I spent the last 5 days reading The Paleo Approach which is basically a tailored (read: stricter) approach to paleo for people who are immune compromised. A lot of it made sense and due to my immune situation, I’m morphing over to that while keeping SCD in mind.
As a former vegetarian though, the diet is not for the faint of heart (pardon the pun). The diet involves eating copious amounts of offal – heart!, blood, liver, etc. These things are extremely helpful for inflammation. I’ve eaten so much salmon these past two weeks, I’m losing it, so with the ever-supportive “you can do this!” Iowa at my side, I headed out to Meat Hook, an artisinal grass-fed beef butcher in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
This store is amazing. Shockingly decent prices on very high quality meat and an extremely knowledgeable and helpful staff. I was totally honest: “I am on a diet which proscribes eating organ meat. I’m completely grossed out by the concept.” and the butcher talked me through many options, how to cook things, etc.
Last night, following her instructions, I grilled some duck hearts in duck fat and sea salt. And then I ate them. I was anxious, not at all turned on by the smell but, really, they were okay and totally doable. I’m still pretty astonished. She said they had a mild flavor – indeed they did. A tiny bit gamey, but with a side of very sweet roasted butternut, dare I say, quite good. I’ll be making again. And definitely going out to Brooklyn again for my meat. They were great. She looked over what bones I had for bone broth and nixed them and ran in the back and cut me what I ‘needed’ (same lower-than-my- local-butcher price). These bones are cooking in the crock pot right now for stewp later. So impressed with this place.
And I could not have done it without Iowa. For many folks, I suspect eating exotic stuff is, well, not actually exotic but for me it was a major stretch. He offered to take over cooking if I got grossed out, to taste it ‘first’, gave me several hugs and a high five when I cleaned my plate, etc. Best friend/boy friend/person! ever.
I am still having symptoms. They seem to change – overall in 18 days I am improved but I still haven’t achieved improvement nirvana. This diet is high fat and my body is not that open to that yet. But I definitely never feel worse so I keep going going going. Even if eating like this makes me feel like some sort of vampire.
Stomach, oh, stomach 