What To Do With Ten Pounds of Tomatoes: Make Super Awesome Ketchup

We get the bulk of our produce from a local organic farm through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Once a week, we go to the farm and pick up our share of veggies, fruits, and berries. We get different things each week, depending on what's in season and what's available. I love it. We've gotten things we never would've tried otherwise, and before we started this diet, the desire to eat things before they were wasted got us to eat more vegetables.

This week, I was picking out tomatoes and one of the workers explained that the pretty red tomatoes were the ones available for CSA members, not the less-pretty heirloom tomatoes. She said the heirlooms were being boxed up to be sold for making sauce. They were the blemished, the scarred, the rejects. They were $15 for 10 pounds.

Lemon(less) Herb Chicken

I've been making lemon herb chicken thighs in the crock pot every few weeks. I do a big batch and freeze the extra. They reheat in the oven really, really well. I thought they might get dry, but they don't. I planned on making a bunch tonight, because I'll be out of town for about a week and I know James likes them and will eat them while I'm gone. The only issue was, I forgot to get a lemon when I went grocery shopping. I tweaked a few things, and you know what? They are super yummy anyway. And of course, they are SCD legal. So I thought I'd share.

Finding SCD Recipes

I've been thinking about starting to do the whole "meal planning" thing. As opposed to what I normally do, which is take out whatever meat I think will thaw fastest and throw together some veggies. Clearly, I need some planning. I need some kind of routine, so I will remember to pull meat out of the freezer well before I'm wanting to cook it. Also, some of our veggies from the CSA have died in the fridge, and that's just not acceptable to me. The whole point is to eat local, fresh, in-season produce.

The Meat of the Matter

I've watched tons of documentaries on food. Food and medicine; what's wrong with the standard American diet; what happened to family farms; why diets don't work...I can't get enough. It's a topic that's near and dear to my heart (and family). These documentaries inspired me to start juicing and join a local community supported agriculture (CSA) program, which provides us with fresh, organically grown vegetables on a weekly basis.

Is it Hard? Are You Crazy?

When people ask about this new diet we're doing, and hear us talk about it, they usually look at us with wide eyes full of disbelief. "Isn't that hard?" they ask.

Spicy Turkey Sausage

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted! We've been so busy. James has been sticking to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for three weeks now. All of my food preparation has paid off. I've been keeping at least sausage and soup in the freezer, and we've only run out twice. So whatever else is going on, there is something James can heat and eat if he gets hungry.

Homemade Chicken Soup

I'm up late tonight catching up on laundry, freezing chicken soup, and prepping zucchini to be cooked tomorrow. According to the phases from SCD Lifestyle, zucchini is allowed in the phase after the introductory phase, but it must be peeled, seeded, and cooked. The introductory phase lasts two to five days. I want to make sure we have some foods for James to eat once the introductory phase is over, so I'm getting a head start on some of them.

Pork Sausage and Carrots Three Ways

What a busy few weeks it has been! Shelby turned one, and we had a fantastic little party with lots of family from out of town. The week leading up to the party was hectic, full to the brim with party preparations on top of all the things that keep us busy every day. This week, mostly at night after Shelby goes to sleep, I've been preparing SCD legal foods to freeze. The plan is, once we restart the diet, there will be plenty of quick, heat-and-eat foods that are legal. This time, James will not get Hulk Smash Hungry.

The Spiralizer: Making Grain-Free "Pasta"

I've been testing recipes found on the Interwebs lately. I am convinced that we can make foods comparable to the pastas, breads, and other grain-filled comfort foods we love but can't eat on this diet. Luckily, the Paleo diet has been around for a while now, and blogs are full of SCD legal (or almost legal and tweakable) recipes.

Die-Off Syndrome: The Herxheimer Response

As explained in detail in the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet, the intestines of people with gastrointestinal issues, such as inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's, celiac disease, and ulcerative colitis, are overgrown with bacteria and yeast. These organisms typically live in the large intestine, but given the right conditions, they overpopulate the large intestine and migrate to the small intestine and, in severe cases, the stomach. (Please see the book for a more detailed description of this process.)

All of these bacteria are eating the starchy, sugary foods your damaged intestines can't digest, releasing waste products and toxins that further damage your intestines. The bacteria contain toxins in their cell walls that are released when they die. These toxins make you sick. When many bacteria die at once, they all release toxins at the same time. Taking antibiotics or antifungal medication can cause die-off, as can changing your diet to eliminate the foods these bacteria eat, effectively starving them.

A New Plan

As my last post made apparent, we were not as adequately prepared for this journey as I thought we were. The last couple of days have made that fact even more clear. We left the house for too long a time without appropriate snacks. By the time James got Hulk SMASH Hungry, the only close place for food was Dairy Queen. Needless to say, they do not have anything SCD legal on their menu. By the time we got home 20 minutes later, James was already feeling the pains of a poor food choice, and those pains lasted well into today. And again today, a similar scenario, but with Taco Time and a less dramatic attack.

Week One: We Survived!

It's been a very interesting week. It turns out that if your kitchen is the size of a postage stamp and already full of dirty dishes, your best bet is to clean the kitchen before starting the intro diet. Ah, hindsight.

We felt so miserable for the first couple of days, the dishes just kept stacking up. Then we ran out of soup, and nobody had enough energy to clean things enough to make another big pot. When a pot was made, nobody remembered to put the soup in the fridge, so it sat out and nobody wanted to eat it.

A Look on the Bright Side

Just in case my last post about die-off syndrome put anyone off the idea of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, please take a moment to look at the reviews for the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet on Amazon. There are 340 reviews, and 276 (more than 80 percent) are five stars.

Yes, these first few days might be rough, but so many people have achieved what would be called a "miracle cure" if it were a pill instead of a diet.

Days 1 and 2 of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet

We've been on the introductory diet for two whole days now. And wow. Just wow.

I read about "die-off syndrome." I even experienced it a little bit a few years ago when I had a candida overgrowth (which was treated with fungicides, not diet, and probably didn't go away completely). I thought it would be really rough for James, but a walk in the park for me, because I'm not the one with the undiagnosed gastrointestinal disease.

I don't think I've ever been more wrong in my life.

Preparing for Day One

Monday, June 4, is the Day We Begin.

Technically today. But I haven't gone to bed yet, so for me, it's tomorrow.

Today (really yesterday), I prepared. I'd already de-gluten-ized the kitchen about a week ago. We haven't bought many SCD-illegal products in the past few weeks, in anticipation of starting the diet. So what did I do today, you ask?

A Brief History: the Events that Brought Us to SCD

It all started in November of 2011.

Well, actually, it probably started long, long before that. Trouble was brewing, undetected, for years before it finally became A Big Problem.

We thought it was a stomach bug, maybe a bad reaction to food. James was sick. Very sick. Convincing James to go see the doctor was very much like convincing a fish not to swim. But, after an entire day, he went. He was admitted to the hospital. The next day, he had what we would come to call an "attack" or "episode," thought to be caused by his gall bladder. Gall bladder-less, he seemed to improve, and was discharged.