As I said earlier, I didn’t strictly follow what Dr. Gundry described in his book. I believe I did follow what I understood to be the more important parts of his plan. It’s not my intention here to tell you what the good doctor said in his book but rather what I understood from it and how I proceeded to change my life using his book as an inspiration.
One of the primary issues that the doctor describes is how lectins, which come from certain plants, interfere with the normal operation of cells. Gluten is a Lectin and there are many types of lectins. You may have heard of gluten since many products now advertise that they are gluten-free. Does gluten-free mean lectin free? I don’t really know, and somehow I doubt it, we will have to ask the good doctor for clarification on that issue. Well the doctor recommends that you avoid lectins at all costs because essentially they cause “leaky gut”. Leaky gut is, according to Dr Gundry the root cause of many health issues including digestive problems and joint issues. Your reaction to them will be different from mine because we all have our own level of sensitivity to lectins. Your DNA is pretty much what makes life a crap shoot (not Gundry’s words, they are mine). Basically lectin’s are found in tomato peels and seeds, cucumber peels and seeds, and a host of other vegetables that are described fully in his list of items not to eat also known as his “No” list. There was an interesting caveat however, in that if you wanted to eat beans or legumes, you could pressure cook them and that would destroy the lectins. I would say that’s an important thing to remember. Also while you’re not allowed to eat rice and pasta there is a caveat that if you prepare the rice or the pasta in advance and then refrigerate them, the rice and pasta then become a resistant starch (more on those later) instead of a carbohydrate that is very bad for you.
Now I’m not Italian but there is one thing that I do know, lasagna always tastes better after it’s been refrigerated and reheated. Another thing that I know is that the rice that is used in sushi rolls, especially Sushi that you pick up in the supermarket, is always refrigerated before you eat it. So much to my surprise two of my favorite things in the world, Italian food, especially lasagna and Sushi were actually not off-limits at all. That’s an important fact! So first I’ll tell you what I did for my lasagna recipe. Using the “yes and no” lists I decided to make some substitutions in my lasagna recipe. I used bison instead of beef (because that was what I had that was grass fed and finished) and I used goat cheese instead of ricotta cheese. As far as the red sauce went, I simply chose my favorite sauce, which I normally liven up with a mixture of my own special spices, and put it in my instant pot to pressure cook it. My logic was that if I could pressure cook legumes (beans) to kill the lectins, then I should be able to pressure cook a tomato sauce and not worry about whether it had been made with peeled and seeded tomatoes. The only thing left to do was to put it all together as you normally would a lasagna, bake it, let it cool, divided into sections, and then individually seal them and little boiling bags, which I then froze. I could then conveniently sous vide portions whenever I wanted lasagna. For those of you who don’t know what sous vide is, simply put it’s a machine that lets you drop a boiling bag into hot water and allows you to cook something to a perfect temperature and never burn it. It’s great for defrosting foods or for cooking steaks, but if you cook a steak (100% Grass Fed and Grass Finished!), after you take it out of the sous vide machine you will need to seer both sides. For a perfect medium rare steak, sous vide it to 130° and then seer it in a 500° pan or on your barbecue for about a minute on each side.
More on how I did it and what I ate later! Thanks for checking in!