. Would I do that? Little me? Really?! You better believe it!!!

I am kind of sad at some of the stuff I pulled out to put away as I was really looking forward to eating some red lentils, gluten-free brownie mix, and chai mix I had my family pick up for me at Trader Joe's on their recent excursion to Omaha, NE. Not to mention the completely addictive lentil chips I found on sale a couple weeks back at our neighborhood health food store. Guess it will have to wait 6-8 weeks, or longer depending on how much better I feel and if I want to continue on with GAPS for a new cycle for deeper healing. But I will talk more about that later.

The other thing I did on Saturday was chop up some fresh veggies into medium-diced or small-diced cuts for the freezer. I can pull a bag of veggies out the day before to thaw and then throw it into some broth or soup for several meals throughout the week. I tried to prepare veggies I know are GAPS-approved for the first few stages or some I already had on hand like tomatoes. In total I prepped one and a half onions, three bell peppers, one roma tomato, and one zucchini squash.

I would encourage those of you who are planning to do GAPS in the coming weeks to do the same. Look for veggies that you know are GAPS-approved like winter and summer squashes, broccoli and cauliflower, and bell peppers to chop ahead of time and freeze into plastic freezer bags or BPA-free plastic containers like from Rubbermaid or Tupperware. Then you can pull out a bag the day before to thaw in the fridge and add to soup or broth as you are heating it on the stove. So easy, so much less stressful, and so little thought needed when you are super hungry and ready to tear into a bag of kale chips stuffed at the back of your pantry.

Save yourself some time and energy by prepping your veggies, broth, fermented veggies and some of the meat ahead of time. I will be adding other posts later this week and next about making bone broth and making your own ghee. I already have my pound of grass-fed dairy butter for the ghee, but just haven't gotten around to making it yet. I have made it once and it was super easy. It just took a bit longer than I first thought it would, but you don't have to do much with it while it is cooking.

What short-cuts or time-saving tips have you found for prepping healthy meals whether as part of GAPS or any whole-foods lifestyle? Share in the comments with me and everyone else!

Starting with fermented foods: Sauerkraut

One of the hallmarks that sets GAPS apart from other diets is the abundant and varied use of fermented foods to aid in repopulating the gut (colon) with beneficial bacteria, fungi, and yeast.

I have made just a few of these beneficial foods myself, but I hope to try out and teach others how to make them in the future. This last week I made homemade sauerkraut for the first time.

Let me tell you, it was easy and not so easy. Hehe. What makes it easy is that it only has two ingredients. Yes, two. A head of cabbage, either green or purple, and some sea salt. To make a quart-size jar of sauerkraut you will need a little over a 2-lb. head of cabbage and 4 teaspoons of sea salt. It is best to use unrefined sea salt that is unbleached with no added anti-caking agents or fillers.

What made it tricky was the mixing, massaging and breaking down part as you mix the chopped or sliced cabbage with the salt to create a salty brine for the cabbage to "bathe in" while it ferments. Being that Kansas has cold and very dry winters, my hands take quite the abuse. So with all the little cuts and abrasions on my hands from washing them often (Nursing 101) and the frigid air, I had to find some workable solutions for making this delectable brine.

So here is what you can do and what I did:

1) Find a quart-size plastic kitchen bag and slip it over your hand or one bag on each hand with which you plan to mix the cabbage.
2) Secure around your wrist with a large rubber band.
3) Use the plastic-covered hand to mash, massage, and mix your cabbage in the bowl with sea salt.

You could also use kitchen or food-service gloves for your hands as you mix the cabbage. The kind we had were powdered and I didn't want "glove powder" as part of the ingredients in my sauerkraut.

Here are some photos so you get an idea of how to mix your cabbage with the salt.

Cut the core out of the cabbage

Place the chopped cabbage and salt into a glass bowl

Use your hands, with or without gloves, to massage the cabbage with the salt until it produces a salty brine liquid

The key to a good sauerkraut is making lots of the brine solution to completely cover the cabbage in your fermentation jar. You do not want any of the cabbage exposed to the air above the liquid line as it will tend to mold or dry out. Beneficial yeasts are one thing for sauerkraut, but you don't want mold growing on it. That is not the type of fungus you want in the finished product.

Also, make sure you don't have your cabbage sitting in a place that is too warm. It is best in a dark, cool but not cold area of your kitchen like on the counter away from the oven or refrigerator. Once the sauerkraut has fermented to your desired sourness and length of time you can refrigerate it to stop the fermentation process. It will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

Mine has only been fermenting a few days so I will update once it is complete and I have tasted it. Can't wait to try it out and start adding it to my GAPS plan! There is a method for making sauerkraut in the GAPS book, but you can find a recipe easily online or in many Paleo cookbooks. You can also add other herbs or vegetables like garlic, ginger, carrots, peppers, or onions. There are many variations from other cultures like kimchee from South Korea and beet kvass from Russia.

For this recipe I used the one from the book, Real Food Fermentation by Alex Lewin.

How do you like to make your sauerkraut and what is a "must-have" ingredient for your version?  Share in the comments with everyone.

Welcome to the blog!

Hello and welcome to my blog as I chronicle my healing journey using the GAPS diet and protocol as outlined by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.

To get started I will share a little about myself. I live in the Midwest, south central Kansas, specifically. I grew up here and continue to live here near my family.

I am a practicing registered nurse of over 10 years while mostly working with adult patients in inpatient-hospital settings including women's health, cardiology, and orthopedics and neurology. I am in the process of starting a health-coaching service to assist people with their personal wellness and health goals on an individual and in-depth basis. I will primarily be focusing on helping women and those with digestive ailments.

I decided to begin the GAPS diet to heal my gut after a rather lengthy antibiotic regimen to treat tertiary Lyme disease. In all, I was on one or more oral antibiotics for Lyme disease from January 2012 to April 2014 with some intermittent use during the last year.  I stopped all my antibiotic therapies in Spring 2014 and have been off them since. Now, I continue to have some residual Lyme-related issues like thyroid and hormonal imbalances and some remaining difficulty with sleeping, but most of my major symptoms and Lyme-related complications have been resolved.

I have heard so many things from friends, both online and in my area, who have used the GAPS diet with great success to heal various gut, brain, psychological, and digestive issues. I hope to do the same following the GAPS program for the next 6-8 weeks. I plan to transition to a mostly Paleo diet after going off of GAPS as maintenance for my health.

On this blog I plan to share recipes I have created or tried personally that are GAPS-approved, post photos of my food and fermented food creations, and share my progress, both the successes and setbacks in my healing journey. Feel free to read along and share in the comments about your own experience on the GAPS protocol, dealing with Lyme disease, or other related health matters.

I will not be giving out professional or personal advice on this blog, but please do contact me via email or on Facebook to follow my health coaching page for more information and input into GAPS and healing gut and brain ailments.

Happy reading and healing in your own journey toward better health and well-being!