GAPS soup ideas

When I first started GAPS, I literally ate nothing but chicken stock with chicken and boiled carrots for 2 days. By the end of the second day I didn't think I could even look at another bowl of chicken soup with carrots. That's when I realized I really needed to make these soups more interesting or I just wasn't going to last. I scoured the internet for ideas and made the following list. There are 17 soups because that's what I could fit on a single sheet of paper, lol. I printed the list out and have it taped to the front of my kitchen cabinet so I can easily assemble the days soup in the morning. These are all Stage 1 - Stage 3 recipes.

I usually steam-sautee a bunch of vegetables and some kind of meat beforehand. I try to do it on Sunday, which is my "prep for the week" day but I don't always get around to it. More often I pick up some veggies after work and steam sautee a bunch of them that I can use for several days to prepare dishes with.

I've included a couple of condiments in some of these soups - fish sauce and sesame sauce - because they don't seem likely to contain any GAPS illegal ingredients. I use Red Boat fish sauce, which is just fermented fish juice with nothing added other than salt; and toasted sesame oil is just 100% sesame oil. They both add so much amazing flavor to dishes!



GAPS Soups

Asian Soup
Meat (any kind, including fish), mushrooms, carrot shreds, peppers, onions, fish sauce, sesame oil, chicken stock preferred, a little mushroom juice is a nice addition if you have any on hand

Creamy Broccoli Soup
Meat, garlic, broccoli, pureed with chunks, egg yolk mixed in (be sure to "temper" eggs before adding unless you want scrambled egg soup; to temper an egg add a bit of the hot broth to the egg/egg yolk and stir, I usually repeat this until it's more soup than egg yolk then I dump it into the pot and put it back on the heat for a bit)

Creamy Zucchini Soup
Onion & zucchini, pureed, egg yolk mixed in, with added chicken or meat on the side

Carrot Ginger Soup
Onion, carrots, and ginger pureed, meat on the side

Squash Soup
Onion, butternut/acorn/kabocha squash pureed, meat on side

French Onion Soup
Use beef broth; shredded carrots and wet sauteed onions with meat (beef preferred)

Italian Tomato Soup
Use beef broth; onion, carrots, celeriac, tomato paste (brown the tomato paste first to add some umami), garlic cloves, meat (beef preferred)

Cream Soup
Cook cauliflower and garlic and puree; veggies can be varied: spinach, broccoli, carrot, pepper, any kind of meat or meat can be on side

Mexican Soup
Onion, garlic, tomato, lemon juice, cilantro, avocado, meat (beef preferred)

Chicken “Noodle” Soup
Onion, carrots, zoodles* (salted and pressed?), chicken, in chicken broth

Pho
Onion, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, zoodles* (salted and pressed?), meat (probably any kind), in beef stock

Tom Yum Soup
Mushrooms, shredded carrots, tomatoes, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, meat

Beef Stew
Mushrooms, carrots, tomatoes, onion, partially puree for body, add beef

Chinese Soup
Ginger, bok choy, shredded carrots, green onions, in chicken stock, meat (fish, seafood, chicken, or pork preferred) in chicken broth and mushroom juice if you have any. You want the bok choy to be bright green with a bit of crunch and the green onions fresh so if you're bringing a thermos don't put them in with the rest of the soup, bring them in a little side container and add them right before eating (the bok choy should already be steam sautéed).

Egg Drop Soup
A little zucchini or cauliflower pureed to give some body, ginger, green onions, sesame oil, in chicken stock, drizzled scrambled eggs (do not temper the eggs here - you want the egg to cook in thin, noodle-like strands)

Clam Chowder
Onion, garlic, cauliflower, homemade coconut milk*, roughly pureed, carrots, spinach, green onions, in chicken broth, add clams and juice

Creamy Mushroom Soup
Onion, cauliflower, homemade coconut milk*, pureed, in broth (beef or chicken), with meat and mushrooms and their juice



I hope this list helps. Enjoy!

* "Zoodles" are "noodles" made out of zucchini. I have something like this, basically a vegetable peeler with teeth that slice the stripe into noodle shapes. What I really want is spiralizer, but I don't want to spend the money when I have my little hand-held doodad. Note, you can make veggie noodles out of anything you can peel, although I've only tried zoodles.

* If you don't have homemade coconut milk use tempered egg yolk and/or pureed cauliflower to add some creaminess. (Most canned coconut milk, even the good stuff, has guar gum in it. This is no bueno for GAPS/SCD. It is possible to find canned coconut milk without guar gum but it's not easy.)

GAPS Day 10: Losing weight?????

Still chugging along. Felt better this morning, kind of like I did this weekend if not as dramatic. I think the inulin did me in - the bad bacteria had their last little hurrah. This is interesting because it shows how even a tiny amount of sugar or starch can really have a negative impact, at least at the point I'm at now. This is motivating me even more to do this GAPS thing 100%, and stay with this for as long as I have to.

Had "creamy mushroom soup" for lunch (some onion and a bunch of pre-sautéed mushrooms blended with the stick blender, with some ground pork and an egg yolk mixed in). My co-worker said it smelled delicious. It tasted delicious! I also added a small container of mashed butternut squash topped with browned butter ghee and a tiny bit of himalayan salt; sooooo goooood! My co-worker was kind of jealous lol! After the first two days on GAPS stage one, eating the same chicken/carrot soup I literally could not bring myself to look at it anymore and realized I'd need to come up with some tasty combos if I wanted to survive. Scoured the internet and made a list of 17 soup options - I'll post them tomorrow.

I'm running out of the beef stock so I was going to get an organic chicken from the food coop but I forgot to get off the train so I decided to see if I could find on at my local regular supermarket. They did not have it so I just got a rotisserie chicken. Thinking about that chicken and taking it home made me sooooo hungry! I pretty much tore into it as soon as I got in. Ate it with avocado (I forgot to buy more! AGAIN!!) and a simple salad of sliced beets and sauerkraut. The salad was really tasty, kind of sweet and sour with crunch from the sauerkraut. The chicken was AMAZING! It's been so long since I've had anything that wasn't boiled. I ate all the legs, thighs, and wings. Smeared with some of the avocado it was heavenly! I'm sure I overate but whateverrrr.

I'd decided over the weekend to try to see if I could actually maybe possibly lose some weight on GAPS. I wasn't trying to - after the last time when I did cyclic low carb and I lose zero pounds I'd given up. PCOS ruled my life, or at least my waistline. But when I weight myself Sunday morning I saw that I was 20 pounds less than when I'd last weight myself last year, after the last one month low carb attempt. And it does look like I've lose some weight since starting GAPS. I can't know because I didn't weigh/measure myself at the beginning. I kept weight myself (despite knowing I shouldn't) every morning since then; I should have taken my own advice, it went down a tiny bit maybe, then went up again this morning. It's stupid, I'm not going to weight myself again until the end of the month!

The reason I thought it would work is 1) maybe it's the bad bacteria that made me fat in the first place! Also, 2) low "seductiveness" is the only really "diet" that's been actually shown to permanently lower the "adipostat" (the adipostat is the weight one's body decides is the best weight; like a thermostat, the body fights to keep it's weight at the adipostat, whether one is trying to lose or even gain weight.) I tried doing this before, making boring, tasteless soups, but I didn't last. But now that I have to stick with this, for reasons other than vanity but serious health conditions, maybe I can manage to lose some weight? Maybe??

GAPS Day 9: Joining the human race?

Woke up with what seemed to be some slight pain in my ankles (due to the inulin from yesterday?) Mood ok, nothing spectacular but still calm and upbeat.

One thing that's amazed me about this little experiment is the psychological effect it's had. I'd experienced a lifting of the brain fog while doing Paleo, but this is something exponentially different, almost personality changing. For one thing, I've been feeling truly happy. I didn't realize how not happy I was until I started feeling this feeling of calm positivity and good humor over the weekend. There was also a lessening of a general feeling of anxiety that I'd never really been aware of - I always considered myself a bit high strung but I'm coming to think that it's actually anxiety.

I also had moments of really, truly enjoying being with others. This is another thing I was never really aware of; I always knew that I felt stressed by being with most people (with the exception of close family members, G, F, and another close friend, K). Even with people I really liked, I found myself quickly exhausted from spending time with them. Of course parties are an absolute nightmare! But I've been having flashes of actually wanting to move toward people. I never realized that I have a pronounced avoidant streak; I think I may be on the autism/Aspergers spectrum. If that's truly the case, then this diet would of course help.

It's been an amazing, eye-opening experience and it's only been a week!

GAPS Day 8: Uh oh

I took probiotics and prebiotics (inulin) in my morning water; according to the book you're supposed to drink a cup of water with lemon, preferably warm but I really like my water cold. I just tossed the inulin in there with the probiotics because that's what I've always done when I drink something with probiotics in it. This may have been a mistake - I forgot that the whole point of this diet is to not feed the bad bacteria. But you're also supposed to take probiotics and eat probiotic foods! I mixed my probiotic drink with water and added inulin to the water to give it something to eat. But this may not have been such a hot idea.

GAPS Day 7: Staying out of bad food

Woke up feeling great again. Spent the day kind of getting ready for the week, but mostly just relaxing. G went out with his friends - came back early because he was cold. Didn't bother eating while he was out so he ended up getting Chinese food from our favorite Chinese place. THANKS G!!! Made him eat in the other side of the apartment so I didn't have to look at all the delicious food I couldn't eat.

GAPS Day 6: Windy city

Woke up feeling happy and really good, like I wanted to go out and do things. Unusually so. Up to today I've been really draggy. Tuesday was the worst - I had to stay home because my muscles literally felt like they had no energy in them. I've been babying myself, taking it really easy. Today was the first day I woke up feeling good, and not just good REALLY good! Way better than ever! Unfortunately, it's also freezing cold and crazy windy! I kind of made G go out with me. He asked me where I wanted to go and I said to Prospect Park. This turned out to be way unrealistic. We went to Cortelyou Road instead, which was about a 10 minute walk, although in that wind it felt like an hour. I was ok but G is more sensitive to the cold. When we got back he jumped under the blanket, poor guy. We cuddled under the blanket though, which is the best way I can think of to spend a cold, grotty Saturday.

Wandering around Acronymlandia

Feeling like I've been in the desert for years

(My first post was getting monstrously long so I've divided it in two; the previous part was my history of health issues and my attempts to resolve this. This post will be about issues I'm dealing with on GAPS.)



A very good friend of my aunt's - my cousin's (the one who had the wedding) godmother. A wonderful woman. She died of a heart attack the day after my cousin's wedding. She'd been obese for years and was finally pretty much stuck in a wheelchair the last few years. She had developed congestive heart disease and had trouble breathing. She could barely walk with the help of a cane or walker. She was a kind, loving, and well loved woman. She should not have died as young as she did. I don't want to go down that road!!

I know that I need to get serious about my health; what I do now determines how I live for the last decades of my life, and I want those to be full of wonderful experiences, and ease in my body. It's not going to be easy; not only are we surrounded by food that hurts us, and will eventually kill us, but I struggle with getting the people around me to be supportive of my health goals. Except for F, who, the last time I saw him, made sure that I did not get unhealthy (even if it was gluten free) crap but had healthy, nourishing food (he bought me kombucha and almonds when I wanted to get soda and potato chips.)

Other than F, everyone else either clueless or downright unhelpful. In particular, I struggle with my boyfriend. We work together but he has a later schedule than me, so I've gotten into the habit of staying after work to eat dinner with him. He won't go on the diet with me (I'm pretty sure he has gut issues which make it very difficult for him to not eat shit food because the bad bacteria are all screaming for it). I didn't bother asking him to because I know how he is with food.

I make him his dinner, which is what we used eat together (something loaded with non-GAPS ingredients like sugar with rice or potatoes on the side) but I don't want to have him sit in front of me and eat it! I don't need to smell or see this!! It's hard enough!!! I ask him to eat in another part of the apartment, away from me, when he's eating toast with nutella, or the spareribs combo (the kind with pork fried rice and my beloved egg rolls) from our favorite Chinese place. I ask him to get this food out of the apartment so I'm less tempted but it's still hard!

We had a talk last night about this. I was listening to one of Christ Kresser's podcasts, his latest one with obesity expert Stephan Guyanet. As the podcast was closing Chris asked Stephan what was the one thing, the most important thing, he could tell people about healing obesity. Stephan told Christ that the one thing people could do was to get rid of food triggers. We're already bombarded with the most seductive commercials from food corporations that don't care about our health, they just want our dollars, and that means making the most tempting (but least healthy) "foods" they can. We can't really do anything about that, but we can make sure to get all that shit out of our homes.

Since I started this, I've been asking G (my boyfriend) to take leftover non-GAPS food out of the house. I already got a bunch of it out; I gave away individually packaged rice pudding snack cups, sweetened coconut, Ghirardelli chocolate chips, etc. to co-workers. I dumped the leftover whipped cream and heavy cream down the sink since G said he didn't want it. But there's still some stuff left, including a giant jar of NUTELLA! When I heard Stephan talking I finished up what I was doing and walked over to where G was lying down on the sofa and asked him to listen to the end of the podcast with me. Then we had a talk.

I told him how important it was that I do this, but that it was hard. I didn't want to end up like my aunt's friend; I didn't want to be stuck in a wheelchair or a recliner, unable to move. Needing to be cared for. Dependent. I wanted to have a bright, healthy future, but I needed him to be on board, 100%, to do what I needed him to do to help me with this. That I'd really like him to do this, too, quite honestly. Besides gut and bathroom issues, he has issues with anxiety, which I'm positive have to do with his messed up gut. But if he can't do it with me, to support me in whatever way he could. This includes supporting me in not having dinner with him. Not only do I need the extra hour to get all the goddam cooking eating like this requires (not to mention the nightly detox bath), but that seeing and smelling his delicious dinner was just too hard for me at this point.

This made him really sad. We talked about it. He's been alone for so long, and getting a chance to spend time with, and share things with, someone he enjoys being with and loves... giving that up has really hit him hard. We hardly get a chance to see each other now that his schedule's been changed; he gets home at around 9:30 and I should really go to bed at 11:00 (although I literally never get to bed before 12:00, unless I'm exhausted or something.) He's much more affectionate than I am, and loves being with people way more than me. I'm quite happy with what I get at work, and the few hours with G at night. I think he needs more. We're working on balancing our needs, but for now he's agreed to help me however he can with my health because he knows how important it is. He's just not very proactive, and has a hard time seeing beyond his feelings. This is a great learning experience for both of us.

So, I'm soldiering on, along with my loved ones. I'm nervous and excited about this experiment. I've failed so many times before; even though I learned something each time, and each experience has benefited me, I haven't come close to permanently resolving my health issues. I don't want to get over excited and think "NOW I've found THE solution!!! This time it will work!!!!!" I've been burned too many times. But I do know that this will do something; I'm already seeing some amazing improvements, including of some issues I hadn't even been aware of having! I know some good - some great and wonderful good - is coming from this experiment so even if I don't lose a hundred pounds and become a perfect specimen of health, I think this will be an enormously helpful experience.

I didn't think to start this blog until after reading and enjoying Starlene's so I'm missing a few days. I hope seeing my struggles will help you with yours! Join me on our journey to health... and self-discovery, too!