CREATE-YOUR-OWN SKILLET MEAL
Take two pounds of chicken or beef. Cook in a skillet on the stove top. If you are still a bit earlier along, you can sort of boil/poach in a small amount of water.
Add onion and garlic at this stage, too. You can also use dried if you know your source -- I got letters stating no additives from The Spice House.
Once the meat is cooked to your satisfaction, add 3-4 cups of water. Top the cooked meat with 2-3 pounds of veggies. I usually use a combo of carrots, green beans, and spinach. Sometimes I throw in a little broccoli but I can't eat too much of it yet.
Simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour with the lid on, until almost all the liquid is gone.
Season and eat!
Pretty easy, and you get a bunch of leftovers. I have a huge skillet as you can tell. It is well worth the investment, I think.
4 comments:
Hi Susan,
I just found out about your blog when I was searching more on the SCD diet, since I most likely have RA (or to be more precise: psoriatic arthritis). I love your blog, it's refreshing to read, funny and very interesting to see that there are other people out there who are just as stubborn as me to find naturaly diet-related ways to beat the 'system' :)
Here's my story. I had minor red zones of psoriasis at elbows since 18-19 years, which never really bothered me. Around 2 years ago, during a very stressfull period, I started to develop also minor patches on the knees, and then slowly it worsened: i had periods of extreme fatigue, didn't feel like doing anything, and over these 2 years I had weeks where my fingers and toes would swell up. I don't have any pain however, but the fatigue and swelling (plus flue-like feeling) of end of the joints are typical for psoriatic arthritis.
Now I have been living gluten-free for the last year after a terrible flare-up and things did improve for a long time, but I do seem to notice that my fingers and toes (end-joints) keep worsening nonetheless, at a slower pace then during flare-ups however, but still limiting my physical mobility. Strangely on x-rays the rheumatologist so far was unable to see any bone erosion, which could explain the lack of pain for now.
Anyhow I am now considering the SCD diet to see if it could perhaps completely "cure" the PA. I also read about the Paleo diet and searched on Pubmed the articles regarding arthritis and diet.
Here's what I can contribute of my diet-related personal experiences with arthritis so far:
- Of all foods so far, if i eat grains containing gluten the situation definitely worsens in the next days, eg. flare-up
- Milk seems to definitely worsen the arthritis if I drink too much of it, but in small margins it appears acceptable, but only if i am gluten-free for a long time
- Eating lots of fish (and especially fatty fish) and taking fish oil helps in making joints more flexible, and seem to control flare-ups. Also glucosamine and vit c are helpful as supplements for RA, for joints and energy level.
- Drinking 3-4 cups of green tea also helps a lot, and there are numerous articles and a big scientific study out there which confirms that green tea anti-oxidants limit the progress of RA, working in a similar way as Enbrel, Remicade (blocking TNF-x)
- I don't seem to have much trouble with eating potatoes, rice and/or glutenfree pasta and bread, there's no direct reaction apparent, however like I said the appearance of my fingers and toes keep worsening slowly but steady
- Eating too much meat (i usually only eat chicken) also seems to increase inflammation in my hands and toes.
So my main issue with the SCD diet, which promotes eating meat, is that there is a "proven" relationship between a vegan, gluten-free diet and improvement of RA patients outcomes, eg. slower worsening of the condition, compared with a healthy meats-included diet. You can find (even recent) articles about this published on Pubmed. Thus there seems to be a difference between the diseases the SCD diet "cures", and the RA here atleast.
Any thoughts about this? I find it odd that there isn't more information about the SCD diet results for people with arthritis..
Thanks again for your great blog, and please keep writing :)
Hello, thanks for writing.
I don't have a whole lot of time right now, but I do want to respond to some of your questions.
A vegan diet would kill me. LOL. I know there is at least one case study in PubMed that shows that corn alone triggered one woman's RA. As long as she avoided corn completely, she remained free of the disease.
The starches that form the base of a vegan diet (even a gluten free one) feed bad gut bacteria. I realized after starting the SCD that I was terribly sugar addicted, and that any amount of refined starches fed the same yeast and gut bugs that were fed by the sugar. This all contributed to my condition.
I do think that eating too much meat can be inflammatory. I think that is in large part due to consuming factory farmed meats, which have a horrible fat profile.
I think the main reason that people did well on a vegan gluten free diet is that it eliminated many allergenic foods.
The basis of doing SCD using the Pecanbread protocol at pecanbread.com is to run SCD like an elimination diet. You start with a limited number of foods, and then by slow introduction, you find out what you can tolerate. Of course, there are no grains, no corn, and no potatoes on SCD either. So you test other foods.
In this way I found out I can't handle any eggs, cow dairy, or tomatoes on top of the SCD restrictions. I probably should be limiting beef, but lamb and such is pretty expensive.
The thing is, it's really impossible to find out what foods are affecting you if you don't do a really strict elimination.
Well, those are my two cents for today!
Thanks for writing. :)
Hi Susan,
Are all of the spices from Spice House SCD safe? In particular chili powder, cinnamon, cumin, mustard and black pepper?
Their blends are not legal. Many of them contain sugar. If you did find a blend that seemed to have no sugar or other additives, you would have to contact them regarding that specific blend. They responded to my question very thoroughly - it just took a while!
I did not obtain letters regarding the single spices. I was mostly concerned about the onion and garlic. Most pure single spices are OK, but I did not check with them regarding cross contamination or other issues like that.
Thanks for writing!
Post a Comment