A week of AIP meals

First of all, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten these to you lately! I fell off the bandwagon partly due to another Hashi’s flare in September and partly because I keep getting an HTTP error when I try to upload images to share with you & I just got annoyed trying to fix it and shut down. However, I am going to bring this back!  I have had many friends and fellow AIP-ers tell me that they like this feature.  I don’t often follow recipes so these meals are fairly easy to recreate.   I also don’t have a “real” kitchen.  We live in our friend’s basement and I do almost all my cooking in a toaster oven or with the “slow-cook” or “sautee” feature on my Instant Pot.  (I don’t love pressure cooking but that’s another conversation…) So you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment or even a “real” kitchen to make these meals!

Changes are coming for me!

Today I’m  starting a Candida cleanse under the suggestion of my homeopath.  Today and tomorrow are liquid diet days.  I’m not too hungry yet today, we’ll see how writing this food blog and posting all my photos of yummy meals makes me feel!  After this portion is over I’m going to modify the GAPS intro diet to be Candida-friendly.  This is partly because GAPS really intrigues me.  I’ve seen amazing success on AIP and absolutely love AIP.  I’m interested in GAPS and have a good friend (over at Aprons & Armor) with Hashimoto’s who is a big GAPS fan.  I’ve stalled on my healing in terms of my gut health and symptoms so I’m hoping this will help.  There are some components of GAPS that don’t mesh with AIP so everything will still be AIP friendly as I’m not going to do any non-AIP foods during this time.  The Candida cleanse friendly aspect means no fruit or starchy veggies for 6ish weeks as well as implementing some supplementation and a special homeopathic remedy.  I’ll write more about it here for you and I’ll do a Facebook Live video in early March. I’m guessing it will be 6-12 weeks and then I’ll be back to full AIP.  Stay tuned and I’ll keep sharing my yummy recipes with you here!

My AIP re-intros & Special Considerations

I can tolerate raw cheese, raw yogurt and some nuts and seeds so long as they’ve been sprouted.  I also have issues with fructose (which I’m hoping this candida cleanse will help with) so I eat very low FODMAP and not much fruit.  I can also tolerate ghee so I mix ghee in with almost all my veggies and purees.

A week of AIP Meals…

I’m going to change the format a bit for this post.  Let me know what you think in the comments, please.  I can go back to my old format if you like it better! I tend to repeat meals so I thought I’d try this format

Breakfasts

I am trying to transition to having breakfast as my biggest meal of the day.  It’s a hard transition!

• Ham steak with broccoli
  • Pastured ham steak if possible.  Chop them up and toss in an oven-safe dish (I like my cast iron skillet) and pour some avocado oil over them.  Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes.  If the ham steak is pre-cooked than just roast the broccoli and add the ham steak for the last 5-10 minutes
    
• Yogurt, bacon and 1/2 a grapefruit
  • Fast, simple, yummy.  Could have coconut-yogurt if you’re not tolerating dairy yet

• 

  Pate ~ GREAT to batch cook & freeze a bunch!

  • I do this at least 3 mornings a week.  I rotate beef and chicken pate.  I serve it with carrot slices, celery slices, cucumber slices, sliced green apple or green apple chips and a bit of lightly cooked greens (usually kale or spinach).  I also love it with Yucan Crunch if I have any on hand.  (post coming soon about how I make my pate!)  This is my 6-year-olds FAVORITE breakfast.  It took about a dozen tries but now he loves Pate.  We try to make it fun too.
• N’Oatmeal with kale, bacon or breakfast sausage, cooked greens and a side of fruit
  • Roast a spaghetti squash at 400 for 30-40 minutes.   (I also like to mix equal parts kabocha squash for some extra yummy flavor and sweetness).  Shred the squash up, add in your preferred seasoning (I usually use Ceylon cinnamon, mace, and ginger), throw in a scoop of grass-fed gelatin (we use Vital Proteins) and blend away with an immersion blender until it’s your desired texture.  It’s also yummy to mix in maple syrup if you’re using sweeteners.  I usually crumble my bacon or sausage in the n’oatmeal

Lunches

• Whole Foods Salad Bar
  • My hubby works at WF now and it’s fairly easy to eat AIP.  We usually eat there on Wednesdays for Rotisserie chicken Wednesday.  The chickens are $3 off.  They have a plain organic chicken w/ nothing on it and a chicken w/ just salt & pepper if you tolerate pepper.  The salad bar can get pricey if you add on heavier things.  I can eat for $3 and get a satisfying meal sticking to mostly greens.  Also, bring your own dressing- the weight of the dressing is expensive!  This week I also got a bag of Jackson’s Honest Sweet Potato Chips, EPIC pork rinds, a Dr. D’s Water Keifer and some raw milk manchego cheese.
• Roasted sweet potato, salsa chicken,  and salad
  • I use leftover chicken from my WF rotisserie chicken.  I also make a huge batch of this AIP-friendly salsa from The Primordial Table and freeze it in 1/4 cup portions.  I thaw out some salsa and pour it over the chicken, heat it in my toaster oven and pour it over a roasted mashed sweet potato.  Tastes like a burrito bowl!
• “Potato” chowder
  • I’m obsessed with this soup from Aprons & Armor.  It really tastes like potatoes and is a great batch-cook recipe
• Antipasto Salad from The Healing Kitchen
  • If you don’t own “The Healing Kitchen” get yourself a copy.  It’s full of super easy recipes and includes freezing instructions.  This salad was amazing.  I ate it for a few lunches.
• Beef carnitas with salsa over mashed sweet potato & a side of roasted broccoli
  • The beef carnitas is another Healing Kitchen recipe

Dinners

• Bison burgers and roasted purple cabbage
• Delicata squash stuffed with kale, ground beef, and kraut
  • I roasted the squash and cooked the beef in the toaster oven.  After both were done I mixed in some frozen kale with the beef and stuffed them.  It was amazing.  We were wishing we had a lot more after it was done
• Beef carnitas with salsa (as above)
• Leftover chicken with arugula salad and mashed carrots & parsnips
  • Steam the carrots and parsnips in some chicken broth and puree (I add ghee)
• Salmon over arugula with sauteed red onion and capers
  • I cooked the salmon drizzled with avocado oil, a sprig of fresh fennel and some lemon juice.  I wrap it in parchment paper and cook it in the oven on 350.

I hope this gives you some good ideas for AIP-friendly meals and helps you know they don’t have to be complicated!  Check back next week to see what I had on my first week of my Candida cleanse.  Make sure to follow me on Facebook  and Instagram for lots more recipes, inspiration and encouragement (plus my weekly Facebook Live videos!)