Ice Cream! Dairy Free and GAPS friendly.

I have desperately missed ice cream. 

Sorbet doesn't do it for me. 

I have enjoyed Coconut Bliss for several years now, but their flavors are a bit limited, and now that I'm on the GAPS diet, I am not supposed to have agave as a sweetener. My boyfriend found a sugar free and lactose free ice cream, but alas, it doesn't say anything about being casein free, and casein is also a problem for many of us with serious GAPS gut issues. I became determined to make my own ice cream, and fantasized about purchasing an ice cream maker for months before finally breaking down and getting one.

These are my first experiments with my ice cream maker. The base ingredients I am using are as follows:


Base ingredients:
1 can light coconut milk
1 can 100% coconut cream (from Trader Joe's)
[you can probably use to cans of normal coconut milk instead of those two above]
1/4-1/2 cup honey
3-5 servings of stevia
1/2 teaspoon sea salt


I've made three different flavors so far:

1. Chai (Banana)
I adapted this recipe from one I found online. It called for cashew butter, which I did not have, so I used bananas. The bananas do impart a moderate flavor, but the chai is so strong that is still a lovely banana-chai recipe.

Additional ingredients:
1/2 cup cashew butter or 1-2 bananas

4 bags of chai tea, or 4 teaspoons of loose chai tea
some fresh ginger
teaspoon vanilla


Instructions:

1. Pour the can of coconut milk into a small sauce pan and heat on medium. Add the chai tea and ginger. Simmer for  a few minutes, whisking frequently.
2. Strain the tea out of the coconut milk, and throw out the tea.
3. Add all remaining ingredients to a blender; mix until creamy. 
4. Place in fridge for 1-2 hours (or overnight) to cool. 
5. Mix in ice cream maker for 20-30 minutes. 
6. Eat immediately or store in freezer.

2. Lemon Basil 

We had some Meyer lemons from my mom's tree and some basil we got for free at the farmer's market.

Additional ingredients:
Juice of 3-6 lemons
Zest of 1-3 lemons
Handful of basil

Instructions:

1. Add a little bit of the lemon juice, lemon zest, and basil at a time. I added the maximum amount listed and it was pretty intense, but good. Some might prefer a more subtle flavor. 
2. Blend everything together. 
3. Place in fridge for 1-2 hours (or overnight) to cool. 
4. Mix in ice cream maker for 20-30 minutes. 
5. Eat immediately or store in freezer.

3. Fruit and Mint

You really can't go wrong with fresh mint and just about any kind of fruit. I had some apricots and strawberries that were on the edge, so I threw them in together. Tastes like a summer day!

Instructions:

1. Combine fruit and mint to taste with base ingredients. 
2. Blend everything together. 
3. Place in fridge for 1-2 hours (or overnight) to cool.  
4. Mix in ice cream maker for 20-30 minutes. 
5. Eat immediately or store in freezer.

I want to make more tea flavors: matcha, earl grey and many more. Different nuts and/or fruits can be used. It's hard to mess it up. The coconut also has a fairly strong flavor, so ingredients that go well with coconut are probably best though. Just add ingredients a little bit at a time in the blender, and get it to the right taste and a nice creamy consistency.  The banana did give the Chai one a better consistency, so I am going to try to think of more banana friendly flavors and also try different flavors with cashew butter, which is more subtle than other nut butters. I also want try it using almond milk with coconut cream, just to mute the coconut a little, but then, it might get weird if there are too many flavors.  Another thing to try - fermented coconut or almond milk. If it's got probiotics, it won't feel so indulgent!

Buen provecho! 

Stuck on Stage 2 (of the GAPS diet)

Breakfast on this beautiful spring morning was a Japanese inspired kale, carrot and ginger soup with an egg poached in it. I also added fermented veggie juice, which always adds a refreshingly tangy dimension, I think. 

I've grown to love the sour flavor of fermented veggies and their juice. My body must know it's good for me! I can already feel good things happening - my gut is activated rather than sluggish.  This is progress!

I did try to move on to stage 3 a few days ago. This was exciting because it introduced "pancakes" made of squash,  eggs and either ground nuts or nut butter. However,  my body reacted badly with intense abdominal pain in more than one organ.  I tried baking the batter instead of frying it but still had gut aches. Alas, the only thing to do is to go back to stage 2 until the pain and inflammation subside.

Stage 2 doesn't add a whole lot more from stage 1: egg yolks, fermented veggies, and ghee. After trying the ghee  I decided to wait to eat it until my constipation is lessened;  dairy can make constipation worse and I'm still worried about having a serious dairy intolerance or even a straight-up allergy.  I did decide to add the white of the egg, in addition to the yolk, since I'm pretty sure I don't have an egg allergy (most people are allergic to the whites and not the yolks apparently).

I can't wait to eat nuts as well as fried and baked foods. Eating only boiled foods is quite boring, especially for a food lover like me. This diet is both necessary healing and torture. Still, as my boyfriend pointed out, if I didn't encounter any issues along the way, how would I know I was doing the introduction diet right? If I just sailed through it, I might have worried I hadn't quite done it right. 

For now, stage 2 until my the daily gut pain goes away, or until my doctor tells me otherwise. Like anything in life, this diet doesn't have to be completely prescriptive. We are all unique individuals, with different guts, gut flora et cetera. I've been drinking some carrot juice here and there even though it's not supposed to be added until a later stage. We've got to use some intuition, experiment and also it's very important to CONSULT A DOCTOR. I just want to stress to everyone that I am working with a doctor on this. It's a very intense diet, and it needs to be done carefully, and with a lot of support. 

SUGAR!

(I'm a health nut) I've always wanted to get sugar out of my diet, in theory. In reality, it tastes so good! I've never thought of myself as a big sweet tooth, yet I've always had my favorite sweet treats. We've all probably heard that sugar is bad for us - it makes us gain weight, causes blood sugar spikes, feeds bad bacteria, and so on. Trying to quit sugar? Apparantly there are ex-crack addicts who said quitting sugar was harder than quitting crack. Maybe this is urban legend but from my experience trying, I'm inclined to believe it.

If you want to quit sugar, how far do you go? Just refined sugars? Do you allow maple syrup or honey since the former has good minerals and the later has enzymes among other healing properties. What about fruit? Where do you draw the line?

The GAPS diet makes the distinction between two kinds of sugars. The simplest sugars are called monosaccharides in contrast to their counter parts, which are calleddisaccharides because they are made of two monosaccharides. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride explains the following information in her book which outlines the GAPS diet, called Gut and Psychology Syndrome.

1. Monosaccharides (mono-sugars)

The most common monosaccharides are glucose, fructose and galactose. "These monosaccharides or monosugars can easily penetrate the gut lining; they do not need digestion," says Natasha. Honey and fruit are primarily made of glucose and fructose, which is why they are allowed on the GAPS diet.
Galactose is found in yogurt or other soured milk products. Natasha states in her book that most of our carbohydrates should come from monosugars.

2. Disaccharides (di-sugars)

The dissaccharides, or double sugars, are found in table sugar (sucrose), milk (lactose),  and maltose (starch). When digestion is compromised, as is the reason why people do the GAPS diet, the enterocytes that live on the villi in the small intestine, whose job it is to break down our foods, cannot break the double sugars down into monosugars. The double sugars "stay becoming major food for pathogenic bacteria, viruses, Candida, and other fungi, getting converted into a river of toxic substances which damage the gut wall even further and poison the whole body.

Grains, potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, and cassava all have a lot of starch in them, and are not allowed the GAPS diet for that reason. Whatever starch does get digested,  breaks down into the double sugar maltose. But a GAPS person cannot break down the malatose, and so these foods are basically poison for GAPS people like myself.

So all fruit sugar is good right?  Fruits actually do contain some sucrose and/or maltose. Natasha explains:
"Most fruit, particulary when unripe, contains some sucrose, which is a double sugar. That is why it is very important to eat ripe fruit. Most vegetables and some fruit contain a little bit of starch. However, the amount of sucrose and starch in fruit and non-starch vegetables are tiny compared to grains, starchy vegetables and table sugar. In the majority of people with digestive disorders, their gut lining can cope with these tiny amounts of sugar and starch from fruit and non-starch vegetables."

To see exactly how much of each kind of sugar different fruits and sweet things have, see this list by Paleo expert Loren Cordain. Below, I'm going to be my mathematician self and crunch some numbers and some of my favor sweets.

The amount of double sugars are measured in grams per 100 grams of food item.

Less than 1 gram: Avocado, blackberries, blueberries, Casaba melon, sour cherries, elderberries, figs, grapes, lemon, lime, pomegranate, star fruit, tomato, dried prunes, raisins (including golden).

[1-5) grams: Apples, sweet cherries, grapefruit, guava, kiwi, orange, papaya, pears, pineapple, plum, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon.

[5-10) grams: Apricots, banana, cantaloupe, mango, nectarine, peach, dried apricots, dried figs, honey (5.7 grams).

Some high hitters are:
Dried peaches: 13.2 grams of double sugars in 100 grams of dried peaches.
Molasses: 34.7 grams of double sugars in 100 grams of molasses. 
Dates: 44.6 grams of double sugars in 100 grams of dates.
Maple syrup: 75 grams of double sugars in 100 grams of maple syrup.
Table sugar: 97 grams of double sugars in 100 grams of table sugar.

While honey and table sugar have almost the same amount of total sugars, 82 grams and 97 grams respectively, table sugar has 17 times the amount of double sugars! And even dates, which are often used as an alternative sweetener in raw and Paleo recipes, have almost 8 times as many double sugars are honey.

I recently found a recipe for grain-free Pineapple Upside-down cake from Home, Health, Happiness which called for dried cherries as the sweetener in cake. It was really yummy! Dried cherries are a great idea for a GAPSer, since cherries are low in double sugars. However, where do you get dried cherries that don't have added table sugar? Certainly not at Trader Joe's!

Does anyone know where to get dried cherries without sugar added? What are your favorite recipes using only the foods with low double sugars? Please comment and let me know!