A coordinated GAPS Vegetable Stew/Beef Simmer - the chatty version!

This post is for my mother, who likes my stews, but also because it seems like a nice time to get this up there to share. I keep hearing about folks on GAPS who flail around during the intro and the first few stages trying to figure out how to get things to taste good, how much fat or meat is right for them and what combinations of vegetables to use. Here's the way we do it, more or less. It's infinitely variable for each family's tastes and preferences.

So it's taken me about 2 years to get to the stage where I have come up with a clear method for a nice all -purpose supper that lasts for a few days. It's basically a development of the stew from the early phases of the GAPS Diet. I do use herbs. Our kid likes her eggs so much that I leave them out of the stews and serve them in the mornings for breakfast. So if you're in the early stages of the diet, this should be fine, depending on what your food sensitivities are.

At least for us, the key is saturated animal fat - ghee and drippings, mainly. We also use olive oil, but it's not as healing as the other two. We can't have lard, so generally it's tallow or schmaltz and the gelatinous leavings from whatever roast or simmer I've made. To our early 21st century eyes and palettes these recipes look frighteningly out of whack with the mainstream dietary advice you'll get from your doctor, but I've found that it is the perfect balance of fat to flavor for dealing with our allergies, migraines, general health and digestion, including sugar digestion. This is a meal after which our kid almost NEVER asks for dessert.

I try to coordinate the making of a soup and a roast so that I can use the fresh drippings in the soup. Occasionally my cooking will be out of sync and I'll store the stuff in a jar, then use it from there. It still tastes good. I've included a simple and thrifty ground beef simmer in this post. The reason I make the meat separate from the rest of the stew is that we opt for meatless meals after 3 or 5pm. This works well whether I'm working late and eating alone or on regular weeknights when Snackboy gets home from work at 7. We include the actual meat for lunch or breakfast, but leave it out for dinner. (Both the stew and the meat make nice additions for breakfast scrambles, too.)

The recipe also takes for granted that the day or so before you've made your week's worth of ghee (which for us is a full 2 cups!) and your week's worth of broth. I also have either storebought or home made sauerkraut ready. If we could we'd alternate with a good sour cream dollop instead, but that's not happening with us for a while. :)

By the way, the big news is that Little Moo has nearly made it to the end of her second food trial with her favorite treat, sheep's milk yogurt, with nary a spot on her, a sniffle or an "ahem." Good news! This is after I forgot her dose of enzymes before her breakfast this morning and suddenly remembered it mid-meal. So tomorrow, unbeknownst to her, she gets another two large teaspoons full. Joy will ensue. It's been over a year. Yay!

So here it is...I'm sure that you will come up with your own fun variations. Try different veggies - midwinter's a good time for hard greens and roots. Those can get interesting. We're just starting to see new spring veggies come in. Asparagus, peas and string beans are nice additions. Just remember that the softer the vegetable, the closer to the end you add it. If it's a very tender vegetable, you might want to do a quick or even flash steam and add it at the very end to the hot soup so as not to overcook it. The warmth of the broth will continue to steam it at a nicely low temperature so that the color, texture and flavor stay put.

Lastly, you'll notice that the stew only has 1/2 teaspoon of salt, even though it's a pretty big pot-full. The reasoning for this is that it's meant to be served with a ferment which adds tang or saltiness at the end.

Ground Beef Simmer & The Ultimate GAPS Vegetable Stew

Ingredients for simmer:

2 teaspoons ghee
1 medium (or so) onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon unprocessed sea salt
1 lb organic, full-fat, pastured ground beef
1/4 cup broth (we use chicken or beef - I think it's tastier with the chicken, but it's whatever you'd like)
(optional) 1/2 cup or so well-cooked gizzards from the last long-simmered chicken soup, chopped
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Ingredients for soup:

3-4 tablespoons ghee
1 large onion or two small, sliced
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon unprocessed sea salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 small leaf of dried sage or a small pinch of the bottled stuff
drippings from the simmer
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
1/2 to 1 cup mushrooms
1/2 head of yellow cabbage
1 BIG bunch of hard winter greens or a blend of a few. (Kales, collards are both nice - chard is sweet and pretty, especially if you have a pinkophile like we do. Mustard and dandilion are kind of bitter, but can be offset with the high fat content or by blending a small amount with a bunch of something sweeter. We stay away from spinach for calcium absorption reasons, but this can also be a nice addition. Don't cook it as much as the harder greens.)
1/2 gallon (or so) broth
(optional) a softer spring vegetable: peas, chopped string beans or asparagus
sauerkraut or sour cream

Get out 2 pots. One should be like a large skillet our round-belly saucepan for the simmer. The other big enough for a soup - either Dutch oven or spaghetti-sized. (I recommend NOT using iron for the beef, the reason being that at the end you'll have to lift it and pour out the drippings. If you have wrists of steel, go for it. Consider it part of your weightlifting regimen. :) Iron makes tastier simmers, anyway.)

If your beef is frozen start defrosting it in a bowl of warm water.

Melt the ghee for each recipe in the corresponding pan at medium-low temperature. Chop or slice the onion for the stew. Chop the onion for the simmer. Put into the corresponding pot. Set your timer for 15 minutes, minimum, cover the pots and stir occasionally. The longer the simmer on the onion, the sweeter it gets and the less structured. If you like nice solid onions, continue the recipe at 15 minutes. Everyone else, turn the heat down a bit and keep simmering.

Okay, so you're waiting now. If you're like me, you stop for a bit to blog or procrastinate. So here we are.

I keep hearing that onion is good for both digestive and immune systems if simmered between 25 and 35 minutes in ghee. I also read a post on Dr. Mercola's page recently where, below all the usual hype he revealed that there had been some study somewhere that showed that onions eaten regularly help boost calcium absorption. (No word on how to cook them, or why onions do that, or if the onion eaters were also doing weight-bearing exercise, eating well otherwise, standing on their heads chanting a sea chanty etc...so take with a grain of salt! So to speak. Sorry for the pun.)

Back to the recipe.

Once you've safely turned down your onion simmers, crush your garlic into each pot, then add the salt. Add the herbs and any previously stored drippings to the soup pot. Keep both on the lowest temperature. No worries about overcooking - there's no rush. Just keep it low. Turn it off and keep covered if you're concerned about burning. Let it steep. 

If you have time, pots and space, bring your quart of broth to a boil, then turn it down to simmer. I often don't have any of those three things so I add it cold, but I don't think that's necessarily the best way to do it. 

Get out a big bowl, fill it with filtered water and a teaspoon of vinegar or 2 teaspoons sea salt and prepare your greens. Different greens need different prep - kale gets the ribs stripped clean away, mustard gets some of the ribs stripped. Dandelion ribs are fine. So are chard. Go for it. Have fun. Put them to soak in the bowl. The salt or vinegar will encourage any freeloaders to jump ship. Set aside ribs for another broth at another time if you wish.

Chop the harder veggies first. I like carrots either in small dices or half-rounds, roots like turnip or rutabaga in dices, and celery in slices but there are no rules. Keep the pieces to a small bite size and try to make them more or less the same size with the harder vegetables smaller or added earlier. One exception to this rule is mushrooms. I like to add them early, sliced or coarsely chopped, since they are twice as amazing when they've absorbed the herb-scented ghee before the broth.

So you should be nearly done chopping, slicing and dicing by now. Your timer may have gone off, or you may be like me right now and have let the onion mixtures steep for a while in the ghee. Get the temperature of the skillet or round belly pot up a bit, then add the beef. Chop it up with a fork for a bit, then add the lemon juice - it breaks down the fat in the meat so that it starts to break up a bit. Add the chopped gizzards if you are using them. Then add the broth and blend well. Cover and simmer on low, stirring occasionally until done - about 10 minutes. Be careful once you add the meat not to overcook. Even the fattiest pastured meats cook much quicker and drier than the feedlot stuff. If you got good, clean, grass-fed meat it should be fine with a bit of pink. If you don't have that option, cook it until the pink is gone. Turn it off and set aside.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch...

Bring the heat back to a cooking temperature on your stew pot. Heft up that pot of meat and pour the drippings into the onion/garlic/herb mixture. Add the mushrooms. Stir well and allow them to absorb the niceness in the pot. Yum. Then add the hard veggies - carrots, roots, cabbage. Follow with celery, zucchini, string beans and other medium-hard vegetables. Stir and coat. Put the top back on. Chop the well-washed greens to a nice bite-size and add them on top of the rest of the mixture. They should just about fill the Dutch oven. It will look like they're taking over. Don't worry. They shrink. Stir to coat and put the top back on for about 5 minutes or until the greens look a bit wilty. (At this point either add your soft vegetables or put them on to steam.) Add the broth. Bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer. Simmer well for about 15-25 minutes depending on how long you've simmered previously. Take your steamed soft veggies - asparagus, peas, pea greens, etc - and add before serving.

A nice way to re-make the stew in its meaty hearty version is to take a dollop of the meat and a nice portion of the stew in a third pot (this is assuming that it's the next day or the day after and you're pulling out a nice instantaneous lunch that you can get from fridge to table in - get this - FIVE MINUTES, yes indeedy,) and heat them up together so that they blend nicely. If you do eat starches you can pour the mixture over rice, but if you're a hard-core GAPS follower, eat it as is topped with sauerkraut or sour cream.

Enjoy. I'm going to go chop vegetables now. :)

An unintentional cavewoman.

Last week I saw John Durant on The Colbert Report and a lightbulb went off. Sort of. I mean, diets are all in the eye of the beholder, and the eater, to a certain extent. I'm sure that there are some folks in the world who are better adjusted to a menu that contains grains and vegetable matter than I am. I just don't know where or who they are, necessarily. I remember, as a youngish dancer meeting a colleague who was actually raised vegan who was in excellent shape, not counting some laugh lines that could be chalked up to a smoking habit. On the other hand, then we were 20-something. Now we're all nearing or in our 40s and I don't see her much, (although she's still dancing, as far as I can see) so I don't know what her health is like. I also have a friend who is amazingly creative in the kitchen as a vegan and manages to make some spectacularly varied macrobiotic meals for her family. She's also from an ancestry that ate lots of vegetables and rice. So perhaps that's a good fit, as well.

I do know that my years as a vegetarian helped to ruin my health. I lost several years just trying to get my life back. First there was the wild moods of my adolescence - I'm sorry, folks, but that kind of emotional mess is NOT normal for a kid. Then there was my back injury, constant rashes and infections. My gut was a mess, too. I had chronic dysbiosis. I've been allergic to gluten (perhaps Celiac's, I'm not sure...) all my life, but my childhood and later vegetarian diet was full of it. This was on top of the routinely overused antibiotics given to kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s and too many foods that came out of boxes and cans. At least I ate fish, eggs and dairy.

My ancestors ate meat, including organ meat (during lean periods in the form of stews, most likely), fresh and preserved fish, poultry, bone broth, roots, fermented drinks, dairy and vegetables. They had soured breads, black breads and kasha, nuts, honey and probably some dried fruits. In the summers they had whatever vegetables they could grow. My great grandmother had 7 children, six of whom lived. Two of her children she birthed in her forties - at the turn of the century. My mother tells me that her favorite part of the chicken were the feet. She was also unusual in that she was a birthing assistant, basically what we now call a doula. She believed in nursing, rather than the bottle feeding that was forced on mothers at that time. She nursed all her babies. So did my grandmother. My mother nursed me until about 16 months. My maternal grandmother lived to a ripe old age of 97 with little illness and amazing bones. The fact that my mother nursed me as long as she did probably saved me from even more difficulties.

Since the turn of the century, the health of my extended family has suffered as the diet changed to packaged and processed foods. Few people actually die of old age. Instead, we have cancer and diabetes. Many of the women have fibroids, including me. (I currently live with nine of varying sizes. It was a bit like having a multiple pregnancy, with only one coming out at the end. We named them after the Seven Dwarves with two extra whose names changed often - Annoyance and Irritation were my favorite.) I have a theory that there are lots of unnoticed food sensitivities and allergies, especially gluten.

I started GAPS diet over a year ago and watched as layers of dysfunction peeled away, sometimes painfully, usually with relief. I still have a few, but I have hope that these will go at some point, as well. One thing that hasn't happened is true relief from my food allergies. I still can't have peach, honey, salmon, oranges, ginger or nuts. I have occasional problems with nightshades, broccoli and can't eat any vegetable raw. The diet doesn't allow any soy or starches, so I don't know (and actually don't care) if I can eat grains, soy or corn. My child is off of eggs and dairy. Since we're still nursing, so am I.

That leaves meat. Lots of it. It's my main protein since legumes are more of a starch. Then there's ghee, drippings, well cooked vegetables, fruits that aren't from the peach family, herbs and spices. I did discover that although I couldn't really eat nuts that I could eat coconut so I do, although my great grandmother probably would have thought it a strange food. I'm suddenly remembering that coconut was a favorite food of my maternal grandmother's. Go figure. I like to think that's a sign. Of something. I'm not sure what, though.

Since the GAPS diet, I'm physically much stronger than I was. I've always built muscle quickly - a curse to a ballet dancer - but now that I'm in my 40s and eating more or less a paleolithic diet, I'm finding that the extra muscle mass feels good and is probably good for the rest of my body. I digest fats well and definitely use them for energy, although small amounts of GAPS-legal well-soaked or sprouted beans or fruit give me a little extra when I need it.

Little Moo is definitely a carnivore, as well as a what...a lipidivore? She likes fats. She's never liked grains or starches all that much. If her preferences indicate what sort of instinctive diet our genetic makeup should eat, then we're definitely talking caveman here. That is, if cavemen enjoyed mustard and kraut.

I just looked up some of the offshoots of this food movement and thought that at least on the surface it was a bit simplified and also on the macho side. There's lots of talk about what the body looks like, weight loss and ketosis, building muscle (yep, that's a man typing) and lots of pictures of well-muscled male abs and arms doing pull-ups and the like. I read a little more on the Primal Blueprint site and found some deeper analysis, but not quite as much as on the Weston A. Price Foundation's or Natasha Campbell-McBride's.

One thing I just love...and it has nothing to do with food, so please excuse this digression...I adore the idea of barefoot running. I have terrible feet. Always have. My theory is that when I was born with inwardly rotated femurs that from then on doctors insisted that my feet be shoved into hard little "supportive" shoes. I don't think that my feet fully developed. The ligament that runs around the arch on both feet is lax and the tendons on either side of the foot work too hard. My talus doesn't move very well. I have all kinds of foot pain and have needed orthotics all my life. The only place I don't, though, is when I'm dancing and warmed up. I do my best to get to that state these days and to take off my shoes whenever I can. I love wearing sandals that let my feet move, even if I can only tolerate them for a short time. I do think that I'm doing myself a favor.

Little Moo, on the other hand, has great feet. From the time she started walking my instinct was to let her go as barefoot as possible. I loved the Robeez shoes that were like soft little sheaths for developing feet. I wish there were similar shoes for older kids! I let her take off her shoes (always as soft as I can find, but with protective soles) at clean parks and climb things while her toes wrap around bars and ropes. Two days ago we found an empty dance studio. We took off our shoes then ran and danced together until we fell down laughing and exhausted....now that's a great time!