Fermented Veggie Headstart

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I'm getting all my ducks in a row. I am hoping to get started on the GAPS diet after Saturday so I am getting ready as much as I can. I made two quarts of lacto-fermented vegetable mixes on Monday. I can't wait until I can try them. I didn't measure or follow a recipe but they are coming along great. I have been reading about lacto-fermentation enough that I felt comfortable with my process. I just shredded carrots, ginger, garlic, and onion in the food processor and mushed (technical term) it with my hands with added Celtic sea salt. I then packed into my quart mason jar and put the lid on tight. The other jar consists of cabbage, radish, turnip and tiny bit of carrot mixture and salt. It worked out great and is fermenting away in my office covered with a folded sheet.

I knew I would need lacto-fermented veggies for the GAPS diet so I wanted to get those going ahead of time. I think they will make a lot of juice which is what we want in the beginning. I think I will make some other mixes after Saturday. I keep saying Saturday because I will be driving the two hours to Whole Foods (the closest source of organic produce and butter) and also picking up my order of pastured meat and eggs at the farmer's market. (The irony of which you can't possibly appreciate unless you could see how many pastures full of cows and farms I pass in that two hour drive.)

Speaking of irony, I am currently paying for 20 acres of pine trees out in the country. We originally bought this land to have some room out in the country to do whatever we wished. Now that I am pushing to do what I always wanted (raise chickens and goats and cows and vegetables, you know, farm) I find out my husband has no intention of being a farmer (or farmer's husband). I never hid my intentions from him (in fact, I was very excited about it from the very beginning) so I don't know why he never shared his ideas about what we would do with the land. Apparently, he now wants to spend the next 5 - 10 years watching pine trees grow so we will get a "good price" for them when we cut them. We may be approaching an impasse.

His idea is to buy pastured beef, chicken, eggs, and organic veggies from other farms. Forever. My idea is to start small by trying to raise enough to feed our family at first. Once we get the hang of it we can expand our operation to raise enough to sell. I don't know if it will ever make me rich, but I do know that I want to guarantee my family access to quality foods. If you read the news, you can probably see the wisdom of trying to secure these foods for our family. Not to mention that the farm that I want to buy eggs from said that she won't have enough to meet demand. We have wonderful climate here in Alabama and a shortage of family truck farms (especially organic). Alabama farmers bought the whole "better farming through chemicals" method the county agents sold in a big way.

This GAPS diet is going to be more complicated than it looks on paper (and not because of the cooking). The pastured eggs, beef, pork, and organic vegetables are going to become too expensive. I can already feel the pressure, but I don't cave to pressure so well since I became ill. I have two teenagers that I fully intend to get well so that they can start their adult lives without the burden of ill health hanging over them.

Personal Heroes:

1. Sandor Ellix Katz is a fearless citizen of this earth sharing knowledge about the link between fermented foods and health. His book, Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods started me on the path toward GAPS.
2. Joel Salatin is a farmer for the future of food in this country. He is spreading the word about sustainable organic farming as a profitable business. Check out his book,You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise if you have any inclination toward growing your own food.
3. Eliot Coleman has inspired me to try my hand at growing food throughout the year. After all, if he can do it in Maine under a blanket of snow, I should be able to manage something in Alabama (it probably won't even freeze but maybe twice all winter here). His book, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, is very informative even for a backyard gardener. He has a new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses, that I can't wait to read.
   

GAPS in knowledge

Image by NatalieMaynor via Flickr

My children and I are starting the GAPS Diet soon. We are already starting to get everything together that we will need. I am anxiously awaiting the book that I ordered and I will order the supplements (probiotics, cod liver oil, butter oil) tomorrow. If you haven't heard of the GAPS diet then you most likely don't have serious digestive problems. We do.

I've read many articles and books and expert opinions about nutrition and digestive health. So many people are so sure that they know what constitutes the best diet for everyone. I have learned a lot in the last two years but I still have so many questions. I have decided to do this: Use the ideas that seem the most logical to me and trust what our bodies tell us as we proceed. We have already eliminated all foods that we seem to have trouble tolerating. I feel that we are no longer harming our bodies (by eating foods we can't tolerate), but we aren't actively healing either. The GAPS diet is designed to help us heal us do that.

I have assimilated a lot of information in a short period and have formed the following opinions:

• Americans are killing ourselves with food additives and we don't even understand the depth of the problem yet.
• Traditional foods and healthy fats are very important for longterm health.
• I'm not even sure we should be eating wheat at all, much less in the worthless refined and enriched form that we gulp down in America.
• GMO corn, soy, and canola are dangerous and should have been studied over generations before being allowed into our food supply.
• We shouldn't be eating vegetables that insects are too smart to eat. (example: GMOs that produce their own insecticide.)
• Meat is only bad for the environment when it is raised on feed lots in huge numbers. There are smaller farms all over this country that manage to raise pastured beef without harm to the environment.
• If you cook everything from scratch there is no need to restrict calories from sugar. Dessert is so labor intensive that there is no way you are going to "have something sweet" at every meal.
• Purified Water Enhanced with Minerals for Taste is the next big scheme by those gems that run the food industry. The "minerals" in this case just happen to be a desiccant, baking soda and a laxative. Can you conceive of a reason to add those three things to bottled water if you sell bottled water?
• The same family and friends that rant about how the government is screwing the "little guy" in this country won't even entertain the idea that food companies are putting harmful additives in our food for profit while the FDA sits by and does nothing.
• The new food safety "crackdown" is only going to make it harder for small farms to compete with the huge agribusinesses. When have you ever heard of pastured beef, eggs, or organic vegetables causing food-borne illness? Is it a coincidence that Tom Vilsack is the Secretary of Agriculture?

Remember, I said these are my opinions, not documented facts. Most of these ideas will never be proven simply because it would profit no big company to have them proven. I have been accused of being extreme in my views on diet and nutrition but I just use logic to try to regain health. By cutting out all prepared foods, I am hoping to "first do no harm". By taking in nutrients in the form of bone broth and cod liver oil I aim to increase the amount of nutrition I am able to absorb from my food. And finally, by ingesting high quality probiotics I hope to heal my gut flora so that I can properly digest food. It makes perfect sense to me.