Coming Back: Doing the Whole 30 Autoimmune Diet

Since I've been struggling with gut health for the past few months, including a number of weeks in the hospital with ischemic colitis and C. Diff since the beginning of September, I have been seriously testing lifestyle changes. When I mentioned thinking about coming back to paleo habits, a friend of mine recommended the Whole30 regimen. I was impressed to see that the Whole30 site also offered an autoimmune food list as well as a low-histamine list and a FODMAP list (for those with IBS/IBD). It is very similar to paleo, so I decided to make the jump.

The other trouble with the gut issues is that when eating anything makes me so ill, I'm exhausted all the time and it makes it difficult to buckle down and cook. And so I return to the land of the slow cooker, where I can do the cooking on Sunday mornings and then rest while watching football.

Sunday I made my husband the Island Hash minus the onion and garlic, with lamb chops, while he was out grabbing groceries and running errands. After simmering for 12 hours, I strained the broth into a large pot, covered it in foil, ad refrigerated it. This time, I saved that top layer of fat (stuffed it in a container and put it in the fridge) that hardens at the top for frying veggies in, and portioned out the broth into small one-serving Rubbermaid containers.

I bought some frozen beef soup bones and made a large 6-qt crock of beef bone broth but without all the veggies in it (I didnt have any heels handy). I also bought a bunch of marrow bones, and Sunday night we had roasted beef marrow bones for dinner (I added a bag of steamed veggies to my plate). Not only was it delicious, we then tossed our bones into a 6 quart crock, I added a splash of apple cider vinegar and filled it with water, and voila, more bone broth. Ditto to the above - this one ran for 18 hours, cooled it, strained it, refrigerated it, and then separated the bone from broth, portioned into containers, and refrigerated it.

The real first success for the Whole30 recipe thing, however, is my turkey and sweet potato curry (it's really a tomato-free chili). More on that, with pics, in the next post.