GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 1)

To organize our GAPS journey, I took a binder and basically made myself a cookbook. I had tabs for all six stages of the intro diet, and another for full GAPS. On each tabbed page, I placed a sheet I had printed off that detailed everything I needed to know for that stage. All of the recipes I gathered, then, I categorized by stage, and when I printed them all off, they went into the appropriate sections of my binder, and ta-da! Instant cook book. I keep it in my kitchen and use it 5 million times per day.

Or something like that.

I’ve been collecting recipes for a while. Below is an index of direct links. If I find new ones, they’ll be added to my Stage 1 pinboard on Pinterest, so you might want to follow that. I can’t promise that I’ll come back here. Not all of this list is on Pinterest, however, because some of these links do not have graphics and therefore cannot be pinned. These are recipes I keep coming back to; I just add the new things we are allowed. I’ll top it with raw avocado, dribble beet kvas in it, add a scoop of sauerkraut–whatever works. The purred vegetarian soups serve as wonderful side dishes when you are in later stages that allow roasted meats; I use them they way I used to use side salads, but we’re actually eating a lot more vegetables this way.

If you are sensitive to spices, you might have to take some out of these recipes (spices really aren’t on Stage 1, but I didn’t eliminate them). Generally speaking, though, these recipes should all be fine for Stage 1.

• Chicken “Noodle” Soup
• Simple Chicken Enchilada Soup
• Creamy Cauliflower Soup
• Chicken Ginger Soup
• Fish Soup
• Another Fish Soup
• Intense Beef and Winter Veggie Soup
• Summer Garden Soup with Turkey Meatballs (hurry before your garden dies!!)
• Another Chicken “Noodle” Soup
• Carrot Soup
• Creamy Cauliflower Meatball Soup
• Spaghetti Soup (this is a favorite and reminds me of minestrone)
• Butternut Squash Soup

The only thing I would add is that you need to add a lot of saturated fat to these dishes, even if it’s not on the recipe. If you have trouble digesting fats, try taking bile salts rather than skimping on the fat. This is the only way to get those necessary fat-soluble vitamins, so important for healing your gut! You cannot absorb fat-soluble vitamins without…fat. (Shocking, I know.) I like grass-fed tallow. Kerrygold butter is not only wonderfully yellow (from the Vitamin A–not beta carotene, A’s inferior cousin) but it tastes fabulous. Grassfed organic ghee is better, though, if you have serious dairy issues. Coconut oil is always a good option. And, of course, cooking your meat into your soup will save all the drippings for consumption.

I used to buy cheap butter most of the time, and Kerrygold was a treat. We don’t do it this way on GAPS. We are using Kerrygold most of the time, because this is a healing protocol. I can’t afford to buy everything organic, but good fat is one of the keys to the diet, so we don’t compromise on this.

These are wonderful recipes, but I still suggest getting to Stage 3 as fast as humanly possible. The ability to have “real” breakfast foods, rather than soup all day long, makes GAPS much more bearable. At least, it did for us.

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More on my Intro Binder:

• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 1) ← you are here
• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 2) 
• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 3)
• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 4)
• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 5)
• The GAPS Binder: Intro Diet Recipes (Stage 6)