After my big fail, we took the mattress apart and put it together again as a team. This time we put it together directly on the bed frame. I guess I would have done this to begin with if I hadn’t skipped reading the instructions.

For the last week or so we have been so comfortable and are enjoying not sleeping on top of each other! We got the king size frame secondhand on craigslist a while ago but then took a few weeks to decide what type of mattress to order. Once we decided, we had to wait 4-6 weeks for it to be delivered. We filled in the empty space next to our queen mattress with some pillows “just in case” but on more than one occasion I spied Peter sleeping in the little spot with his arms pinned to his sides. I can’t imagine him getting a restful sleep that way.

Now we have a supportive natural latex mattress by Pure Rest, with three customizable layers and an organic cotton zippered cover.

Why Pure Rest?

• Natural latex with no chemicals
• Very comfortable with even support (no springs)
• Organic cotton tested for chemical residue
• Only fair labor used in producing mattresses
• Less motion transfer (when I wake up with the baby it doesn’t disturb Peter)

I was a little skeptical of the zippered cover option but ultimately I’m really glad we went for it:

• Once all the layers are inside and it’s zipped up, it looks just like a regular mattress
• The mattress shipped with the different layers rolled up in standard boxes
• If we decide we want to change the firmness of the layer closest to us, we can reorder them
• We can also exchange one layer at no charge
• The price was significantly lower

(We also got a discount since I am a member of the Holistic Moms Network and we bought the mattress from a company owned by another Holistic Mom, Organic and Healthy Inc.)

I thought it would be a nice Valentine’s Day surprise to have our new mattress (which came in four boxes) put together before my husband got home from work.

I spent the last hour plus wrestling with these latex layers with a baby on my back (and sweating, even though I turned the heat off).

I finally got the cover zipped up, only to realize I put the layers in upside down. Also it’s so heavy there is no way I’m getting this thing to budge by myself.

At least someone is having fun…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

After a rough weekend, this week is shaping up to be much better. Yesterday our UPS delivery guy arrived with our new king size non-toxic, natural latex and wool mattress and our new water filter, which will remove chlorine, fluoride and other chemicals from our drinking water. As you can see, the cats were also very excited about the new arrivals and inspected all the packages.

When Sarah first approached me about beginning the Whole30 diet on January 1st, I was nervous. I thought that I could’t do it. Before committing to it, I tried to practice a few days beforehand. I had been visiting my in-laws out of state. The 250 mile drive back from Maryland was tough. It’s hard to get food that fits the Whole30 criteria at highway rest stops. Luckily, Delaware’s rest stop sold both bananas and hard boiled eggs. It was tough, I tell you. If this is what it was going to be like, then I was in for a rough time.

Putting my trepidations aside though, I agreed to go on the Whole30 diet with Sarah beginning on January 1st. Though we had one minor misstep on January 1st, we were off the ground by January 2nd. A day or two into the diet I came down with a cold. It was make or break time. Normally when I get a cold, I love to load up on carbs and all kinds of junk food. I guess it’s an old habit of mine where I try to soothe the lousy feeling of cold. Yet, I really wanted to succeed at completing this diet with my wife. I mustered up the willpower and managed to stick to the Whole30 regimen despite my feeling lousy.

Sarah made sure to cook healthy breakfasts and to make and pack lunches and snacks for me. Without her support, I would not have been able to do this. I am reminded of the old saying that anything worth doing takes hard work. While the Whole30 can be quite tough to stick to, it is worth doing.

I have noticed several significant changes since adopting the Whole30 diet. Since I have shifted from being a carb burner to a fat burner, I don’t feel extreme hunger pangs anymore. I no longer feel like I have to keep stuffing my face every couple of hours. My stomach doesn’t really get upset anymore as it frequently did pre-Whole30. I also have a newfound appreciation for the flavor of fruits and vegetables. I suppose processed sugars have a way of inundating and burning out your taste buds to point where you no longer taste the natural sweetness of veggies and fruits. After a short time on Whole30, this was no longer the case. Did I mention that I lost some weight too? So, you can see that the Whole30 was a positive experience for me.

Now that I have successfully completed the Whole30, where do I go from here? Well, I have decided that I want to continue adhering to the principles of the diet going forward. I feel too good not to continue. What this means for me is eating delicious home-cooked food with a minimum of eating out. I will also refrain from eating grains and dairy. There will definitely be no extra sugar in my diet. Of course I may occasionally treat myself to a little something but nowhere near the amount I used to before Whole30. I am pretty excited about this new eating lifestyle. I’d like to thank my wife, Sarah for introducing me to the Whole30 diet. If she hadn’t shown me this diet, I would not be where I am today.

We don’t pack our food in plastic because of health concerns as well as environmental reasons. Here’s how we avoid plastic lunches to go:

1. Stainless steel airtight containers by Sanctus Mundo. I love these so much that I’ve written about them before. We have seven of them and use them for lunches, leftovers (at home or restaurants), and taking to the farmer’s market for seafood, delicate fruit or anything really. They hold about 3 cups.
2. We just added a recycled cotton carrier by To-Go Ware that holds three of the containers perfectly (or two with a couple of “sidekicks,” and has a pocket for silverware. It’s also available in green and 2-tier.
3. An Insulated Klean Kanteen keeps the contents hot for hours, and is great for packing soup. If you pack a chunky soup, you’ll probably want to have a bowl to pour it into, but pureed soup or bone broth are easy to drink right from the “kanteen.”
4. Small stainless steel sidekick containers by To-Go Ware. These are great for salad dressing, nut butter, or any other food that you want to keep separate until lunch time.
5. Large stainless steel sidekick containers by To-Go Ware. These are great for nuts, cut fruit, coconut flakes or other snacks that you want a little more than will fit in the small sidekick, but not quite so much that you need one of the large airtight containers.
6. Reusable cotton bags (not pictured). These are also good for snacks like nuts and coconut flakes (we also used to use them for sandwiches).

Questions I asked Peter

Q: Do you heat your lunches?

A: I mostly eat them room temperature, right out of the stainless steel containers. I used to keep a ceramic bowl at work to warm food in the microwave but I’ve since learned that microwaves destroy nutrients. In the future I don’t plan to heat the food unless I have access to a toaster oven. (The stainless steel containers are oven safe.)

Q: Regarding the stainless steel containers: How well do the clamps work? Are they spill proof?

A: The clamps work quite well; I’ve never had a problem with them opening. Yes, they are spill proof, even for liquids.

Q: What has it been like having lunch packed every day?

A: Initially I was reluctant because it’s one more thing to carry. That’s the main reason I never stuck with bringing lunch to work everyday in the past. Now that I committed to the Whole30, it became a habit. I feel like I could incorporate anything into my schedule by making it a habit.

Q: What is it like eating Whole30 in the “real world?” How have your coworkers reacted? (I asked this question because Peter works in a small office and they all order lunch in and eat together around one big table.)

A: They definitely noticed. In the beginning they asked me questions about what kind of diet I was on but now they are used to me bringing food.

Q: What was the biggest challenge this month?

A: Not drinking beer, even though I drink very infrequently. It’s challenging not because I desire a beer but more not being able to partake and enjoy a social drink with friends.

Q: Have you noticed any positive changes?

A: I definitely noticed my waistline go down and I’ve definitely had way fewer reactions to food than I’ve had in the past (like heavy, bloated feelings after eating). I generally feel good that I’m able to take control over the situation and it’s not at the expense of something else in my life. It’s a great feeling.

Peter felt inspired to write more about his perspective after I interviewed him. Check back soon for his guest post!

We have 14 Dunkin Donuts within one mile of our apartment. No joke.

Don’t worry, I won’t do it. I hope. I don’t think it would taste nearly as good as it looks and it’s bound to have dairy  or something else that the baby is allergic to anyway, right?

I did try looking for a bar of 90% dark chocolate as a treat while I was out running errands today. The highest I could find was 85% and it had “milk solids” as one of the ingredients, whatever that is. So, the Whole30 continues…

Here’s what we ate the last two days:

Meals

Day 29

Breakfast: 3 eggs with spinach and slow roasted tomatoes, sweet potato hash

Lunch: Applegate sliced roasted turkey breast, red leaf lettuce, rosemary mayo, scallions, fermented ginger carrots, slow roasted tomatoes

Dinner: ground beef liver over kale, onions and mushrooms (cremini and shitake)

Day 30

Breakfast: 3 eggs with green peppers, slow roasted tomatoes and parsley, sweet potatoes, chicken bone broth

Lunch (not pictured): beef hot dog dipped in tomato paste, avocado, pumpkin butter

Dinner: leftover ground beef liver, sauerkraut, kale, shallots, baked Japanese sweet potato, ghee

Peter’s lunches

Day 29: chicken avocado salad from Pret

Day 30: mug of chicken bone broth, salad (red leaf lettuce, carrot sticks, green peppers, turkey breast slices, tomatoes), dressing (rosemary mayo), Crispin apple

Snacks

I think I forgot to write about snacks last week. I’ve been working on reducing how much fruit I eat (goal is one or two pieces per day). I’m finding that it’s much easier now than it was at the beginning of the month when I was still missing sugar. I also have heard from Paleo and GAPS people that you should have fruit in between meals and not with meals since your body digests fruit differently than meat and vegetables. Here’s what I’ve been snacking on lately:

• Bone broth
• Avocados
• Hazelnuts and walnuts (Peter isn’t allergic, yay!)
• Cold hot-dogs (100% organic, grass-fed beef)
• Oranges
• Grapefruits
• Raspberries
• Blackberries
• Apples

What do you think?

It turned out to be so much easier than I expected to eat this way. Would you ever try the Whole30?

I have to share some more recipes soon, like the cauliflower mash we made this week. I had the recipe for a long time but figured there was no way it could compare to real mashed potatoes. I. Was. Wrong.

Now that we’ve got our routines down, it’s very easy to have a whole meal three times a day. Usually I make two meals at once (like making Peter’s lunch while cooking breakfast) or have one of the three meals centered around leftovers.

Here’s what we’ve been eating…

Meals

Day 22

Breakfast: burrito (eggs, beef, red leaf lettuce, tomatoes), sweet potatoes cooked in ghee and ginger, 1/2 of a grapefruit

Lunch: egg drop soup (bone broth, chicken fat, egg, parsley), steamed broccoli, EVOO, USS

Dinner: beef stew (beef stew meat, bone broth, onion, celery, carrots, white sweet potatoes, tomato paste, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, USS)

Day 23

Breakfast: eggs with rosemary and scallions, sirloin steak, Japanese sweet potato “chips”

Lunch: sirloin steak, mushroom and onion cooked in bone broth, steamed green beans with EVOO, salad (red leaf lettuce, raw onion, fermented radishes, slow roasted tomatoes), dressing (homemade mayo with garlic and rosemary), seltzer

Dinner: roasted chicken, cauliflower mash (steamed cauliflower, turmeric, ghee, USS), salad (red leaf lettuce, cremini mushrooms, slow roasted tomatoes, fermented radishes), dressing (homemade mayo with garlic and rosemary)

Day 24

Breakfast: lightly scrambled eggs, cilantro, white sweet potatoes cooked in mix of lard and chicken fat

Lunch: chicken salad wrap (chicken, mayo, rosemary, red leaf lettuce), braised leeks, mug of bone broth

Dinner: slow cooker lamb shanks (onion, celery, carrots, garlic, bone broth, tomato paste, thyme, bay leaf, lamb, lard)

Day 25

Breakfast: chorizo, 2 fried eggs with parsley, lard

Lunch: Beef hot dogs, dijon, tomato paste, sauerkraut, avocado

Dinner (not pictured since we were eating it cold and running out the door): sliced roasted turkey with rosemary mayo, avocado

Day 26

Breakfast: 3 egg omelet with crumbled chorizo, avocado and slow roasted tomatoes, sweet potato hash

Lunch: chicken bone broth, sliced roasted turkey, rosemary mayo, red leave lettuce, 1/2 of an avocado, tomatoes

Dinner: hamburger on red leaf lettuce, cooked mushrooms and onions, rosemary mayo, fermented radishes, leftover beef stew with green pepper added

Day 27

Breakfast: lamb/chicken bone broth, 3 fried eggs with minced rosemary and parsley, sweet potato hash

Lunch: hamburger, red leaf lettuce, tomato paste, dijon, avocado, leftover sweet potatoes, coffee

Dinner: chip steak, roasted golden beets, beet greens, shallot, bone broth, baked Japanese sweet potatoes with ghee and USS

Day 28

Breakfast: eggs with cilantro, chip steak, sweet potato hash, coffee

Lunch: beef hot dogs, fermented ginger carrots, cauliflower mash (ghee, turmeric, USS), dijon, tomato paste

Dinner: chip steak, cauliflower mash (ghee, turmeric, USS), roasted brussels sprouts, mug of bone broth

Peter’s lunches

This week we had a special treat. Since Peter was working at a clients’ office nearby he came home for lunch every day and all his lunches are the same as mine above. It was really nice to see him in the middle of the day!

Baby’s reactions

None! He’s doing really well.

According to the FDA

About seven years ago I started hearing the message that whole grains are good for you. According to the FDA, you should eat three or more servings of whole grains daily. If you’ve switched to whole grains or are thinking about it, please read this first.

Switching to Whole Grains

When I first learned whole grains are good, my staple single girl dinner was mac ‘n cheese mixed with a can of tuna or a cut up hot dog and preferably eaten while watching the Simpsons. I started buying whole grain macaroni elbows to make my mac ‘n cheese. I also bought whole grain bagels for breakfast most mornings and any time I found whole grains on a menu I would order them instead of white flour products.

Fast forward a few years: I cook just about everything myself from scratch. I learned to make my own whole grain sandwich bread, pizza dough and even whole grain cookies with organic soft white wheat and spelt flour grown in upstate New York.

But then I learned there was a problem…

The Anti-nutrient Problem

Most people have heard of Celiac or gluten-intolerance, but there are many more problems with grains that effect us all, and gluten is just one of the proteins that can cause problems. A little over a year ago I learned that whole grains contain anti-nutrients such as phytic acid, which block your body from absorbing nutrients in the grains, and worse, bind with other minerals you consume (such as calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron) so you don’t absorb those either.

When I learned this, I started soaking grains to neutralize phytic acid. (This includes oatmeal, which I ate for breakfast almost every day.) I also bought sprouted flour, which according to this book changes the structure of the grain to make them digest like a vegetable. I’ve since read that this may not be true (see the Wheat Germ Agglutinin link at the bottom of this post).

Today’s Wheat Isn’t Even Wheat

To make matters even worse, today’s grains are a result of “some of the most intense crossbreeding efforts ever seen” to “develop a higher-yielding crop.” “The wheat products sold to you today are nothing like the wheat products of our grandmother’s age, very different from the wheat of the early 20th Century, and completely transformed from the wheat of the Bible and earlier.” (See link The Dark Side of “Healthy” Wheat for more information.)

Leaky Gut

I recently learned about “leaky gut,” which is a widespread but little known problem associated with grain consumption. Basically your intestines become permeable and proteins and toxins then enter the bloodstream and cause all kinds of havoc throughout the body.

Millions of people have leaky gut syndrome and don’t know it. I personally only noticed gas and migraines before this year. The only reason I figured out I have leaky gut is because allergenic proteins from cow’s milk, peanuts and other foods were ending up in my breast milk and causing apparent food allergies in the baby.

Here are just a few possible outcomes:

• ADD/ADHD
• Arthritis
• Seasonal Allergies
• Apparent Food Allergies
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Depression
• Eczema
• Fibromyalgia
• Infertility
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Osteoporosis
• Weight Gain/Weight Loss Resistance
• Yeast/Fungal Overgrowth

Passing on Grains for Now

For the past six months I’ve drastically reduced my consumption of grains and for the last month I stopped eating grains completely. I believe that eating whole grains for so many years damaged my intestinal lining. I don’t think I was like this before because when I was in college I went to Mexico and ate fresh fruit, brushed my teeth with the water etc and had no issues, while two other people in my group were hospitalized for E. coli. (I started reading the GAPS book last night and learned that a healthy gut has helpful strains of E. coli that fight off the dangerous ones.)

I don’t know if this would have happened if I had gone straight from white flour to properly prepared grains (see Weston A. Price Foundation links below for more information on traditional preparation of grains). Since I can’t change the past, I am leaving grains off my plate for the duration of the Whole30 and beyond. I don’t plan to reintroduce grains until I’m sure my body is ready for them. If or when that day comes, you bet the grains will be traditionally prepared and in limited quantities.

Further reading:

• The Dark Side of “Healthy” Wheat
• Living with Phytic Acid (Weston A. Price Foundation)
• Be Kind to Your Grains (Weston A. Price Foundation)
• Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA)
• Leaky Gut Syndrom Description
• Leaky Gut Symptoms by Stages

I’m starting to notice which foods I’m not digesting well. Sadly for me it looks like just about all squash is out (which is supposed to be easy to digest). I still have some roasted pumpkin in my freezer from the fall that I’ve been saving for my favorite soup; hopefully pumpkin will be an exception! Bananas are also out for both of us.

Here’s what we’ve been eating…

Meals

Day 15

Breakfast: fried eggs, braised kale and shallots

Lunch: leftover kale and shallots, 1/2 of a roasted butternut squash

Dinner: chicken leg/thigh, carrots, celery, bone broth, onions, broccoli, chestnuts

Day 16

Breakfast: scrambled eggs with thyme and onions, coffee

Lunch: double serving of salad (red leaf lettuce, tomato, mushroom, chicken breast) with dressing (homemade mayo, EVOO, crushed garlic), mug of chicken bone broth

Dinner: flounder, fermented carrots, fermented cauliflower, applesauce

Day 17

Breakfast: sirloin steak, fried eggs, sweet potato “chips,” green chai tea

Lunch: roasted spagetti squash, roasted beets, salad (red leaf lettuce, mushrooms, fermented carrots, chicken?), dressing (homemade mayo, EVOO, crushed garlic)

Dinner: two bowls soup (chicken bone broth, carrots, celery, white sweet potatoes)

Day 18

Breakfast: leftover sirloin steak, fried eggs, sweet potato hash

Lunch: chicken liver, heirloom greenhouse tomatoes

Dinner: chicken liver, mushrooms, kale and shallots braised in chicken bone broth

Day 19

Breakfast: kale, onions, eggs*, sweet potato chips

Lunch: chicken liver pate (chicken liver, sun-dried tomatoes, cumin, garlic, paprika, cayenne, sage), avocado, 1/2 of a roasted butternut squash

Dinner: meatloaf (Nourishing Traditions recipe: used ground beef, ground heart, coconut flour instead of breadcrumbs, omitted cream), sauerkraut, fermented carrots

*I have no idea if there is a name for this cooking method but eggs are delicious like this! Basically I braised the kale and onions, made sure they were evenly distributed in the pan and then cracked eggs directly on top throughout the pan. I covered it and turned the heat very low. The steam from the bone broth cooked the eggs very gently.

Day 20

Breakfast: avocado, bone broth, 1/2 of a grapefruit

Lunch: leftover meatloaf and sauerkraut

Dinner: scallops over beet greens (red onion, garlic, sausage, bone broth, beet greens, crushed red pepper, apple cider vinegar), leftover roasted butternut squash

Day 21

Breakfast: crumbled chorizo, onions, garlic, bone broth, kale, eggs, 2 cups coffee (really tired today since baby is teething!)

Lunch: meatloaf, fermented radishes, roasted beets

Dinner: hamburger (ground beef, red leaf lettuce, red onion, yellow heirloom tomato), sauerkraut, carrots sautéed with ghee and ginger, guacamole (avocado, red onion, heirloom tomato, lime juice, USS)

Peter’s lunches

Day 15: can of sardines, avocado, salad from Pret (walnuts, avocado, tomatoes and chicken)

Day 16: chicken soup (chicken breast, carrots, celery, chicken bone broth), roasted beets, sardines

Day 17: sirloin steak, salad (red leaf lettuce, tomato, mushroom), dressing (homemade mayo, EVOO, crushed garlic)

Day 18: leftover sirloin steak, egg drop soup, orange

Days 19, 20 and 21: same as my lunch above

Baby’s Reactions

After another bout of diarrhea, we found the culprit… paper! (You may recall, last time I wasn’t sure if the problem was almonds, carrots or paper.) We have got to make sure this little guy doesn’t get ahold of any more paper scraps. As he’s crawling around he is so good at finding every speck on the floor.

We haven’t given him any more fruit and he is doing well with meat and vegetables. I have been doing some reading on peanut allergies, and discovered one possible reason why I haven’t been able to pin down whether or not he’s sensitive to other nuts: peanut contamination from peanuts being processed in the same facilities as nuts. By the way, peanuts aren’t even nuts!

On day 10, I was actually shocked at how much food I was able to fit in my stomach, including a full pound of meatballs at lunch. (Usually we split a pound.) Starting the next day, I switched to eating 3 eggs instead of my usual 2 at breakfast and that helped me stay full until lunch time.

One problem I noticed at the beginning of the week was that I wasn’t defrosting enough meat each day and had to resort to snacks with added fat to feel full (avocados, adding ghee to apples, adding coconut oil to just about anything, and heaps and heaps of lard in everything I cook on the stovetop). When we do have more protein and fat at each meal, I feel full longer.

We also made it through a weekend away from home without eating anything off plan! Unfortunately I forgot my camera at my parents’ house and hadn’t downloaded all of the photos so some of them are missing below. I have my camera back and I added the photos below!

Day 8

Breakfast: eggs with mixed bell peppers and bacon, Earl Grey tea

Lunch: turkey pâté (leftover roasted turkey, leftover homemade spicy mustard-mayo, sun-dried tomatos), avocado

Dinner: stuffed peppers (ground beef, cauliflower “rice,” spinach, onions, garlic, tomato paste, and parsley and basil

Day 9

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, bell peppers, bacon, sweet potatoes

Lunch: egg drop soup (bone broth, egg, parsley), avocado, 2 dried plums

Dinner: beef stew (beef, bone broth, onion, garlic, tomato, italian seasoning, scallions), apple

Day 10

Breakfast: eggs, sausage (pork, scallions, apple, fennel fronds, sage), sweet potato “chips,” grapefruit

Lunch: meatballs, fermented green beans, salad (red leaf lettuce, mushroom, tomato, garlic infused EVOO), avocado

Dinner: bacon wrapped scallops, sweet potato and spinach mash, braised fennel

Day 11

Breakfast: eggs scrambled lightly with minced fresh thyme and parsley, piece of bacon, Earl Grey tea, 1/2 grapefruit

Lunch: hamburger with mushrooms and onions cooked in bone broth, leftover spinach and sweet potato mash from last night

Dinner: stuffed peppers (bell peppers, ground beef, cauliflower, bone broth, tomato paste, italian seasoning, fresh parsley), handful of blueberries

Day 12

Breakfast: eggs, red onion, mushrooms, dried parsley, sweet potatoes, 1/2 of a grapefruit

Lunch: chicken bone broth, two deviled eggs (eggs, homemade mayo, dijon, cayenne)

Dinner: roasted chicken leg/thigh, steamed broccolini, sauteed carrots, fermented green beans, two small apples

Day 13

Breakfast: eggs, scallions, sausage, sweet potatoes, 1/2 of a grapefruit, small coffee

Lunch: salad shaker (red leaf lettuce, tomato, mushroom, chicken breast) with dressing (homemade mayo, olive oil, crushed garlic), 1/2 of an orange

Dinner: beef liver, onions, mushrooms, sauerkraut

Day 14

Breakfast: eggs, sweet potatoes, chorizo

Lunch: meatballs, spinach, brussels sprouts

Dinner: hard boiled eggs, avocado, apple (in the car)

Peter’s lunches

Day 8: salad from Pret

Day 9: leftover stuffed bell pepper, fermented green beans, apple, almond butter

Day 10: sausage patties from breakfast, salad (red leaf lettuce, carrot sticks, tomatoes, mushroom slices, EVOO), steam sauteed mixed bell peppers. He also packed his own snacks

Day 11: hamburger with mushrooms and onions cooked in bone broth, braised kale with garlic, fermented green beans, apple and walnuts

Day 12: shrimp salad (shrimp, homemade mayo, splash apple cider vinegar, dried dill from CSA, red onion, leftover stuffing from peppers, coconut flakes, walnuts, 2 dried plums, orange

Days 13 & 14 were the same as my lunch above (weekend)

Snacks

• leftovers
• coconut flakes
• bone broth
• avocados
• walnuts
• pistachios
• strawberries
• kiwi
• cooked apple with ghee and cinnamon
• raspberries or banana with “chocolate sauce” (melted coconut oil and cocoa powder)*

* After having this a couple times I had to stop because it was making my sugar cravings come back!

Baby’s reactions

After recovering from the almond butter I had or the carrots he had (not sure which was the problem) the baby was doing great. Then I forgot about my idea of not giving him fruit and let him have a piece of apple I was eating while we were traveling. I really need to keep the fruit away from him and try to eat less myself and see if we can go more than a couple of days without any adverse reactions. This is so frustrating!

Canceled diaper service

Just after Peter turned 6 months, I hesitantly canceled the diaper washing service. We went from the huge stack of prefold diapers on the left to the tiny stack of organic prefold diapers on the right. Typically, the 30 diapers last us a week before I have to wash them. They hang dry very quickly, or dry at the laundromat with just two quarters. A huge cost savings over the diaper service!

Improved diet, decreased frequency

As I mentioned last time, we have had problems with foods in my diet effecting Peter. By 6 months he improved significantly but was still pooping 4 or 5 times a day. (One of the books I read said because there is little waste in breastmilk, babies can poop as little as every other day.) As we improved our diet, he has been down to once a day many times.

He still has bouts of diarrhea but currently we are doing the Whole30, and eliminating all inflammatory and allergenic foods from our diet. I’ve been excited by how much easier EC is when Peter isn’t having food reactions. Since starting the Whole30, he pees as little as every 5 hours instead of every hour and we can go out with only one extra diaper “just in case.” Today I even went out with Peter in underpants and no diaper backup.

Communicating

Peter has become much more direct in his need to use the bathroom. First he started trying to take his diaper cover off by pulling on the tabs when we were using the Thirsties covers. Then he started raising his arms as if he wanted to be picked up and squeezing both fists. Now that he’s crawling he will stop playing, crawl up to me and pull on my pant leg. In the last couple days he started pulling on his pants between his legs when he has to go. Now that’s direct!

Dressing for EC

Last month we switched from covering the thin diapers with plastic covers to wool underwear. I love the Little Beetle wool underpants from Better for Babies. The space below our apartment is unheated so the wool keeps his bottom warmer on our cold floors.

In the last couple days I started keeping Peter in regular underpants during the day. We got these really cute XXS boys underpants and these printed 2T underpants that I shrunk by washing in very hot water. We still use the wool belt with a prefold at nighttime and when I get up in the morning I put the Thirsties cover on Peter in case he wakes up and has to pee before I get to him.

On top of the diaper we used leg warmers from Etsy for a while (my sewing machine, among many other things, broke this winter). They were great until our floors got too cold. Now we use fleece pants that are warm but aren’t very absorbent so we can rinse them out if needed and they hang dry very quickly.

One of the meals in our first week of the Whole30 was chorizo patties with eggs and sweet potatoes. The spicy flavor of chorizo compliments the sweet potato hash. Another delicious option is Caldo Verde (a kale, potato and chorizo soup). Just be sure to use fingerling sweet potatoes if you want it to be Paleo.

Chorizo

This spicy sausage is so simple to make and well worth the couple of minutes it takes to transform your pork. Makes about 8 patties.

Ingredients

• 1 pound pasture-raised ground pork
• 1 ½ teaspoons paprika
• ½ teaspoon unrefined sea salt
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• ½ teaspoon cayenne
• ½ teaspoon cumin
• ½ teaspoon oregano
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Stir spices together and then combine with meat.
2. Form into patties and cook as desired.

Today I used the white part of scallions leftover from dinner last night, along with some fronds from the fennel I plan to use later in the week, an apple that was on it’s way out and some sage leaves I dried last summer to make this delicious breakfast sausage.

Apple, Fennel and Sage Sausage

This sweet and savory sausage is perfect for breakfast. Makes about 8 patties.

Ingredients

• lard, for frying
• 1 small apple, peeled, cored and diced
• 2-4 pieces scallions, white part only, thinly sliced
• 1 pound pasture-raised ground pork
• 4-6 dried sage leaves, pulverized in a molcajete or spice grinder
• 1 teaspoon fresh fennel fronds, minced

Directions

1. In a 10 inch cast iron skillet, heat some lard over medium heat.
2. Add the apples and scallion whites. Sauté until apples start to brown, stirring occasionally.
3. Combine all ingredients by hand and lightly shape into 3/4-inch thick patties to avoid crushing apples.
4. Fry in skillet used to cook apples or freeze for later use.

The first day without any sugar was intense. I didn’t know how I would possibly make it through the challenge. I read in the support group that the best way to short circuit the sugar craving cycle is to have healthy fat so that your body gets the message that you are well nourished. I had a banana mashed with lots of coconut oil and cinnamon when I felt like I couldn’t stop the craving. Amazingly, as intense as the feeling was it quickly disappeared by the second day. What a relief!

Observations

• I generally don’t get hungry between meals anymore (I used to snack a lot more often) and I’m rarely hungry in the middle of the day. Most days I eat breakfast and then don’t eat again until 3 or 4 pm.
• My teeth feel really clean, even when I haven’t brushed them in a while. (I can even feel the difference in the texture of my teeth vs. my fillings, which I never noticed before.)
• Hunger and satiety feel different; generally more subtle than before. (New for Peter: not feeling stuffed after eating. It’s the carbs that make you feel that way, and I had given most of them up months ago.)
• There have been times when I’ve finished dinner and still been hungry. My body seems to want most of the food either early in the morning or late in the evening. I had to remind myself early in the week that what’s important is what I’m eating not how much I’m eating.

Meals

Day 1:

• Breakfast: Fried eggs with parsley, tomatoes and avocados and a grapefruit.
• Lunch: Hamburger with dijon. Carrots sautéed with ghee and ginger. Handful of frozen raspberries.
• Dinner: Aromatic meatballs (minus the cream), carrots with ghee and ginger and kale braised with onions, garlic and bone broth.

Day 2:

• Breakfast: Pear and two hard boiled eggs, coffee.
• Lunch: Avocado.
• Dinner: Shrimp and steamed brussels sprouts.

Day 3:

• Breakfast: Eggs, sweet potatoes and homemade chorizo.
• Lunch: Leftover chorizo and sweet potatoes with tomatoes and a pear.
• Dinner: Slow cooker beef stew, based on Robb Wolf’s Paleo Beef Stew.

Day 4:

• Breakfast: Two eggs with mushrooms, tomatoes and parsley and half of a grapefruit.
• Lunch: leftovers from last night.
• Dinner: Chicken liver with mushrooms, sauerkraut, and fermented carrots. Apples fried in ghee and cinnamon (not pictured).

Day 5:

• Breakfast: Eggs with caramelized onions, tomatoes, parsley and thyme and fried sweet potatoes, half of a grapefruit.
• Lunch: Hamburger with chopped rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes, covered with tomato paste.
• Dinner: Roasted chicken and steamed carrots with olive oil.

Day 6:

• Breakfast: Omelete with shrimp and avocado (still cooking).
• Lunch: Leftover chicken salad (chicken, homemade mayo, celery, parsley, ginger, cayenne).
• Dinner: Flounder with ghee, artichoke and homemade spicy mustard-mayo for dipping.

Day 7:

• Breakfast: two soft boiled eggs
• Dinner: Turkey leg/thigh roasted with thyme over carrots, celery and onions. Cooked cranberries with an apple.

Peter’s lunches

Snacks and treats

• Leftovers
• Chicken bone broth
• Soft and hard boiled eggs
• Avocados
• Grapefruits
• Coconut flakes
• Roasted acorn squash
• Apples
• Small amount of walnuts and dried fruit (Peter only)
• Coffee or espresso
• I tried almond butter (on celery) for the first time.

Baby’s reactions

One of the main reasons I decided to participate in the Whole30 was to try to address the baby’s food sensitivities. Here’s what I’ve observed this week:

• After a couple days of no sugar in my diet, his frequency of urination decreased significantly to as long as 3 or 4 hours during the day and 6 hours at night. EC is so much easier now!
• Of course the baby picked this week to really start eating (previously he would munch on food but let most of it fall out of his mouth). He ate half of a slice of pear – chewed, swallowed and everything. Then he had diarrhea all evening into the next morning.
• We tried not giving him any solids but after a couple days he started grabbing my plate and the food on it and crying until we let him have some food. So I hoped the pear was too much sugar, and decided he would only get meat/veggies.
• He had munched on carrots with no problem before so we gave him some (very soft) carrots the last night of the first week. He ate a significant amount. This morning (the first day of week 2) he had diarrhea again with what could have been pieces of carrot in it. He had diarrhea during the day with blood in it.
• I’m not sure if the reaction was the carrots he ate or the almond butter I had last night since it was a new food. He also ate part of a piece of paper he found on the floor. I think the almond butter was the culprit though since he’s had problems with other nuts. Too bad because it was darn tasty.

• 1 6-12mo snowsuit
• 1 pair 6mo gloves
• 2 red aprons
• 1 sleep bra
• 1 power strip
• 1 reusable bag
• 1 cat food mat
• 1 pair sweatpants
• 1 pair socks
• 2 tap lights
• 1 dresser
• 1 fish tank with stand
• 1 large plastic tote of fish tank accessories
• 1 shoe organizer shelf

Total: 16

Grand total for 2011: 231 + 16 = 247

I’m going to snag this idea for 2012 and try to purge 2012 items by the end of the year!

Breakfast: eggs, parsley, tomatoes, avocado, lard

Lunch: hamburger with dijon mustard and carrots with ghee and ginger (almost forgot the photo!)

Dinner: aromatic meatballs (minus the cream), more of the carrots and kale braised with onions, garlic and bone broth

I also had bone broth and water to drink and fruit between meals. Apparently I’m more hooked to sugar than I thought! After breakfast I had a grapefruit, after lunch I had a handful of frozen raspberries and while I was making dinner I had a banana mashed with coconut oil and lots of cinnamon. I’m think cooking dinner is going to be my weakest point in the day.

I doubt I’m going to have time to post all my meals but maybe I’ll start a photo set somewhere. I still haven’t figured out which service I’m going to use to replace my MobileMe gallery so any opinions are welcome. (My main reason I went with MobileMe originally was no worries about copyrights or other uses of the photos.)

On a more positive note, my husband actually said he’s excited about this challenge now. Why? Because we weighed ourselves and he was shocked that he’s lost 15 pounds since I started cooking Paleo food at home despite his eating whatever he wanted while out. I had been telling him I thought he lost weight, but he kept insisting that he hadn’t. He even asked me if I calibrated the scale recently. (I seriously doubt it’s off by 15 pounds!)

Here’s where we are at the start:

I  will add photos later but I just wanted to get this posted for now!

For the last several years I’ve been trying to learn what it means to eat healthfully. Since high school, my main focus with food was maintaining a healthy weight (always a struggle for me). This year everything changed when I became a breastfeeding mom. Our son had a few episodes of projectile vomiting, but I had trouble connecting it to any specific foods I was eating. When he was four months old, his symptoms got much worse. I knew that however imperfect it was, my breast milk was still the best food for him, so I made a commitment to figure out what was going on and fix it. Since then, I’ve seen multiple doctors and nutrition consultants and keep coming back to the same root: We both have compromised gut health.

For the last four or five months I’ve been eliminating all the problematic foods from my diet. Whenever I start telling someone about all the foods I don’t eat, they invariably ask “what do you eat?” As I quickly discovered, there are endless options in meat, vegetables and fruits when you don’t base your meals around grains or dairy. Though I admit I had very strong dairy cravings for a while and went through an intense detox, losing 15 pounds in three weeks.

Here’s what I do eat: Eggs, seafood, meat, vegetables, and fruit with a little coconut (and coconut oil), raw honey, ghee, unrefined sea salt and real chocolate. I drink several mugs of bone broth and eat fermented foods every day (so easy to make, by the way). I do still have a little bit of sprouted grains (no more than 1 serving a day) and certain nuts every now and then.

And here’s how I feel: Instead of feeling like I’m missing something, I feel excited to try new foods and combinations of foods. I no longer have icicles for fingers and toes in the winter like I’ve had since I was a teenager. I have energy throughout the day. I sleep better at night. I feel thin (I wear a size 2 jeans now. Yes, you read that right!)

I soon found out that the foods I still eat (with the exception of those sprouted grains) fall under something called the Paleo diet. Both the baby and I have done very well for the last couple of months but  have issues crop up whenever we eat food outside of home, so I am going to start the Whole30.

I’ve realized from all the research I’ve done and talking to nutritionists and doctors with different areas of expertise that there are many paths to getting control of your gut health (another option is GAPS) so you can thrive and be the healthiest version of you. You just have to find the one that works for you. If you’re up for a challenge, there is a Facebook support group for people starting the Whole30 on or around January 1, 2012. Hope to see you there!

Experiences

• Host Thanksgiving dinner for my family
• Have a spontaneous, natural labor and home birth
• Be in the wedding party of a friend or family member
• Take a carriage ride in Central Park
• Attend the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center

Travel

• Take a trip to Germany and visit the house my grandfather was born in
• Spend a summer in Croatia, and meet my husband’s family there
• Return to Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary
• Return to Costa Rica during the dry season and see Arenal

Family & Relationships

• Exclusively breastfeed for at least 6 months
• Have another baby
• Take a family portrait at least once per year
• Finish the family tree I started and send it to my extended family members
• Start a date night tradition
• Start an annual get together with my best friends who no longer live near me

Home & Green Living

• Have every room in our home organized at the same time
• Drive a hybrid car and/or live without a car for a year
• Live in an off the grid home
• Live somewhere with a real washer (and dryer)
• Live somewhere where I can hang clothes outside to dry
• Live somewhere with a balcony or patio
• Live somewhere with a window seat

Skills & Creativity

• Learn to play the piano
• Become fluent in Spanish
• Learn more crochet stitches
• Take a sewing class
• Learn to drive a stick-shift

Career & Finance

• Launch the business I’ve been daydreaming about for several years
• Go back to NYU for a design certificate or degree
• Open an Etsy shop
• Be completely debt free (having the cash on hand that could pay the debt off doesn’t count)
• Sell my car
• Go a week without spending any money

I decided to take a moment to publish one post, and hopefully get back in the habit. When I was working on creating our family rhythm, I decided blogging is important to me right now, but that I wanted to limit myself to 500 words or less and 20 minutes per post (except for special occasions). I’ve been good with the word count, but not so much the time. I write, read, edit, delete and rewrite. I recently got an email from a reader in Germany and then checked out my analytics. I learned that I have followers all over the world, from many countries. Something about these words going out to the world makes me want to get it perfect. I need to settle for good enough.

Anyway, here are a few words that are on my mind right now.

Winter is the time to slow down

I heard these words from Claudia Keel, when she presented at one of our recent Holistic Moms Network monthly meetings. She talked about herbs and kitchen remedies for winter health. I’m fortunate that I haven’t gotten sick yet this year (and I have been using some preventative remedies we learned and eating very well), but winter is a long way from over and I need to slow down a bit.

How do you balance the need to slow down in the winter with the flurry of holiday activities and gatherings?

I took photos of some of our larger purge items this week and listed them on craigslist today. I can’t believe how many responses I got immediately, and for all the items.

The most popular item is our fish tank. I didn’t even have a great photo of it and couldn’t take a new one since Peter was sleeping on my lap when I wanted to make the ad. I dug around my Aperture library and found these photos:

I feel a little sad letting go of it since I bought it in high school. I still remember handing over my hard-earned $120. But I’m ready to let someone else enjoy it. We’re just not that into it anymore, it takes up space in the living room, and it takes up time and money maintaining it and feeding the fish.

The first person who wrote to me is really into fish. He has two other tanks and is more than happy taking all of our fish related clutter off our hands. Wish me luck!

Peter recently outgrew his infant car seat that we got secondhand and I spent a while researching our options for a “convertible” seat (works for rear-facing infants and forward-facing children usually up to 65 or 70 pounds). It’s very important for babies to remain rear-facing at least up to 12 months old so we needed a car seat that allows rear facing for heavier/longer babies!

Healthystuff.org scores car seats based on the chemicals found on the seat, clip and base. Testing includes bromine (flame retardants), chlorine, lead, antimony, arsenic, chromium, cobalt, copper, mercury, nickel and tin. The only convertible car seat that scored NONE was the Sunshine Kids Radian 65 Convertible Car Seat in Champagne. (Note that some car seats had differing levels in different seat colors.) The Granite colored seat (in photo), was not ranked on healthystuff.org so I wrote to the manufacturer to find out about any chemicals used in that color. The response I got was “The processing for the Granite is the same as the Champagne and would have the same test results.” We ended up getting the champagne seat since it was available from a local vendor selling through Amazon.

We got this car seat about a month ago and have used it for short trips a few times. We also drove 500 miles around the Thanksgiving holiday and our son was very happy in this seat (a blessing since he always hated the infant seat). The seat is raised with a straighter back so he can look out of the windows. The only down side is that because it’s so roomy and vertical he kind of slumped to one side when he was sleeping. I used a small pillow or blanket to straighten him out.

I love that this car seat folds up into a backpack too because we sometimes travel by train and then use a car seat to get from the train station to our destination. The seat is fairly heavy but I think it would be doable. If you’re wondering about the seat’s ability to stand up to a crash, there is a shocking article with photos showing that the car seat can withstand a building collapsing on it!