GAPS Intro Diet - Day 22 (Stage 3) - Recap

Greenmarket, Union Square

I had the day off from work today, which was lovely. My company allows us to take 5 Fridays off in the summer as long as we work 4 extra hours each week.  It is a pretty good deal, especially since I usually work those extra hours year round.  I'd like to say that I slept in, but as soon as Alex was up at 6:30, I was awake with a list of things to do running through my head. It's a problem.

In addition to throwing together a crock pot full of bones to stink up the apartment, I planned to go into the city and visit the farmers market in Union Square.  It is a huge market with everything from your typical fruits and vegetables to wines, fresh juices, lavender, hard pretzels, baked goods, honey, cheeses, maple candies and - from doing a little research - an ostrich farmer.  Yep, I have never had it either, but being as it is a 'pastured' meat I figured I would give it a go. The farmer was also selling ostrich eggs for about $28 per egg. Maybe I will buy one sometime - can you imagine the omelet that thing wold make? They are huge.

I also was inspired by talking to Kathryn yesterday about her lard rendering and decided to buy some pork back fat from a farm with pastured heritage pigs. I also came across some organic Kirby cucumbers - very hard to find them organic - so I bought a bunch to ferment. Then I went to Whole Foods on a mission to get some additional stock making materials.  I read on the GAPS Yahoo! Group (a forum where people on the GAPS diet ask questions and post materials) that a woman had found chicken necks and backs at WF for a reasonable price.  I was able to find a bunch of necks and also came across some chicken feet too - what luck :) Don't worry, they are organic feet, so they are super clean I am sure.  Alex didn't even seem to care when I warned him what was in the fridge. He is now officially truly desensitized to this diet!

I also purchased some ground lamb at Whole Foods.  I haven't eaten lamb in over 4+ years and I have never purchased it myself.  Well.... I ate it for dinner and it was really delicious, but I still feel guilty going back on things I said I wouldn't eat out of principal. 

Three Week Recap:
Three weeks in and I still feel pretty good, well other than the headache issue which has been plaguing me this past week, and the long lasting muscle aches yesterday.  My forehead is still broken out, but again, that is to be expected.  The other thing I have noticed some improvement with are these tiny pinprick bruises I get all over my calves after exercising, usually running or jumping.  I asked a dermatologist about them last year and he really couldn't tell me why I get them - weak veins maybe? They seem to be better - I did exercises that would have caused them this week and didn't get them so maybe something is getting fixed? Or maybe I didn't exercise hard enough.... who knows. I am interested to see what Stage 4 brings since I will probably be shifting to that in a few days.  Also, now that I have restocked (no pun intended) my stock pile (haha, I did it again!) I am hoping to see some more benefits of chugging down massive quantities of the chicken broth my crock pot slaved over all day.  Hopefully I can get it down.

P.S - I debated posting photo of the chicken feet above, but thought everyone might enjoy the beautiful sunflowers I saw in Union Square instead.